I’m not saying that without naptime I would go insane, but I WILL say that I appreciate naptime. Look forward to naptime. Anticipate naptime all morning. Consider drugging my children in order to get them to take a longer naptime.

So why is Elizabeth setting out to destroy me? Here is what happens nearly every single day now. I feed the twins their lunch. Then I take William to kindergarten. Then I put the twins down for their nap, and I settle in at my computer, or in a comfy chair with a book, or in front of the freezer to eat ice cream directly out of it, or whatever.

Elizabeth starts crying. Has she perhaps taken advantage of her nice clean dry pre-nap diaper? Why, yes she has. So I change her, and after I do that she clings to me in a way that is both loving and manipulative. Edward is already sound asleep, so I am whispering to her: “You are going to have to go back into your crib. It is naptime. I got you out to change your diaper, but now you need to go back in.” She has not given up hope, and she pushes her face into my neck, making a little “mmmmm” sound. She knows this is difficult to resist.

Easier to resist is her angry astonished crying when I put her back into her crib anyway. Edward is a good sleeper, and he is used to this; he continues to sleep. I leave the room. She continues to cry. Finally she wakes up Edward. Now they are both awake, less than an hour after the beginning of naptime.

Alternate ending: Elizabeth finally does go to sleep, just as she succeeds in waking Edward. I wait as long as I can to go get him: he is making gentle little talking sounds, not crying, and the sound of not-crying is good to me and I want to take advantage of it. Then he begins crying. Elizabeth is a light sleeper, and so when I go in to get Edward, she wakes up, crabby and tired and definitely not going back to sleep. Now they are both awake, less than an hour after the beginning of naptime.

I’m starting to notice Tum Interference occurring. I’m walking funny. My tum gets sore. I feel tired from walking around. It’s difficult to carry things that I would normally carry in front of me. It’s difficult to lean forward. It’s difficult to get up from the floor, or out of bed. It’s the beginning of the third trimester, all right.

I was thinking about my most recent pregnancy, the twin pregnancy. I looked it up in my journal to make sure I was remembering correctly, and I was: It sucked. I had to lie down for awhile, queasy and shaky, after taking a shower. I almost couldn’t face the idea of a short errand. I couldn’t get comfortable in any position. My legs retained water all the way up to my hips–enough water to give me stretch marks. My feet went up two sizes. I could barely walk, and when I did walk it was slow and painful. At around 32 weeks, I couldn’t lie down anymore without excruciating pain in my pelvis and hips, so I had to sleep sitting up in a recliner for the rest of the pregnancy. I felt lousy and sick all the time. I felt like I was dying of a painful terminal illness.

Hard to complain about it, though, when there are women who would have given up one of their limbs just to have carried their twins another week, or to have felt bad but have no actual complications, or to not have been on bedrest for months. But just because I was very, very lucky in comparison doesn’t mean it didn’t still utterly suck. It did. It utterly sucked. I acknowledge my luckiness, without giving up my claim to the suckiness.

I was partially hoping that this pregnancy would be twins again, because I have so loved almost everything about having twins (I have to use that qualifier because of the times when they both had blow-out diapers and then both spit up over their clean outfits and freshly-washed hair), and because it would be so comical and unusual to have two sets of twins less than two years apart. But when I found out I was having just a single baby this time, I felt like I could look forward to the pregnancy. Definitely it is not buttercups and Christmas morning, but there’s woe and then there’s WOE, and I am better able to handle woe.

I came home from shopping today, and the jar of honey was in the kitchen sink. I said to Paul, “Why is the honey in the kitchen sink?” and he said, “Because I was pretty sure it didn’t belong in the SHOWER.”

That logic doesn’t really follow, does it? Besides, if the honey is in the shower, it’s not the same as if it’s in the refrigerator and maybe someone just got a little absentminded. If it’s in the shower, someone must have put it there on purpose. And yes, it was me.

