You Might Be 38 Weeks Pregnant When...

...your family is annoying the crap out of you.

***

Notes on non-labor:

I'm three and a half centimeters dilated and 50% effaced. Nothing is happening. At 1 1/2 centimeters per week with no contractions, this baby will arrive somewhere around July 14th by simply falling out of my body when I stand up.

I asked Matt to time contractions for me last night. He started his stop watch function. He then left to get something, went out the back door, played with his latest concrete wall project, picked his nose, I don't know what else, but I had commented on like twelve blogs and run an entire twitter conversation.

He meandered back into the living room with concrete drying on his shirt and a beer in his hand.

"Any more?"
"Um, yeah, a few."
"How many?"

Evil eye.

"What difference does it make? You've been gone like two hours."

He checked his running stop watch. "Only eighteen minutes, actually."

Eviler eye.

"How many? I can divide. Two? Three?"
"Two," I grunted.
"Nine minutes."

Annoyingly accurate. Apparently, Matt is not taking my ten-day labor seriously. Does anyone now understand why I want my friend at my delivery?

***

Three things about my kids that would be driving me to drink, if I could drink, in no particular order:

Garrett is slow.

Not relaxed, not unhurried, not adorably on his own schedule. Painfully, intentionally, please forces of the universe give me the strength not to rip out my hair while I waaaaiiiiiittttttt and waiiiiitttttt for him to decide, finally, after dawdling and sixteen distractions and seventy billion questions to pleeeeassseeeee dooooooooo whatever it is I have asked him to do.

Not like, achieve world peace, like put your shoes on. Toddler appropriate tasks.

It might kill me. I am not slow. I am crisp. Efficient. I have a running list in my head all the time and I accomplish, accomplish, accomplish until it's done and then I sit down and write a list for tomorrow. He has been sent to temper me, to make me patient, and it's not working.

It starts first thing in the morning. We pick out clothes and I leave Ess and Gee to get dressed while I change Cue and get him dressed. See how efficient that is? When I get back from the nursery, they are dressed and we can go down for breakfast.

Ess always is dressed. Gee is in some half-assed state of pajama removal and he is picking lint from between his toes, or reading a book, or some other pointless morning pursuit.

After several cleansing breaths, "Gee," I say, with studied calm, "we are going down stairs, come down when you're dressed, okay?"
"I can't find my underwear."
"Hmmmmm. When you're dressed..."
"Oh, here they are."

He puts them on an arm, sits on the floor and discovers a fascinating fuzz in the carpet.
I try not to hyperventilate. "When you're dressed, come down."

Ten minutes later he calls me to the top of the stairs. He's still naked. HE'S STILL NAKED! I walk away. He screams for me for fifteen minutes. Eventually, he snail trails down the stairs. His clothes are on his body, many of them are backwards, but they are on.

Glaciers have melted. Molasses has poured. The universe has spun off of it's access and gone hurtling into a massive black hole, but the child is dressed for breakfast.

Ess never shuts up.

I mean that the way I wrote it. I don't mean she's never quiet or she talks too much or aha, how cute, my adorable daughter always has something to say. I mean she never-ever-ever-stops-making-noise-oh-my-god-can-you-have-that-operation-done-that-takes-away-a-dog's-bark-on-a-child. Probably not.

She sings in the car. She orders the boys around when they play. She makes up elaborate games during quiet time and narrates them to herself at the top of her lungs. She hums at dinner, or babbles, or talks to her plate.

It is never, never, ever, ever quiet. Ahahahaha. I'm not losing it at all.

Quinn will not watch TV.

Not any TV. Not even half an hour. At 4:30, every day, I put in a movie. I need that movie. I need it. Ess is quiet. Gee does not need to accomplish forward motion. Cue...will not watch TV. Why? The rest of us are quite happy to be plugged in and have our minds numbed and erased by the digital age we live in. Why not Cue?

He stands at the gate and calls for me like the most annoying talking baby doll in the history of the world. "Momma, momma, momma, momma." It's on endless repeat. I've tried to ignore him, I've tried to pretend. But if he sees me, catches my eye, if I check on him or initiate contact of any sort, there it is...he holds out his little hand and cocks his head to one side.

"Momma, play? Momma sit? Momma cars? Momma trains? Momma read it?"

And I have to do it. I have to "waste" my precious, precious making dinner while playing on the computer hour playing with him. Now you probably think I'm going to say, but I love it, it's worth it, it's only a short time, they are only little for this brief, beautiful moment.

NO! I play with him all damn day. The entire time I am pretending to eat plastic pizza, I am screaming in my head OH MY GOD PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, could you just learn to watch a little TV???!!!

***

I'm done. I feel better.