It's the most wonderful time...of our lives?

When you're pregnant, everyone has something to say to you. Sometimes it's well-meaning advice, sometimes it's the kind of stuff you fake a smile for ("You're in for trouble!" Ha ha. Thanks, jerk.), and sometimes the stranger next to you at the laundromat is suddenly making up a song about you having a baby and singing it out loud. I've had all three happen to me.

When women notice me and talk to me, I almost always end up hearing stories about their births, pregnancies, children, breastfeeding experiences, etc. In particular, when people hear that I've had two natural home births, they almost always feel compelled to offer me a lengthy explanation justifying their hospital births, medicated or not. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, since healthy babies are born in all kinds of ways every day. I'm not actually trying to convert anyone to natural home birth.

That's actually beside the point. I don't mind it when people talk to me about their kids or pregnancies- I think it's interesting. There are so many different experiences. But one thing I've heard a LOT of, particularly from older women, is that pregnancy was the "best time of their lives."

Really?

Does that really happen? Are there people out there who truly enjoy pregnancy and everything that comes with it?

I don't know what to say to these women, because that's completely not my experience. I dislike being pregnant. (I don't know if any of you could tell.) I don't like that my body isn't my own. I've maintained a certain weight range most of my life, and I hate the weight gain that comes with pregnancy. I've never seen some of those numbers all together on the scale before! I don't like that I can't move like I used to. My hips hurt and my back hurts and I have to squat to get anything on the floor or if there are multiple things, just crawl around on my hands and knees. There are random pains in areas I can't describe here. And at the end of it all is the promise of labor and childbirth, complete with possible tearing, stitches, and any number of unforeseen complications.

And did I mention the moodiness? I feel much healthier in this pregnancy than with Liam, but my moods (mostly my bad moods) have been off the charts. Sometimes I forget about all the problems, and while I was trying to decide if we would regret limiting the size of our family, I asked my husband wistfully one evening, "Should this be our last baby?" His response, without pausing to think (clearly), was, "I know this should be the last pregnancy." Yeah. It's been like that. You can ask anyone, even my family, and they'll say I've been a lot of things, but I'm not an angry person. Well, during the early part of this pregnancy, I was an ANGRY PERSON. I hated it. Now I've got a handle on it, I'm just becoming more withdrawn and curmudgeonly.

Also, who decided that wearing a baby around your waist for ten months was a great idea?? It's so awkward and throws everything off! Braxton and Hicks are JERKS. Your blood sugar goes everywhere. You're kicked and pushed against from the inside. And then that eight pound, watermelon-sized baby has to fit through WHERE? You know who's got it good? Marsupials. After a few weeks of pregnancy, they give birth to an itty bitty baby who just finishes developing in a pouch that it can eventually leave. Even animals who lay eggs can at least leave them for a little while (or sleep normally next to them) before coming back to sit on them.

So is it possible that there are really that many women for whom bearing children was the "best time of their lives?" Do other people just take these things in stride WAY better than I do? (Which is entirely likely.) Since I mostly hear it from older women, is it possible they've forgotten all the painful and annoying parts of pregnancy, or has more time simply allowed them to see the relatively short period of pregnancy from a different perspective?

I feel compelled to add that while I dislike a lot of things about pregnancy, I don't hate it. There are a lot of things I'm thankful for. I'm thankful that my husband and I can conceive at all. What a precious gift! I know many couples who are struggling with the heartache of infertility. I'm thankful that I'm healthy and my pregnancies have (so far) been healthy and I've had two healthy babies. I'm thankful that I live in part of the world with access to proper nutrition and education and many comforts that pregnant mothers in other places lack. I'm thankful I have the support of a wonderful husband and family, many of whom live very close. I'm thankful that I know a community of other mothers to talk to. There are things I could complain about (for days. Have I mentioned my moodiness?), but it's never lonely. Now that I can feel my baby moving, I get to start developing a relationship with them. I can feel when and why and where they kick and punch. I can tell when they twist around and what they like and dislike. Later on with my other kids, I was even able to tell when they were sucking their thumb or when they got the hiccups. And even if it throws off my balance, at least they're safe inside me. I don't have to worry about the temperature or germs or SIDS or whether they're eating enough or why they're crying.

All that is to say that there are some beautiful things about pregnancy for me, but I wouldn't describe it as the best time of my life. I hit a sweet spot with my kids around 6-12 months. That's when things start getting really fun. I'm not sure what to say when people tell me they just loved being pregnant. I guess I want to ask them why, but that seems rude somehow. I even had one woman describe the painful hernias she had (only when she was pregnant, though) and then go on to say "but it was just the best time of my life!" I wonder what part she was remembering fondly?