You all have honey in your showers too, right? Or, okay, fine, on your bathroom sinks if you prefer. Because we’re all doing Sundry’s honey challenge, aren’t we? This is exactly the sort of thing I loved to do in high school, and while some women might mourn the hips of their youth or the boyfriends of their youth, what I mourn is the beauty product experiments of my youth: I used to cruise the beauty aisle, babysitting money climbing out of my purse looking for what would be coming home with us today. The facial scrub, with real bits of apricot pit? The peel-away masks, as thrilling as peeling off dried Elmer’s glue? The mud masks, so very very ugly and full of minerals? Did I want to tighten? glow? exfoliate? peel?

I tried the honey this morning in the shower, and Sundry is right that it isn’t sticky and yucky as you’d expect: it went on smooth and nice, and of course it smelled delicious. I rinsed it off a few minutes later, and my face felt just as nice as with any of the other facials I’ve tried over the years. I don’t know yet if this says something about the honey, or if it says something about the other facials.

One of the commenters on Sundry’s honey post says you can mix honey with your hair conditioner, too. Well, count me in! High time we had some fun beauty product experiments around here!

That “vote on a name” comments section was THE MOST FUN EVER. I loved reading all your comments. LOVED. IT. Well, except for the Milo and Otis comments, because I found out that I am very, very elderly. I didn’t even know what you were talking about until I looked it up, because I was too old in 1989 for movies such as that one to make an impact on my consciousness. Dead Poets Society, yes. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, yes. Uncle Buck, yes. Story about a kitty and a doggy who are friends? NO. So now I feel old, thanks so much. (I’m waving a cane irritably in your direction.)

One commenter wanted to know what we thought of three girl name candidates: Evelyn, Eve, or Gwen. I’m a big fan of the name Eve. If we were having a girl this time, I’d be pushing for Millicent around here, and Paul would be pushing for Penelope; we both like Ivy and Eve even better than the names we’d be championing, but can’t use either of them for other reasons.

I should have re-mentioned before posting that vote thing that I use pseudonyms for my kids’ names. So although Milo would be a bad, bad match and Henry would be like the perfectest fit ever, in actual life either name is about the same, match-wise. They’re both equally good with our surname, too. Well, okay, Henry is a shade better on both points. But only a shade.

Well. Yesterday’s appointments. Elizabeth has a massive ear infection, and the usually very understanding pediatrician made me feel bad about it. When he looked in her ear, he said, “Whoof.” “HOW long has she had the cough?,” he added. And when I said to her, “Oh, no! An ear infection? Has your ear been owie?,” he said, “She would have HAD to have felt that.” Me: *sinking into hole in earth, while simultaneously declaring my total innocence since the child never seemed bothered by her ears at all, I swear*

And Elizabeth was totally working it, looking at the doctor with the large pitiful eyes and limp posture of a Truly Sick Child, communicating with every fiber of her being that she had tried and tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen.

The thing is, I brought Edward in less than 2 weeks ago for this same cough, and I felt like a total overreacting idiot because he was absolutely fine and I’d dragged three children and a double stroller into a tiny exam room for nothing. So with Elizabeth I waited a little longer. Edward had had a low fever and no appetite and he looked cruddy, but Elizabeth seemed happy and healthy except that she had this cough: no fever, no loss of appetite, no batting at her ears, nothing. In this whole parenting thing, one of my biggest struggles is the “When to call the doctor” struggle. I feel like I always go the wrong way.

I had my ultrasound, and got the all-clear on the placenta previa situation. I’m very glad. Then I had my usual OB appointment, and confirmed that I’m now in the third trimester. I’d been confused on that point, because my week-by-week book says it starts week 27, but Baby Center says it starts week 28. The OB says week 27. I’m going with that, because I like that answer better.

The screens for gestational diabetes and anemia both came back fine. Blood pressure was kind of high for me, but only the top number, and I personally think it was because their ultrasound tech is an irritable sadist who nearly leaves bruises every time I see her, plus is always sighing as if I am ruining her day. For my mid-pregnancy ultrasound I asked to go to the hospital instead, because they don’t try to KILL me there.

So, here we go! About 12 weeks left until the c-section, which will probably be scheduled when I go back to the OB in 3 weeks. And they didn’t say word one about my weight, which was good because I was still a little fired up from earlier this week, but it would have been difficult to defend myself considering I had Cadbury Fruit & Nut Bar breath.

