The next day

I'm still alive.

As it turns out, our new baby never really was alive. There was some placental tissue, but after four weeks, it had stopped growing. Chalk us up for another chemical pregnancy.

I was surprised when Dr. W. asked to do an ultrasound, but it was pretty informative. I could see the sac. He thought for a heart-stopping second that he could see a fetal pole, which might -- MIGHT -- have meant there was a shred of hope. But after one twirl of his OB-GYN wheel-of-gestation, he knew that we should be seeing a heartbeat, and what we were looking at was a four-week pregnancy that had stopped developing, and is now shedding its lining like a menstrual period.

"What, are we COUSINS?" I said to Dr. W., gesturing to Hub-D, wondering why our genes are so screwed up that we now have three miscarriages to mourn.

"No, cousins don't have miscarriages. Cousins have babies with problems."

Well, that was an interesting tidbit in the middle of the shitstorm.

And the bleeding is so minimal now, it annoys me. Can't we just be DONE with this?

The "good" news is that Dr. W. is so terrific and progressive and he said we could start trying again in TWO WEEKS. It seems kind of pathetic to start trying again so soon. Hub-D and I aren't feeling particularly, let's say, sexy. But I would be irritated if he'd asked us to wait a few cycles before trying again.

OK, I'm going to go on a walk with Gigi now. The child is going to get blisters from all the kisses I've laid on her in the last 24 hours. It was all I could do not to burst into her room in the middle of the night and resume the kissing.

The Mama House is in mourning.

Once again, it's over

I'm sorry to do this to you guys, after posting what I (modestly) consider my funniest post so far, but today I started bleeding and cramping in earnest, and we've lost the new baby.

This is twelve kinds of awful. It sucks to be 37 and to know that my eggs are just, compared to other people, shitty. It seems that I'm popping out eggs that don't genetically knit together correctly.

I'm a woman who has had THREE MISCARRIAGES. I know that I shouldn't feel like a loser about this, but I can't quite feel like a winner about it either, can I?

Thank God for Dr. W's office, who know me by name, and know my history, and expressed genuine sympathy when I called this morning. They're going to bring Hub-D and me in as soon as possible to talk with the doctor and make some sense of this horrible, horrible thing.

My pregnancy test, the two-lined pregnancy test I had admired for the last week and a half... I will probably throw it away like I did with the others. I mean, what? Should I make a scrapbook for the pregnancies I lose?

Anyway, here is how it went down...

I was putting Gigi down for her nap. She was kind of crabby about it, but tired. She lay against my stomach drinking her bottle and I suddenly felt a huge cramp.

After she finished with her bottle, I picked her up and placed her in her crib and the cramp just got more intense as I left the room.

I wondered if I just had to go to the bathroom or something, so I headed there. Since I've been checking my underpants for blood twelve times a day since I found out I was pregnant, it wasn't a big stretch for me to report to the bathroom yet again.

I sat on the toilet for a little bit, feeling the cramps get stronger, and I noticed they were located in the WRONG place, directly above my pubic bone. That is NOT an OK place for cramps when you are almost six weeks pregnant.

Then I discovered a huge amount of bright red blood. Gooey and voluminous, a harbinger of doom for the little baby I'd already named inside my head.

So here we go again.

(I plan to put more details up on Health.com when I have them.)

Advice for Jbeeky

It's finally happened... Jbeeky GOT ELLEN! She's chronicling it here.

She is currently in Taiwan, with Ellen in her arms.

Because this is Jbeeky's first experience with a seven month old girl, I thought I'd pass on some of my extremely valuable parental wisdom...

Such as... yes, it is possible to put pigtails in your infant's hair. No, she doesn't like it, but that's too bad. I didn't go through that whole horrible pregnancy followed by emergency abdominal surgery so she could just wear her hair the way she wants it. I am the hair boss. Likewise, you could talk about all the crazy paperwork and heartache you went through as you jam little "Obama" barrettes in Ellen's silky hair.

Also, Jbeeky, make sure you set up a drawer of toys in your kitchen for your little one to enjoy. It's best if you place this drawer directly in the way of everything you might be doing in the kitchen, such as frying a spattering mass of organic bacon or carrying delicate stemware. This is where your older child can "chip in" by placing a large number of little throat-sized beads inside the drawer and/or "play" with the baby by ripping anything she has out of her hands and saying, "No! That's MINE!" or simply kicking the drawer closed in a fit of pique.

And my friend, let me introduce you to the Around-We-Go baby entertainment mechanism (pictured below). This is good for hours of fun... for you. Because the baby can't get out of it. Neither can older children who jam their bodies into the leg-holes, so imagine the housework you can get done! Or when you need a nap after that long flight home from Taiwan, just stick Ellen straight into the Around-We-Go and pop a sleeping pill, my friend. Some busybodies might object to this parenting technique, to which I say... There are at least a DOZEN developmental toys on the Around-We-Go. You can go ahead and coddle your children, but don't come crying to me when you are jet-lagged and pitiful, or when your kid doesn't get into Harvard. I consider the Around-We-Go the complete parenting solution.

And finally, a word of warning. Once you bring home your precious little girl, the older sibling is going to seem like more of a menace than you ever thought capable. A CUTE menace, definitely, and good for a few photo-ops of your family together, but there just may be a few times that you wish for some Ellen-time... just you and she alone. Particularly when your older child hollers that his/her juice is not being delivered in the exact right princess cup or, for example, bangs his/her head against the bathroom tiles because you refuse to put a particular kind of German bubble in the bathtub -- that's where Sears comes in.