Are there any other mothers who feel that pregnancy was the best time of your life? Why? If not pregnancy, was there another part of  having and raising children that you enjoyed more?

Baby is a....

Today we went in for New Baby's first ultrasound. We're very happy going the home birth-midwife route, and insurance doesn't cover that, so it doesn't cover full diagnostic ultrasounds either. Luckily, occasionally our local Pregnancy Resource Center puts out a call for ultrasound models to train their nursing staff. The ultrasound is free (!) they just can't medically diagnose anything, including gender. It's great if you just want to make sure there is indeed a baby (instead of a pterodactyl or something) in there, that they have all their limbs and vital organs, and they're moving around in a healthy way. Since that's mostly what we want to do, it's a great fit for us. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at reading ultrasounds. ("Oh, is that it's little eye? It's the stomach, you say?')

I remember when we had Diana's done around 20 weeks and the tech was repeatedly scanning the Area in Question and asking "Does that look like anything to you?" "Can you see anything that's there or missing...?" No, I couldn't. Joey thought afterward that he saw a distinct lack of anything, and he was right. The same thing happened at Liam's ultrasound and he definitely thought Something was there. Later on, to satisfy my curiosity (in a very expensive way), we had a full diagnostic ultrasound done at the local hospital and confirmed that Liam was our Liam boy. This time, Joseph wasn't able to make it, so I didn't have any help. In fact, I had two small people in the room gleefully competing to make the loudest dinosaur scream, which is the opposite of help.

(Oh my gosh, Nichole, we don't even care about your rambling. We're just here to see whether you're having a boy or a girl. JUST TELL US IF IT'S A BOY OR A GIRL.)

I have an oversharing problem, and I warn you all it's just going to get worse as this pregnancy goes on. Anyway, when the Area in Question was scanned in passing a couple of times, I really thought I distinctly saw Something. However, as the nurse pointed out later, the cord was showing up very strongly, so I might have been seeing the cord passing over the Area in Question and connecting to the body. When I asked if they could just scan that general area again for my sake, though I knew they couldn't tell me anything, they came up from the underside, as if the baby was sitting on a glass table and we were looking up from underneath. Honestly, I didn't see anything there. So who knows, maybe we're having another girl. Rather than spend $200 and a trip to Portland to get a diagnostic ultrasound when we're pretty sure the baby is healthy otherwise, I think we're just going to leave this one a surprise. We're already prepared either way. We're not hoping for one more than another. I think Liam would probably appreciate having a little brother to rough house around with (Heaven help us all) more than Diana would enjoy having a little sister, but I know I'd have fun dressing up another little girl. (Moms of girls know they have a way better clothing/accessory selection.) We already have a short list of boy names, so we'll pick some girl names and be surprised in late January, I guess!

Baby in profile at 21 weeks! Can you see the little heart? It was beating at 140 bpm.

Another baby profile shot.

Happy Five Years

Just married! 2008

This weekend, my husband and I celebrated our fifth anniversary. Five years has gone by so quickly! Having kids and the ensuing sleep deprivation has, granted, caused many of my memories of at least three of those years to become pretty fuzzy, but hey, five years is still longer than college or high school. I hope we'll be together for decades more, but five years begins to feel like at least a minor milestone. As we approached our anniversary, I reflected on how relatively little we knew each other when we got married and how much closer we've become. Granted, we met each other about four months before we began dating, dated for just less than a year, and got married about eight months later, so there wasn't a lot of time between meeting each other and getting married. In that sense, marriage really does seem like a leap of faith, because you have no idea how much you don't know about each other!

Some people will say you should get to know each other for a long time as friends first, or at least have a very long engagement. I think it's unnecessary. Probably prudent, but if you know you belong together and have covered your relationship in prayer, I really don't see the point in waiting. And five years later, I still don't. Certainly our relationship deepened after we married. We've grown closer in ways I couldn't have anticipated. But I think that's just something that happens after you've made that marriage commitment, regardless of how long you've been together. All I knew when I married Joseph was that I loved him, I admired him, I wanted to be with him, and it seemed like God wanted us to be together too. Five years later, all of those are still true.

I know one thing for certain: I have never regretted or wished away a moment of being married. (This post may also be subtitled: "Justifying my quick marriage at a young age.")  I was 21 when we got engaged and 22 when we were married. All the adult members of my family balked in ways great and small and insisted I should wait until I was at least 30 until I got married, God bless them every one. (Literally, they believed 30 was a magical number.) That way I would have time to "grow as a person," "finish schooling," "establish my career," "accomplish my goals," etc. It seemed silly at the time, and five years later it still seems laughable. (I love you all.) The fact that I never got a graduate degree or pursued a career had to do with my uncertainty about what I wanted to pursue, and nothing to do with a lack of support or encouragement from Joseph. (Quite the opposite.) If God has lessons to teach me, He can use any part of my life, whether I'm married, in school, a mother, or pursuing a career.

