Still Not Dead. I Swear.

Even though I claimed I wasn't dead six weeks ago in my last post, I bet you thought maybe I was after all. Well, not yet. However, my life has absolutely been turned upside down (and I am typing this with one hand, so cut me some slack).


My beautiful, wonderful, amazing little baby has been having some health problems for the past month and was even hospitalized for a few days. It was the most horrific experience of my life. We still don't have an answer, but at least some of her symptoms have subsided. What we have left is a little girl with bowel problems, some rockin' gas, and is in constant pain and discomfort. So, lots of screaming from her and lots of crying from me because I wish I could make my baby happy and comfortable. We are working on it.


Despite all of that nonsense, and the fact that I still find myself in a doctor's office at least three days a week, there have been so many moments of absolute BLISS since my baby girl arrived.  


She is so beautiful ...

So funny ...

Very expressive ...

And totally sassy.

And while she does not-so-awesome things while I nurse her, like grab a handful of nip with her abnormally strong baby hands and TWIST while she digs her baby talons in, she also does amazingly awesome things like grab one of my fingers and hold it to her face the entire time she's eating.


She also lets me put big headbands and bows on her, so it's good to know she is obedient when it comes to being a well-accessorized baby.

Last night Jeremy and I talked about how we used to wish things for ourselves, and now we only wish things for our little Bean. I don't get wistful thinking about whether or not I will ever get to travel to Europe one day; instead, I get wistful thinking of all the firsts that are in our baby's future, and all the good things I want her to experience and be and do.


Even though I am not sleeping much because my little lady only wants to sleep stretched out on my chest like this:

Although I wish I could take away every single moment of pain she has felt so far in her short life, I wouldn't change anything else for the world. Our little Bean is our whole world now. Showering, eating, blogging, breathing -- none of that is important anymore.  

And I couldn't be happier.

I Didn't Die, I Just HAD A BABY!!!

On Sunday night, while my mom and I were sewing last minute things for the baby, I started having CONTRACTIONS!  

I sent Jeremy to bed for a few hours, and then we left for the hospital around midnight.

I have never been so excited to be in pain! YAY contractions!

By Monday (8/9/10!) at 2:33 PM, I had my beautiful, amazing, perfect, wonderful daughter.

Josephine Isabelle weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces, and was 21 inches long. I have had no time or energy to write about it or even think about it, and that is not changing now. Instead, I have beautiful pictures to show you.  

Isn't my baby amazing? :)  We sure think so.

I Love You, So GET OUT!

Okay, I know I have been crying about this pregnancy a lot, but GOOD LORD, I am ready to not be pregnant anymore.  I never actually wanted to be pregnant in the first place.  I just wanted a baby.  Jeremy asked me how I would accomplish that, and I told him I had kind of hoped I could squeeze my eyes shut real tight and wish a baby into my arms.  Either that, or some kind of Cabbage Patch scenario:  Oh look, there's our baby growing in a head of cabbage!  Let's pick her up and take her home and ignore her abnormally large head!

{source}

Alas, I went the pregnancy route.  But guess what?  My baby is full term. You know what that means?  GET THIS BABY OUT OF ME!!!  I have been ready for my bundle of joy for months and months, and I am SOOO ready to not be pregnant that it is not even funny.

This is the conversation I've been having with the baby lately:  "Oh, you're all done cooking?  And you can survive outside of my womb?  And you are slowly killing me instead of coming out?  And we have all the essentials for raising you all ready to go?  You know what that means?  GET OUT!!!"

The thing is, Jeremy is TERRIFIED of the baby coming even one second before her 40-week mark.  Seriously.  And he is mad at me for wanting her out.  He even thinks I am hurting her by wishing her out.  Do you know what he DOESN'T know?  That my entire day consists of furiously nesting, crying, sleeping, crying, and crying in my sleep.  He was also not there when the doctor told me the baby was SOO ready to go and was already on the very large side, and if I wanted to try to persuade her to come out, I could do so. And apparently he doesn't know how bad it is to tell a pregnant Veronica her business.

Today he called me on his lunch break, and I was trying to figure out what I could do to help her want to come out.

Me:  I am figuring that she will want to come at the most inconvenient time possible, so if I DON'T pack the hospital bag and I DON'T grade these papers, maybe I will go into labor!!

Jeremy:  Umm, probably not.  She will probably come when she's ready, and I don't think she's ready yet.

Me:  Oh, really?  You don't think she's ready?  Well, I am ready.  And the BOOKS say she is ready.  And the DOCTORS say she is ready.  

Jeremy:  I'm just saying, she will come on her own time.

Me:  Well, for your sake, I sure hope that is soon, because I am just going to get worse and worse every single day, and YOU are the one who has to live with me.

Jeremy:  Really?

Me:  Really what?

Jeremy:  This could get worse?

Me:  You bet your sweet ass it can.  And it will.  Oh, it WILL.

Jeremy:  *silence*

Me:  That's what I thought.