Choose one baby name: Milo or Henry. Say why, unless it is mean and would make me cry.

My blog is mostly secret. I told Paul and my parents about it after a few months because I kept slipping and almost telling them, and plus I wanted to be able to tell them happy or funny blog-connected things. All three have promised not to go cruising around the blog on their own, and they read only the posts I send to them. Nobody else in my life knows about the blog, because I don’t think I can trust anyone else to be so good. I think I have mentioned before that my mother was the kind of mother who could be trusted to walk past an open diary. I don’t think that’s common in the general population, do you?

This blog is anonymous, so I say things that I might not even say to my best friends. Or I say things that I might say to one best friend but not to the other. Or I say things that otherwise I might not have said except in my own head. This blog is technically public, but because it’s anonymous, it feels private.

Well. Today. I left a comment on a friend’s blog. While I was logged in as Swistle. I deleted the comment, but it still says “Swistle said…” with a link to the Swistle blog. Also, then I tried to re-leave my comment, and I accidentally used the Swistle name A SECOND TIME. I’ve emailed my friend, begging her to delete the link and then forget she ever saw it, but I haven’t heard back from her yet. She has three children including a very young baby, and so who knows when she’ll get back to her computer? I am DYING here. Her family is friends with my family. Her family is very dear to me. Her family can NOT read some of the things I’ve written.

I am so mortified. At any moment, one of those dear people could be thinking, “Huh. I wonder who this is, who wrote a comment and then changed their mind TWICE? I’ll just click and see.” And then they will be here. And THEN what?

It was bound to happen, I suppose. I’m so very, very careful, but even “very, very careful” isn’t one hundred percent reliable. Exhibit A: fifth child. Exhibit B: leaving comment while logged in.

If only a stick of deodorant did not have to bid its farewell by breaking off startlingly into moist, powdery chunks all over the sink and floor, leaving the empty plastic shell to scrape unpleasantly against the armpit.

Rob said he had a dream about lemon toothpaste. The next time I went to the store, I blew his little mind by bringing home a tube of that very thing. I tried it and thought it was pretty good, like lemon drops. Weird flavor for toothpaste, but not bad. Then Paul said he thought it tasted like Lemon Pledge, and the next time I used it I realized he was absolutely right. It tastes like Lemon Pledge.

Now that we have a large freezer, we are getting better at going grocery shopping once a week rather than twice or even thrice, but the bananas don’t work on this system: they’re eaten up by the second or third day, but if we buy extras they go bad before we can use them, and I only want to make so many banana muffins/fritters.

Tomorrow I have an ultrasound to take a look at the placenta previa situation from the ultrasound I had in mid-January. I am glad to be getting this looked at, because then I can either stop worrying or else I can start worrying in earnest, rather than this silly worry limbo where I’m feeling like I could be worrying over something that would turn out to be nothing, not that that’s an unusual situation for me, considering how often I worry about how I’d cope if Cujo were outside my minivan.

I haven’t been posting separate Digging Ourselves Out entries because my projects have been so very, very dull and unphotoworthy, but that doesn’t seem to be changing so I’ll mention what I did today. We have a recliner too short for the vacuum cleaner to fit under the edges. From the chair in the kitchen where I feed the twins, I can see right directly under that chair, and the accumulation of dirt was bugging me. I moved the recliner and vacuumed under it.

Also, our dustbuster had been making me feel sad and low. We bought it to replace one that I used all the time until it finally broke, but we’d had this new one only a few months when it started seeming as if I might as well turn it on its back and stick the Cheerios one by one into the little slot. I was feeling grouchy about having made an expensive purchase that turned so useless so soon. Then I thought maybe it would help to use a little brush to brush out what looked like little lint-clogged holes. As I was doing that, I thought, Hey, this part looks like it snaps off. Snapping it off revealed practically an entire cat curled around the filter. This dustbuster has a different design than our old one, and evidently there is a filter that is supposed to be cleaned. After I cleaned it, the dustbuster’s strength was so restored it nearly suctioned itself to the floor. So that is happy.