Also, how did marriage become the great End of Everything? Why on earth couldn't a person still grow, establish a career, go to school, or accomplish their life goals while married? Wouldn't having a constant support in your life just help you with all of those? Children are a completely different story. It's a much bigger challenge trying to do any of those with children. But people act as if getting married ends your life. You never get to grow or change or progress. I remember in one of my graduate level classes one day, I mentioned I'd just gotten engaged, and everyone was floored. "I can't imagine making a commitment like that!" "Yeah, I'd be scared out of my mind." "There is no way I could even think about doing that." I understand that everyone is different, and not everyone wants to get married or is ready at the same time at their lives, but why is marriage actually frightening? Again, I don't go in for conspiracy theories. I don't believe there's a war on marriage. But it's sad that so many people have such a negative view of something so beautiful.

I didn't have any reservations about getting married to Joseph. (My parents were going through a separation/divorce at the time and I worried that I would somehow ruin a marriage, but that's another story.) I've always liked guys names that started with "J." I don't know why. I like blue eyes and darkish hair. I like big shoulders. Since I was a teenager, I've been keeping an almost-impossible list of what I wanted my future husband to be: he had to like kids, like animals, be spiritual (I wasn't raised a Christian, but I knew I wanted someone who had good morals and a deeper meaning behind them), enjoy cooking, enjoy classical music, be highly educated or very intellectual, be well-read in the classics, among many other traits. I was also looking for that loving, caring, strong, protective, gentle, prince-like quality. The way I know that God meant us to be together is I got all that in Joseph and more. He was literally everything I'd ever hoped for in a man, but still better than I could have imagined. A prince among men. The kind of material that knights and great leaders are made of. Brave, wild, a dreamer and deep thinker, hilarious, has a great way with words, able to encourage others, inspiring, a sharp businessman, able to teach himself anything. Honest- as far as I know, he's never lied to me or anyone as long as I've known him. I grew up in a family where little white lies were acceptable. It's very important to Joseph that nothing either of us says even borders on a lie to anyone. Not even little white lies. He's a wonderful father. He's a great friend, and he's a strong Christian. I haven't even mentioned that he's super handsome and fit, with a great Welsh singing voice. Or that he was an entrepreneur with a successful business (two, now!), a pilot, and a volunteer firefighter/EMT. I couldn't have in my wildest imaginings even designed a man like him. I certainly couldn't have imagined I'd meet him one day. And how lucky was I to meet him when I was only 20?? When we were dating, we both prayed about our relationship a LOT and were very open to God's prompting. But since there were no barriers and we both just kept liking each other more and more, we assumed it was meant to be. I would have been happy (and I still am) to be with Joseph the rest of my life. He was the man I'd always wanted. Since he felt the same way about me, there was no reason for us to date for another nine years just so I'd grow or learn in some hard-to-define way. (Plus, as Christian couples who are waiting for marriage can attest, it reduces temptation drastically if as soon as you get the green light from God, you put a ring on it.) Though I saw no reason marriage should hinder my education or career, I decided that love and building our life together was more important than both of those things. We're both enormously thankful for the experiences we had when we were younger and single, but I wouldn't wish for any more of those if it also came with the loneliness and longing of waiting for your perfect match.

Was that too braggy? What I'm trying to say is that Joseph is one of my sure proofs of God's grace. How could I ever deserve a man like that? How could I deserve his unconditional love and constant forgiveness? How could I manifest him with positive thoughts and energy sent out into a big uncaring Universe? No, God definitely exists, He designed Joseph, and for reasons I'll never understand but always be thankful for, He brought us together. (Really, as nerdy as I was when we met, it was a miracle he wanted my number.) I could never deserve or understand God's grace in choosing to save and protect me, but I'll always be thankful for it, and I'm always reminded of that when I think about my relationship with Joseph.

I'm sure your spouse (or future spouse) is great too, but I love mine so much! I'll say to single people: get out and enjoy life! Do all the things you'll be proud of yourself for later on. But if you meet the person you know is right, marry them whether you're 20 or 70. At the end of my life, I can't imagine I'd look back and wish we'd had nine fewer years of marriage so I could have "grown" more for nine years. I can only imagine I'll be grateful for every moment I've had with my amazing husband. In fact, I'd wager that the last five years, the challenges of life (both major and mundane), keeping our marriage healthy (even through having kids, which is no easy feat), adjusting our personal attitudes and behaviors, and just living together, has resulted in more personal growth than I would have experienced in either graduate school or through work. We've both changed and helped each other as iron sharpens iron. It's not always comfortable,  and it's definitely hard work, but I'd say we're both better people.

