Happy Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. The leaves are changing colors, the air is crisp and the sky is that perfect blue that only autumn brings. Everywhere you look, kids are picking out pumpkins, begging for early candy and shrieking in feigned fear at the spooky decorations. I have an amazing animated Halloween village complete with spooky music and sound effects that my children will spend hours watching as the tiny mummies pop up out of the coffin and the ghosts swirl past miniature lighted windows. They spend days deciding what they want to dress up as and talk at length about how much candy they will collect this year. We decorate the house inside and out, adding freshly carved jack o' lanterns, bat shaped window clings and our enormous fake furry tarantula affectionately known as Hairy. It is truly a time to be a child again and I love to spend October weekends drinking in the Halloween hubbub, touring haunted houses, strolling through the local Halloween festivals and watching late-night slasher movies with my husband. Halloween is a time for the imagination to run wild with every full moon and rustle of leaves. A time for ghosts and goblins to roam the streets and a time for the impossible to come to life safely for one exciting night. So enjoy celebrating your children, enjoy being a kid again and happy Halloween to all!

Pregnancy Hormones Strike Again

I get really angry during early pregnancy. For some reason, the heightened levels of progesterone transform me from a sweet Mrs. Jeckyll to a ready-to-rumble Mrs. Hyde. And I know it's not just in my head because I have had a psycho moment every pregnancy before I got a positive test. And this time was no different. Enter scene on a beautiful autumn afternoon. My husband and I are doing yard work because suddenly the leaves in the yard are making me nuts. Our next door neighbors who are perpetually tidy come over yet again to complain about our tree. It has some branches that hang over into their yard and is "getting leaves all over the yard" ummmm, hello? They call it Fall for a reason... Anyway, my normal handling of the situation would involve something along the lines of apologizing (even though it was here when we moved in) and assuring them that I'd have it taken care of when we had available funds. Instead they got a raving lunatic that loudly commented that they could cut the f&*%ing tree down if they couldn't stand leaves that much and promptly marched across the street to see about borrowing an axe. The guy who lives there took one look at my wild eyes and calmly asked if he could cut whatever it was for me instead. I swear my husband was in the background waving his arms and mouthing "Don't give her an axe!!"...to this day, I'm really not certain just what would have occurred if he had, but either way we'd have a felled tree and possibly a newspaper headline. As it was, we finished the yardwork, left the tree intact to be handled by professionals oddly, my suggestion of burning it down was met with resistance, go figure? and finished off the evening with a major argument about changing the bag in the trashcan. Thank goodness this pregnancy rage only lasts a few days since I soon realize something's really off and end up with a positive pregnancy test. That little diagnostic tool ends up being worth it's weight in gold as it makes me put every future impulse through the "crazy hormones filter" and I tend to take a couple deep breaths and chalk it all up to the hormones. Maybe EPT should come out with a PMS test too? So now our situation stands thus: we still have the freakin' tree until someone returns my calls for an estimate, I am seeing the advantage of privacy fencing and our neighbors are no longer speaking to us. Oh well, at least they won't come complaining about the leaves in their yard anymore.

Eternity..I mean Maternity Clothes

So now that I'm back in the gestation business I have a whole host of new material. So I think I'll start with maternity clothes. The bad news is that...well...it's maternity clothing. That pretty much isolates you from the latest fashion trends. And though some of you out there probably don't even show until you're 8 months along, only to sport an adorable little barely-there-baby-bump, I was in maternity clothes about 5 minutes after the test came back positive. So no more haute couture for me. My fashion days are over for the next 3 years (yes, it takes me almost 2 years to lose the baby weight despite a normal weight gain- even though I'm sure you left the hospital in your regular jeans that were now too big from all the weight you lost while pregnant). Anyway, cattiness aside, the good news is...everybody else looks pregnant too, hooray! The latest fashion trend seems to be babydoll tops which I would normally avoid like the plague for fear of looking pregnant, but now....if the shoe fits, wear it right? But, more bad news... maternity clothing this year is just the opposite. So while everyone else gets to wear oversized, empire-waisted babydoll tops, us moms-to-be are stuck with spandex camisoles and side-ruched tees complete with spaghetti straps and banded waists. And to think that pregnancy does a number on a woman's body image anyway, what is this!? I mean, who in their right mind wants to wear some skin-tight top that's ruched down the side and leaves nothing to the imagination? Somehow the thought of spandex stretched over a huge belly complete with inside-out navel and lines from the ultra-high waist maternity jeans just doesn't scream high fashion. And apparently I'm not the only one because I noticed that all the normal looking stuff was sold out in my size, leaving only the extra smalls for all you barely-there-baby-bump gals who can wear your regular clothing anyway. And the worst part of it all is I will be in the damn things until eternity- which is how long it will take me to lose the weight after baby #4..... Sorry for the rant folks- and tune in next time for more hormonally hyped up pregnancy rants =)

