Home. Sweet!

I learned something new about myself in the last week. I've always known that I bite my fingernails when I get stressed out. What I didn't know is that when the stress passes a certain level I stop biting them. Yikes.

We flew up to Boston for a five-day househunting trip — told ourselves that we'd look around, get a feel for what was available, and if we found something that looked good we'd make an offer on it. If not, we'd rent for six months to a year and see what turned up. And we found it: a 1963-vintage split-entry raised ranch, hardwood floors, big backyard, two-car attached garage. It needs work, beginning with a new circuit breaker box (I said the house was of 1963 vintage!) and a good coat of (white) paint in the (otherwise gloomy) downstairs den. Then the kitchen, which may or may not even be functional (my guess is not) since the appliances are as old as the house is. I mean, the in-wall oven is yellow. So I've just spent half an hour looking at Ikea kitchen ideas.

I feel like such an adult. Yikes. All of a sudden I have weird homeowner-type questions floating through my head: Are there French drains to keep water out of the basement? How soon will the furnace need to be replaced, and is it worth it to convert to a geothermal system when it does? Do the garage door openers work? ('Cause we forgot to check.) How much will the fact that the commuter rail line passes right behind our backyard affect the resale value of the house?

But we're happy with this. A little freaked out, but happy. Beth is in love with the bathroom in the new house. Everything is pink: bathtub, sink, toilet, all the tile. All the fixtures in the bathroom (and in the tiny tan half-bath off the master bedroom) are the exact same make and model as all the fixtures in the bathroom of our first apartment, which were pale blue. Eerie.

The house is in Belmont. Boston neighborhood names still mean nothing to me; likewise with Boston college names, other than the obvious ones. But every time I told someone we were looking for houses in Belmont, they said, "Oh, Belmont," just as every time Scott said he was going to be teaching at Bentley the reaction was, "Oh, Bentley." Anyway. The house is 2.4 miles from Scott's office, and 1.3 miles from church and the temple, and four blocks from the elementary school. The town is unbelievably Mormon (two wards in the town; neighboring areas have four towns to a ward), has excellent schools, and feels, you know, friendly. Homey. People wave to each other from their cars. Road signs at the town borders say, "Welcome to Belmont. Please be courteous and obey all traffic laws."

Beth and Sarah were angels during the trip — even with the missed naps and the hours in airports and our real estate agent's car and the random stops to eat. Beth complained a bit in the car, especially if I had forgotten to bring along her newest Babybug magazine, but was thrilled to sit down and play with the temporarily abandoned toys belonging to kids who actually lived in the houses we were touring. (She threw up at dinner one night, but that's another story — and at least it wasn't while we were on an airplane.) Sarah grinned at everyone and let us subject her to the car seat for hours on end and slept through the night every night. And we took them on the swan boats — the swan boats! — Sunday afternoon when we went downtown. I loved it. Beth was thrilled. And Sarah, placid Sarah, hung onto her daddy and smiled.

Pictures to follow (I'll embed them in this post), so check back in a day or so. Shots of the house are on our Flickr page.

Sunshine

We have a new nickname for Sarah: Sarah Sunshine. It's true. She's a bright little happy ray of golden sunshine, and "Ray" is already taken as a (somewhat ironic) nickname for my mom. I just wish we were getting as much sunshine outside as we're getting inside.

Oh, and Sarah only comes in snuggly.

Happy Bethday #2

Today was the second annual celebration of Bethday — which to you uninitiated folks is also known as Bethie's second birthday. Cute kid! She had so much fun helping me decorate her cake (purple frosting, purple writing, pink and blue sprinkles she put on herself, and lots of frosting tastes)...and fun eating it...and fun with her myriad fascinating presents. Christmas all over again: she couldn't stand to put something down to unwrap the next box. The big hit (and this may change by tomorrow when she and Scott put together her Ikea table and chairs) was a Razor tricycle scooter.

Oh, the Ikea trip. Where do I start?

1. Beth really, really wants a big-girl bed. (To tell the truth, I want this for her too. But the matching little day beds I want for the girls are a bit more than I can afford right now, and they're bulky, and I don't want to include yet another item in the Boston move. Sigh.) She climbed all over the toddler beds in the children's section, and put her head down and pretended to go night-night, and made sure she inbethtigated all of the kid-friendly room mockups they'd put together.
   