This feels a little rambling. I guess other than justifying my Great Marriage Experiment, I don't know exactly what I want to say, except happy five years, Joseph! One day I'll actually let you read my writing before it's complete... it might take another five years, though. :)

The happy couple five years later... plus three bundles of joy.

Big Trip Aftermath

[Backstory: All that talking about a new car became research about a new car which turned into actually buying a new car. Unfortunately, the only places around the country to find our ideal Mazda CX-9 are Florida, Texas, and Virginia. Since we have friends in Virginia, and since we wanted to try a road trip this year anyway, we decided we'd buy an East Coast car, fly out to pick it up, and drive back to Oregon. It was an epic road trip which I will write a brilliant post about later. We've been dealing with the aftermath for about a week now, so I thought I'd share that while it's fresh.]

We arrived home from our First Family Road Trip around 9 PM on Tuesday, August 6. Liam, who had been pretty weirded out the entire 2.5 week trip away from home, was so thrilled when we set him down inside our own house that he just walked around with a big smile, pumping his arms and yelling "Yess!! Yess!!" We found while we'd been gone, Joseph's sweet family had harvested our peaches to keep them from being wasted and canned some for us to enjoy when we got home. We were all so happy and relieved to be back and looked forward to spending the night in our own beds again.

And then it became apparent that we were not alone.

Our house was inhabited. Not by spiders or fruit flies or ants, or any insect that people normally have to deal with. We found them clinging to our ankles only moments after we walked in the door. We knew them by the little stinging bite.

Our house was infested with fleas.

Someone who has dealt with a flea infestation before called them "the insects from hell." It's the adults you notice because they bite (and jump up to 7 inches), but they're hardly the worst of your problems. Once they've fed (on blood), females can lay 5,000 eggs in their lifetime, which can be a few months or something like 1.5 years. The eggs can take a few days or up to two weeks to hatch, so when you think you have your infestation cleared, a new batch of eggs hatch to start the cycle over again. There's also a larval stage. The larvae need to feed only on any organic material, and then they form a cocoon before developing into adults. Once they emerge from their cocoon, adult fleas need to eat within a week or they will die. If they don't emerge from their cocoons (which could be hidden anywhere from your baseboards to the underside of your furniture or on piles of junk on the floor, which we had in abundance), larval fleas can survive for months without eating, only to emerge when conditions are right and drive you mad.

Luckily, we hadn't brought anything into the house but ourselves, so we turned around, checked ourselves for fleas, and went to Joseph's parents' house to spend the night. I just HAD to try to make a dent in the population by vacuuming the house (it's a tiny house), so while everyone else was outside, I ran a vacuum over all the floors, accumulating (and summarily drowning in a nearby container of water) 30 fleas in the few minutes I was in there.

Can I take a moment to defend myself?

There is a stigma that surrounds people who deal with fleas. It seems like a terrible, uncivilized, hillbilly problem. It makes me feel like a caveman, picking fleas off myself and my children. It's the pits. Get your flea jokes in now, people, because I never want to have them again.

We weren't completely surprised to have fleas in our house. We'd found them on our dog about a week before we left and banished her outside and to the garage. When we lived in a different apartment with a different dog, we'd had a flea problem before and had developed a flea protocol that involved daily vacuuming, religious use of Frontline, and baths for the dog every other day. Once we found fleas on Nova, I began flea protocol: vacuuming daily, washing any clothes on or near the ground, bathing the dog every other day, etc. The day we left, I found a single flea in our room, but I didn't think much of it. We're leaving for two weeks, I thought. In two weeks without a host, any fleas left in the house will die. Besides, it was supposed to get very warm while we were gone, and without special care or AC, our house can heat up to 90 degrees easily. I figured that if there were fleas left, they would be cooked while we were gone. (P.S. Fleas love temperatures from 70 to 85 degrees.)

