16 weeks pregnant. The nausea is practically gone. I feel icky first thing in the morning before breakfast, and also if I go too long without eating, but otherwise I feel normal. I’ve been feeling more pregnant: back aching if I stand too long, wanting to sit down and feeling so much better if I do, a slight imbalance in the frontal tum region, sharp muscle pains in the tum/hip region if I stand up too fast.

I would probably be in maternity clothes except that I lost some weight before becoming pregnant and still had my larger-size pants. I’m wearing two-sizes-bigger jeans, stretch denim. And I have two men’s t-shirts I wear on alternating days, tossing one in the laundry whenever I’m doing a load. I am a fashion plate, clearly, but I do like to delay maternity clothes when I’m still in the “overdid the fudge” stage of tum size: it looks like such overeagerness to be wearing a huge maternity smock over a flabby little bump.

I had blood drawn for that MAFP test where they screen for the likelihood of various problems. I get more nervous about that test with every pregnancy, as I get closer and closer to age 35. I can’t remember how long it takes to get the results back, but Christmas will delay them even more. When I’m pregnant, screenings and tests aren’t good enough to ease my mind anyway. What I want is magical powers. I don’t want a “Your odds are 1 in 1000 for Down’s, 1 in 10,000 for spina bifida.” I want a window I can wave to the baby through.

I don’t know if anyone would be interested in an update on the whole “husband not entirely thrilled about unexpected fifth child” issue. I’ve mentioned before that the way Paul and I deal with crises is that we close our eyes and cover our ears and say “LA LA LA” really loud until enough time passes that it’s safe to look again, and so I haven’t given a lot of thought to the issue in the last weeks, and in fact had almost forgotten about it. That’s the miracle of ostrichism: you may get sand up your nose, but you live a more carefree life.

Anyway, the other day, Paul and I were in the playroom with the twins, and he said, “I just wanted you to know that I’m no longer thinking, ‘Oh no, a baby!’ I’m not thinking, ‘Woo hoo, a baby!’ either, but I’m more like, ‘Hey, a baby!'”

I wonder if this would be a good time to tell him I think we should go for an even half-dozen.

One of the best things about December is the mail, which contains a toy surprise almost every day: a package on the porch, a Christmas card in the mailbox. Since the packages are almost always things I ordered, it’s the cards I look forward to the most. I put them up with poster putty around the arch between living room and kitchen, and I look at the pretty pictures with a sentimental sigh: like driving around looking at Christmas lights, it’s one of my favorite non-present-related parts of the holidays.

There is lots of complaining about Christmas cards. People write to advice columnists complaining that people just sign their names, or that Christmas cards are a waste of time and money and environmental resources, or that the form letters that accompany them are so impersonal. I don’t mind any of that stuff if there’s a pretty picture on the front. I have the rest of the year to exchange personalized information with these people, so at Christmas what I want is paper with glitter and foil on it.

I love Christmas cards so much, I would almost make a new friend just for the Christmas card they might send me. In fact, I should have asked you to send me one, but I’m nervous about weirdo Internet types. I know you’re not a weirdo Internet type, but if I give my address to one person I have to give it to everyone, and before you know it I have stalkers on the front lawn criticizing the way I hung the Christmas lights.

The air is getting cold and dry. This has led to some bad hair days.

I have a Christmas dilemma. My father-in-law and mother-in-law are divorced. My father-in-law is an asshole of the self-pitying, self-help, it’s-all-about-me variety. I’ve only met him once, and he spent most of that evening in total silence because he “felt too bad about himself.” He’s never met his grandchildren or made any moves in the direction of having anything to do with them; he doesn’t even congratulate us when we have a new baby. Every year, because I like to manage gifts and Paul does not, I send my father-in-law a Christmas package. He doesn’t send out cards or gifts because he’s “not emotionally up to it.” Nor does he say anything about the card and gifts we send, presumably for the same reason.

This year–just like every other year after the first one–I’ve been considering not sending any more Christmas packages. Why should we spend time and money on someone we dislike so much, someone who doesn’t even seem to be glad we did it? I even made the decision not to send one this year. But then one of my friends pointed out that the kind gesture of sending a Christmas package to a difficult family member is not invalidated by his crappy response to it, and not only did I agree with her, I felt a lot better about the decision to send one.

But I do keep thinking about it, and also, I’m not sure what to send. I don’t know him, and neither does Paul. If we send anything that isn’t mind-readingly perfect, he uses it as an opportunity to descend into a deep depression about how no one really knows him. I was thinking of sending a puzzle book and a bunch of soup (Amazon.com has a grocery section, he’s a guy living alone, soup seemed like a comfort food and it ships for free), shipped directly to him, unwrapped. Or, I could get the things shipped to me, then wrap them and repack them along with some homemade stuff–cookies, fudge, whatever. That’s a new level of effort, though: more time, more errands, more money, more tasks.

I don’t even know what I’m asking here. Thoughts, I guess. What you’d do. Gift ideas for assholes you barely know but are accidentally related to.

