Baby boy is on the move! Over the course of the weekend he started army crawling across the room, pulled himself up to the coffee table and cut his first tooth. He's also paying more attention to music...I think if he can combine all of these new talents, we could have a breakdancer on our hands. The Fresh Prince of Kenmore perhaps!

Murph the Wonder Dog will be his entourage. Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yeah!

After a long posting hiatus, I am back online, ready to rant, rave and insult people as I sit comfortably veiled behind my laptop. My life changed this week when the baby decided it was finally time to sleep through the night. Honestly I think he got tired of my rancid breath in the middle of the night. I often wondered if the smell of my intestines digesting dinner was going to negatively affect my child’s ability to bond with me. Funny thing is, the little bugger has a wee bit of halitosis himself. Must run in my family. Thanks mom.

So after a full night sleep I am anew.  I am just about motivated to conquer the laundry...but I think this short post has resulted in temporary carpel tunnel. I hear wine is really good for that.

Ever wonder why Rosie on the Jetsons was so popular? If you invest in a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, you'll know why. These electronic maids are a dream!

The hubby got this as a "Valentines" gift for me. I know, I know I am tripping over red flags and violating the commonsense marriage rule that voids household cleaning appliances as acceptable gifts from the husband. Even still, I love this thing. As a new mom, its a time saver, as a control freak in recovery, I like opening the filter and dumping out loads of dust bunnies, because guess what...this little robot can sweep under the furniture!

I have an "anonymous" suggestion for a "friend" of mine whose carpet is riddled with sour milk and wine stains. Attention domestic bliss scientists who are working on improvements for the next version of the Roomba. See what you can do about integrating a sniff and scrub mechanism that locates stains left behind from baby spit up and red wine, program the Roomba to hover over the stain and scrub until the sour milk smell is gone and the wine spots that mimic a staggered return from the kitchen to the couch and back is less obvious.

The hubby and I just survived more than a week of what the news stations refer to as "Arctic Blast 2008" in the Seattle area. No more frigid were the streets than were our sheets. After having Babe Wonder two months ago, I was finally ready to cozy up to the hubby and being snowed in for more than a week certainly afforded us plenty of opportunity to fool around...until I invited our neighbors over for cocktails.

Rewind...a few weeks ago, in a time period known as pre-Arctic Blast, we went to a Dirty Santa party, at which my friends play the typical anonymous gift exchange. There are some really hilarious interpretations of "dirty" every year, I've decided next year I will bring two ornamental Christmas tree balls...blue ones to be exact. In any case, I gifted what was left of our condom supply as part of the "Manscaping" kit I added to the exchange. 

A few days after the Dirty Santa party, Arctic Blast hits us with our pants down...literally. Being snowed in with an infant had cemented the hubby's plan to wait a few years before considering a second child. So while his mind was on family planning, my mind drifted toward finding a fun way to spend the time together. At first I was able to convince the hubby that breastfeeding is natures birth control, and I won't get pregnant. That excuse seemed to work, though he was doubtful. My big mistake was inviting a few neighbors over for cocktails on day 4 of being snowed in. As the group of us were chatting, one of the ladies shared a story about her friend who got pregnant with her 2nd child while she was breastfeeding her 1st...who was 2 months old.

The hubby shot me a dirty look from across the room. And it wasn't a Dirty Santa kind of look either.

Oh yes, a new addition to my New Mommy compilation of 80's tunes, its "Hold Me Now" by the Thompson Twins. Seems as if this is my 6 week old son's mantra. He wants to be held from 5pm until we get him down for the "night" which is 4 hours of my eyes rolling into the back of my head whilst the young prince sleeps.

All you mommies out there, do the lyrics below evoke fond memories of spending hours, during what were your quite evenings with your husband, bouncing the babe feverishly on the yoga ball or papoosing them to your chest with one of your myriad of baby slings in a desperate attempt to quell their cries?

I think going forward I'll give the gift of song at baby showers and download the collection of 80's tunes whose lyrics are in fact art mimicking the life of a new mom. I always did like making mixed tapes in junior high.

My mom came up for a visit this week, so for the last few days I've shared a good deal of personal space with her as we coo over my adorable 5 week old baby in unison. I'm not all that close with my mom, so this would be a bit of a Hallmark moment in our relationship except for the fact that something crawled into her mouth and died. Actually its not just something, to be more precise I think it’s a moth ball militia, or my cousin Mike's pet hermit crab circa 1981.

Yesterday we took the Wonder Babe to his pediatrician for a check up and before going into her office, I handed mom an altoid, then insisted she take two, and then in the lobby of the doctors office, I was overcome with diarrhea of the mouth and told her she has halitosis. No sooner did the words escape me, did the nurse call us back to the exam room.  Mom, ever the chatty Kathy, took my observation in stride and in her lame effort not to further offend, she chatted up the pediatrician by talking out the side of her mouth, which didn't change the smell of her breath, it just made her look like she was a stroke victim with halitosis.

