The Second Child.

I've always heard that parents are less frantic about preparing for second, third, fourth etc...child, and I always found the idea a little sad. Why do subsequent children get less fanfare?

Then I became pregnant with our second child.

This is Payne's room when I was 28 weeks pregnant:



This is Nugget's room, as I sit here 28 weeks pregnant:

Oops.

Now I know that teeny spawn don't generally come home and sleep in their rooms right away, but it still somehow seems imperative that the room be prepared for them. I'm starting to feel seriously guilty about this.

BUT, BUT, you can see piled haphazardly on the bed there some girly bedding, and piled up on the dresser are some wooden cut outs that I'll eventually get around to sanding and painting in order to put up on the walls. Um, well, once we've disassembled the gigantic bed and figured out where the heck we're going to store it.

Seriously, we are SO unmotivated to prepare for this baby! Does this mean we're going to have like 5 photos of her entire first year (seemingly a curse for all younger siblings)? Will she go for a week without a name on her birth certificate?

(Rachel breathes into paper bag)

Ok, ok.... I am prepared for her in one way. Of course, this happens to be the most consumerist and shallow way to prepare for the birth of one's child.

Behold, the closet of Nugget:

Hem hem...here we see all outfits in newborn size left of the center partition, and in 0-3 size right of the partition.

And on the far right wall are all outfits sized 6 months and larger. Not pictured are the receiving blanket and girly sock collections, which are currently housed on the floor, waiting for a spot in the dresser.

So homegirl may sleep in a drawer lined with towels for her first few weeks, but she'll look smashing while she's at it! Feel free to nominate me for Mother of the Year any time.

Folks, I think I've hit rock bottom.

I was meeting my friend Mikel at Chick Fil A for lunch today, and as soon as Payne and I got there I had to make my 35th trip to the restroom for the day (yay for pregnancy!). I ushered my kid into the handicapped stall. Yes, for all of you non-mothers out there, we mothers feel entitled to use the larger stalls normally reserved for people with disabilities. I've yet to come out of one to find a disabled person waiting, but when that day comes I'm sure I will melt into a puddle of pure shame and embarrassment.

Now, normally my procedure is to set Payne up with his back against the far wall of the stall, threaten him with his life not to touch anything, and get out as quickly as possible. Today I made the fatal mistake of turning my back to him to hang up my diaper bag on the door hook. When I turned around he was hovering over the toilet, wee right hand outstretched to grab the back of the toilet seat, which is, in my domestically educated opinion the nastiest 6 square inches on the planet. I screeched "Don't touch!" and yanked him backwards.

My friends, Payne had a sippy cup in his left hand. As he was yanked backwards that sippy cup fell INTO THE TOILET BOWL. I miserably squealed "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" at him, which triggered immediate tears, and of course guilt on my part. So, my kid is crying about his lost "wawer" and I'm frozen staring at a floating sippy cup in the toilet of a public restroom. What can I do? I can't flush the damn thing, since it's like three times the size of the toilet's, um, passageway. I can't just leave it there for an unwitting (and already unlucky for having been selected to clean the restrooms)employee to find and be forced to extract.

I think you all know what I had to do.

I think you all know what I did.

Yes, I reached my hand into a toilet of public use and extracted a cup covered in publicly used toilet water. I then rushed it to the bathroom garbage chanting "Grossgrossgrossgrossgross" under my breath.

Two hand washings and one promise to a still sobbing toddler of a new milk later, I managed to actually exit the bathroom and find my confused friend. Then I ate my lunch...with my hands.

So yeah. Rock bottom. Right up there.

It's a good thing the sippy cup flinger is cute.


(Here he is cackling "I got my Mom to stick her hand in a toilet used by hundreds today!")

Payne, the bathroom attendant.

If one is planning on visiting the restroom at our house, it's best to lock the door behind oneself. Otherwise, there's a high possibility of a wee person busting in when you're at your most vulnerable and "howping" you in whatever way he sees fit.

Sometimes this involves trying to squish between the toilet and the side of the cabinet so he can prematurely flush the toilet 5 times. Sometimes it means pushing up his little plastic stool so you have somewhere to rest your feet. And it will always include him carefully measuring out and tearing off a length of toilet paper, handing it to you, and saying " Here ooh go!".

Maybe I should get him a little tux and have him stand by the bathroom door with a hand towel over one arm, offering pumps of hand soap or spritzes of one's choice of perfume or cologne...

