In about 2 hours I’ll be 24 weeks, but it still counts!  I’m a sometimes-waddling, no belly-button-having, eternally hungry, fetus carrier.  Just like I like it.  I’ve been feeling good and my sunburn is now splotchy on my belly since I have literally stretched new pale skin in with the angry red.  It’s very strange looking, so of course I have shown everyone, include EB’s teachers and the gal that works the front desk at her school.  If you know me in real life, you would not be surprised by this.  If you only know the blog me, put that in your back pocket.  I’m rarely embarrassed and probably grossed a lot of people out this week.  I was like a science fair project!

I went to the chiro and got adjusted, then went to prenatal yoga at the YMCA today.  Pretty much the best day ever.  There were only 2 of us preggos in there so it was so nicely paced.  I feel limber except in the front part of my skin, but I can’t do much about the bursting belly.  I feel like I’ve grown a lot more this week.  Well, you know, little A2 has grown.  She loves me getting my back popped.  A gal after my own heart.

The whole 29 hours I spent in the hospital with my cousin (Monday to Tuesday) was really surreal to me.  I already told LG this, but I felt like I should’ve been leaving the hospital with a baby.  It’s a good thing they have those sensor tags so nobody swipes one.  I don’t know what the heck I’d do with someone else’s baby in the first place, but it was strange to wake up every 2-3 hours again, change poo diapers that have a consistency that’s not exactly gross, but super strange, and just stare at a baby taco like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.  And I thought that was reserved for my own baby, but baby P sure fit the bill.  I guess the real fear would’ve been that I grew so attached to baby P over that first night that LG should worry about me leaving the hospital with her, instead of some stranger baby.  They’re so effing helpless.  How can you not swoop in and jostle them until they fall asleep?  I still do the standing hip bounce/swing, even when I’m not holding a baby taco.  I find myself doing it in the line at the grocery store even.  So many instincts burst right out of your skin with newborns.  But maybe all of that was so close to the surface because I’m so close to LG, and that of course I’d feel comfortable picking up baby P in the middle of the night so LG could get some damn sleep already.  The instinct could also be to love on my cousin, too.  But at least I had a kiddo to come home to and appreciate that she can feed herself.  A toddler is actually harder to take care of than a newborn, but I’m less scared of something happening to her.

She is less fragile than an infant, but takes way more energy from me to chase/clean/clothe/entertain. It’s a give and take.

My toddler is officially a 2 year old.  She is having tantrums about anything and everything.  This morning it was not bringing the right pair of sunglasses with us on the 3 minute ride to school.  I brought 2 options, but she wanted the pair I couldn’t find, of course.  Here is a pic she is in a pair I found in my old toy chest at home. Those are indeed Transformers glasses without the lenses.  Back when Transformers was cool and not some movie slash commercial for Ford, or whatever it was.  Cheese and rice, that movie bugged me.  I had such high hopes, too.

After-bath and before bed, you never know what will happen.

While learning the new intricacies of someone who can say most words, but not all, and probably in an interesting order and pronoun usage, I have gotten the preggo brain Loss of Good Sense.  When I printed out the first draft of my book, my MIL’s printer ran out of ink on the even pages from 2-74.  So I started writing in the lines that were hard to read.  It was taking forever.  And I was reading only tidbits and not editing the whole thing so my story was getting confusing to me.  So Hubs kindly pointed out that we have a printer and I could simply reprint those illegible pages.  Well DER.  It took me about 50 tries to get the paper in the right way, but now I’m on my way to editing the thing without being annoyed with it.  Hallelujah!

I’ve had several questions about the book that I haven’t yet responded to–I will, probably tomorrow when I should be working.  But for now, it is a paranormal romance.  The title is in the process of being revised because I’m sometimes ok with the cheesiness and other times it slowly kills my soul.  And I need to work on getting the story description down to a few lines because right now it takes me 20 minutes to explain it, and most of it is caveats as to why I am hesitant to let my family read it (because of the romance.  My mom doesn’t need to read that).  And I need to own up to the cheese factor of the storyline because those are the types of books I like to read, but I hate explaining to anyone else.  Basically I want to market this book just to me and not have to describe it to anyone else.  Or publish it under a pen name and not worry about being embarrassed.

And now I’ve come full circle–in my life I’m not embarrassed, but I get shy when talking about writing a book about vampires making out.  Maybe that should be on the back of the book.  ”This is about a vampire and a human making out.  And a little more stuff in between.”  That would actually make me want to read a book, so I’d still be marketing to myself.  That actually sounds like the best option.

Sidenote:  EB is sleeping in her big girl bed all night tonight!  We had a little setback where she wouldn’t actually stay in it, so this is a big deal.  And I just picked her up off the floor where she rolled out so I put some thick comforters down for the next time she falls.  I need to find some bed guards or something.  And I fully expect to find her rummaging around in my room in the morning instead of hollering for me to come get her for Cheerios.

Mama/writing Jells.