Journal Excerpt

Her crib is a veritable menagerie, a shelter for any lost animal toy she can find. The owners of the place we’re temporarily renting from left not only their furniture, but about twenty species of stuffed dog, all of whom I’m happy to report have found a loving home. There is one dachshund that grossed me out because one of its eyeballs was hanging out (ironic, I know), so one night I secretly chucked it out of the crib. She saw it the next day wedged in the corner and pointed “go3 go2! Go3 go2!” until I picked it up. She insisted on holding it during our prayer-and-tucking-in time. Tonight she insisted on being carried upstairs to bed with a stuffed mouse that she calls “rabbit,” a stuffed dog that she calls “small dog” (it’s one of about four pugs but it is the smallest), and a rubber ducky. I’ve stopped trying to secretly “forget” one because ten minutes later, arms stuffed full already, she’ll ask for the one I tried to hide.

Sometimes it gets hard putting her-and-five-stuffed-animals to bed at the same time, besides the fact that there is almost no room left in the crib to put her down in, but I’m not complaining as they keep her amused in the mornings, allowing us to sleep in. Usually when I come in she’s put them all lined up around the edge of her crib and is sitting there talking to them.

Cinderella

My mom took this photo of her today. When she is a teenager she can accuse us of making her do all the manual labor around the house.

Journal Excerpt

This stage of pregnancy is a bit like torture by bladder. Once again I crave watermelon constantly, while being unable to pee any less than ten times an hour, and any more than one thimble-full of pee at a time. The first thing I do now when entering a public space is scope out the location of the nearest restroom. When we were house-hunting, I considered peeing surreptitiously into model toilets. The realtor would ask, “what do you think about this house?” and I’d reply, “where are the bathrooms?” I ended up just avoiding any fluids, and I’m doing the same now on OR days. It’s a good thing none of our surgeries last longer than two hours.

I was getting up three times a night to pee, which pretty much cut off any hope of REM sleep, until I figured out shifting positions sometimes eased the baby off my bladder. So now instead of waking immediately, I turn over a few times while half-asleep, dream about peeing, and turn some more, before finally getting up. I think my main goal before October should be sleeping through the night as much as humanly possible.

Journal Excerpt

She is shockingly tidy. It’s sort of embarrassing admitting your not-yet-two year old is cleaner than you are. She’s very particular about things being proper: all the stuffed animals sitting upright, all of us staying in our chairs during a meal, wiping her mouth and hands with a napkin in between bites (I kid you not). She likes sweeping and if I let her will wipe down any surface—my laptop monitor, the kitchen floor, my cheek—with a rag. One of my favorite things to do is watch her carefully search for the corners of her blanket so she can lay it down smoothly without wrinkles. And this with her “a germ a day keeps the asthma away” mother.

All of this orderliness does get a bit exhausting. She gets upset if her stuffed bunny falls over onto its side. If she has a speck of dirt on her finger. One of second-hand dolls has a permanent marker spot on its bald head and I can’t say how many times I’ve pretended to try wiping it off with a tissue. Once she got distressed when she spotted a mole on my thigh. I didn’t know how to say nevus in Chinese so it came out something like “this is a dot mommy was born with” which I’m sure cleared it all up.

She is also quite maternal. She likes to feed people, stuffed toys, the cats. She likes to brush my hair. She stretches out her hands and whines to hug everything, including birds in the sky and animals in a book. She’s adopted so many stuffed animals she names and refuses to go to sleep without that half her crib is filled with them. I’ve actually only bought her one of them, incidentally her least favorite one. I’m not sure where she finds them.

I attribute some of this to her being a girl, and secretly I enjoy it a lot.

We find out tomorrow morning if the second is a boy or girl.

Another Hat

She is somewhat obsessed with pandas. One of D's single guy friends bought her this stuffed one from the Smithsonian which she tries to call 'panda' in Chinese which comes out sounding like "shi-shu." I can never tell if she wants the panda or a tissue (she's actually quite hygienic and insists on wiping her mouth and hands regularly). D got this hat for her from NYC during one of our rare baby-less getaways. It's a bit too big for her but fits him perfectly. When he's depressed he puts it on and it makes him feel better.