I'm not saying that you ask the employees of Sears to take care of your child! No, no, that would be totally unreasonable. I'm just saying that you coax your child into napping at the store, then go home for three or four hours and really bond with that new baby. There are security cameras ALL OVER that store, so it's probably safer than napping in your own home, yes?



Listen, good luck, Jbeeky. I'm here if you need me.

My first trimester analogy

Imagine seeing your child from far away. Although you haven't quite met, you know it is your daughter and she is wearing a sweet multicolored floral dress. There is a meadow between you two, and only she can traverse it.

She must traverse this meadow to get to you, but there are land mines in the meadow.

I'm sorry, but there are land mines, and you've already had two little girls not survive the journey. You have exchanged smiles with this new-to-you child, and wished her so much luck.

Please make it, you call out to her. Please just make it into my arms. I already love you so much.

The land mines multiply as you grow older, so you know there are more in that meadow than last time. And in that way, you are responsible for the land mines.

Just please make it, child. Make it over to Mama, or we'll miss you forever.

Hopes up

OK, I admit it! My hopes are up. Are you happy now? Even though my risks of miscarriage are honking huge, I've started nursing a great big ball of hope.

There, I've said it. That might better explain my flood of despair if we find out that we are not, after all, having another baby.

Musical malady

As I've mentioned before, I love "Legally Blonde: The Musical." I didn't see any harm in playing it for Chebbles and her pal Z. when I drove them back and forth to preschool.

I should have foreseen that I'd have two toddlers shrieking "Omigod! Omigod you guys!" at the least provocation.

In addition, the Bruiser imitations are ongoing, demanding that I repeatedly ask the toddler (as Bruiser) whether Elle is trapped in the Old Valley Mill. "Ruf! Ruf!"

I've tried distracting them with "Annie," which they enjoyed ("Miss Hannigan is MEAN, Mama"), but Chebbles is currently in her room enthusiastically performing "Omigod You Guys" to an unspecified audience.

Any suggestions for addictive, yet toddler-friendly Broadway shows I could play for these little scamps?

In other news, Gigi is seven months old today, and growing gorgeouser by the minute. She knocked the pediatrician's socks off with her physical development this week. The standing, the cruising, the intentional ringing of bells and keys. Genius in the house!

Then at Whole Foods today, a strange little man stopped us as I was purchasing organic bacon (that's a good summation of my whole lifestyle, organic bacon). He said, "She has a calm soul. I can see it in her aura. Very centered. Do her eyes move quickly or slowly?"

"I don't think I ever noticed the speed of her eyes," I said.

"I see a lot of children in my work, and with this one, ma'am, you got a good one."

Omigod, I know!

Miracle

Pregnancy hormones turn me into an insomniac, so I was bummed out when I couldn't sleep from 3-5:30am last night. I made the best of it, reading "Three Cups of Tea" -- one of those books that everyone else in the world read five years ago...

As I finally drifted to sleep, I thought, WELL, I'll get a little nap in here before my daughters need me.

When I woke up, I felt surprisingly rested, then I looked at the clock.

8:30am.

!!!

I bolted for Gigi's room, certain something terrible had happened to make her quiet this long in the morning. And she just looked at me from her crib, like, "Hey! You're up! Great!"

Then I skedaddled over to Chebbles' room, certain that she was weeping dejectedly, waiting for her family to notice her. But no, she kept sleeping until about 8:45am.

This never happens.

This never, never happens.

Everyone in our house is usually roaring around by 7.

"Oh what a beautiful MORNING! Oh what a beautiful day! I got a wonderful feeling, everything's coming my way!"

Whereas Gigi can't find her own mouth

Gigi is such a messy eater. It's just ridiculous. It's almost as if she's trying to be sloppy on PURPOSE.

I give her a bunch of organic Gerber Graduates raviolis for lunch. I say, "These are organic, Gigi, so don't WASTE them."

And she squeals with glee and rubs them into her corduroy overalls and into her eyebrows. Then she dumps half of them on the floor.

JEEGE! Don't give me that whole "I'm six months old and I have no hand-eye coordination" crap again. That was organic, my little friend.

What? You want me to give you the conventional Gerber Graduate raviolis instead? Yeah, I didn't think so. Maybe you'll think twice before jamming six or seven raviolis in the gap between the cushion and the high chair next time.

And as for the teething biscuits, AGAIN, it's like she just can't control herself. She chews on them with her miniature pearly teeth for five minutes, then she takes the moist, sticky teething biscuit and she smears it on any fabric that has been cleaned in the last week NOT TO MENTION her neck rolls and elbow creases, or any body part which she hates being cleaned.

So the whole house, and our family’s bodies are crusted with her smeared food. What? You’re almost seven months, Jeege, shouldn’t you be rounding the corner toward some coordination? Oh MAN, are those three dozen Cheerios under your chair? Coupled with some dried -up peas from last week?

“Don’t worry, Mama, the ants will eat it!” Chebbles says cheerfully.

I don’t care. Gigi’s grounded. No calling her friends, no twittering, no carousing and for goodness’ sake NO CRUISING for at least ten minutes, until I get a chance to wipe up the floor and smooch all the ravioli and barley biscuit detritus from her sweet soft skin.

Apologies to Shania Twain

I've known a few embryos who thought they were pretty smart
The pregnancy made me barf, it made me fart.
It turned me into a gestational know-it-all
Oh-oo-oh, I thought that embryo was special
Oh-oo-oh, I thought it was something else...

Okay, so you're a making me tired?
That don't impress me much.