2. She was fascinated by the tables and chairs. We tried out a bunch of them, made a decision, and Scott headed out to the furniture pickup area to wrangle a big cardboard box — and Beth was positive we were leaving without the great things she'd just been playing on. Oh, the plaintive cries of "Table and chairs! Please! Oh-kay!"


3. Now that she has said table and chairs, there's a darling little porcelain dolly-sized tea set that I can't get out of my head and must go back to get her. Maybe it can be a moving present. Ha. Like I need an excuse to buy cute, cute stuff for my kids.

Sarah — sweet baby Sarah! — has discovered her hands. Finally! She's gotten quite adept, in the last few days, at aiming one of them straight for her mouth, inserting her fist, and sucking like mad on the knuckles of her first finger. It's very, very cute. (She's also a kicker, and managed to kick off and lose her big flannel blanket while we were out shopping Wednesday. Conveniently, she did this in the fabric store — so I just bought three lengths of flannel to hem into more blankets. Frustrating, nonetheless.)

Sarah watches and watches and watches us. I'll be nursing her and talking to someone, or watching Veronica Mars reruns, or playing "Talk to Piglet on the Phone" with Beth, and I'll look down at her and see her eyes absolutely riveted on mine. If she's lying on the floor she's watching Beth. And unless she's asleep (or almost so) she can't stand not to be in the same room with us. Such a social little bear. I swear she was as thrilled as Beth was with the birthday celebration, just because she could tell it made us all so happy.

In your dreams, Gen Xers

Last night I dreamed that Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland told a homeless guy in Pittsburgh several things that a character was going to do in his next book. The guy went out and did them, and since then (in my dream, at least) Coupland has written him into each of his books, because he knows the guy will actually do all the things Coupland dreams up for him.

I could get all metaphysical about this — something about life imitating art, or the fact that I dream about dreams becoming reality, or someone finding purpose to his life through service to someone else's ideas — but it's not that deep. I watched Friday's episode of "Raines" last night, and I'm halfway through JPod.

(Also, in my dream, the guy lived in the alley next to Little's Shoes on Forbes. So maybe I'm just dreaming about shoes...again.)

Proof that every kid, no matter how sweet, is a manipulative little twerp

My friend Jessie watched the girls tonight while Scott and I went out for the evening — chamber music played by the Pacifica Quartet and dessert at Gullifty's, a Pittsburgh institution with acceptable food and out-of-this-world desserts. It was wonderful, really wonderful, especially the part when we realized that Janáček's "Intimate Letters" quartet is a stalker piece. (I knew the title referred to love letters he'd written, but didn't know she was 40 years his junior and there were 700 letters over a ten-year period. Creepy. And kudos to the Pacifica for the fabulous interpretation.) And then we came home and saw that the light in Beth's bedroom was still on. At 11:30.

It occurred to us that though we'd given Jessie a quick rundown on Beth's bedtime routine, we'd neglected to mention that she protests being put in her crib every night and yells about it for a good thirty seconds after we've left the room. It's just a protest on principle; she goes to sleep almost immediately. But Jessie didn't know this, and Beth figured it out fast.

Sorry, Jessie. You've been played. By a not-quite-two-year-old.

Sigh. And she'd been so cute earlier in the day. I was feeding Sarah, and Beth was attending to her own important agenda while wearing her piggy ears, and she ended up putting two of Sarah's stuffed animals on their backs on the couch, pulling out two size 1 diapers, and pretending to change the animals' diapers. So cute. Her afternoon snack (airplane-shaped crackers my dad nabbed from his flight last week) was a hit: she polished off the bowl I'd given her and asked for "Mosh airplane crackers please o-kay" in her low-pitched little voice. And when we went to the playground with friends this morning she scaled the slides and then slid down on her tummy over and over again.

Sarah's going to learn how to do the play-the-babysitter thing too, I'm sure. Right now she's sweet and calm and watchful, but she's changing: there's a sobbing quality to her cry that wasn't there a few days ago, and she's less enthralled (and therefore less easily pacified) by her binky than she has been. She has a big sister who can't wait to teach her absolutely everything, and Sarah will soak it up like a sponge.