Elizabeth is on my lap. This is the third day in a row she’s declined a nap. The first day I let her skip it. The second day I made her stay in her crib the whole time. Today I did a mix of both. Consistency, that’s my middle name. It should be driving me mad that she’s not sleeping, since this is usually my big break: Robert in school, William in kindergarten, Elizabeth and Edward sleeping. Instead it’s made me feel more affectionate toward her. I think–and this is pitiful–it’s because this time together is such an exponential increase in our usual one-on-one time. The trouble with having a larger family is that there is very little one-on-one time.

I had an OB appointment yesterday. It was the first time I’d seen the OB who handled most of my last pregnancy. He was surprised and amused and pleased to see me again. There were jokes about knowing how this works, have to stop meeting like this, etc.

Can we talk about the name Penelope? Is that a crazy name, or within the realm of possibility for a new baby? I think it’s pretty, but maybe too unusual?

The past few nights, Elizabeth has been a basketcase/angel. A basketcase in her crib, and angel if we get her up. What started it off was that she had croup Friday night, and so we kept her up for awhile after steaming/chilling her, just to make sure it had worked and that she could breathe. She had so much fun, she wants to start a nightly tradition.

Last night after she’d been screaming on and off for two hours, including making herself throw up a little and needing a bath, I took her out to the living room. I turned off all the lights except the Christmas tree lights, and I rocked her in the recliner. I could smell the baby shampoo we’d just used on her hair. I could see the beautiful Christmas ornaments and lights. Elizabeth was snuggled in, and she hasn’t done much snuggling in her life: she’s more of a queenly posture type. So I was drinking it in: wishing she wasn’t up, wishing we weren’t having a Sleep Struggle that was apparently going to need a Solution, but also enjoying the unusual experience of a cuddly toddler falling asleep on me.

But I was also wondering if this was going to take much longer, because it was 9:00 when I got her up, and at 9:30 I need to shower and get ready for bed, so the last 30 minutes of my free time were ticking away and I was still “at work.”

Obviously what I should learn from this experience is to be more “in the moment,” and to soak up these beautiful times whenever they happen: the lights, the shampoo, the snuggle. Instead what I learned (for about the millionth time) is that there is no way to do this parenting thing perfectly. It either isn’t possible to soak up all these beautiful times, or else it is but I’m failing. And if I wasn’t failing at this, I’d be failing at some other aspect–along with the other aspects I’m already failing at, because we all fail at some stuff.

I’ve never had a job where I worried so much about not being perfect at it. It seems to come with the territory: every mother I know worries that she should be doing this differently, or that differently, or this more, or that not at all. Probably the worrying is a good sign: it means we care about doing a good job, and it means we want to do what’s best for our children. That’s like saying it’s “good for your character,” though: big deal, I’d rather be perfect.

You’re dying, right? EAR HATS. Nothing is better than an ear hat, except TWO ear hats. I took the twins out shopping like this, and strangers were clutching their hearts and falling backward against store shelves.

Each week I read Kaz Cooke’s week-by-week pregnancy guide, A Bun in the Oven. This week she wrote that it’s common to be weepy and emotional. I thought, “That’s funny, I was weepy and emotional with previous pregnancies, but not with this one.” Then I was in the living room while the kids were watching Arthur, and it was an episode with Mr. Rogers on it, and I’d never seen that one. I was feeling all warm and sentimental about Mr. Rogers, especially when there was that little section of “live” TV between animated segments of Arthur and Mr. Rogers himself was on, explaining to children how cartoons are made and how the voices are done. And suddenly I remembered that Mr. Rogers had died, and I burst into tears. And I’m doing it again as I’m writing! So apparently things are par for the course.

And the other day, Paul was telling me the plot of some absurdly sentimental Christmas carol in which a cat and a mouse keep each other warm on a cold Christmas night and the cat dies, and when he got to that part I was nearly screaming with laughter about the silly maudlin song, but I also started weeping and almost couldn’t stop, and then later in the shower I thought of the cat dying and started crying again. It’s not even a real cat! As Paul said, in an affectionate but gently mocking voice when he saw that I had started crying, “I’m pretty sure it’s not based on a true story.”

This morning when the twins woke up I went into their room as usual, saying, “Good morning, babies!” Then the wall of scent hit me. It was clear immediately that someone had thrown up. Outward Me: “Oh, honey! Did you frow up? Oh, sweetie! Are you all right? Don’t worry, we’ll get this all cleaned up!” Inward Me: “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit shit shit.”

There are few things as difficult and gross as a toddler with a stomach virus. An older child can be set up on a towel-covered couch with a bucket and the television. A baby can be strapped into a towel-covered bouncy seat. A toddler, all is lost and you might as well burn the house down afterwards.

They won’t stay put. They can’t use a bucket. They can’t tell you that they’re about to throw up. When they do throw up, they play with it. They hate to have their hair washed, and holy crap does it ever need it now.

My only lingering hope is that this was a one-time thing, something that disagreed with her that she has now thrown up. I am hoping beyond reason that this is now over. But I am suspecting that it is not over, and that not only will she continue to throw up, her twin brother will soon start throwing up as well. This is the sort of situation for which the expression “The only way out of it is through it” was coined. Or if it wasn’t, it should have been.