So you got the dividing cells, but will you live 'til week 10?
Don't get me wrong, yeah I think you're alright
But that won't keep me warm in the middle of the ultrasound
That don't impress me much.

I've known a few embryos who got me excited
But once the gel was on the wand, the writing was on the wall
Cause Heaven forbid, they fell outta place...

Okay, so you gave me two lines?
That don't impress me much

TTC in public

Hey guys, my latest Health.com post is up!

And also, your dreams have come true... you can subscribe to my FEED on Health.com now. Just click on the RSS link over my picture on this page.

The article this time is about all the nutty acronyms and warm community I found online while trying to conceive (the last, uh, five times).

Go see!

What we know so far

This "greeting card" from A Little Pregnant never ceases to amuse me.

By this time, with my pregnancy with Gigi, I'd already started the spotting that would haunt my whole first trimester. Basically, I found out I was pregnant on a Sunday, and the next day, during Gymboree, I felt something... "wrong."

If you'll recall, I had gone to the bathroom at Gymboree only to discover bright red blood. Then some woman started banging on the bathroom door because her toddler had to pee. That's when I vowed to The Lord that I would never, ever bang on a bathroom door, because you never know when a woman who is finally pregnant after two miscarriages has suddenly discovered blood in her underwear.

But we all know the story has a happy ending. No, the banging-door woman didn't get some sort of karmic lashing as far as I know, but we all got GIGI to play with, and that is a heck of a reward.

(She is such a superb baby. She woke up only once last night, at 1am. And whenever she sees us, she smiles like a maniac. We LOVE the JEEGE.)

So I keep expecting to see some blood. And so far, I've lucked out -- none! And I've started feeling genuinely barfy.

"Is that your stomach?" Hub-D asked while I lay in bed reading "Brain, Child" and ignoring the father of my children.

"Yup," I said, then returned to the super juicy articles about transracial families.

It was rumbling and roiling last night, my belly. And this morning, I felt so certain I would throw up that I reviewed the drill with Chebbles.

"CHEBBLES. Listen up. Mama might cough in the potty this morning."

"Uh-huh?"

"And if I do, YOUR JOB is to go to Gigi and let her know it is OK. Give her toys or something to chew on, or dance around for her, but don't let her cry."

"OK"

But we didn't need the drill... yet.

I'm shocked I'm this sick so early.

Twins?

Here's the deal

It's really early. It's super-duper early. It's in-the-1800's-I'd-be-a-month-away-from-knowing early. So I'm like four weeks pregnant.

A lot of people don't know. So if you tell someone else, make sure you go back and let them know I miscarried, if perchance I do.

I'm not sure what my exact odds are of miscarrying, but since I'm 37, I think it's about a 33% chance, particularly since it's so early.

I told you guys about the pregnancy because I'm going to need to talk about it. For me, writing is superb outlet for anxiety, and what is a very-early-pregnancy-after-two-losses-and-one-Gigi but an exercise in high anxiety?

Hub-D is sick to death of my caveats already.

"If we have three kids, then we might need a bigger house," I said last night.

He rolled his eyes so hard that I thought he might pop an optic nerve.

"IF?" he said.

But I've got to keep up the caveats. I absolutely must say "If" instead of "When."

I think I'm subconsciously of the belief that if I am nervous and crazy and filled with caveats about this pregnancy, then I *will* get a baby at the end of the exercise. Any sign of confidence might be a deal-killer in my imagination.

See, despite my Sting-Would-Call-It-A-Fortress-Around-My-Heart I have already fallen in love with this baby who lives in my gut. I have mentally moved the furniture in the house to accommodate a second crib. I have already surveyed our Baby-Names-in-Waiting and found them all to be inadequate. I have already watched Gigi pulling herself up to standing on the dishwasher and thought, "Big Sister."

I have already decided against a VBAC. And I have started fantasizing about the Nuchal Fold Translucency test, imagining that the technician tells us that the baby's numbers look perfect.

I am pretty sure it's a girl.

But ALL THAT SAID, I have to stay realistic. My odds of miscarriage may not be higher because I've already had two miscarriages, but my odds of total heartbreak are 100% if I do lost this pregnancy. I love this zygote. It may just be a clump of cells but it's OUR clump of cells and I want to hang onto it. It's important to recognize that just because I've miscarried before, I have no protective scar tissue to save me from falling off a cliff of sadness should I lose another pregnancy.

When my Oma was born in 1912, she got very sick. It looked like the little baby wouldn't pull through, so my great-grandfather told my great-grandmother, "Don't worry. If she dies, we'll have another one."

"I don't want another one," she replied. "I want this one."

That is how I feel so often. Although my pregnancies are somewhat easy to come by (I'm usually pregnant within six months), each one of them is extraordinarily special to me.

I still love the baby who's been categorized as a "Chemical Pregnancy," the one I lost in June 2006. And don't even get me started about the baby I lost in December of that year. If we are going to meet people we love in heaven, she'll be waiting right at the end of the tunnel-of-light, my sweet baby girl. The missing sister. Oh, that baby still breaks my heart.

So here I sit. No bleeding so far (EVERYONE KNOCK ON WOOD), and I already feel like a giant sack of hormones. During the early stages of my pregnancy with Gigi, I had no symptoms. That was part of my Great Worry during that era.

But I find it somewhat encouraging that my body has already kicked up the nausea (Hello Toilet My Old Friend...). And my gut has already folded right over the top of my pants, a la Homer Simpson. At four weeks! Can you believe it?

