The Important Stuff

This morning as we drove down the canyon on our way home from Snowbird, Ben and I were talking about our luggage that was getting snowed on in the back of the truck. Ben said, "Don't worry, though. I put all the important stuff inside, like the Xbox...and the baby."

Hard to Believe

Spiz is 7 weeks old today. Can you believe how fast the time has gone? He’s like a totally different person today than he was 7 weeks ago. He’s almost twice as big as he was and he’s at least ten times as happy. He has a lot less hair now, and even though his bald spots are kind of weird-looking, I think he looks a lot more normal than he did a few weeks ago.

Yesterday I was reading the blog of someone else with a 7-week-old baby and she said her baby is down to pooping only twice a week now. I find that very hard to believe because Spiz still poops every time he eats, which is about 7 times/day. Seriously, he’s the poop master.

I also find it hard to believe that Liam likes Ben more than he likes me, but he does. Ben is not a source of food like I am, he’s not even around during the day, and he plays with the baby like he’s a puppy instead of a newborn, but for some reason Spiz loves his dad to death and he cries when I take him away.

And since we’re on the subject of things that are hard to believe, I can’t believe how fun motherhood is. I thought keeping my job would help me keep my sanity, but I’m actually finding that work just gets in the way of my baby time. I would way rather spend my time making silly faces and high-pitched noises than sitting at the computer, because a smile from Liam is worth more than all of the money in the world.

It's Official

Spiz is here! He made his appearance on August 31st, weighing 8 lbs. ½ oz. People keep telling me that’s pretty big, but I didn’t feel a thing because of the wonderful drug named epidural. I considered naming the baby after the epideral, but he came out looking like an angry little leprechaun, so we named him Liam. Isn’t he so cute?

Coming Soon to a Hospital Near You

I’m 38 ½ weeks pregnant, which means Spiz could come any day now. I’m hoping he’ll wait at least until next Wednesday, because I’m scheduled to do some studio recording on Tuesday night. Does anyone else think it’s weird that even though my band broke up two months ago, we’re still recording an album? Honestly, who’s going to buy it? We haven’t even sold out of our last album yet, and we promoted that one at two years’ worth of shows. Even if we just divide up the CDs and I give my share of them away to everyone I know, I’ll still be left with 150 of them.

Yesterday my sister-in-law called to tell me that wet wipes were on sale at Macey’s and that I should stock up on them. I had totally forgotten about wet wipes. Now I’m wondering how many other things I should have that I don’t even know about. I thought I was all set to bring a baby home because I have a crib, a changing pad, and a few diapers. I think I’m in for a big, fat surprise.

This week I found out that I get to keep my job, but switch to part-time and work from home. This was pretty much the best news of my life, because I wanted to try being a stay-at-home mom but I thought I might get bored out of my mind. I know I’m selfish for being more concerned with my own level of boredom than the well being of my unborn child, but I just can’t help it. Anyway, I’m confident that Spiz will be cool with the situation. He’s been so polite for the last nine months, crammed inside my belly, I’m sure he’ll be the perfect little gentleman when he gets out.

Missing Ben

My husband is working in Samoa this week, lining a water tank at the temple. At first I thought I might die of loneliness without him. I think I cried three times the day he left, and I’m not even a crier. I knew he would be gone for eight days and I couldn’t believe how long the first day lasted. It was like an eternity.

Now it has been one week, and he was supposed to be home tomorrow morning. Well it turns out that the Air New Zealand flight attendants are on strike, so his flight got canceled. He had a choice—he could fly home on a different airline and get to Salt Lake City at about the same time he would have on the canceled flight, or he could stay with Air New Zealand and fly to New Zealand, staying there for free for two days before coming home. Don't ask me why the flight attendants for his flight were on strike, but he could still fly to New Zealand. I don't get it either.
When he told me his options, it sounded like he wasn’t even considering the New Zealand choice. I wasn’t considering it either, because I just wanted him to come home as soon as possible. But when I started thinking about it, I realized that we were being crazy and of course he should go to New Zealand for free. When will he ever get that chance again? I already passed up a trip to New Zealand once, mostly because I hate sitting on airplanes for long periods of time, so I knew I would probably never go there with him. So I sucked it up and told him I thought he should go to New Zealand if he wanted to.

Today he called me from the airport in Samoa and said he had decided to go to New Zealand. Even though I was secretly disappointed because I can’t stand the thought of two extra days of boredom and loneliness and I miss him more than I ever thought possible, I’m actually really excited for him and also totally jealous. I hope he comes back really big and tan, with a huge tattoo on his face.

