Major Life Event Announcement! Brace Yourselves! :-)
Hi everyone!
OK, I’ve decided it’s time to tell you all the Big Crazy News that has made me a terrible blogger/correspondent/punctual or awake human being for the last few months. Remember my "excellent and fascinating reason" for skipping a blog post about a month ago? Well, the Moment of Revelation Has Arrived! I know! So exciting! Are you all sitting down? Except maybe the 75% of you who already know this news because you’ve seen me in person lately and it’s, hello, kind of obvious, Tui?
YES.
We are HAVING A BABY!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE exciting and alarming and kind of cool and kind of terrifying all at the same time!
Well, OK, we’re either having a baby, or we’re having the ravenous plant from Little Shop of Horrors. SERIOUSLY OMGHUNGRY ALL THE TIME! HUNGRY NOW! AND ALSO NOW! AND ALSO RIGHT NOW! AND ALSO TWENTY MINUTES FROM NOW AND FORTY MINUTES FROM NOW AND ALSO NOW AND OMG WHY AM I STILL TYPING WHEN I SHOULD BE EATING RIGHT NOW NOW NOW?
That is my whole day right there. La la la HUNGRY la la HUNGRY la la surely I can wait another hour until Adam comes home for dinOKSTARVING EATING THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THE FRIDGE RIGHT NOW.
What’s up with that, baby? Good GRACIOUS HEAVENS.
But all this eating doesn’t actually explain why I’m the size of a whale, because I became the size of a whale INSTANTLY OVERNIGHT, before the eating even started. SERIOUSLY. I took the test, found out I was pregnant, went yay!, and then a week later NONE OF MY CLOTHES FIT! OUTRAGEOUS!
They say every pregnant gal gains weight differently; evidently I gained it ALL in the first week, which is FABULOUS. Fun for ME. Especially when my mother gained, apparently, ZERO pounds over her ENTIRE PREGNANCY and tells me allllllll about it every time she sees me. ("I didn’t have to tell anyone I was pregnant until I was seven months along! I never had a day of morning sickness! I ate like a perfectly normal size 0 model! The hunger is all in your mind! You’re not REALLY dying of starvation right now! No, you don’t need an entire roast chicken at 2am! Have some sugarless tea or brush your teeth and you’ll forget all about it! But seriously, sweetie, you look like a manatee. Oh, there go those funny hormones making you cry again! Ha ha ha ha ha! Your pregnancy suffering is hilarious!")
On the plus side, whenever I feel too gigantic, I can cheer myself up by buying maternity clothes. Maternity clothes are AWESOME! Unlike all the other clothing in the universe, maternity clothes are designed for ACTUAL WOMEN with CURVES! It’s BANANAS! Or, you know, watermelons, more accurately. ;-) These clothes totally say: "Hey, I’m supposed to look like this! Smooshiness is hawt! Whales and manatees are huggable and awesome! Also, give me that seat on the subway! And don’t stand between me and the buffet table because here I come!"
Much as I love them, however, don’t expect to see any photos of me between now and, say, 2012 at the earliest. You may notice that I’ve cropped myself out of many recent photos posted here. There is a VERY GOOD REASON for this (cf. manatee, whale, side of a barn, etc.). If you’re lucky, however, there may one day be photos of the baby. Or we’ll just stick with photos of Sunshine, who is eternally photogenic and adorable and non-manatee-like, and also unlikely to one day write a tell-all memoir about how embarrassing/traumatizing it was to be the child of a blog-happy author. 🙂
True, true, very astute.
Pregnancy, it turns out, is THE WEIRDEST THING IN THE UNIVERSE. I can feel something MOVING INSIDE OF ME WHAT IS THAT ALL ABOUT! Also, it is like living in the longest episode of House ever, except that the answer to every mysterious malady (my feet hurt! I’m hungry all the time! my knees hurt! I throw up every time I brush my teeth! my hips hurt! my shoulders itch! I keep falling asleep instead of writing back to emails!) is: "Aha! We’ve figured it out! You’re PREGNANT! So there’s nothing we can do to help. Have fun with that for the next nine months! Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA!"