I called up Dr. W's yesterday and the receptionist positively squealed with excitement for me (everyone should have an OB office like this). I asked her, "What do normal people do when they find out they are pregnant?"

"Well, what's the first day of your last period?"

I told her, and she twirled her little OB-wheel and said, "We should see you sometime between October 4 and October 26."

October 26! Hahahahaha.... wiping a tear from my eye. That's a good one.

In the interest of maintaining a veneer of normalcy, I made the appointment for October 3. But if I see one drop of blood, I'm racing into that office for an ultrasound right away.

Because I love this new baby. Hub-D and my fifth pregnancy, our hypothetical third baby, who sours my stomach and fills me with hope.

Date night

Like every Thursday, last night was Hub-D and my date night. Our sitter came early so I could drive into San Francisco and meet him at the office.

I had just received the soundtrack to "Legally Blonde: The Musical" from Amazon.com, so I rocked out while I drove. The songs are so terrific and thumping and uplifting, I didn't even notice I was caught in traffic through the tunnel and the tolls. Who cares? Elle got into Harvard!

After making a few wrong turns (hard to believe I ever lived in The City), I parked in the lot under Union Square and flip-flopped my way across the street to the door of his office.

Yes, I wore flip-flops for our date. Chebbles had dressed me, twirling a beaded necklace around my neck, choosing my shoes and telling me I looked pretty before I'd given her "Mama Stamps" which are lipstick kisses on the backs of her hands.

A few people were left in the office when I arrived. We all chatted, and I blathered on about how much I LOVE "Legally Blonde: The Musical," before I asked Hub-D if we could go out onto the balcony and look out onto Union Square.

The sun had just set and the buildings looked beautiful -- metallic and pastel -- autumn in The City is a terrific time, when the fog stops rolling in so relentlessly and the skies are bright blue. The city seems somehow hopeful.

We sighed and looked down on the pedestrians, then up at the department stores and the buildings in the distance.

"I'm pregnant," I told him.

I'm in love with my children

This would be the third night in the row of sleeplessness...

Do we have any right to complain? We really, really wanted to have children and now we have two adorable, healthy, brilliant little girls -- so we should just shut up about not getting any sleep, yes?

I'm too sleep deprived to contemplate the gratefulness I ought to feel. Everyone keeps waking up, and I even dropped a loud F-bomb in the middle of the house when Chebbles woke up screaming at 5:38am, after I'd finally gone back to sleep after Gigi's two wake-ups. What did Chebbles ALLEGE to want? Mimi. Who was sitting right next to her pillow.

And I'm the kind of person who can't go back to sleep if I'm woken past 5am. It's just over.

Crap, people!

Johnson = Gigi

Oh yunz!

Thank you for all the love and support, and especially for the comments at Health.com. I really couldn't sleep last night, I was so excited to be a "real" writer, to be working for pay in some small capacity, to be using my graduate degree for GOOD (sharing information about miscarriage and AMA) instead of EVIL (Public Relations). (Just kidding, PR is not evil. Just some of it is.)

In other news, Johnson is now called Gigi. It's just totally appropriate, and now that she's only waking up 2-3 times a night, she can be considered French and lovely. And it's what I really call her: Gigi, or "The Jeege," or when she falls on her face for the twelfth time in a row, "Oh, JEEGE!"

This is probably her last name change here, so we can all go ahead and settle into Gigi. So whenever you meet her in real life, she'll come when you call.

And more about The Jeege? She cruises. No, she's not driving a convertible down the road whistling at chicks ("Hey, you lactating!?"), she's cruising baby style, which means she pulls herself up to standing and then maneuvers around the room by holding on to various chest-level objects... the ottoman, the easel's paint tray.

She's dying to catch up with Chebbles. It pisses her off so much when Chebbles goes to another room -- so she's taking the bull by the horns and learning to locomote bipedal-like. Good girl.

And Chebbles, oh my Chebbles. She is still feeling pissed off about preschool. Once she is at preschool, she gets right into it, painting and gluing and farting around with baby dolls and swingsets. But when she's at home, she glowers at me.

She and I had been attached at the hip since Gigi was born. Whenever I got a sitter, I'd leave the baby at home and Chebbles and I would go get pedicures or milkshakes or ball gowns or whatever. So my eldest child is wondering, "What the hell?"

She is also STILL rising and screaming out for me, despite the aforementioned bribery. So tonight I just let her cry it on out. It's always worked for her, crying it out. She just screams and screams and screams, then whimpers and falls asleep, and I feel wracked with guilt momentarily. But I know that tomorrow she'll scream less, and the next night not at all. It's the only behavior modification technique that works 100% of the time with her.

So? Scream on, sister.

And finally, I am so PMS. I'm craving chocolate and I'm snippy at everyone, and it's 27 days into my cycle, so I'm drawing a conclusion here: no pregnancy this month. This seems like an Aunt Flo month. Which blows, because I thought we hit everything "spot on" this time. But now that I'm the Fertility Blogger for Health.com, not being pregnant buys me extra time to post more entries about my past reproductive dramas before delving into the present.

So there.

Health.com -- Now with ME!

I'm excited to announce that I'm the new "Fertility Blogger" for Health.com!

My first entry is here.

(It's also tagged on the front page of Health.com. No, that's not MY belly.)

This is more than the "daily upchuck" of Shaken Mama, as this site provides information and relevant news stories for other women who are struggling with miscarriages and other side-effects of getting a family started on the "late" side.

Please visit the site, leave a comment if you're so moved, and post a link on your own sites if you feel it's relevant.

NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THIS SUBJECT! I have been longing to clear the air about miscarriages and being "older" while trying to get pregnant. I'm so thrilled to have my chance. (THANK YOU KATE!)

And unfortunately, there is no way to "subscribe to the feed" for my articles on Health.com. SO, if you would like me to send you an e-mail whenever a new story goes live, just leave your address in comments.

Yeeeeee! I'm so excited.

Watch this space

I've got big news tomorrow!

(No, I'm not pregnant. As far as I know. But that would be cool, wouldn't it? If I were pregnant? So we could have another crack at another baby, except for the whole hope-it-doesn't-miscarry-again crap, and I could do without the vomiting-everything-I-eat part. No, next time I'm pregnant, if I'm so lucky, I going to ask for a shunt. Yeah, I'll have a big old shunt so medical personnel can rehydrate me at the drop of a hat. Then I could have my epidural just put in the shunt. But no, the news is NOT that I'm pregnant.)

Illicit Fun in the "Around We Go"

After calling up the night nurse and asking her if she had "seen my camera," I just discovered our digital camera at the bottom of a tote bag I'd hastily packed for a trip to the farmer's market two weeks ago.

HOORAY! My faith in humanity is restored! And it reconfirmed my suspicion that I'm a little bit of an airhead, despite my mental acument in other arenas. The camera was never stolen. And more importantly, this video was never lost.

I proctored Chebbles this morning as she washed her hands.

While she sudsed up, she laid her head against my belly, kind of bouncing against my abdomen while we talked and she washed.

She stopped suddenly and looked at my belly.

"Mama? Are you having another baby?"

Things you should know about Johnson

* She can crawl, sit, and pull up to a standing position by herself.

* She can eat "Level 3" solid foods, Cheerios, half-blueberries, little bits of everything.

* She is crazy about keys, and lunges for them whenever she hears them clinking. It is the only thing that will make her cry: taking away her keys. "But I only had three drinks!" she protests while you attempt to lock the door with a key that is still half in her mouth.

* She had her first swimming lesson this week and was superb. She went underwater and successfully held herself up at the side of the pool. The teacher kept saying, "Good JOB, Johnson!" and she and I would just beam at each other.

* She is absolutely nuts about her sister. Whenever I start to intervene because I worry that Chebbles is being too rough with Johnson, I look at the baby's face and realize she's LAUGHING. Chebbles can do no wrong with her.

* She excels in the baby jogger, inspiring me to start running again! Johnson happily sits in our decrepit old cobwebbed jogger, happy with a set of keys and the wind in her face.

* She attended Chebbles' playgroup this week, and she fit right in. She just sat in the midst of the older kids, mouthing the toys and chuckling at the kids' antics.

* Unlike her sister, she seems to enjoy the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Also different: she's happy to be held by anyone. She only gets upset if everyone leaves the room without her. She'll fuss and crawl toward us, "Hey, folks! You forgot me back there!"

* She has two gorgeous pearly teeth. Her knees are reddened from crawling. She has no sign of the eczema her sister suffered at her age, and her hair is coming in lighter beneath the dark locks. PLUS she's starting to get curls. Can you imagine? Curls? Her cuteness is going to be deadly.

* She can only sleep in her own bed, with darkened shades, no blankets and a white noise machine. DO NOT sing her a lullaby, unless you want her to suddenly become wide awake and stare into your face with excitement.

* She and I are in love, in love, in love.

What it took

Before I became a mom, I was decidedly against the notion of BRIBING your child. Kids should behave because it's the right thing to do, I would say.

That's before I met Chebbles.

She's unimpressed by punishment, and time-outs only work for behaviors that are occurring at that exact moment.

So, how to solve the waking-up-every-two-hours-and-screaming-at-the-top-of-her-lungs issue? First, I ruled out any physical reason behind the wake-ups. She didn't have to pee during the wake-ups, she had a sippy cup with water so she wasn't thirsty. She was a good temperature with a nice assemblage of blankets to warm her.

I also ascertained that it wasn't a nightmare or going-to-preschool fear or anything mental.


I finally lost my marbles when I slunk into her room to STOP THE SCREAMING at 5am and she asked me for water -- I grabbed for her sippy cup, determined that it was still full of fresh, cool water, and she CACKLED WITH GLEE.

So clearly, something had to change. I tried being as unpleasant as possible during my nighttime visits, but then I remembered something about "Any attention, even negative attention" being desirable to toddlers.

We tried letting her cry it out. The problem is that she isn't in a crib anymore, and she just accelerates the screaming into infinity if we don't intervene. She now has a cat door in her door, so Otto can come and snuggle with her at night -- but she also fits through the cat door, so locking the door is kind of pointless. So she'll just holler and holler, putting her head, then her whole body through the cat door.

Night after night, Hub-D and I screamed back at her and just went insane as she yelled for "help" every two hours, begging for back rubs and stories and whatever thing she could think of. Between Chebbles' annoying wake-ups and Johnson's twice nightly feedings, no one was getting any sleep.

Then Chebbles saw the Matchbox Haunted House (pictured below) in a magazine and said, "Can I have that?"

SO!

Last night, we put a Capri Sun left over from her birthday party and a pink lollipop on the kitchen counter -- both to be eaten ONLY IF she was quiet all night long. Then I cut out the picture from the magazine and taped it to her wall with a bunch of checkboxes on it.


AND I also promised she could do an Angelina the Ballerina story on Click and Play, a defunct kids computer game that miraculously continues to operate on my computer.

So there were four bribes in all: lollipop, juice, Angelina AND a checkmark toward the Matchbox Haunted House -- all she had to do was stay quiet all night long.

