Reports of my death have been greatly exagerated

So ... from phone calls and emails and texts and other things that I have gotten, I get the feeling that my mother sent out the call yesterday that "Oh my goodness the librarian who is also a pirate is dying or very sick or having her baby RIGHT NOW or something ... I don't know! I'm just worried! Be worried too!" This is totally not her fault - when I was in the hospital I was texting her and my sister and my husband and my other sister (who has helped me pick out a name for baby girl #2! The husband doesn't like it, but who wouldn't want a child named Sparkly Unicorn! He'll come around.) and sometimes I forgot who I had told what to and she probably didn't get the whole story. Since so many people are worried about me, I am going to type it all up and stick it on my blog because really - who reads this but friends and family? (:

ANYWAY - yesterday.

I got to work yesterday and started feeling awful. Nausea, stomach (not uterus) cramps, dizzy ... and when I started throwing up and the cramps were worse I called my doctor, OB-GYN sister, and mother (in that order), then doctor again (I couldn't get through to my doctor the first time, nor my doctor sister, and I don't know about anyone else, but when I don't feel good and can't get a hold of people the people I should, I tend to call my mother. My mother's brilliant advice was "keep calling your doctor until you get through."). I am really bad at taking care of myself and determining if this is "go to the doctor" worthy or if it's just food poisoning/the flu/whatever. When I'm sick I get even less rational and don't like making decisions for myself! So my doctor told me not even to go to see her but to go to the hospital and they'd check me out.

So I go to the hospital and they hook me up to all kinds of "lets check this lady out" equipment and I felt better then worse then better then worse. The nurse said, "how many times has the nausea come since you've been here?" "Twice" I replied. "Yeah ... those are contractions."

!!!

"Contractions! But they're at the top of my belly and they're making me nauseous! They don't feel anything like what contractions felt like before!"

"Every baby is different. And these aren't big contractions. About 10 minutes apart and pretty little." They wanted to watch me to make sure they were false labor and as long as I was there they wanted me to stay for awhile in case it was real labor (For those of you who know nothing about this sort of thing, six and a half weeks early is bad. Not so bad that it wouldn't work out, but bad enough that we REALLY didn't want Sparkly Unicorn to show up quite yet). They took my blood and did and ultrasound (and Sparkly Unicorn has the prettiest face EVER) and determined that nothing seemed problematic and eventually (WAAAAAY Later) let me go home.

I'm on what the doctors call "modified bedrest" which sounds so much more dire than it is. I stayed home from work today, I'm going to stop carrying Kinsie as much, I'm going to be much more careful in what I lift and how much moving I do. That said I can still go to work (but when I turn on "Shake your Sillies Out" I'm going to tell the kids they have to shake extra hard to make up for my lack of shakes). I can still live my life. I really don't like that they call this "modified bedrest" because in reality it's "be more careful and maybe start acting like you can't do as much as you used to be able to do."

BUT one of the joys of being home all day is that I have gotten photos uploaded to my Kodak Gallery (FINALLY) - anyone who wants a link just email me.



This is currently my favorite picture. I think she kinda looks like Little Michael here (something I think all the time in real life but I rarely see captured in photographs). I'm now going to go catch myself up on emails (I know! I owe so many emails) ... and get myself something large and cold to drink.

Lobster-Plath

A very happy Lobster-Plath to you all! I plan on celebrating by reading some Sylvia Plath and perhaps making some sort of shrimp related dish tonight. I know, I know - it's LOBSTER Plath not SHRIMP plath, but if you look at the spirit of the holiday, it's really CRUSTACEAN-Plath and that's why I'm going for shrimp. That and because the husband and I are watching our way through the first season of Chuck and I just watched the episode where they spend forever talking about how wonderful the Sizzling Shrimp is. Now I want sizzling shrimp and I don't even know what it is exactly!