But we were wrong. Oh, so wrong. The only way to get rid of fleas is hard work and usually lots of chemicals. I couldn't deal with the chemical part because I'm four months pregnant, so my husband and two of his awesome brothers had to do the hard work. Here is how we got rid of our fleas:

Joseph bravely waded unto the breach and set off flea bombs in the house. I wish there was a way to eradicate fleas without nasty chemicals, but that would take months of wading in to sprinkle diatomaceous earth, vacuum it up, clear everything out, wipe all the surfaces down, repeating the process many times and for an untold amount of money (and without living in the house), and we just don't have that kind of time. So flea bombs it was. After the initial bombing, Joseph and his two awesome brothers (I'm frequently glad I married into this family, but when you need it, their amazing work ethic is particularly incredible!) moved everything out of the house that wasn't bolted to a wall. Have I mentioned I'm a pile-r? I like to keep things we probably don't need (Free samples of things, old magazines, construction paper Diana might want to use when she's five and can handle scissors...), and since our house isn't finished and has no storage, there are piles in every room. It drives Joseph nuts, but he mostly puts up with it. Anyway, they went in and cleared out all the junk and piles and every item that could be washed and moved it outside. Furniture went in a U-Haul to protect it from the elements. Then they set off more flea bombs in every room of the house, including the garage and the attic. After giving those time to air out, they went back and vacuumed, then mopped all the floors. Before moving each item of furniture into the house, they sprayed and cleaned it. Nothing was moved back into the house without being thoroughly cleaned first. The mattress we'd been sleeping on was on box springs on the floor and was probably over 15 years old anyway, so we had to make the surprise purchase of a new bed. New beds are wonderful but EXPENSIVE! We moved back in Thursday night, but we had no curtains, bedsheets, pillows, towels, etc. because I hadn't washed them. Aside from the six or seven loads of laundry I was able to finish at home, we basically took over the local laundromat one Saturday and washed nine 13 gallon trash bags full of laundry. I washed every dish, utensil, pot, pan, glass, etc. in our kitchen. It's not the cleaning items that is particularly tedious. It's the fact that in order to put that item back where it belongs, you have to empty the drawer or shelf of other contaminated items, then wipe that down, then put your clean item away. Then you can clean the rest and put those in the same place. I've been wiping down walls where kids can touch them, doors, bookshelves, drawers, counters, appliances... places you don't even think about until you consider them contaminated and know that little hands and mouths will be exploring them. So many surfaces to clean! And quite frankly it all worries me a little bit anyway just because I'm pregnant, not in the first trimester, but it's still a little early.

So, if we seemed to fall off the face of the earth after already being away for two and a half weeks, it's because we did, into flea hell, a land of chemicals and endless cleaning. I won't be ready to say we've won for another few weeks, but so far we haven't seen any fleas in the house. Obviously, when we pick the dog up from where she stayed while we were gone, she will have to be outdoor-only until I can completely control the fleas on her too. We've been very careful about applying Frontline every month, so I'm not sure how she picked up fleas. Someone who dealt with an infestation earlier this year said the exterminator told them even then that it was going to be a bad year for fleas in our area. Since Nova isn't really around other dogs, I can only imagine she picked them up from the yard or the grassy area behind Joseph's office.

I can't wait until I've folded these eight bags of laundry (at least that's a chore I enjoy), put everything away, wiped down all contaminated surfaces and we can get back to enjoying life in our little house. On the bright side, my piles were all cleaned for me (mostly into the trash) and we have a new bed, but it's still a lot of work! Has anyone else had to deal with these awful parasites?

P.S. You can't catch fleas by reading about them on a computer screen, but I understand if you don't want to be friends anymore. :P

Next Baby

Stop! It's a trap!

You probably followed this link here from Facebook, thinking you'd read about how I've been feeling physically this past twelve weeks. On that subject, Liz Lemon said it best, because she says everything best: "Oh, little achy and nauseous, but I'm hanging in there." We'll get to that in a few paragraphs. (I saw you, you were just going to skip down a few paragraphs and see if you could find the non-hormonal and ranty stuff. Forget it, buddy.)

Instead, I'm going to address how I'm feeling that I'm pregnant, because that seems to be a much more important issue. 

When we had Liam, we would have been just as thrilled if he'd been a girl, but instead we got our Liam boy. It was great. And apparently, we'd won the genetic lottery, or so EVERYONE told us. Friends, acquaintances, and especially complete strangers would congratulate us. "How wonderful," they said, "you have a girl and a boy! Now you can be done!" It's a little gratifying to be congratulated, but also puzzling. Now we can be done? Sometimes it was much more certain. "Oh good. You're done!" Joseph even had a stranger say it almost as an order, as if we shouldn't have any more children. 

I don't go in for conspiracy theories, and I don't believe there's a war on large families, but why is two children the perfect number? Joseph's family is one of the happiest I've ever met and there are 13 children. (P.S. Thirteen is not the number we're shooting for.) Adjusting to two children was exponentially harder than adjusting to one. It was a real challenge for the first few months. Sometimes it's still a challenge, and Joseph and I weren't certain that we were ready to be outnumbered, because the chaos of dinner and bedtime is so much easier when we can each take one child, or if I can help/carry/care for one child with each hand. But as Liam grew up and needed less babying, we wondered if a family with just two children would seem small. 