This just in: farm overrun by kitty cats

My dad's in town, and we both love to shop at outlet malls, so yesterday he and I took the girls up to the outlets at Grove City. It's an hour's drive up there (and right at naptime to boot!) so Beth and Sarah both snoozed on the way up. But once we got there Sarah decided she needed to eat right now! Dad went to get us some lunch, Beth woke up and wanted to know (in a rather panicked little voice) where Grandpa Wes was going, so while I fed Sarah in the front seat Beth and I sang "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

We've been singing in the car since Bethie was in utero. The songs have changed a bit over time. I don't bother to sing along with the radio any more, and Beth's Top 40 include "If You're Happy and You Know It," "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," and "Give, Said the Little Stream." Lately, the more interactive the song is, the better it goes over. She likes to think about what the lyrics should be.

I started with a cow (moo, moo here, moo, moo there, yadda yadda) and then asked her what else was on the farm.

"Ki'cat!"

"Okay. What does the kitty cat say?"

"Mau!"

"Okay:

Old MacDonald had a farm
E-I-E-I-O.
And on that farm he had a kitty cat
E-I-E-I-O.
With a 'meow, meow' here, and a 'meow, meow' there
Here a 'meow'
There a 'meow'
Everywhere a 'meow, meow'
Old MacDonald had a farm
E-I-E-I-O.
And on that farm he had a..."

"Amon ki'cat!"

"Okay, he had another kitty cat..." and I sang the song again. "And on that farm he had a..."

"Um...mama ki'ee cat!"

"Okay, he had a mama kitty cat..." and I sang the song again. More meows.

"Amon mama ki'cat!"

"Another mama kitty cat? Are you sure?"

"Yes!" I sang it again. And again. She eventually threw in a daddy kitty cat, then went back to mama kitty cats. This lasted until Dad came back with a Subway meatball sandwich for the two adults in the car (Beth had eaten at home) and — glorious! — an Orange Julius for me to split with Beth. She was in heaven. So much for fixing the juice addiction.

We did our tour of the outlet mall. I got some good spring clothes, Beth got way-too-cute summer playclothes (how come khaki cargo shorts with flowers embroidered on the pockets don't come in my size?), and Sarah got attention from absolutely everyone who saw us. ("Oh, Martha, look at the little tiny baby! Aww, isn't she sweet!") Sarah took it in stride. I swear she even posed and batted her eyelashes.

By the time we were headed back to Pittsburgh, Sarah had been fed again and Beth was exhausted. And frantic: she'd emit little yelps of "Out! Out!" and "Up! Up!" in the vain hope that we'd stop the car and let her toddle around. So I started singing "The Wheels on the Bus." I went through the wheels that go round and round, the wipers that go swish swish swish, the people who go up and down, and the babies who go "goo goo goo." Then I asked Beth, "What else is on the bus?"

"Money!"

"Okay:

The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink,
Clink, clink, clink,
Clink, clink, clink.
The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink,
All through the town.

"What else is on the bus, Bethie?"

"Um...ki'ee cat!"

Here we go again. This went on for miles. I started varying what the mama kitty cats said: less "meow, meow, meow" and more "Wash your paws." Then we switched back to "Old MacDonald" and it it kept going. Kitty cats. Mama kitty cats. More mama kitty cats. (My dad's comment was, "Some tomcat's sure been busy on that farm.") Beth was delighted. So was her grandpa.

Night-night time

Scott usually puts Beth to bed, but we switched kids tonight. I should definitely do this more often, because after we've read books and said prayers and put saline drips in her nose it's prime one-on-one chat time. Here's what I learned about Beth tonight as we chatted:

1. Her favorite book is Ballerina! by Peter Sís.


2. She loves Baby Sarah.
   
   "Why do you love Baby Sarah, Bethie?"
   
   "Bu'fly mat." The butterfly gymini-type mat is a huge hit with both girls. Beth loves playing on it with Sarah.


3. She wants to have hair like Mama's when she's older.


4. Beth loves Mama, Daddy, Baby Sarah, and her two stuffed Pooh bears, "Big Pooh" and "Baby Pooh," both of which, coincidentally, were gifts from Sister Eror at church. (When prompted, she admitted that she also loves her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and her six cousins.)