After some screwing around, she finally went to sleep last night at 9pm, and damn if we didn't hear a PEEP from her until 7:30am this morning.

So to my former self, the idealistic parent who thought bribes were terrible, I say... it WORKS.

Beauty Shop

We've been doing a LOT of "Beauty Shop" around here.

It's immensely gratifying to see Chebbles and Johnson really play together for the first time. And to get everyone's hair brushed at the same time.

Our little lady

Chebbles' birthday party was an absolute blast. We fit more than 100 people in our house and yard, and Steven Gary, our farmer's market find, got the crowd to boogie for two hours straight.

We ate 18 massive pizzas, and people barely touched the salads (I thought we were in California, people). I discovered many empty bottles of wine as I took out the recycling (good for you, party parents!) and we have just enough cream soda left to make us drink like KINGS for a little while.

Chebbles' stated dream was to eat her birthday cake with her birthday candles. You can see from this image that she lived her dream.


And you can also see that her buddy Z. had the freakin' time of his life. If I am ever feeling blue in life, I will simply refer to the image of Z.'s face when he saw Steven Gary start singing. Dang, man, it was love at first sight.

Last night, Hub-D, Chebbles and I ate dinner in the backyard together. Chebbles said, "No one is here, Mama."

"What do you mean? I'm here, Daddy's here. You're here!"

"But no one is here."

"No, this evening is a lot different from last Monday, isn't it?"

And it's true, our backyard echoed with our little voices. We missed the music...

But in other news, Z. and Chebbles got to start school together two days later. They were PUMPED. When I asked Chebbles who she played with at school, she said, "Z.. All the other kids are mean."

Oh well, at least they have each other. And their musical memories.

Greenie update

Remember a few months ago, when a horrible bout of the stomach flu led me to start worshipping Pete Seeger?

That day, I made a bunch of resolutions about changing our family's energy consumption.

I have a confession to make...

I have stuck to every single one. What the heck?

We run our clothes dryer only rarely -- if the laundry has piled up and the day is gray. Otherwise, everything dries on the clothesline in the backyard.

We are only using cloth diapers, which I launder myself with detergent and vinegar and hang in the sunshine. And I use CLOTH WIPES, for goodness' sake. I mean, doesn't that sound ridiculous? But I squirt Johnson's rear with California Babies bum spray, wipe with the cloth wipe, and we're done.

We are turning off the lights all of the time. Hub-D had harrassed me about my habit of leaving on lights, and I would always think to myself, "Jeez, stop acting like my dad." But as it turns out, Hub-D (and my dad) were right. I am a habitual light-leaver-on-er.

I have asked for a bike and trailer for Christmas, so we can do all of our "marketing" locally and without using the car.

And I've changed the way I drive, being more "slow and steady" than jackrabbity. (Another thing that my irritated my dad).

Plus, I've bypassed the heated dry feature on our dishwasher (yet another pet peeve of my father) for a few months now -- instead I run the dishwasher after dinner, then open it up to dry before we go to bed.

Next week, I'm enrolled in a composting workshop. Sexy, sexy!

Am I saving the polar bears? Probably not. But I'm saving serious money. Our energy bill was -$18 this month.

How could it be -$18? I don't know, and I'm not going to question it.

We also got a smaller, cheaper garbage container from our garbage company, because our output has dropped.

Then my neighbor across the street did the same thing, swapping his big container for a miniature one, in order to reduce waste and save some money.

So maybe I'm heading a miniature revolution? Perhaps we'll all start to sneer at the families who still use big garbage containers in my subdivision? Am I an envirosnob? (No hemp shoes... yet)

But I was egged on by Gorgeously Green, the book that insists that you can remain attractive AND save the earth at the same time. Although the science behind the book isn't all that admirable (the author gets extremely hyper about potential carcinogens in make-up and lotions without much data to back up her fears), the tone of the book is TERRIFIC and it does contain a lot of excellent advice without becoming preachy and annoying.

But anyway, these changes have worked for our family. We've practically stopped using paper towels in favor of a big stack of old washcloths that work better.

It's awesome. It's working great. Just one thing, though, PLEASE don't tell my dad.

Flights of fancy

Chebbles' imagination has suddenly shot through the roof. Once upon a time, she had one imaginary friend, Bruiser. But he hasn't been heard from in some time. Now, the whole house is Chebbles' stage for elaborate stories.

More often than not, she's the boss in the stories, and she's usually wearing a scarf around her waist as a fancy skirt. Everyone (dollhouse people, princess figurines, stuffed animals) is being told that they only have "three minutes" and then they must go to bed and be very quiet so as not to wake the baby.

Today she is staging a complicated picnic, involving multiple towels and characters, all of whom are "late." They all must "walk like ladies" and she's demonstrating the proper walking technique with them now in her new plastic Cinderella slippers.

Yesterday, the dollhouse cat was trying to find places to hide from the monster who was trying to get in the door.

So I suppose I'm not the only one with an imagination around here...

Bob

I have written a few times about these people that lurk around in my head. This sounds psychotic, but my friend K. has verified that I'm experiencing some kind of limited psychic phenomenon.

To that end, I've been trying to shake the story of Bob for several months now, but it just keeps coming back. Basically someone, somewhere in my life, is having an affair with a guy named Bob in Seattle. He owns a quaint bookshop or possibly antique shop, in a touristy section of town. His store features wood cases with glass tops and sides.

Tonight I got another huge "I love Bob" vibe.

Let's be clear. I don't love Bob. But someone is thinking it so loud that it's intruding on my daily life.