We've been uncertain about the idea of growing our family for a while now, and most of our friends and family knew it, so maybe that threw some people off. But it has become very apparent that with this pregnancy we have stepped from the sparkling pedestal of family-of-four bliss to the realm of "You idiots, you just ruined your lives." It's uncanny. It's actually quite baffling. Some of the first reactions I received when revealing I was pregnant were "Congratulations, I guess. You know it's going to get a lot harder," and "I'm sorry this happened to you at such a busy time."

Can I just take a moment to address those thoughts? "You know it's going to get a lot harder"??? Really?? I had no idea! I'm already pregnant, so what on earth did they suppose I was going to do about it at that point?? I think I replied, "Well, we'll handle it." What else can I do except handle it? "I'm sorry this happened to you"?? I'm not! This isn't a disease, this is a baby! Soon it will be just like the adorable kids I have running around me. 

Those are easily the most extreme responses, but they aren't uncommon. Strangers don't congratulate us now. When people hear we're expecting, the reply is "Oh!....." occasionally with some weak fake enthusiasm.

There have been some people that were genuinely happy for us, and we appreciate every one of them. If you were one of those people, thank you. Parenting is hard enough without getting any negativity. Even if parents seem completely fine, cheerful support is always appreciated. 

So for both of you still reading at this point, I would like to address some very important points about this pregnancy:

This baby is wanted, loved, and expected.

This baby was given to us by God, created in the image of God, and as an amazing gift to us, it is a combination of us: two people who love each other deeply. How amazing! How lucky we are! Of course we love this baby. From the moment we knew we were expecting another baby, it was a welcome member of our family. Sure, we're not sure how it will be adjusting to three kids, but we'll manage it, and the chaos and uncertainty doesn't mean we love any of our kids less. Also, it always baffles me when married people are asked "So was [your baby] a surprise?" Since marriage involves sex and since sex makes babies... and since no birth control is 100% effective... can any baby be completely a surprise? Really? We're two intelligent people who know how this works. This baby was not a surprise, nor an accident. We hadn't made up our minds about having more kids, so we knew it was only a matter of time before I got pregnant again, and we were both okay with that. 

Q: "What are you hoping for??"

A: A healthy baby. A genius would be nice. Somehow we need to vicariously live out our dreams of Rhodes
Scholarship. (I'm going to be disappointed with one gender or another? Come on, there are so many more important things to worry about.)

And that's pretty much it. I've been holding all that hormonal ranting in for eight weeks now. You're welcome. If you're one of the two people who had the time and/or stamina to read this post to the end, well done! Now we get to the more mundane stuff:

With the third pregnancy, you don't get a lot of time to focus on being pregnant. Weeks 8-11 were pretty rough for me. I was really tired all the time and nauseous, especially in the evening. The smell of raw onions made me gag. I didn't feel like eating anything at all, though I usually felt better if I had something plain. Preggie Pop Drops saved me for those few weeks. Initially I craved LOTS of red meat, which makes Joseph think this baby must be a boy, but after that it was mostly carbs and sodium. I ate lots of sour cream and onion chips, ramen, pasta, and chicken nuggets. I know it's not healthy, but when the thought of most food makes you sick, you go with what you can. I'm feeling almost back to normal now, though Pinterest with all its pictures of food still sometimes makes me nauseous. 

That's all, folks. I'm already feeling healthier going into this pregnancy than I did with Liam, and I got more time to recover and enjoy my baby, so that was a nice vacation from being pregnant. I'm due January 24 (give or take two weeks, of course), at which point Diana will be three and Liam will be almost two (20 months). Keep checking back for more pregnancy updates. 

Liam is one!

Liam on the day of his birthday. Enjoying dirt, sunshine, fresh air, and hose water.

Liam's first birthday setup. It got so much messier once we added the birthday boy. :)

(Actually, Liam's birthday was on May 26, but I get around to posting when I can. Sometimes that's three weeks late.)
It's hard to believe that we've already gotten to spend a year with Liam! I went back and read my old blog posts because in the haze of sleeplessness and chaos, sometimes it's easy to forget the newborn days. He certainly has changed a lot!

Liam may have started out quietly, content to just look around and learn about the world, but that is certainly not Liam now. He is loud. No, he is LOUD like you wouldn't believe. I've never heard babies with this kind of volume. When he wants to be heard, or sometimes when he's just happy or excited, he BELLOWS. He can be heard outside across parking lots or in busy grocery stores. There is no mistaking Liam. He gets it from the Cespedes side, which he still very strongly resembles in looks. My guess is it comes from the Filipino side of the family, but all I know is the boy has lung power, and if he doesn't do something with it when he grows up (Singer? Actor? Coach? Drill sergeant?) it will be a waste of natural talent. Can you imagine if he had Filipino lung power and his dad's Welsh singing voice? That would be amazing!