5. She's very excited to have her cousin Hannah come visit next weekend.


6. Her favorite thing that we did today? Play with "Baby Sa'a." Never mind that we went out to lunch with one of my friends, that she got to watch a whole bunch of TV shows (yep, it was one of those days), and that she had strawberries — strawberries! — for dinner. This kid loves her little sister.

I love talking with Bethie. She's such a sweet little girl, such a good conversationalist, such a fun friend. How did I survive before she came along?

72°

I know this will horrify my husband — the guy who likes the drugged-out-and-enigmatic later-years Beatles — but my favorite, favorite Beatles song is "Here Comes the Sun." It just makes me happy. So does actual live sun, so getting outside today after a horrible and tearful morning helped tremendously.

One of these days I'm going to have to compile a blog must: a "100 things I love" list. It isn't going to happen today. But on the list I'll have to put "unexpected sunny days in early spring," "my tandem stroller," and "lunch with friends after storytime."

Potty time

Beth, Beth, the amazing girl Beth! She used the potty yesterday. Actually sat down and waited for a few minutes and then peed right into her little potty.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a picnic — the whole thing started when she woke up yesterday morning and I was changing her diaper (as she was standing up, insistent girl) and she let a few dribbles onto the floor. Eww. I got another diaper and held it under her, but as soon as I asked, "Do you want to go do this in the potty?" she trotted off to the bathroom quite happily. Yeeha. She got a sticker. She gets a sticker every time she sits on the potty, whether it's a productive sit or not. We've used up a whole row of puffy sea creature stickers this way.

Is every little kid as fascinated with stickers as Beth is? She loves the fact that they, well, stick. She'll stick one onto something — usually her shirt — and then, after a "Look at me!" grin, immediately pull it off and stick it someplace else. Ten minutes later all the stickiness is gone and the poor bedraggled sticker is covered with fibers from clothes, the couch, the carpet and goodness knows what else. These little puffy stickers have taken it especially hard — they're little, for starters, and Beth can't seem to let them go. I don't know if they're so very enchanting because they're puffy and sparkly (could be?) or if it's because she earned them by sitting on the potty.

I'd love to get inside her little head and figure it out, because the things she does that seem weird and random to me apparently make perfect sense to her: the mattress in the doll cradle goes on top of the stuffed animals, for example. Yesterday she climbed up on her stepstool and emptied everything out of the kitchen utensil drawer, starting with the baby spoons and measuring spoons and working through meat thermometers (how did we end up with three of them?), the nutmeg grater, and eventually a bunch of knives that I thought were safely hidden in the back (guess not). She was good about the knives — carefully handed each of them to me with a serious, "Thank you, Mama" — before pulling out the wire organizer baskets at the bottom of the drawer. Okay, I thought, she emptied a drawer. Good for her. Then she trundled off to the living room and brought back Regina the frog princess and one of Sarah's diapers, placed them up on the counter next to the pile of utensils, looked at them all with a pleased little expression on her face, then wandered off to do something else. I was left with the inverse of the Sesame Street puzzle: not "one of these things is not like the others" but "what on earth do these things have in common?" I'm still wondering.

Speaking of...we checked the "Elmo's Potty Time" DVD out of the library last week, and I sat Beth in front of it this morning while I took a shower. It wasn't the same format as Sesame Street, so she was a little weirded out. I watched the very end of it with her. Guess what? It's "brought to you by the letter P and the number 2." Heaven help us.

Book tag

I've been tagged! What a great game. I don't even mind being "it." Thanks, Rebecca. Here are the rules:

1. Find the nearest book to you.


2. Name the book and author.


3. Turn to page 123.


4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.


5. Copy out the next 3 sentences and post to your blog.


6. Tag someone else.

Here goes, then.

From Every Living Thing, by James Herriot:

"This is a condition that often affects neutered toms like your Peter. I'll be able to clear it up with a hormone injection and a course of tablets." Peter didn't stop purring as I inserted the needle under his skin — he was a cat who appreciated any kind of attention — but I noticed that his owners looked a little uneasy.

I love the Herriot books! And I found out a few years ago that my friend Andi actually met their author. Very cool.

Tag, Sarah — you're it!

Toadlet

I love Sarah's new hat. And the matching little shoes, which unfortunately didn't make it in the picture. That said...she does bear a striking resemblance to the Super Mario Bros character Toad.

