Babble

That last post was heavy, both in subject and in the way that it weighs on your mind. If you haven't read the comments, I recommend them, they are amazing and thought-provoking on both sides of this difficult issue. I can't say that I changed my mind, but I did reevaluate the basis for my position a few times. I also have to say thank you. I don't know if you can call this kind of discussion fun, but I enjoy it when it stays measured.

I suspect we have to agree to disagree, for the most part, but there are two points on which I think we can all agree. Thanks to whatever higher power you believe in that none of us have had to deal with such catastrophic consequences (knock wood) for our carelessness and thank the great State of Washington that we are not asked to sit as judge or jury for this case.

Check your kids' buckles again. Every time. Okay?

((UPDATE. Sorry. One more thing. Read this article from today's Washington Post. I'm not comparing the situations in anyway. I'm just saying take the time to read it and be a witness. Read the whole thing, if you can bear it, especially if you blog and/or comment often. Because at the end there, those comments left about those people, are true evil, not because prosecuting them is wrong in every case, because lashing people when they are crushed to pulp is wrong, in every case. Thank you again for the comments on the last post. You are all amazing.))

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In the fourth and final AnyBaby saga, I finally got in to see my midwife yesterday. Hooray! Gee and Ess went with me to the appointment. Boo! We all got to hear his (or her) little heart beating away. Gee heard the ocean in my tummy and Ess now thinks the baby is a lion, like Symba, or Ryan on The Wild. Let's hope not, those suckers are born with claws.

I managed to answer her questions in between Sticker Book Gate 2009 and the Great Toddler Scale Incident. She was quiet for a while, reviewing her papers and flipping the pages of my file back and forth. She then leaned forward and pointed to two lines plotted, one above the other, on a graph. "That is your weight for Cue's pregnancy," she explained, "and this line is through today."

Oh, that line? The one that both starts and ends above the other line? I could have happily lived my whole life without that information. Also, is there a paper shortage? Because I have graph paper at home. I can bring some in so that we don't have to reuse like that. Finally, I totally changed my mind. I want some doctor that has never seen me before.

And that, as Maura so astutely noted yesterday, is why you should be careful what you wish/whine obsessively for.

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It's my birthday today. I'm mid to high thirty something. This is my birthday present.

Aha, no. Not that. That's the before picture. This:


I love and cherish it with a passion generally reserved for other situations. I stroke it and stoke it and try to make it nice and hot and keep it happy because when it is really cooking my living room has reached temperatures in the high seventies. The ungrateful little bastard hates me. It will not light for me no matter what I do. I have sacrificed my three month stockpile of newspaper to the cause. I have begged and pleaded, yelled and screamed, stomped my feet. No matter what I do, it withholds fire from me.

For Matt, it turns over and shoots flames out of its...you get the picture. I'm starting to suspect that either I am not a good determiner of wood burning stove gender or my treasured stove plays for the other team. It's just not fair. I'm the one who's home all day. I'm the one that tends it and talks to it and disciplines it. I'm the one who sacrificed and asked for the damn thing as a birthday present. And this is how I'm treated. It's a cranky pain in the ass all day and then it purrs and puts out heat and is generally on it's best behavior the minute Matt walks in the door. Typical.

Yeah, well, watch it, stove boy, unlike the other small, messy, cold, ungrateful creatures in this household, you can be traded in for another model.