Again, I know this sounds wacko. I'm aware of that. That's why I dismiss some of these stories, these other people stories, much of the time.

I'm pretty sure she met Bob on a business trip to Seattle. I think they had a picnic, or at least talked about it. I didn't see the picnic, but I saw the bookstore. I also think this woman has a daughter.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? No, I didn't think so.

Shaken Chebbles

In case you think the name of this blog is figurative, I'm inclined to remind you that we are regularly shaken.

Tonight's 4.0 was Chebbles' first earthquake. In the past, she's slept right through them.

"Mama?" she called out after our house boomed and shook, "What are you DOING?"

I love how she thinks I am so powerful that I might have been doing something that so loudly impacted the structure of our home.

Then I lay in bed with her for a long while, serving her warm milk and explaining the earthquake.

She wanted to know where the earthquake went after it shook our house. "Up into the sky?" she asked.

Finally, she felt more comfortable with the whole concept. "I think it was a pink earthquake, Mama. With flags on it."

Cloth diapers, good and bad

You guys, I am prepared to admit that I've become a cloth diaperer.

Disposables are so yesterday. So Chebbles.

Johnson has been doing great in the Bumgenius 3.0 cloth diaper. It's awesome. They look good, they work perfectly, I hang them out on the clothesline and I feel like the most responsible Earth Mama ever.

But I must caution ya'll against the new organic version of the Bumgenius diaper, or going on any giddy diaper-purchasing sprees like I did. That particular diaper is ASS, and I think I'm stuck with it. Inspired by my success with the 3.0 diaper, I bought EIGHT organic Bumgenius diapers, and I washed them all and started using them on Johnson.

...Only to realize that they leak. That they hurt the skin on her back. That there is no way to double them up, and they are just... well, ass. They take forever to dry and they generally just make the Mama Family mad.

The company has a policy -- which kind of makes sense -- that you can return a cloth diaper, JUST ONE, if it doesn't work out for you. So we are not supposed to go nuts and buy $200 worth of diapers if you're not SURE they work.

But I didn't understand that these organic diapers were different from the 3.0's. And I chucked them all in the washing machine... and now it looks like I'm stuck with a stack of expensive, crappy organic diapers. Harumph.

But the whole bottom line here is, I don't ever buy disposables anymore. If you don't do dumb things like overinvest in badly designed hippie diapers, cloth ROCKS.

We've had no diaper rashes with cloth. Our garbage can doesn't reek anymore. And I can just put T-shirts on Johnson and she looks ready for action -- no onesie needed to complete the fashion statement.

Plus there is the invisible halo over my head when I hang the diapers to dry on our clothesline. The Patron Saint of Poop.

Sleeping, boobs and candy

* Johnson slept 13 hours on Wednesday night. And last night she slept 11 hours. In a ROW. Unfortunately, she woke up at 5am, so I'm starting the day way too early, but WHO CARES? My child seems to be on a semi-consistent sleeping pattern that involves WHOLE NIGHTS. Can I have some kind of crazy cocktail party to celebrate, now that I know I might be able to sleep off the effects?

*Speaking of sleeping, this image is of Chebbles on the plane back from Germany. Note that once she sped through all the lotions and soaps in her Lufthansa toiletries kit, she opted to cover her arms with all the toothpaste in the miniature tube.

* Hub-D and I attended a cocktail reception for Chebbles' new preschool last night. I freaked out about what I would wear. What? My kid's education? Who cares! Should I go with black slacks or skirt? Does it look like I tried too hard? I went with the skirt and a Michael Stars top that makes my boobs look good. And after meeting a bunch of fairly boring people, I came across another mom, B., who was hilarious. She might not be my friend anymore after I gave her WAY TOO MUCH information about feral cat sperm, but it was still fun.

* Speaking of my boobs, we're back to nursing around here. Johnson has decided that my boobs have risen to "OK" from their previous "abhorrent" status. So I'm getting in about two nursing sessions a day, which is nice, because formula is expensive, and I left most of her Born Free bottles in our dishwasher... in Munich.

* Chebbles got some incredibly badass birthday presents. Again, I live vicariously through my child, because when you turn 37 you don't get Barbies, fairy wings and jeweled crowns the way you might think. It's really terrific how well people know The Chebs -- her personality shines through in everyone's gift choices. Pinkalicious was a particularly inspired choice. She also got Candyland, which led to this conversation as our babysitter Liz walked into the door last night:

"Wiz?"
"Yes?"
"Do you wike CANDY?"
"Yes I do."
"Would you do the CANDY GAME with me?"
"Yes I will."

Lucky, lucky Chebs. I was too busy picking out a bra to make my newly re-inflated boobs look good in order to play the game with her. Priorities.

* OK, anyway. We are officially in the TWW. (That's the Two Week Wait, for you "Oh my husband just has to LOOK at me for me to get pregnant, and I don't know I'm pregnant until I'm 14 weeks along! Hee hee" people.) I hate this whole part of the process. I like all the hope and excitement that leads up to this moment, but the "Am I? Am I?" part blows, and then the "Will the baby LIVE to Week 10?" part blows even harder. Oh, wait, then the amount of blowing only accelerates with the anxiety leading up to the nuchal fold translucency test, followed by the great blow of the amnio. I just gotta focus on Johnson. Man, she was worth it.

Yeah, all of it. She laughs and points her little bottom teeth at us, and I think, "What was all my CRYING about before? Didn't I know old Johnson was on her way?"

Transcript: Chebbles and Daddy talking before bedtime

"What's your teacher's name?"