Cute little Toadlet! She's a month old now and starting to be more alert. She's blissfully happy lying on her blanket and watching all the activity around her. She'll squawk if she's hungry or she needs a diaper change, but most of the time she just pays rapt attention to whatever is within range: the ducks and mirror above her swing, Beth trying to push a binky in her mouth, me rubbing noses with her.

We threw Sarah a tiny family one-month birthday party on Sunday. I made cupcakes, which Beth helped me decorate with purple frosting and green sprinkles. Beth had a ball: I'd finish frosting a cupcake, then she'd dump sprinkles on top. Any sprinkles that landed on the kitchen counter were fair game for her to stick her wet little fingers in and lick off. Beth also made Sarah a birthday card. And we sang to her. And then the three of us who can eat solid food enjoyed the cupcakes, and Beth freaked out because the frosting got all over her fingers, and then she kind of got into the groove of having cupcake everywhere, and she started to enjoy herself. Since the birthday girl slept through the whole thing, I'm glad her big sister could have a good time for her.

Sticky situation?

Scott sent me the superhero dating quiz from comicvine.com, so it's with his blessing (or at least it's his fault) that I can say I'm apparently compatible with Spider-Man. Now, if only I made a better redhead...that henna experiment in college turned out pretty badly.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Jealousy

The big scaly green-eyed monster reared its hideous head today. I guess it was inevitable, but it's come at the end of such a long and surreal week that I really wasn't sure what to do about it. The grandmas are gone, I still can't drive, and we've had single-digit temperatures all week, so leaving the house and getting a change of scenery hasn't been an option. It's starting to take a toll on the toddler and her mommy. Sarah, of course, is blissfully unaware of any of this.

Beth isn't a princess — at all — she would far rather get her own sippy cup from the fridge than have us bring it to her, and she loves being in the middle of doing things, "helping" Scott and me as we cook and straighten up the house and check our e-mail. And until recently she's been such a good helper with Sarah that I've gotten scarily dependent on it. ("Bethie, we need to change baby Sarah's diaper. Can you bring me one of her tiny diapers? Wow, thanks! What a helper you are.")

Within a few days this cabin-feverish week she's gone from beaming at the praise to saying "No!" when I ask her to bring over the baby wipes or (gasp!) throw away a baby diaper. I haven't made a big deal about it at all — it's my job, not hers, and we both know it. And I've tried to give her lots of extra hugs and kisses and (her favorite, favorite thing) reading time. I think we've read Where's My Teddy? about two dozen times this week. But bit by bit the little jealous creepies are taking hold of her. After her nap today (granted, not her best time of day) when we were sitting and talking and Sarah woke up hungry, and I asked, "Bethie, should we take baby Sarah downstairs with us?" and her answer was a defiant and hurt "Nooooo!" — I just didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave Sarah crying forever, and distracting Beth with promises of snacks and apple juice wasn't working, so I ended up going downstairs to change and nurse the Small One, with Beth sitting pitifully on the top stair crying and saying, "No, no, Mama, no, no, baby Sarah, no, no" over and over.

I feel like such a heel. Beth loves sitting on the top stair and talking with me. Of course I've been second-guessing everything: Why didn't I just nurse Sarah there? Why didn't I try some other form of distracting her, like having her bring Bo the transgender teddy bear downstairs for a stroller ride? We've both been a teary mess today at some point or another (Sarah, amazingly, has had a terrific day). I guess we're both jealous: Beth wants her mommy back, and her mommy wants to be back. Somehow we're going to have to figure this out.

(Oh, and kudos to Margaret for pointing out that there's a feminine precedent for the name Bo — Bo Derek, of course — so we won't have to rechristen the bear. Huge relief.)

Pat-a-cake

Bethie is learning clapping games! We've tried them a few times, but this week they caught her attention and she's been having a ball. Scott taught her "Pease porridge hot" and "Pat-a-cake," and tonight after prayers, completely unprompted, she started playing pat-a-cake with her teddy bear. Right after the "amen," she started into "pa-cake, pa-cake" and clapped Bo's hands together. After she got to "trow in oven baby and me" she clapped the bear's hands again and said, "Yay Bo!"