Three Years

Right after I got married, I came up with this theory that it doesn’t matter who you marry, because you could be happy with anyone. I thought that the way I felt about Ben before I married him could not possibly have been love, because it was NOTHING compared to the way I felt about him after I married him. I just figured the super-strong feelings of affection were something that came with every marriage, and it didn’t matter who the guy was, because you would automatically start to love him a million times more than you ever thought possible.

I have since realized that I actually have the perfect husband and that’s why my marriage is so easy and wonderful. In the eight years that I’ve known him, Ben has never said anything mean to me. He’s my best friend in the whole world and he respects me and loves me more than anything. He laughs at my jokes and he takes me seriously when I come up with silly theories about nothing. He’s so smart, and he doesn’t let anything bother him. He serves me like it’s a natural part of life, like it doesn’t take any effort at all. He entertains me and keeps me laughing every day. He can fix anything, and he works harder than anyone I know.

When I found out I was pregnant, I got really scared that having a baby would ruin my perfect relationship with my husband. Sometimes I still get nervous, but mostly now I just get excited that this little boy is going to be like a miniature Ben and I’ll get to watch him grow up and become just like his daddy. I love my husband!

Happy Anniversary, Ben!

Name My Baby

So the truth is I’m having a really hard time figuring out what to name my baby. Why is it that I’ve been thinking up baby names for my entire life, and now that it’s actually time to pick a keeper, I don’t like a single name? It doesn’t help that Ben has been totally agreeable on all of the names I’ve ever liked until the second it actually started to matter. Now he doesn’t like any of the same names as me.

Back when I used to think it might be fun to have a baby, I could always talk myself out of it by reminding myself that really the only fun things about having a baby are 1) picking out a name, and 2) dressing it in cute clothes. As it turns out, picking out a name isn’t fun at all. And boy clothes are so much less cute than girl clothes, so that won’t be so fun either. What was I thinking?

I’m officially in my third trimester now, and that means I have less than 3 months to pick a name. If I can’t find anything I like better, it will probably be either Christian or Liam. Do you have any suggestions? Here are my criteria:

• 2 syllables
• Not starting with B or D
• Not ending in S
• Not too popular
• Not too weird

Becoming a Grown-Up

Ben is graduating today! I can’t believe this day is finally here. Even though it's super exciting, it makes me kind of nervous. It’s kind of like the first few years of our marriage have been fake, like we were just pretending to be grown-ups, but now it’s real. Plus, Spiz is coming in less than 4 months and that’s going to really turn us into adults. I secretly wish we had more time before we were forced into parenthood, but don’t tell Spiz.

So the first step on the road to adulthood is getting a telephone line in our house. You might think this is not a big deal, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the top 20 major decisions I’ve had to make in my life. What if I don’t get the best deal? What if the first phone bill comes and it’s loaded with taxes and surcharges that I never planned on? Can you just cancel things like telephone service? I’m kind of nervous about it.

Then we’re going to have to get Internet service at our house, and what if we get a virus on our computer? What if Spiz becomes addicted to porn because I’m too cheap to buy the right filters?

I wonder if I should go to grad school so I can avoid adulthood for a few more years.

It's a Boy!

Curse the Gas Gauge

A few months ago the gas gauge broke in one of our cars, so now we use the odometer to judge when it’s time to fill it up with gas. The rule is, we fill the car up after 200 miles and then reset the odometer.

A couple weeks ago, Ben drove to Grantsville, Utah (out in the middle of nowhere), to get our taxes done by a cheap tax guy. But on the way there, Ben hit 220 miles and ran out of gas. When I showed up with gas after about an hour, I totally made fun of him for not buying gas before 200 miles. I was pretty rude to him and I felt kind of bad afterward.

So then a couple nights ago, I was driving home from band practice, not noticing that the odometer said 217, and I ran out of gas. Normally, I probably would have been a little scared about being alone in my car on the side of the freeway, or maybe a little bit stressed that I wasn’t going to get home before midnight and get a good night’s sleep, but this time I just felt humiliated. I was sure I was being punished for teasing Ben when he ran out of gas. I couldn’t just call him to come save me, after I had ridiculed him for making the same mistake, so I called my friend instead. And then when I got home and sheepishly told Ben that I ran out of gas and I was really sorry for making fun of him, he said, “You made fun of me?”

In the Navy

Today my little brother is joining the Navy. He is on his way to boot camp in Michigan this very second. I’m having a hard time believing this is real.

