The Griffinator

In addition to sleeping on my feet at night, head-butting my belly, stepping on my boobs as often as possible, and keeping a quiet vigil on the bathmat while I take my nightly bath, Griff is now the self-appointed guardian of the box that holds our new crib:

Mulligan

Usually things like this happen to other people, people I envy a bit as I sit on the green line for 20 minutes trying to be Zen about the fact that it takes that long to get from Boylston to Arlington on a Monday morning. Someone must be looking down on us favorably, though. Today started off in a harried, stressful way--the city is doing work on our street, so I had to go running out the door half-dressed to move our car before we got a ticket, and then had to drive around for a while to find parking that wasn't affected by street cleaning. I got home and was like, is this how the day is going to be? Then I saw that I had voicemails on my cell phone. One of them was from work saying "Do not come into work." So I didn't. I've got a cat on my lap and I'm working from home. Woohoo!

Not the way to go

Bronx Mowgli? REALLY? Are Ashlee Simpson and Posh Spice trying to create a little posse of borough children? What's next?

Usher is going to be a daddy for the second time! He and wife Tameka Foster are expecting son #2 on December 15. Maybe he will take after the Simpson-Wentz child and be named Staten Island Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Usher Jr.

Disparity studies

I started chatting with one of the other pregnant ladies in my yoga class today. There are usually 3-4 of us who rotate in and out of the lunchtime classes. This one particular lady has, until recently, always looked like she was a month ahead of me. Then somewhere over the course of the last week, I expanded to the point where she looked like she was a month behind me. It turns out she is due almost approximately one month before me. She is tiny. She can still do koundinyasana. I cannot do koundinyasana anymore. My body has decided to be a gigantic sponge this week and I feel like I am toting around an extra X number of pounds of water weight in addition to the 30 extra pounds that is strapped to my midsection. Even chaturanga makes me grimace now. I am a water balloon.

Anyhoo, this yoga lady was chatting away in the locker room and told me that she had taken off 2.5 years after her daughter was born. "You know, I'm from Canada and it's important to me to be home with my child," she said. Her tone was one of privileged disdain for us misdirected Americans, who clearly prefer to stick their kids in daycare than to marry someone with a nice job at Nokia who can afford to let his wife stay home fulltime. While they lived in SF. Gag me.

I was irked but since the yoga studio is technically in a spa, I didn't feel like being That Person, the one who disrupts the spa ambiance to give a little smackdown. Lunchboy and I do well for ourselves but not working is not an option for me. I would very much like to have more flexibility than I do, but my company is not what I'd call family friendly when it comes to messing with days/hours. My company still frowns on telecommuting for god's sake. The bean is going to be in daycare after my maternity leave is over and I'm still on the fence in terms of how I feel about that. So I don't enjoy hearing that kind of condescenscion from someone who is lucky enough to have had the option of being job-free after the birth of her firstborn. Then again, I chose to practice at a place filled with women who are clearly not returning to the office after yoga class, so I bit my tongue. Then I toddled off to ABP, where I have been such a regular at the harvest pumpkin soup bar that one of the cashiers knows me by sight. I think this is something I should be embarassed about

Ahoy

Many things have been in the works. We have a pediatrician. We ordered our stroller. We signed up for childbirth classes. We are thinking about names (anyone have recommendations on good name books?) I just had my 28-week appointment and other than the fact that it turns out my iron levels are dismal (which probably explains the overwhelming fatigue), all is well. I am feeling not-so-little feet pushing off my ribs like they are a diving board, and her highness has developed a liking for doing triple layouts at 4am. Three people have said "Wow, you are REALLY pregnant!" in the past few days. Yes, I am--because you know, I was faking it before? But really, I am quite round these days.

My mouth is shut on the housing front. We have had so many ups, downs, tears, disappointments, moments of complete panic, moments of elation, and interim periods of complete resignation that at this point it makes no sense to say anything. When there is real, solid, signed-on-the-dotted-line progress, I will let you know.

This is our future

No one was kidding when they said it would go by fast

I'm due exactly three months from today.

Suddenly, three months doesn't feel like a lot of time. I felt like my first trimester would not END but now time is going by so quickly. I can feel little arms and legs doing strange things in my belly. In fact, we can see the strange things--lately my stomach has been twitching, jerking, and pulsating in fascinating ways. And suddenly I'm big. It's very exciting.

Still no news on the house front (we weren't expecting a whole lot, but it would be nice to have news!) We've had five showings since the first open house, which our realtor is ecstatic about, but people are (understandably) taking their time, so no offers yet. We can't do anything with the place we'd like to move to until our condo is under agreement, so we're crossing fingers and consulting all the gods of home buying in existence to see if we can get things moving. Otherwise we will stay put and try our luck again in the spring/summer. Ideally, though, we'd be able to get the hell out before the bean makes an appearance.

The cats, in the meantime, are having all kinds of adventures. From being shoved into their cat jails and driven around while the open house went on, to hiding while a parade of strangers ogles our house, and having all their favorite things shoved into a closet every other day, it's sort of miraculous that they haven't all decided to mutiny and claw us to death in our sleep. Well, almost. Scully did pick this incredibly opportune time to develop an anal gland infection. Yes. That is all I'm going to say about that one. I was not present for the vet visit at which her little issue was addressed and while I feel badly for Lunchboy that he had to be the tree that a screaming Scully climbed, I am SO GLAD I had to be at work. We've been giving her the cat version of penicillin, which is pink and smells terrible, and every time we try to give it to her she manages to spray pink stuff in a 10-foot radius. It's actually pretty funny at this point. Little do they know that there's another open house this Sunday. Teehee.