Baby Tag

Were you married when you found out you were pregnant? Yep. We'd been married for five years, almost six.

What were your reactions when you found out you were pregnant? Ummm.... for me there was a lot of swearing. For Dan (three days later, mind you), there was a lot of silence.

How old were you? 29

How did you find out you were pregnant? Took a home test the day after Dan left for a business trip. (You might see a pattern emerging here....)

Did you want to find out the sex? Of course. Though we still called her Baby Dave.

Due date? July 14? July 16? I have absolutely no idea now.

Did you deliver early or late? 4.5 weeks early (which explains the previous answer)

Did you have morning sickness? Nope.

What did you crave? Nothing really. The only thing that was odd that popped in to my head often that sounded really, really good but that I never actually ate was Oreos dipped in peanut butter. (Mmm... that sounds really yummy...)

Did you get stretch marks? None that I didn't already have :(

What was your first child's sex? Female

How many pounds did you gain throughout the pregnancy? 32

Did you have any complications during your pregnancy? I was anemic toward the end and had excessive amniotic fluid (whatever that means - I know what it literally means, but beyond that...)

Where did you give birth? Winchester Medical Center (Thank God. The hospital I was supposed to deliver at gets nothing but horror stories.)

How many hours were you in labor? I didn't know I was in labor for quite a while so maybe 14 hours total.

Was it natural or c-section? Natural

Did you take anything to ease the pain? Heck yes. I put it off as long as possible but when they said it was now or never, I jumped on the NOW!

How much did your child weigh? 6 lbs 12.5 oz

What did you name him/her? Demon Child Monster Baby. Which would apparently be much easier for people to pronounce. It's MAD-EH-LEN people. Not MadeLINE or MadeLAINE or even MadeLENE. Simply Madeleine. Seriously.

How old is your first born today? 2 and a half

Is he/she named after anyone? Yes. First name is a long story that I don't care to go in to. Middle name is after my sister.

How long were you in the hospital after birth? 2 days

Who was in the delivery room with you? My mother in law since my husband was clear across the country trying his ass off to get back as soon as possible

Are you ready for another? Ready? Hell no. But we'd better be by July, huh?? (If you haven't been told - consider yourself told. Though, if you're breathing, it's a miracle my husband hasn't told you yet. It seems he's told everyone and their mother's dog already.) While the actual due date is in August, I give no credibility to that crap.

Ouch

We're watching Monsters, Inc. and Li'l Miss Monster is talking about how Boo is with her friends (the scene where Sully thinks she's in the garbage compactor).

Me: Boo is with her friends?

M: Uh huh.

Me: Do you have friends?

M: No.

Me: No? Why not?

M: My friends at home. At my own house.

"My own house" is what she calls the Virginia house. So apparently all her friends are in Virginia. She barely had the sentence out before I haId tears in my eyes. She has friends here, they're all family. Looks like I need to get this kid some Utah friends who aren't related to her.

Project Say Something: Let it Snow!

Snow.
What's your favorite thing about it? Your favorite thing to do in it? Your favorite memory in relation to it.

I asked this question because I was freaking stranded in SLC for a week because it wouldn't stop snowing. That, and I had forgotten it was my turn so hadn't given a topic a single thought in weeks.

I love the snow. I mean love. Love that's up there with chocolate and crepes and really cheesy, bad movies and long, hot baths and long conversations with old friends and... Do you get the idea? I'm not a skier or a snowboarder or a do much of anything "in" the snow person. Though I do love cross-country skiing, I haven't done it in ages but boy, I loved it (no, not as much as snow. Or chocolate. Or... I need a bigger vocabulary of like words). Sledding is fun though I haven't done that since high school either. And snowmobiling (that was probably jr. high). Mostly, I love the snow but I HATE being cold. So even snowball fights and making snowmen take a lot to get me out there.

I think my thing is how it just covers the world in a blanket of pure perfection. It hides the dirt and the weeds and the garbage and the muck and buries it in its glistening shimmer of clean white. It makes the ugliest of ugly beautiful. And immediately the atmosphere is peaceful and serene. I love the sound after a freshly fallen snow. The way even the silence is amplified by it.