Toby wants to be a Navy seal, so he had to commit to eight years, whether he actually becomes a seal or not. He has no idea whether he’ll even enjoy being in the Navy, but he committed to staying in it until he’s 30 years old. I can’t even commit to next weekend’s plans. I have no idea what I’ll be doing in eight years, and I have no desire to commit to anything that far in the future. I would be scared out of my mind just from the commitment.

Then there is the whole Navy seal business. Once I watched a documentary on Navy seal training. I think I blocked out the specifics (or I have a really bad memory), but it was seriously disturbing. I just remember that there were ridiculous activities that would have killed me in about two minutes, and I remember thinking that no one in his/her right mind would voluntarily sign up for something like that. Really well-built men were dropping out left and right. It was totally ludicrous.

So Toby has been working out for the last year and a half, trying to get ready. He does 500 sit-ups and 500 push-ups every day, and then straps on his army boots and runs for miles—sometimes on the beach. He also goes to the gym and swims a lot, and he's still going to get his trash kicked. What is he thinking?

I can’t believe that two people who were raised in the same house with the same rules and same parents and siblings can think so differently. Why did I grow up thinking that my only option was to graduate from college, get married, and have children, while my little brother was discovering all kinds of crazy things to do with his life? It totally blows my mind.

The Baby Center

Do you want to know something cool about being pregnant and clueless? There’s a website called babycenter.com that fills me in on everything I need to know. I get this weekly e-mail message that tells me how big my fetus is in relation to different foods. Last week it was a lemon; the week before it was a jumbo shrimp; before that it was a fig, etc. I can’t imagine what these e-mails are like for people who have morning sickness. I’m sickness-free and I still get totally grossed out thinking about a jumbo shrimp growing inside of me.

My weekly e-mail messages also tell me about how much weight I’ve probably gained, what symptoms I’m likely to be feeling, and what I should or should not do while I’m pregnant. I’ve learned all kinds of amazing tidbits that I never would have known on my own. Did you know that it’s not good to eat soft cheese when you’re pregnant? It’s also not good to take a bath in water that’s hotter than 101 degrees.

Luckily, the weekly e-mails haven’t said anything specifically about snowboarding, so I’m pretty sure that means I can still go. I’ve been really careful about not falling down, just so you know. And I feel okay about it because my mom said she skied when she was pregnant. She said I shouldn’t even ask the doctor if it’s okay because he might say I shouldn’t go, just so he won’t be held liable.

The best part of my weekly learn-how-to-be-pregnant e-mail is when it tells me the symptoms I might be experiencing. It seems like every week I discover something weird that is happening to my body, and of course it never crosses my mind that this new weird thing might have to do with being pregnant. Then, a day or two later, I always get my new e-mail telling me that I’m normal. Last week I told Ben that the second I stop eating I’m hungry again. It just started, all of a sudden. I couldn’t stop eating. Then, the next day I got my friendly reminder that when you’re 15 weeks pregnant, you might be ravenously hungry all the time. Those babycenter.com people are amazing! How did they know?

Cheap Furniture

Ikea is pretty much the best store on the planet, in my opinion, and I’m having a really hard time living all of these millions of miles away from it. Last summer Ben and I made a special trip to California to buy some furniture…oh yeah, and also to see my family while we were there. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen my family for a year; Ikea was the first priority. We bought a coffee table, an end table, and light fixtures for our entire house for $200. We also looked at some dressers, but we couldn’t decide whether two dressers were worth another $250.

Now that I’ve done my research and I realize that two dressers are definitely worth $250, I can’t get to Ikea. So I decided to try to order them online. I had already heard that their shipping prices were ridiculous, but I guess I didn’t totally believe it.

Surprise! It costs almost $200 to ship $250 worth of stuff. It’s TOTALLY ridiculous. And they don’t just tell you when you place the order that shipping costs $200. They send you an e-mail message after you’ve already told them your credit card number that says, “Oh, by the way, the shipping costs $200. And here are a lot of other words to hide the fact that we’re charging you an extra 80% of your total cost for shipping. Hopefully you won’t even see the shipping amount and you’ll just click reply so we can totally rip you off without you even knowing it.”

I’m so mad about it that I almost think I should boycott Ikea. But instead I’ll just tell myself that the shipping people don’t have anything to do with Ikea, and Ikea hates them just as much as I do, and Ikea and I are on the same team. Then I’ll just have to figure out a way to convince my parents to come visit me after making a pit stop at Ikea.