Well, at least now I can complain to YOU about it, right, loyal readers who will totally not find that boring? ;-)
The good news is, I only have one more Pet Trouble book to write this year, and then I can sleep until February WHEEEE and/or lie on the couch re-watching Buffy WOOOOOOO! Well, that and re-organize the whole house so there’s room for a baby (and all the baby’s STUFF!), and write a giant stockpile of manuscripts to give to my agent so it’s OK if I can’t write anything for a while after the baby is born. (I hear that I’ll be "busy" or "exhausted" or "insane" or something along those lines.) But, you know…mostly the Buffy thing. 😉
Oh, the answers to the usual questions: I’m about 25 weeks along, which means I’m more than halfway there, but it also means I have a REALLY FREAKING LONG TIME STILL TO GO. The alleged due date is February 3rd, although if this baby is related to me, he’ll be late, and then he’ll make a dramatic arrival with lots of apologies and presents and long-winded but entirely believable excuses. And no, I haven’t gotten my H1N1 shot yet, because it isn’t AVAILABLE HERE yet, but YES I DID SEE the horrifying article in the NYTimes yesterday about ALL THE HORRIBLE THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO PREGNANT WOMEN WHO GET SWINE FLU SUCH AS COMAS AND COLLAPSED LUNGS AND STRETCH MARKS so PLEASE DON’T SEND IT TO ME and OMG YES I PROMISE I WILL GET THE SHOT AS SOON AS I CAN and in the meanwhile I am not leaving the house just to be safe, but luckily I am a hermit who works in her pyjamas, so this is not a problem.
And of course the most frequently asked question: it’s a boy! :-) Bring on the blue clothes! His wardrobe right now consists of an adorable blue blanket with dogs on it and a Buffalo Bills onesie (yes, we’re dooming him from the start, but my Bills-loyal husband assures me that it builds character to root for a team so spectacularly talented at losing in exciting new dramatic ways every time). ;-) (Just kidding, Bills fans! They’re the best! This is their year! Woooo and other appropriate sports noises!)
So far our sophisticated analysis of the baby’s reactions to my behavior have led to the conclusion that he likes hot dogs and big band jazz. I know, he sounds cool, doesn’t he? :-)
Hope he likes books, too, because we’ve got LOTS OF THEM waiting for him! Also because children who don’t like books mystify me. How else do you occupy your time when the grown-ups are being boring (which is, like, always)? Of course, most importantly he has to like Sunshine, who is going to be THOROUGHLY OUTRAGED when she realizes there’s something else in the house as small and cute as she is. We’ve been hanging out with other babies to get her used to the idea, and so far she has been MOST REPROACHFUL about the situation. Usually she sits across the room and gives me Big-Eyed Tragic Face whenever I hold a baby.
Although we did manage once, after a long weekend together, to get her to come snuggle with me and Evie, one of the snuggliest, sweetest babies I know:
I know, Sunshine looks utterly thrilled, doesn’t she? ;-) (This baby, obviously, belongs to one of my many splendidly wonderful dog-loving friends who is all in favor of group snuggling, thank goodness. Speaking of which, I am looking forward to being able to compare my own baby to my dog, as it has come to my attention that some people don’t appreciate it when I compare their babies to my dog, no matter how apt the similarities. WHAT! When it’s CLEARLY a compliment to be anything like Sunshine? My goodness. MOST mysterious, some people are.) 😉
(P.S. How snuggly is this ridiculously awesome super-cute baby? I ask you. Can I have one just like that, please?)
Anyway, so that’s our news! And that’s why I haven’t written back to your email (you, specifically) or done whatever it was I promised to do two months ago: because I’ve either been tragically pregnantly ill (first three months: no fun!), or I have been sleeping fifteen hours a day (or both). I really do keep sitting down at my computer thinking, "I’m going to write a blog! Or clean up my emails! Or start a book!" and ten minutes later I’m fast asleep again. You can find me asleep at nearly any hour of the day (noon, 3pm, 5pm, whenever Adam’s not home, whenever Adam’s watching football or painting the basement, whenever I’m not inside the refrigerator eating everything I can find) — except of course between 11pm and 3am, because that would be ridiculous (prime writing time, people!).
Wait! Stop yourself from sending me a hilarious email about how I’d better take advantage of all this now, because I will Never Get To Sleep Again after February! Yes, it IS hilarious, and I LOVE hearing about how miserable and tired I’m going to be, but trust me, I’ve heard it! And I’m terribly terribly amused! Ha ha, aren’t I in for a shock! My life is going to suck! That is funny! Just wait until February, and we can all laaaaaaugh and laaaaaaaaugh about it then. 🙂
Or you could send me an email about how awesome babies are. Those are sincerely always welcome. 🙂
Well, I’ve been up for at least seven hours now, so I think it’s high time to go back to bed. Expect many more wacky stories about pregnancy and sleeping to come! (Just wait until I tell you the one about how Adam decided to install a new doorbell at eight o’clock in the morning, much to Sunshine’s loud dismay. OMG ADAM WHY ARE YOU TORTURING ME HAVE YOU NOT NOTICED THAT I’M MAKING A PERSON OVER HERE AND BY THE WAY THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT? Yeah, I’m really fun at that hour.)
Happy thoughts and lots of sleeping and snuggliness to all of you!
Quote of the Day:
Doctor: "I don’t know how to put this, but…there’s no baby."
Teri: [gasp!] "Did it fall out?"
Doctor: "No. You’re not pregnant."
Teri: "But I’ve gained ten pounds!"
Doctor: "That’s probably from the eating."
— Glee