But you see how those tasks are difficult to assign per se. Well, how about this: spend 5 minutes or less doing a small cleaning task that is bugging you every time you see it unclean. And if you have a dustbuster, and it has a filter, clean the filter. There!

Okay, fine. You said go ahead and post the rant, and since I can’t make editing headway with it anyway, I’m going to.

I think it’s time we talked about weight gain during pregnancy, but I want to be careful because there are few topics more danger-laden than weight. Furthermore, I could get a little crabby, because I have a mother-in-law story associated with the subject.

In fact, let’s just get the mother-in-law thing out in the open. That way, if you sense a certain…tension to my tone, you’ll know it’s because I’m thinking of her, and not because I am mad at you. When my mother-in-law was pregnant with Paul, she gained only ten pounds. When she was pregnant with Paul’s sister Beth, she LOST ten pounds, and she was thin to begin with. Beth was born with learning disabilities and birth defects, most of unknown origin (that is, it is not possible to say whether they are genetic or spontaneous).

My mother-in-law continues to brag about losing weight during that pregnancy. I think she’s probably told me the story twenty times over the past ten years. Considering how many women wring themselves ragged with guilt over pregnancy problems and birth defects that had absolutely nothing to do with anything they did or didn’t do, why wouldn’t it at least cross my mother-in-law’s mind to wonder if perhaps she should stop flapping her yap about how proud she is of her weight loss?

So you see, I am not going to do a very good job of being cool and objective on this topic. It does indeed piss me off when I hear women bragging about how little weight they’ve gained. When I found there were online groups devoted to women trying to gain as little weight as possible during pregnancy–and in fact, ideally to use pregnancy as an opportunity to lose weight—I felt like throwing up all over them.

Part of the reason it makes me so sick is that I can see the appeal. I don’t like it that I can, but I can. I have even thought to myself how cool it would be to gain 0 pounds during a pregnancy, and then be automatically 25-35 pounds lower after the pregnancy was over—as if I am dumb enough to think that the amount of weight you’re supposed to gain is a guaranteed loss afterwards, and might as well capitalize on it. I gag when I think it, but I do think it.

Furthermore, I’ve acted on those thoughts. I was upset that during my first pregnancy, I gained over 40 pounds. My OB didn’t say anything about it, but I considered myself overweight to begin with, and all the literature says that overweight women don’t usually gain as much. After the baby was born, I lost the weight without trying. So when I was pregnant with William, I came up with a theory. My theory was that if I didn’t gain any weight with that pregnancy, I’d be down 40 pounds afterwards. I’m feeling gross just typing that out. Gross and dumb.

For the first two trimesters of that pregnancy, I didn’t gain any weight, and in fact I lost some weight. I did it by eating a lot of salads, and I don’t mean the nutritious kinds with lots of vegetables and dark leafy greens, I mean the kind with iceberg lettuce and fat-free dressing. I ate canned vegetable soup, the kind where the vegetables have the nutritional content of the label on the can, but the calories are about the same as eating the label, too. I am glad to be able to say that I also drank a lot of skim milk, and I ate eggs and yogurt, and I ate carrots and cantaloupe and oranges and Grape-Nuts and wheat germ, so I was not as stupid as I could have been. Part of my brain was being stupid, but another part of my brain was trying to keep the baby healthy and safe, and apparently succeeded.

In the last eight weeks or so, I couldn’t do it anymore, and I ate and ate and ate. I gained fourteen pounds over my starting weight during that pregnancy, and it was all in those last eight weeks. I wish I’d eaten sooner, because after the baby was born, do you know how many pounds I lost? Fourteen. Not forty as I’d fantasized. I could have gone right ahead and let my body gain forty the way it so dearly wanted to.