Spiz

I’ve been reading a lot of infertility blogs lately, which have gotten me thinking about how real the possibility is that I might be infertile. There’s no way to know these things when you’ve been on the pill since you were a virgin, right? And if there are that many girls blogging about it, infertility must be more common than I thought.

Plus, my mom had endometriosis and didn’t get pregnant for three years after she started trying. I don’t know how these kinds of genetics get passed along, but I thought chances were pretty good that it would take me a while to get pregnant after I stopped taking the pill.

I WAS WRONG!

Up Chuck

Generally speaking, I’m not much of a vomiter. I don’t get the flu very often and when I do, I usually just get a stomachache that lasts for a day. When I was younger, I used to throw up occasionally, but I can’t remember a time that I threw up more than once during a single flu episode.

Until last week…

Thursday night I started feeling sick, but I figured I could sleep it off and feel better in the morning—you know, the way it always works. I soon found out that this time was different. Starting at 5:00 a.m. Friday, I threw up once every hour for five hours. Then I made the mistake of going to work, because my job is so important that I can’t miss a day, even if I’m sicker than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Or because I couldn’t afford to take a day of sick leave because I already used all of my time off for the next 10 years when I went to Hawaii for Christmas. Or maybe because my weekly e-newsletter goes out on Fridays and I haven’t told anyone else how to cover for me yet. Whatever the reason, it was a mistake to go to work because that meant driving...in the car...where there is no toilet. I didn’t even think to bring a bucket.

So after I stayed at work for about 45 minutes, five of which were spent in the bathroom doing you-know-what AGAIN, I hopped in the car and went home. I didn’t make it all the way home, though, before the urge came again. And this time there was nothing to puke in. I didn’t even have time to pull over or open the window or dump out the contents of my purse or take off my shoe. I threw up my own lap, while I was driving. Who does that? Even though no one was around, it was the most embarrassing, humiliating moment ever. So instead of keeping it to myself, I went home and called everyone I knew and then posted it on the Internet.

The Devil Box

I grew up in a house where we didn't watch TV. We had a television, but we didn’t have cable or whatever it is that you need in order to watch actual TV shows, except on a few rare occasions when my dad pulled some kind of illegal stunt and turned on the TV for general conference. We could watch videos, but we couldn’t watch TV.

It wasn't like my parents thought the TV was equivalent to Satan and watching it would turn us into corrupted little devil-worshippers, because we were free to watch TV all we wanted at our friends' houses. It was just a big waste of time, and my mom didn't need additional distractions to take us away from practicing our musical instruments.

I had to practice my violin for 1 ½ hours every day, and it usually took me at least 4 hours to play those 90 minutes worth of music. My friends would call at 2:30 to see if I could play, and I would always ask my mom if I could, as if I didn’t already know the answer, and then reply to my friends that I needed to practice, but I could play at 4:00. Then my friends would call at 4:00 and I would embarrassingly say that I had only practiced for 20 minutes, so it would be 5:10 before I could play. And then at 5:10, I would beg my mother to let me play and promise to practice after I got home, but of course that never worked, so I would tell my friends that I still had another hour of practicing to do. I don’t even remember what could have possibly been entertaining enough to distract me from my violin for hours every day, but for sure it wasn’t the TV. Eventually I would finish my practicing and call my friends, but it was usually too late to play because it was time for dinner.

So anyway, I hated the fact that we couldn't watch television. I always swore that when I grew up, I would have loads of TVs and my kids would be allowed to watch them whenever they wanted. I also swore that my kids wouldn’t have to play musical instruments and if they didn't want to eat their broccoli, I wouldn’t make them.

It's weird how much things have changed since then. Now I’m sure I’ll force my kids to play musical instruments and eat broccoli. I still haven’t decided whether my kids will be able to watch TV (even though I now realize how brilliant my parents were), partially because I’m totally addicted to it now that I can actually watch it, and partially because it would take A LOT of persuasion for Ben to give up his precious TV.

Last night we sat down to watch Lost, because we love that show, and then we ended up watching Alias and that stupid wife-swapping show that comes on after Alias. We’re totally addicted! The TV totally sucked me in and made me believe that watching it was the most productive thing I could possibly be doing for 3 whole hours! And the worst part is that I’m sure the exact same thing will happen again tonight, only we’ll start out with the OC and hang out for whatever comes on in the 2 hours after the OC.

I'm starting to think that the TV is equivalent to Satan and I'm turning into a corrupted devil-worshipper.