Liam with his "mouth blanket," so named because
it's almost always in his mouth (and it smells like it!)
He wads it up in his mouth and
sucks on the silky edges like a pacifier.

Liam has a drop-dead gorgeous smile, the kind that makes older ladies stop to complement him all the time. He is very free with it too. He is shy with people at first, so he'll do a bashful smile and hide his face in my shoulder. He seems to have topped out at eight teeth for the time being. His eyes are giant and just incredibly, beautifully deep blue. He drools like a faucet. It never stops. He really hasn't grown much in weight since his six-month checkup, though he may be starting to stretch out a bit. Almost all Liam's development in the past few months has been cognitive, and it really shows!

Liam doesn't talk much, certainly not nearly as much as Diana did at his age. He can say "Mama," "Dada," "Dana," "dog," "cracker," and "TOAT!!!" pretty well. ("Toat" = toast, but it's always said with utmost excitement because it is one of his favorite things.) He gets along very well with hand gestures and monosyllables. I can almost always understand if he's gesturing for rice, Goldfish crackers, graham crackers, his water cup, his blanket, a book, etc. He very obviously understands what we say, though. If I ask him what he has in his mouth (there is almost always something), he'll smile at me and fish it out, then put it right back in. I can even tell him to give a toy to the dog and he'll comply without hesitation. He's a wiggly boy who doesn't like to hold still, so he's always standing up in his high chair. I just have to tell him to "sit down" and he does... at least for a moment, and then he stands up and starts jigging again in a happy, rascally way. I've taught him some unofficial sign language, waving his hands back and forth for "all done" (eating) and opening and closing his hands if he wants more of something. He picked it up pretty quickly.

And oh, does this boy have personality! He is always on the go now that he can crawl, pull himself up, walk along things, and walks while holding on to people's hands. He loves getting into everything, sometimes with the help of his sister, who he simultaneously idolizes and loves to antagonize. He loves to laugh. He loves playing with everyone and wrestling and roughhousing with daddy. He will happily go off and play with other kids (he adores big kids!), but if he's been apart from me too long, he'll crawl back for a quick reassuring snuggle and then go back to play. He rarely has patience for an entire book, especially when Big Sister is so much more interesting, but sometimes he'll just pull out book after book from his shelf and hand them to me with lots of energy and a "DA! DA!" that clearly means he wants to read a book. Mostly books keep his attention if there are lots of sound effects and hand gestures that go with them, and even then he only has the patience for a few pages. He may not speak much, but he does love making sounds for everything. If you hand him a toy car, he gets a fond, knowing twinkle in his eye and a little half-smile and he starts driving it around making car sounds. He indicates dogs by making a high-pitched bark, which is usually followed by a "shhhh!" and putting a little finger up his nose (to imitate us laying a finger in front of our lips) since barking dogs are almost always shushed. He likes making buzzing sounds for bees or flies. He's even invented a raspberry-like sound whenever I pick up a Kleenex since with allergy season I'm always blowing my nose.

Liam's eczema is virtually gone now that we've pinpointed most of the causes. When I was nursing him, too much dairy set it off. Now it mostly just appears to be acidic foods. If he eats anything with tomatoes, parmesan cheese, grapes, oranges, strawberries, peaches, craisins, lemon, etc. he'll break out. It's so much more manageable than Diana's eczema since we know what to avoid. If he eats contaminated food, he'll get some red bumps on his cheeks or look like he's been punched in the eyes and start scratching at his face, but it usually fades after a day. People mostly don't even notice he has eczema. I think his is a little more common for kids and I'm confident he'll outgrow it. He's also pretty allergic (though thankfully not anaphylactic) when it comes to peanuts, so it looks like we'll just never have peanut butter or peanut oil in our house again. Lol!

We certainly have a fun little boy. I've loved enjoying him as my "baby" this past year, and I can't wait to see how much he will grow and change in the next year.

Adventures in car-buying

Really, I suppose this should be "Adventures in car research." It's technically more of a big thought experiment. We don't really need a new car, but a month or two ago, Joseph proposed researching new cars just so we would know what we wanted if we ever bought another car. There's nothing wrong with the car we have now, a 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer... except that there's a rusty bearing in the fan that causes the fan to be extra loud whenever it's turned on... and the belt slips sometimes before it's warmed up, resulting in the most awful, embarrassing, unearthly squeal whenever it starts up... and the temperature control knob was broken off from the center console, which means only a knowledgeable person in the driver's seat can change the temperature by reaching under the steering column and pulling the right lever... also, the front bumper is held on by zip ties and the paint is peeling horribly. So nothing seriously mechanically wrong, and it's zippy, gets good gas mileage, and holds us all pretty well, but it doesn't really do anything for one's ego to slip into it.