That it can kill you in an instant is something else entirely. Also, when it turns to brown, plowed/shoveled snow (or yellow! The horror!), it's time for it to melt and move on.
I used to dream of living in a small village in Alaska where it was covered in feet of snow for most of the year and that was just how life was. Being so used to it, walking down the street in it wasn't a punishing chore but just something you did. (There may not be anywhere in Alaska like that, I have no idea. Now my dream is just to visit there someday.)

During a snowstorm, sitting near a window, in front of a small fire with a cup of hot cocoa, reading a book - there just can't be a better way to spend one's time. Unless it's stuck in your car at the top of a hill your friend dares you go down then at the last minute you both realize that if you go down it, you'll NEVER get back up and so you spend HOURS trying to figure out how to get out of the rut you've got yourself in just to find out that all you have to do is drive down the damn hill and you'll easily get back up. That's always been one of my favorite things to do in the snow.

And this year I have found some other ways to enjoy the snow - through my (INSANE) toddler. We've done snow angels, made snowmen, had snowball fights, stayed out in the dark until we were both near-numb from the cold and just had all sorts of fun in the snow. I look forward to a million more snowstorms and finding all sorts of things to do in them.

Project Say Something: SuperDork

What super-power would you most like to have, and why?

As you can see, my husband had a great answer to this question. Me? Not so much.

I already feel invisible most of the time. Time travel is not for me (I'm a spoiler-freak, I'd spend too much time going forward and not enough going back). I don't want super speed or super strength, or the ability to fly or to read minds (there are already way too many things I know I wish I didn't) or walk through walls. To be a walking lasso of truth might be interesting. But then again there's that "knowing things I wish I didn't" part. So I am sort of thinking like super metabolism - eat anything I want, burn right through it. Or maybe, and probably most likely, super smarts. Beyond genius. Really, really, really freaking smart. Although I can see it now, that could *so* suck.

PSS: Superpowers

I'm told that when I was younger I stood in the movie theater cheering Superman in his quest to rid the world of evil. The recounted story has me out of the seat nearly the whole movie, staring at the massive screen in awe, with arms stretched to fly with Superman as he defeated evil with the flick of an eyelash.

That was me at 2: crushing ne'er-do-wells with my sidekick, Superman, and my incredible, heart-felt gesticulations. Perhaps, if you were that much of a pest, I'd even assault the baddies with the occasional undulation. Elvis with a cape, and a hefty side of bad-ass-doer-o'-good.

Comparatively, an introduction to super heroes through Superman is a bit unfair. Every other hero is like a small fragment of his greatness. Every other superpower is simply part of the and-also-ran list of Superman's abilities. First clue: his name isn't The Green Lantern, Aquaman or The Beast (a villain, I concede), or I've-got-one-power-so-I'm-special guy. It's Superman. SUPERman. You've got A power. That's great. He's got POWERS. Spiderman? That's nice. Can he fly? Batman? Get real. Can he lift a bus? Captain America? More like Captain American't. One trick ponies, the lot of them.

Let me reign my ego in while I stop flying around crisp, azure skies saving the world from certain doom. If I had to reduce myself to a single power like all of those hum-drum dime store comic book heroes, what power would that be?

Uncle Wiki lists things like: mutation, telekinesis, accelerated healing, invisibility, animated hair (I'm a prime candidate for that, right?), and the ever exciting sonic scream. It's a long list, really. Rummaging through it for that diamond-in-the-rough power proved unsuccessful though. Don't get me wrong, echolocation could be great, but it's not immediately awe-inspiring to me.

Since my six million dollar uncle let me down, I've had to resort to a bit of soul searching. As I'm wont to do, let me answer this question by telling an absolutely unrelated story.

I had wicked good noodles last week. Shanghai noodles from the Little World restaurant. Talk about super!

Wait, that's not the right story.

Sometime around 1988 things changed for me when I saw the Amazing Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a film by Terry Gilliam with an amazing cast. I wish I'd seen this one in the theater, but like a good number of the stories that shaped my youth, I caught this one on HBO at some point. The cast was a collection of oddball characters with unique abilities including Berthold, who could run at amazing speeds, Adolphus, who had incredible eyesight and was an amazing with a gun as a result, Gustavus, who could hear nearly anything and had lungs able to blow down entire armies, and Albrecht, the token strong man. (Superman could SO kick their asses.)