It has ARRIVED!

One of my "when I'm a grown up" goals in life was to get a kind size bed.

I plotted mightily and insisted my husband's back issues were due to our not super firm queen sized mattress.

I convinced him we could just get the new mattress at first, and be in no hurry to get a new frame. We got the mattress.

When we got our tax return I brought up the possibility of a new frame in an oh so coy manner.

When shopping for frames, I lamented that I wouldn't be able to trust the finish quality of anything but a bed from my favorite furniture brand. We got the frame.

I then brought up that the new bed would look so much better with a new duvet and cover, instead of our dry clean only comforter. I got the bedding.

Then I mused (out loud) how lovely our bedroom would look with something other than resale beige on the walls. My husband painted it for me.

While my husband was still exhausted from painting, and thus perhaps not at his most contrary, I suggested rearranging the furniture a bit...

(Here is where I admit that my husband knew EXACTLY what I was doing each and every step of the way, and I was fooling no one.)

In short, we went from the bedroom below (king size mattress here, no bed yet) which I like to call "dorm room with a nice dresser"...




(The lump O stuff on the floor is the girl's bedding)

to THIS! The bed frame, my beloved last piece of the puzzle, was delivered today!


(The thing you can barely see off to the left is a lingerie chest Dan uses as a night stand)



(Sorry for the rumpled pillows. Payne had already tested everything out for me)



(Yes, in my joy to use my new shams I put the king sized covers on standard pillows and folded the extra over.)

I have a GROWN UP room now! Hurrah!

Oh, and Payne will be forevermore exiled from our bedroom, because I know the first thing he'll do when unsupervised for three seconds is spike matchbox cars into the headboard...or something equally horrific.

Sorry Son. You sealed your fate when you "cuhwerd" on my black dishwasher with a magnadoodle pen today, leaving permanent white scratches. I love you anyway, but dude.

Nugget is still Nuggette.

Dan and I were still a little nervous about our new baby supposedly being a girl, since Payne was a "girl" until three days before I gave birth. So we decided to go get a 3D ultrasound to double check, and made the dubious call to bring Payne with us.

In the lobby he passed the time running laps around the couches with his slappy flip flops on their very loud laminate wood flooring, and trying to grab the vase of artificial orchids over and over and over again. I think we may have scared the first time parents that were also out there. Hee.

Once we got in the tech guy was awesome and quickly checked the sex. She is still very much a girl. Hurrah! However, the main goal of these things is to get a good 3D image of the baby's face, so he was mainly working on that. Unfortunately Nugget had her face firmly smushed into the placenta for the whole twenty minutes. I can't say I blame her, I mean, it's pretty much the only pillow like thing in there right? I'd probably snuggle up to it too. The tech poked around on her a bit trying to get her to move, but every time he got her to pull her face away a little she'd shoot her little arms up and cover her face. I told Dan she must be modest, so we're off to a good start.

Oh, and the whole time this was going on Payne was climbing all over the couch in the ultrasound room and Dan was trying desperately to entertain him. We thought he might enjoy seeing the baby, but the images were still a little too hard to decipher for him to quite get it. He did placate us with yelling out "Baby sidder!" a few times, in between attempts at pulling the power plugs to the expensive equipment out of the wall...

We got a couple of printed photos of about half of her face, but my scanner isn't cooperating so I can't post them. Since she was so stubborn we get to go back for free in a few weeks to try again. Go Nugget! She's already getting us free stuff! After that appointment we should get a disk with images on it so I can put them up. Yay! I'll warn you that they might only be cute to me, though. I've heard a pretty accurate description of 3D ultrasound images as "A baby smushed up against a pane of glass". (snort)

A picture pretty much says it all.

Sunday was a long day and by the end of it I had pretty much given up.

Here my boss is seen victoriously eating his dessert of "abboh soss" off of his "payt" of a plastic meat cleaver. Oh yeah, and his "dinner" was a slice of banana bread and a cup of yogurt.

I was thoroughly overpowered in the stubborness department. He may have won the battle, but I WILL win the war!

Awesome.

So Dan got Lasik surgery this weekend, and as a result he has to wear these completely fabulous goggle things at night to keep him from accidentally rubbing his eyes.

He looks sort of like this in them.



Except, well, a little shorter and more Irish.

So guess who snuck into the bedroom today and decided to dress up like Daddy?



Ha!