Of course, researching new cars to figure out which one you might want is a bit like sniffing and dissecting desserts to find out which one you might want to eat. Eventually, desire overcomes you and you just have to have it! So it looks like we're seriously thinking of buying a new (at least to us) car. Here are our criteria:

• NOT A MINIVAN
• Gets good gas mileage (20+ mpg city, at least)
• Safe and reliable
• Can fit two adults, a dog, and two kids in car seats, though we are open to the idea of having three kids someday, so we just set this criterion to: Can fit three car seats, just in case. (It turns out this is the limiting factor in our car decision)
• NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT LIKE A MINIVAN

Minivans seem to have polarized people. There are those who gracefully embrace the convenience that minivans offer and ignore the negative stereotypes, and there are those people who would literally drive their family around in any other vehicle. If you love your minivan, more power to you! They sound roomy and comfortable and convenient. Joseph and I happen to be in the latter group. We would travel by foot, bike, or camel before we owned a minivan. Joseph has even ruled out hatchbacks because "they're gateway vehicles to minivans." Also, I refuse to believe that just because we might consider having a third child one day, we automatically need a minivan. We've determined that our personal Hierarchy of Vehicle Styles is:

Minivan < bicycle < Wagon (like a Subaru Outback) < SUV < Hatchback < Mid-sized SUV < Compact SUV < Sedan (If we're honest, Sports Car, though they don't make those for families.)

After many weeks of researching online and test-driving vehicles, we determined that our perfect car actually doesn't exist, unless it is a Tesla Model X, which hasn't technically been produced yet, and is rumored to cost between $50,000-$80,000. So... we can consider that out of the running. (Though between us, if we had anything like the money for a Model X, Joseph and I would both buy it in a heartbeat.)

I can tell Joseph is serious about research when he creates equations, functions, and Excel spreadsheets for the numerical data we gather. He created some impressive equations and spreadsheets for our car-buying adventure. Based on his research about depreciation, etc., and based on the fact that we only really drive about 10,000 miles a year, we found the fuel economy of a vehicle to be a relatively unimportant financial consideration compared to depreciation. This indicated that a slightly used car would be best for us, even though it would of course be more fun to buy a brand new car. We started looking for cars that were fun and compact-looking. Compact SUVs became a topic of great discussion. The 2013 Ford Escape is definitely worth looking at. It has improved by leaps and bounds over previous models, and is now ranked at the top of its class in many areas. Of course, the Toyota Rav4 and Honda CR-V are always ranked at the top for C-SUVs. We test-drove some new models, researched old ones, and found...

...we liked them.

We really did. Which was a miracle considering how doubtful Joseph had been about anything other than a beefy sedan. But after getting into the back of some sedans and compact SUVs with a string to measure the rear seats and doing yet more research online, we found that the back seats of most compact SUVs are actually narrower than many sedans. There is no way the very sporty Mazda CX-5 could ever fit three car seats across. The Ford Escape, Toyota Rav4 and Honda CR-V might technically have the room to fit three car seats across the back row, but most of them have a weird buckle position for the center seat, so even with three slim car seats, it would be almost impossible to buckle them in the back together. 

Sadly, that ruled out compact SUVs. 

Our Plan B was having a sedan that could, in a pinch, fit three car seats in the back, and also having a three-row, seven-seater mid-sized SUV for times when we want to bring friends or the dog along. Unfortunately, as soon as you move to mid-sized SUVs, you're lucky to get 20 mpg. Fuel economy is not great. So factoring in fuel economy, reliability, and of course the all-important power under the hood (we both like something zippy), these were our options for mid-sized SUVs:

• Mazda CX-9
• Toyota Highlander
• Honda Pilot
• Toyota Highlander Hybrid (EPA avg 28 mpg?? Shut up!!)

Obviously we'd be looking for something a few years old. For sedans, we're looking at: 

• Chrysler 300 (Big enough to fit at least three mafia hit men in the back, so car seats should be no problem, though the fuel economy is unimpressive and the handling is supposed to be just okay.)
• Mazda 6 (Oh-so-sporty! The 2014 is supposed to get better gas mileage than the 2013, and rumor has it that a diesel version that will come out later this year, which should be interesting.)

Anticlimax: right now I don't know what we're going to do. Two cars is a lot to consider buying, though in all fairness our current sedan works just fine if your ego isn't very sensitive. What car do you drive? Why do you like it? What car would you drive your family in if money wasn't an issue?