Here is what pisses me off so, so much. My OB praised me during those first two trimesters, and so did his nurse. They praised me and praised me. They told me I was doing so great with my weight. Those stupid idiots. It is right and natural to gain weight during pregnancy. At the minimum, they should have been questioning me about why I wasn’t gaining weight: was I eating well but just didn’t happen to be gaining? or was I eating iceberg lettuce and soup can labels? At one point the nurse noticed that I’d gained 40 pounds with my first pregnancy. Instead of wondering to herself why I was breaking the pattern this time, she said knowingly, “There’s a learning curve!” As if the first time around, I’d thought I could eat the entire earth because I was pregnant, but NOW I knew better, what a smart girl!

My theory–not exactly a ground-breaking one—about pregnancy weight gain is that any one particular woman gains based on a combination of two factors: (1) her own body’s genetic tendencies, and (2) her eating habits during the pregnancy—but mostly number 1. Here are my body’s genetic tendencies: I gain more than the average amount of weight during each pregnancy, and it comes off automatically afterwards; I lose ten additional pounds while breastfeeding, but I don’t get too familiar with that situation because I always get them back when I wean. That’s my pattern. I can change it, but only through extreme measures in my diet, as with my second pregnancy. Other women gain less weight, but then have to work hard to lose it; or they don’t lose their last 10 pounds until they wean; or they gain more weight and never lose it; or they gain much more weight and do lose it—whatever their own patterns are, that’s what happens to them.

When I was pregnant with the twins, I gained 55 pounds. My OB (a different OB) never said anything about my weight gain one way or the other. His nurse commented at every single visit. “Oooh,” she’d say, breathing in through her teeth. “Looks like another four.” I should have said something, something like, “I don’t know if they covered this in your nurse training, but it is normal and healthy to gain weight during pregnancy.” I am not assertive enough to do that. What I did instead, every single time she gave me what she clearly considered to be “the bad news,” is I said, “Oh, GOOD!”—in a really happy tone of voice.

I think it is difficult and feels crappy to gain weight during pregnancy. I think women are pressured all the time not to gain weight, and in fact to lose weight, and I think that kind of pressure is hard to shake off even when we know it should be shaken off. I think it’s even hard for OBs to shake off. I think some of them have started thinking it’s a good thing when a woman doesn’t gain much weight. I think that’s crap.

I think no one should make a pregnant woman feel even slightly bad about gaining weight, because I think we feel bad enough about it already. It’s hard for us to change our bodies like that, and there isn’t much support for it. Some of us have people in our lives who say, “Oh my god, you are getting so big!” or “Look how HUGE you’re getting!” or “Do you really think you should be eating that?” or “Eating for two, huh?” It takes focus and dedication to allow those numbers to go up so steadily and so relentlessly. I think OBs need to shut about about it unless they are talking about how the woman needs to gain MORE. I’ve had more trouble from the nurses, so I’d like to decree that they need to shut up about it completely, unless the OB has specifically asked them to talk to the patient about her weight, which I’m guessing never ever happens. Romantic partners will keep their lips zipped unless they want to lose a vital body part of the pregnant woman’s choice.

There is one more category of people who need to shut up, and I’m afraid that category is made up of a subset of other pregnant women and other women who have been pregnant. Sometimes pregnant women don’t gain much weight because they are stupid and vain and put their own figures ahead of the health of their babies. Sometimes pregnant women don’t gain much weight because that happens to be their own particular pattern: they’re eating healthily and plenty and they’re not being stupid, but they just don’t gain very much weight. Whatever the reason for it, those women are hereby mandated to keep their mouths shut about it, during the pregnancy and in all future conversations about pregnancy-related weight gain. Those of us who gain more, we know how good it must feel to gain less. But that’s not how our bodies work, and you are hurting us and pissing us off when you shrug and lower your eyes and say you can’t believe you’re 30 weeks and have only gained 5 pounds. We can hear the pleasure in your voices. Anyone who pretends to be happy for you is actually picturing the damage she could do to your shrugging shoulders with a well-placed fork.

Furthermore, considering the mental and physical hurdle that must be leapt for a woman to make herself gain the healthy weight she needs to gain, everyone around her should in fact be encouraging her to gain. Romantic partners, I am speaking especially to you. BRING FOOD. Encourage eating. Don’t do That Look when you see her eating something, like you think maybe she shouldn’t eat it. That makes us want to kill you where you stand, and we have the hormonal chops to pull it off so don’t push us.