Birth Control? Yeah, Right...

My life as a woman seems to be based on some crazy hormonal cycle that runs not only month to month, but changes as I age too. Duh! you say, there's that whole biological clock thing.... but I am talking about something else, those pesky reproductive years. Phase I: Remember this? You are in college, unmarried and having fun ( if my daughters are reading this, I did not do any of this, I was a saint until I met your father). So you obsess over every late period and hormonal imbalance, praying that you're not pregnant. You put an amazing amount of effort into worrying that your birth control methods might have failed and wondering how you'd tell your family if it did. Phase II: You are older, married and can't wait for children. Now you obsess over monthly cycles, cervical mucus, body temps and ovulation predictor kits. You soon find out that your health teacher was a complete liar and wonder why you worried so much about birth control when it was obviously not as easy to get knocked up as you were led to believe.You buy pregnancy tests by the truckload and are addicted to peeing on just about any diagnostic strip that will stand still. You pray for a plus sign on every pregnancy test and plan the ways you'll tell husband and family the joyous news....then comes Phase III: You are done. Hooray! No more obsessing, no more hanging on to baby clothes and cribs "just in case" and no more throwing up, heartburn or nursing babies. You can look ahead, concentrate on your family, reconnect with your husband and your sex life has never been better. This is where it ends for most of us. But then there are always those few of us that are casually eating dinner one evening and suddenly realize that you can smell the aftershave of the gentleman 3 tables away....and no one else can. One hour and 3 trips to the pharmacy later, you are staring at 2 plus signs and a double pink line and wondering how the hell you're going to tell your husband that despite your best efforts, one more baby is on the way. It's certainly not the worst thing in the world, but it's enough to throw the best of us. So to all you ladies out there in Phase III....don't get too complacent, life will find a way.

Weapons of Ass Destruction

The other day I saw this cute little story about how Crayola crayons can bring peace to the world. According to said story, all we needed to do was drop "crayon bombs" and the lovely colors would mesmerize everyone into perfect harmony (I thought Coca-Cola had that monopoly?). It was a really cute story, but was apparently written by someone who has no children whatsoever. You see, in our household crayons are weapons of ass destruction- namely my children's. The second the crayon basket hits the kitchen table, all hell breaks loose and my formerly serene and well-mannered children turn into rejects from Lord of the Flies- only no pig's head, just pig-headedness oh, I just kill myself sometimes... Anyway, out comes the crayons and up on the table goes my son. Amid shrieks of "Noooooo Alex!!" and "Mooooom!!" I find my son with fistfuls of crayons, gleefully biting the pointed ends off and throwing them across the room. As I rescue him from the wrath of his sisters, who are doing their best to push him headfirst off the table in the name of freedom of expression, he begins to scream and flail- knocking papers, artwork and the remaining crayons off the table. My girls start wailing in frustration at having to pick up the crayons from the four corners of the kitchen and then start fighting among themselves over who's doing all the work. As I wrangle a toddler who's hell-bent on demolishing the artwork in the other room, I hear my girls continuing their argument- this time over who is hogging the pink, followed by "Don't copy me!", "But I need the blue right nooooow" and other such statements delivered with vehement whining. After about 15 minutes, I have had enough and come hurricane-force into the room telling everyone to stop the nonsense and clean up the crayons and anything-not-picked-up-will-be-thrown-out!!! My daughters burst into tears and begin cleaning up (sobbing all the while) and my son goes back to crying at not being allowed to fling crayons. I generally lock myself into my walk-in closet for 2 minutes of peace. So I guess crayon bombs could be effective, but maybe not so much for world peace.