Here is a collection of clips:

The movie is a fable told in epic scale though, so each sidekick is put in a situation that demands their unique power. Berthold chased down a bullet, Adolphus did something really cool that I can't remember, Gustavus was also forgettable, but certainly amazing, and Albrecht did what strong men do - carried all the stuff for everyone else (including the entire treasure of a king).

The thing point is that when it mattered, each knew not only what he had to do, but that he could do it. And therein is the moral of the story, which I'll steal with glee and use for this post as well. Each had the confidence to get the job done, each was willing to be extraordinary despite the impossibility of the task in front of them. And at the end of the day, isn't that Superman's real power - that he had the confidence to try in the first place?

My superpower? The courage to be extraordinary, to be part of a story that inspires the boundless imagination of youth to dream. (Preferably in a cape.)

Project Say Something: Traditions. Or Lack Thereof.

What are your family's traditions? To add.. as a child and/or as an adult and not just at Christmas.

To not have any. Seriously. I want traditions, I like traditions, I suck at consistency or remembering anything. I will be making some, really, I just need to come up with them and actually write them down somewhere that they won't get lost or forgotten. I know we had a few as children - opening a present on Christmas Eve, Easter Bunny hiding our baskets (I hated that), the visits to grandparents for each holiday, things like that.

The only true tradition I would have to say I've really held to is the annual fight on New Year's Eve Dan and I have had since the first one we were together. And it's always over the STUPIDEST stuff. Luckily, the last few years we've managed to forego that tradition. Hopefully we manage to replace it with something much more celebratory and festive really, really soon.

Project Say Something: Good Riddance 2008

What is the one event you will remember when you look back on the year 2008 ? good or bad.

Oh good lord. If this isn't the loaded question from hell. Let's start with the bad: Moving from Virginia. Then move to the really bad: Not selling our stinkin' house after TWO years of it on the market. Then move on to even worse: Leaving a job I LOVED because I thought money was more important and ended up living six of the worst months of my life. And then, finally, move to the absolute worst: Both Dan and I losing our (really good paying) jobs within 6 months of each other. And the icing on the bad cake: Ending the year unemployed.

I know, I've got to sugarcoat it with some good. So moving home to family so they have the chance to get to know my demon-child, to have their support during the most chaotic time in our lives (to date anyway [hey, I'm a realist]). And... that's all I've got. But that's a pretty good one. Right?

Project Say Something: Christmas Memories

"Tell us about your most-memorable childhood Christmas."

I don't really remember much about my childhood, let alone Christmases. I hated them. I've hated them for a long, long time. Santa, too. But those are my own issues and not what the question is about so... I remember one year, a friend of my dad's gave all the kids gifts for some reason. My sister and I got Cabbage Patch dolls from him. I remember wanting one really bad but knowing there was no way we would get them. And then some man we didn't even know went and proved me wrong. (Now that's what I call Santa.)

I remember pieces from all of them very well because they were pretty much the same: we'd all get up WAY too early, I was a grumpy teenager so I would whine the whole time and throw a fit any time anyone would point a camera in my direction. As grumpy and mean as I may have been, I always loved Christmas morning with my family. It was probably the only morning of the year the bickering and fighting didn't start as soon as we were awake.

To be fair, my most memorable Christmas wasn't when I was a child. It was when I was all grown up, out on my own (with my husband), thousands of miles away from my family and we chose to have Christmas alone - having always had (and insisted on having) Christmas with all our families come ten feet of snow or thousands of places to be at once or whatever. Christmas without family was unheard of and I am an emotional, sentimental sap who at first thought I was losing my damn mind. But I made the suggestion, I made the decision and I loved it. The few Christmases we spent in VA with just the two (and the one with the three) of us were the very best. I guess that's when I really felt all grown up. And boy was it nice to not have to be in a million places at once.

Project Say Something: Good & Bad

What three things do you consider yourself to be very good at... and what three things you consider yourself to be very bad at?

Listening
Copying in the line of re-creating, you know - the crafty kind
Procrastinating

Writing
Complimenting
Fighting

Take your pick which is the good list and which is the bad list. They both kinda stink.

Project Say Something: Good & Bad

What three things do you consider yourself to be very good at... and what three things you consider yourself to be very bad at?

Listening
Copying in the line of re-creating, you know - the crafty kind
Procrastinating

Writing
Complimenting
Fighting

Take your pick which is the good list and which is the bad list. They both kinda stink.