Bo, by the way, is undergoing some gender confusion. He started out as a boy bear (Scott, who's in charge of naming stuffed animals around here, named him Beauregarde Q. Bear) and we did just fine in that vein...until a package arrived today from the girls' aunts. Meg and Gigi had found, among other adorable things, matching dresses for a toddler and her doll. Since the doll belonging to the toddler in question is much too small for the dress, it got transferred to Bo — who, by the way, looks just adorable in it.

Maybe a girl needs a bear who'll play tea parties with her, instead of one who'll hide out in the garage talking about table saws with his buddies.

Welcome to the world, Baby Sarah!

That's her name: Sarah Eloise Boss. It took us the better part of her first day of life to come up with the middle name — aagh! We're so indecisive! — but we're thrilled with it. And her.

The doctor had sent me to get some (fairly) routine tests at the hospital on the 17th: a quick ultrasound to make sure there was enough amniotic fluid to keep the baby comfortable, and an hour-long non-stress test to make sure baby and placenta were both okay. The ultrasound wasn't very positive — it showed low levels of amniotic fluid – and we didn't make it through the whole non-stress test because my OB called in the middle of it. The upshot of the whole thing is that I ended up with a c-section scheduled for that evening (and it would have been earlier in the day if I hadn't eaten a candy bar just before going in for the non-stress test). So instead of waiting around...and waiting...and waiting...and eventually being induced...I went back eight hours later and had a pretty okay time of it. The OR staff were all friendly and funny and uber-professional, and thanks to an extremely effective spinal block I didn't even realize they'd started the surgery until just before Sarah was out. (Hurrah for meds!)

She was born screaming — she has such a loud little cry! I got a quick glimpse of her before they took her over to clean her off and weigh her, and then when they brought her back to Scott the only thing I could think of was how beautiful she was. She had a little scrunched-up face and a pointy nose, and when her eyes were closed there was this perfect little wavy line that went under her eyelids and over the bridge of her nose. (It's already starting to disappear, and she's not a week old yet.) Lovely little mouth, lots of dark hair that sticks straight out after she's had a bath, long narrow feet and hands.

(Continued on Sunday the 28th)

We've been home for a week now, with my mom here to help, and we're starting to settle into something resembling a routine. Sarah's a hungry little kid. She was born hungry and nothing has changed, really — she just eats to the point of drowsiness and if we're lucky she falls asleep before she realizes that she's not eating any more. But because she eats so much, she sleeps quite well too. She's had three nights in a row of sleeping about five hours after her midnight feeding (which Scott's doing), and I've gotten enough sleep that I feel pretty good.

Bethie's doing reasonably well with her little sister. She's thrilled about the baby — wants to help with everything (and even tried to pick her up today, which was, you know, troubling but sweet) and walks around saying "Baby Saa! Baby Saa!" Sarah has even replaced Aunt Gigi as Beth's favorite person to "call" on her Elmo cell phone. On the other side of things, she's gotten quite clingy with all three of us, Grandma included, and the number of buddies in her crib entourage has grown from two to about five, with definite potential for more.

More about our happy little family to come. I've got to get some sleep before that 5:00 a.m. feeding rolls around.

D-Day

Here it is — my official due date — and for those of you who are curious, nothing is happening. No contractions, no further trips to the hospital, just an increasingly impatient pregnant lady who is now finding all sorts of projects to pick up while I'm waiting...and waiting....

We get enough phone calls from family members every day ("So...you're still pregnant?" "When's that baby coming?") that Scott is now sending both families a daily "BabyWatch 2007" e-mail. Sample (from the mid-day update 1-15-07):

• Baby: Holding Steady


• Contractions: Braxton Hicks contractions only (non-labor)


• Libby's Crankiness Meter: Med/High (Libby contributed to this rating)


• # of times Beth has said "Baby Out!" so far today: 3


• When Scott estimates baby will be born: April 27, 2007

Oh, he's funny, this guy. If we go as far as January 27th, he's going to have to rescale that crankiness meter.

Hi! I'm Elmo

You know it's a successful day with a toddler when she gets to become her favorite Sesame Street character. Hooray for the Center for Creative Play!

Amen to that!