In other news, I was reading through some old blog entries and I came across this terrible horrible no good very bad cake that I told y'all I was about to make. Don't. Seriously - don't. The cider glaze, however, was lovely (I futzed with the spices because I don't actually own "pumpkin pie spice" and it seemed silly to buy it just for the cake, but that only made it better) and now that I've been reminded of it I think I'm going to make some gingerbread and put that lovely glaze on it. OM NOM NOM!

The Kins is learning a new word every day. It's crazy and wonderful and sometimes very very confusing. She has a favorite bunny who I named Marinara after she decided it needed to be dipped in Marinara often. She has just started to say "bunny" though, so her name has been stripped from her. Bunny, though, came quite out of the blue when she started looking around the living room while yelling "money! Money! MONEY!" It took me FAR TOO LONG to figure out what she was searching for. She's not quite putting words together into sentences yet, but she is putting exclamations together into lots of exclamations. Monday she had a bit of diarrhea. Each diaper was worse than the last! Tuesday morning when I changed her diaper she looked up and me and said "Oh goodness! Oh yucky! Oh eeeeeewwww." It was exactly what her father and I had said to her for each of her diapers the day before. Poor baby - I hope I'm not giving her a complex!

That said, YUCKY and EEEEWWW are two of her favorite words. I brought Mo Willem's newest Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed home from work the other day and read it to Kaylee. Wilbur is a Naked Mole Rat who likes wearing clothes. His fellow Mole Rats say to him "EEEWWWWWWW" and "YUCK!" Kaylee LOVED it when I read that part to her, and then she took the book from me, sat in her own corner, turned the pages on her own, and pointed to everything saying "eeeew! Yucky!"

(Side Note Mini Review: Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed is fantastic. It is Mo Willems, though, so I have to tell you that it is probably one of my least favorite of his books. That said it is one of my least favorite books by one of my favorite authors. It is really really good ... but if you're going for Mo Willems go for Leonardo or any of the Gerald and Piggie books.)

I don't think I've told the blog yet that I'm pregnant! How has that happened? Hi! I'm pregnant and I'm telling you waaaaaay down here. Yes, it is important to me, I just went through this (seemingly) looooong stage of not telling anybody about it and then told everybody all in a rush and now it seems like everybody knows. Do YOU know, intarwebs? Do ya? Good. Well anyway, I was about to talk about being pregnant and realized I should probably officially tell my blog that I am pregnant. Now it's done and I can get on with the whole moaning and whining and demanding foot rubs and ice cream, yes?

So this pregnancy has been so totally and completely different from pregnancy #1. Everyone said that probably meant I am having a boy this time, but then the ultrasound came in and voila - labia! My poor husband is going to be SO overrun with estrogen! This is going to be fun! YAY FOR TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS! But seriously, ya'll! With the Kins I had morning sickness for 9 months. With this baby I threw up when I got a stomach virus and that other time when Brandon and Kaylee threw up all over the car and I sent them away so I could clean it up without the sickies being around (and it was just a ton of puke. Seriously - you woulda joined in just a hair too). Other symptoms that passed me by with the Kins I've been getting full force this time. Heartburn? check. Constant burping? check. A need to stick my hands on my lower back and WADDLE? CHECK!

It seems like everyone in my house has had the death defying crud for far too long (seriously - I got it at work and coworkers had it for 6-8 WEEKS. I think it's about as bad for all of us), so while I promised my siblings that I would be better about taking pictures this year ... it's hard to take pictures when everyone just wants to crawl in a hole and sleep until our sinuses clear, but I have taken SOME ... I just haven't uploaded them. I just pulled 3 of the most recent out to prove to the world that a) My daughter is still the cutest thing EVER and b) I am using my beautiful new camera for good, not evil.

This was when Kaylee had a horrible fever and she made herself a little nest on the couch then demanded I come cuddle with her. Of course I did, but first I had to take a picture.

Kaylee loves to empty out this one cupboard next to the oven and make herself a fort in it.

She loves it so darn much I don't mind moving all the pots and pans back into the cupboard when she's done - nor do I mind cooking around a kitchen floor full of random junk ... but I AM working on teaching her to put it away when she's done. She'll get there!