Anyway. With this pregnancy, I will tell you, I have gained almost 25 pounds so far. I am 26 weeks pregnant, soon to enter the trimester when it is expected that you will gain one pound per week–which is what I’ve already been doing. It looks like I’m headed for another 40-pound gain. And I will TAKE IT.

I’m working on a post, but I’m not getting it right. It’s about pregnancy weight gain, and I keep getting so pissed as I’m writing, I am beginning to think that what I’m actually writing is a rant. Nothing wrong with rants, I LIKE rants, but I was hoping for a different effect, something more…detached. The post is also way, way too long, the kind of length not even a very interested reader would tackle, but I can’t cut out a single word—and in fact, when I try, I end up ADDING words. This is another indicator that what I have on my hands is a rant. I think I’d better back away slowly and come back to it later.

Instead I will write about my new baby name book, which is a disappointment but not the kind of disappointment that provokes a too-long, too-angry post. This is more a situation where the book is pretty good, but not as good as I’d hoped.

The book is The Baby Name Bible by Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz, and they get off on the wrong foot with me right away by claiming to have started the WHOLE IDEA of choosing baby names: before they came along with their first baby-name book about 20 years ago, everyone just picked names out of thin air without giving it a moment’s thought.

They go on to bother me by saying that my goal should be to “fall in love with” a baby name. This makes me feel pressured and tense. I’ve only “fallen in love with” one of the four names we’ve used so far, and I still do feel all crushy about it. The other three, I liked well enough, and then they grew on me even more. I’m just trying to find a name I like well enough to use, and when they tell me I have to be in love, I feel overwhelmed and discouraged.

Many of the name entries seem to be there only to plump the total number of names high enough that they can say “50,000+ baby names!” on the cover. The authors seem to think so, too, because the descriptions for these names are things like “Don’t even think about it” and “Only for girls.” Other descriptions seem to go for the easy joke rather than actually giving an opinion of the name.

I’m not sorry I bought the book. For one thing, I like to buy a new baby name book with each pregnancy, as a sort of Happy Pregnancy present. But if I were buying a baby name book for someone else, I would definitely, definitely go with The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg instead. It’s my top favorite so far. I love the entries enough to read them straight through one after another, even for names I’m not at all interested in using. I love the sibling name suggestions, which not only give actual good suggestions, they’re also intended to give you an idea of the kind of category other people will put your child’s name into.

Oh, I will give you a sample entry. This is what it says for the name Oliver, which we are not going to use because we have a cat named Oliver, but otherwise I think it’s almost for sure we’d be using it for this baby:
—————
OLIVER
Popularity: #243
Style: Antique Charm, English, Saints, Shakespearean
Nicknames: Ollie
Sisters: Helena, Cecilia, Lucy, Sophie, Violet
Brothers: Julius, Leo, Edgar, Felix, Solomon
Oliver seemed a little eccentric a generation ago, but fashion has come around to its charms. The name’s offbeat style now sounds handsome and rakish. Oliver is already in full fashion flower in the U.K., where they’ve always appreciated unconventional heartthrobs.
—————

There are longer descriptions later in the book of all the style categories, and other examples of names within those categories. There is also a little graph next to each name, showing how its popularity has risen or fallen over the years, and where it peaked. I lurrrrrrrrrrrrrve it. I want to marrrrrrrrrrrrrrry it. It’s no wonder other books fall short.

I am writing a post, and in it I am planning to do a little swearing. However, the last couple of days I have been out exploring the bloggerhood (“Hey! Evidently LOTS of people have blogs!”), and I have come across not one but TWO bloggers saying something like, “I wish I could swear in this blog,” or “If only bloggers could swear,” or things like that. This gives me pause. I wondered if perhaps they knew something I didn’t know.

Do any of you know of any reason NOT to swear in a blog, other than the possibility of offending people who don’t like swearing? I mean, could it be something like that a blog with swears would get blocked by some people’s browsers, something of that sort?