Bethie is so eager to meet her new baby sister — as are we all. Tonight we took a field trip: dinner at Five Guys (she sang, "Hot dog! Fries!" in the back seat all the way down to Oakland) and then a walk through the hospital where the baby will be born. The highlight of the trip was either a) seeing an actual new baby in the lobby as his parents tried to figure out their new car seat, or b) watching the fish in the aquarium in one of the waiting rooms. We're not sure which. She got the point of the visit, though: on our way out of the parking lot, Scott asked her, "So where did we go tonight?" and she answered, "Hospital."

"And what's going to happen here?" he asked.

"Baby!"

Yeah, she gets it. She's been saying, "Baby, out!" for the last several days. I couldn't agree with her more. The baby's cradle and dresser are set up; the dozens of tiny fuzzy pink outfits are washed and folded and tucked away; Regina the frog princess is sitting on top of a basket of blankets waiting to welcome her new friend and drool buddy. There's a packed suitcase sitting downstairs so we can grab it on our way out the door, and a new dolly for Beth when she comes to visit the baby in the hospital. We're ready, for all intents and purposes. (We could be ready-er, like with the bathroom clean and the laundry folded and a trip to Trader Joe's for some easy-to-throw-together frozen meals. But we're doing pretty well.)

Beth is starting to be more opinionated, too. (I know this is a big surprise, given the parents that she has.) Yesterday Scott got her dressed for church and put on her suede flowered shoes. She wasn't impressed. "Black shoes!" she said.

"Go ask Mama," he told her. So she did.

"Which shoes do you want to wear, honey?" I asked.

"Black shoes!" So that was it.

Later at church, as someone was giving an unbearably long testimony, she decided she'd had enough. "Amen," she said. And, when he didn't stop: "Amen. Amen!"

I'm feeling just about the same way with the pregnancy. Enough! Let's get on with the next phase. Beth's ready to be a big sister — let's do this already!

Juice cup

Several years ago Scott gave me a huge (and I mean huge), hideous drink cup. I think it was part of a birthday present. It's truly just unimagineably monstrous. Shocking pink, with a lurid beach scene and "Summer Fun" written on the side. It's a barrel with a handle attached to it, and military-grade drinking options on the lid. Then he promptly lost the receipt, so he couldn't return it. The thing has been rattling around the house ever since, mostly because it's so awful that we just can't get rid of it. We tried to pawn it off on my Coke-loving dad — the guy who has a stash of larger-than-life drink containers in his truck for every conceivable occasion — when he was taking off on a sightseeing trip around the northeast, but even he wouldn't take it. Said it wouldn't fit in a cupholder. (C'mon. Does this thing really need a cupholder? Is it likely to spill? I don't think so.)

Beth found it today. She's just figuring out "big" and "little" and gets a real kick out of noticing the difference between the two, so this was right up her little alley. She carted the cup around for a good portion of the afternoon, and then announced this evening that it was a "juice cup."

"I don't think so," I told her. Juice makes her completely hyper, even though what she drinks is, technically, half juice and half water. We're trying to limit her intake. This wasn't going to do the trick.

"Apple juice cup," she replied. Mom! What are you thinking? This would be a perfect apple juice cup!

False alarm #1

I woke up at 4 a.m. with cramps — nothing weird or serious, but the kind of low-grade menstrual cramps that tend to make me cranky without interfering with day-to-day activities. But I started wondering: Is this the beginning of labor? That and a few other symptoms (which I won't post for the world to read, thanks) got me to the point where I called my doctor's office this afternoon. The doctor's out of the office for Christmas vacation, of course, so I got one of the nurses, who said: Go into the hospital, preferably within the next hour.

Our much-too-kind friends Jen and Charles came over to watch Beth, and we ended up sitting in the hospital for close to four hours. Overall it wasn't too vastly unpleasant. I've been reading Orson Scott Card's Enchantment out loud to Scott, so we did a chapter or so of that; the computers and labs were up and running, so even though they were swamped the wait wasn't quite as brutal as it was the last time we were there in April of 2005; and we saw my favorite nurse from my previous hospital stay, who's now working triage. The doctor who examined me was kind and funny and gave me good stories about my own OB, who she helped train. And yes, it was a false alarm.

Nevertheless...Scott says he's giving me three of these before he starts calling me "She Who Cries Wolf." (You have nothing to worry about, sweetie.)