"Mrs. W."

"Did you make any new friends?"

"No."

"Is Z. your friend?"

"Yes."

"What are some of your new classmates' names?"

"Mrs. W. and Miss M. And Steph."

"Like Stephanie?"

"No."

"What did Steph do?"

"Pooped. On the floor."

While she sleeps

Tonight my baby is turning three. I said goodbye to my two-year-old as I kissed her a hundred times on her head. I told her it had been fun, and that I would miss her, and that I look forward to meeting my three-year-old in the morning.

So this is it. No more two-year-old in the house. And tomorrow, to cap off the swell of emotion, she starts her real preschool. They told her she can wear a crown. They told me she'd be treated well. They'll make her feel very special on her birthday at school.

But oh, I don't get to hold on to this new child quite as tightly, do I? I'll just get to feed her breakfast, then I send her off to school. And wait for her to return, maybe with art projects or stories or boo-boos she got while I wasn't around.

OK, it's not all about me. It's about my amazing sprouting daughter, with her new long legs and her ability to make her baby sister laugh just by looking at her. It's about our family room filled with princess paraphenalia she's received for her birthday.

It's about her, looking particularly tall in her new plastic "Sleeping Beauty" high heel shoes, clip-clopping on the floors, taking a header and popping back up again, walking gingerly to her bedroom. Goodnight little two-year-old. I'm going to miss you.

Snapshots from Germany

The shot on the train is Hub-D spinning a tale for Chebbles. I love her face in that one, it's just how she feels about Daddy and his stories.

The city in the rain is Salzburg. The pond and the garden of fun is Onkel Rudi's (you can spot him near the bush).

And don't worry, Chebbles was drinking an Apfelschorle, although she called it a Bier.

The final shot is Grandma waiting for the ferris wheel at Sommerfest with her grandbaby.

Oh, those were the days!

Maybe our cameras have been stolen

I'm not sure that the night nurse we hired over the weekend didn't steal our cameras.

They're both gone.

This sucks pretty bad when you're about to throw your kid's third birthday party, and an hour before, you're ripping apart the house because both of your digital cameras are missing.

The party is a whole other, wonderful, lovely story, filled with love and music.

But tonight I'm up with the baby and I'm just obsessing. We looked everywhere. I always leave the back-up camera on my desk, and I'm almost positive the other camera was on the front counter... where I was showing a video on it to Hub-D the evening before... the night nurse came.

There were some other shady elements to the night nurse. I'm pretty sure she was a compulsive liar. This, to me, is typified by a need to lie about insignificant things. And on the last night she was here, the little lies started flowing.

They were really unnecessary little things, but she told me at 3am, "I just checked the log I've been keeping tonight, and the baby's been up 10 times."

And this sounded wrong. Hub-D was awake and he hadn't heard her once. So in the morning, I casually asked if I could see her log, so I could know what her waking patterns had been. And the night nurse said, "I only kept a log the first night I was here, and I don't have that now."

What?

That's when I started smelling fishiness all over the place. And lies. And really, when it comes to liars, it takes one to know one.

Then she said I had told her I'd pay her $30/hour, not $25 an hour, and she earnestly told me that I'd agreed to that rate. There is no way I would have agreed to that rate, already feeling stupid about paying a person to sleep in my house for $25/hour.

It cast everything else she told me into doubt. And also, on the first night that she was gone, the baby slept a lot better. She settled down for hours at a time... none of this "I was up so many times last night" stuff. That's why I'd kept her on for so many nights! Ugh! What a sucker I am.

And now the cameras are missing.

What do I do? Hub-D is going to be mad as hell when I tell him about this. I keep hoping that they will turn up, but truthfully, we have scoured this house and they are nowhere to be found.

I could call her up and say, "Did you take our cameras?"

But what's she going to say? "Yes?"

What evidence do I have that she stole them? Only that they were here before she came, and gone after she left. What are the police going to do? Search her home? I don't even know her address.

Primarily, I just feel creepy that I trusted her with my kids. I had thought it was such a good idea, and she was recommended by the first postpartum doula we'd used... but her references were a little weird, and I fought my initial instincts that she was fishy. I thought maybe it was a cultural thing, perhaps I just felt weird about her because she was Kenyan and I'd never met anyone from there before. I admonished myself for being closed minded.

And my kids did seem to really like her. But what do kids know?

All I know is that I had to impinge upon a couple of friends at the party yesterday to take photos for us and that SUCKS. Where are our cameras? Do I really have to go to Best Buy today and shell out more money for ANOTHER camera? I don't want to miss the pictures of Chebbles' first day of school.

I just keep hoping that the cameras will turn up somewhere in the house. But my instinct is that she's got 'em.

And why is my instinct so strong in this regard? Because of how she kept talking about her bag on the morning she left. She was begging me to take a closer look at this waterproof tote that she'd brought, and I was tired, slumped on the couch, saying, "Oh yeah, it's pretty cool," and thinking, "OK, already, it's a cool bag. Let it go, man, so I can go back to bed."

She kept talking about the bag, and working to keep it upright as she talked, as the baby crawled toward it and almost knocked it over. Yeah, because our goddamn CAMERAS were in there.

Survey

"Hey Mama, please stop calling me Johnson."

"Well OK. Now that you've learned to soothe yourself back to sleep in your own crib, you can be called anything you want."

"How about my real name, which is exactly appropriate for my extreme cuteness?"

"Nah, babes, we're all pseudonyms on the blog."

"Well, ask your friends. Now that I can graduate from 'Johnson,' what do they want to call me?"