This is going up TONIGHT:

I Made a Boo-boo

I am not really a superstitious person. I am obviously not afraid of black cats ...

(Isn't my cat handsome??)

... I don't mind spilling salt, and if I have to walk under a ladder, I do so with impunity.  


However, there is one little suspicious thing my mom always said that I have found to be SO true.  She has always warned me that you should never start sentences with "It has been forever since ... " or "I have never ... " if you don't want the latter half of the sentence to happen, like, IMMEDIATELY.  


She has warned me against jinxing myself time and again, yet I still do stupid things like say, "Wow, it has been a year since I have been pulled over for speeding" (which is followed by a ticket within the week) or "I can't believe I don't have any stretch marks yet!" (which precipitated the map of New York city that now adorns my stomach).


Connected to the "saying things out loud" jinx is the preparation jinx: If you decide not to take an umbrella with you, it will rain; if you bring your jacket, it will be boiling hot. So yesterday I totally shot myself in the foot. You may or may not know that I still have 4-ish weeks of pregnancy and my doctors just broke the news that my daughter already weighs seven pounds. Yeah. Bloody fantastic. So she can come early and be a normal size or come on (or after) her due date and weigh like 28 pounds. I am hoping for the former.

(look at her -- just growing away in there, and LAUGHING at me.  LAUGHING!  I guarantee it.)

Too bad I just jinxed myself into having a large, late baby. Yeah, as of yesterday, this is what my desk at work looks like:

Those are detailed lesson plans, along with sing-in sheets, handouts (in the order they will be used) and more information than a sub would ever need, for both of my classes, for the next four weeks of class.  

I have four weeks of teaching left and four weeks of pregnancy left, and the possibility that I could go into labor early forced my anxious brain into preparing these packets. But now? The baby will OBVIOUSLY not come early if I am all prepared and covered at work. If there had been a possibility that I would have to take my laptop to type up lesson plans and e-mail them to a sub while in labor, I am sure the baby would come early. She would just LOVE that. I mean, she is my child.  


Damn my organizational skills! I never thought they would betray me! Perhaps there's still a chance ... the all-spicy-food diet starts in two weeks!


P.S.  But is this perhaps worse? A few hours ago, I actually said -- OUT LOUD -- "You know, every pregnant woman has warned me about ___________ (←something people generally don't like to read about). Isn't it awesome that I don't have them?" Oh, baby Jebus. 


P.P.S.  The first person to comment and correctly fill in the blank wins a gold star.


P.P.P.S.  Okay, so maybe not a literal gold star, but like when people say, "Gold star for you!"


P.P.P.P.S.  I changed my mind again. You want a gold star, you got it. Shoot me an e-mail with your address to veronicamarcetti {at} gmail {dot} com and I will mail you a gold star.


P.P.P.P.P.S.  If you earn it.

The End of the Movie is like the Cream Filling in the Oreo

I was watching The Sound of Music the other day and wondering why I don't watch it like every week.  That movie is fantastic.  I also think I didn't take full advantage of it when I was young.  I'm guessing that it was too long for three kids with no attention spans, so we stuck to Disney most of the time.


ANYWAY, as I have gotten older, I have learned that a lot of parents stop the movie while everything is still happy and cut out out the scary running-from-the-Nazis ending.  My parents didn't, because it's the ENDING.  Watching a movie and not getting to see the end is infuriating. Plus, I always liked the music at the end of movies, so I totally would have been on to my mom if she just shut the TV off and claimed that was the end.  All those other kids must be totally gullible and stupid.  


I guess I just don't get it.  I mean, every single Disney movie I ever watched was traumatizing.  Someone SHOT Bambi's mother?!?!?!!  Ursula is going to eat the whole boat and Ariel and Eric will never get to live happily ever after???!?!?!!?  How will the Prince EVER get past that fire and dragon to save Aurora??!?!?!!!???  Same difference.  Pretty much every kid's movie has some sort of sadness and/or scariness so parents can use it as a teaching moment.  I can explain that sometimes there are bad people who want to do bad things to good people.


But, there are some things I can't really explain, so if I COULD skip a scene, I would skip the oldest girl in the orchard with her boyfriend singing "Sixteen going on Seventeen."  I can explain Nazis, but I do NOT want to risk them internalizing that stupid "I'll take care of you" line from that dumbass boyfriend who later becomes a Nazi and then sells them out at the end and almost gets them killed.


I mean, obviously I don't want my little girl(s) to think that a man will take care of them and then have them look forward to that instead of looking forward to taking care of themselves, and I don't want my little boy(s) to think they are Neanderthals. 


You might be thinking that ONE movie is not going to set my child(ren)'s psyche(s) in stone.  Well, I have read enough about serial killers to know that you never know what is going on in their little brains.  I can't take the risk!  


Also, I probably won't beat them with a rubber hose and encourage them to dress up in clown make-up and teach them how to bury things without leaving a trace.  It's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to raising a non-serial killer.