Poor mom, she really is the nicest lady but I couldn't take it anymore and I just didn't have the ability to hold back, so when we got back into my car to head home, I suggested she see her dentist when she got back to Portland. She countered with the idea to buy a bottle of chlorophyll capsules, as she had heard these would help. We stopped by a vitamin and supplement store, she bought some chlorophyll and now every couple hours, she walks up to me, heaves a big dragon breath into my face and asks if the remedy is working. My only reply is "you should really make an appointment with your dentist, maybe there is a prescription they can give you."

A good lesson for me to keep my mouth shut next time, lest I am willing to become my moms testing ground for whether or not her breath smells like a vinegar bottle rocket exploded in granny's attic.

Oh, Chubby Checker... there are three reasons your tune is the one I dedicate to today's pregnancy status. Being that I am two days past my due date, Chubby just seems to be a perfect musician for me to channel today. That and the fact that I just came home from a walk-walk-waddle around the lake, having decided that as long as I keep moving, the baby will be encouraged to dislodge himself from his cozy abode in my belly. Hopefully, while I was on my hour walk (which usually takes closer to 30 mins), my little boy was twisting his way down, inching closer to his big debut. 

The third reason Chubby's Twist is the song of the day is that I was hit with a sugar attack on my drive home from the lake, and being a rare sunny day in late October in the Pacific Northwest, I decided this must be an "Indian Summer", which of course calls for an ice cream cone. So, I pulled into Tulley's, ordered a vanilla bean and chocolate twist in a cone. I had to repeat myself three times, obviously the dipstick working the drive-thru isn't accustomed to customers ordering ice cream in the midst of Fall. 

"C'mon, twist again, twisting time is here..." 

When I initially saw Dr. Z Gyno Extraordinaire at 9 weeks pregnant, he told me that by the calendar (the date of my last period), my due date was yesterday, Oct 15th. When I had my 20 week ultrasound, the baby's head, femur and other leading indicator body parts estimated his birth date at Oct 20th. Dr. Z decided to stick with the earlier due date because of my active lifestyle, my stubborn disposition may have had something to do with it as well.

Now that Oct 15th has come and gone, I am looking at Oct 20th, and perhaps later. I don't have any physical indication that the baby will be coming in the next few days. My water hasn't broken, I'm still feeling really good. Its a bit more difficult to bend over to put pots and pans away, or to get off the couch, but honestly I was more physically exhausted three or so weeks ago than I am now. I am sleeping much better and this has me perplexed. To get this far, and have no idea when this child will first send me into a hurricane of pain before making his arrival makes this tale of two due dates yet another one of the woes of pregnancy that nobody told me about.

Since I found out I was pregnant on Valentines Day, I've earmarked October 15th as the due date, I've told countless friends and relatives, I arranged for my maternity leave to begin based on that date...only to find out once the day approached that perhaps Oct 20th is more realistic. That's like telling a half marathon runner that they took a wrong turn, and they are actually on the full 26.2 mile marathon route...and its raining, and they have blisters and diarrhea has set in.

That half marathon runner better be compensated with the oversized race t-shirt and cheesy medal bragging that they finished the FULL race. I haven't thought of what my conciliatory prize should be for sticking this pregnancy out another week...but I'm thinking it belongs in the "medal/natural stone" family. Perhaps the confusion of two due dates is the orgin of the push gift. Hint, hint, hubby my ring size is still a 6, don't let my pregnancy bloated digits fool you.

You guessed it, tomorrow is my due date, and so I chose Little Orphan Annie's theme song to dedicate to today's pregnancy status. The hubby and I are fielding phone calls from anxious friends and family wanting to know when they can meet our little boy (this morning's first call was from my 2yr old nephew who demanded to know where the baby was and when he would be outside of my belly...when I say demanding I'm not kidding, he was yelling at me).

When we went to bed last night, the hubby and I took account of the waning hours of our quiet household. We laid in bed and talked for 45 minutes about nothing in particular. I went to sleep knowing I would really miss that luxury of a free flowing chat with him. Just before I drifted off to sleep, he rolled over, threw his arm over me and I compiled a mental note of all the friends, family and neighbors who have volunteered to babysit for us...you can expect a phone call.

The sun'll come out tomorrow, so ya gotta hang on til tomorrow, come what may.
Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya Tomorrow!
You're always a day away!

We're on the 5 day countdown until our baby boy arrives and I've noticed over the last few days how forward folks are in asking me how I'm "progressing". Yesterday I was playing with Murph Dog in the backyard when my neighbor and her husband came over and she quickly asked "are you dilated"? Hey, keep your mind off my private parts lady, I don't ask you if you have hemorrhoids!

There is really no way to avoid the question, as the thinning and subsequent opening of the cervix is the really only indicator of active labor, but its a little unsettling to be questioned about the status of your whoo-hoo. Once again my sheltered Catholic upbringing serves me well, as for my own well being, I would like to consider the theory of stork delivery. I haven't put a lot of thought into the process of delivering a baby myself. I choose to remain naive to those things I cannot control in this regard.

Wish me luck and a may my IV overflow with pain killers...