Blended Family

I love baby clothes and baby booties and baby blankets, but I really love our new baby blender! I saw it from across the room in the housewares section of a major department store and just knew I had to have it. Look how cute it is! Jeff and I already planned to make Pepps' baby food ourselves once she can eat solid food, and this is the perfect accessory. We have a great cook book for her called "Le Petit Apetite" by Lisa Barnes, whose philosphy is that infants/toddlers should not be forced to eat processed, manufactured, crappy tasting food. It's hard not to agree with that. It might be funny when I sit down to dinner in about 9 months and give Pepps her organic sweet potato and some organic bananas while my Mac 'n Cheese T.V. dinner is heating in the microwave. But you know, you always want better for your children than for yourself, right?

We also joined a CSA where we pick up our fresh vegetables every Sunday. We started last week with lettuce, arugula, spinach, radishes and garlic chives. Pretty leafy start to the whole summer season. I was hoping for asparagus and tomatoes and peaches, but funny thing about CSAs is that they tend to grow according to seasons so I just have to wait my turn for tomatoes. The peaches thing won't work out because it appears that the CSA I joined knows the difference between fruits and vegetables. Oh well, win some and lose some.

Other than that, I just spend my time trying to stay awake all day and then trying to fall asleep at night. Actually, it's pretty easy to fall asleep, but staying asleep is more challenging than before. (Before I had a human being in my stomach, that is.) Back in early May I made a little trip to the hospital because I wasn't feeling as much baby movement. The doctors rely on moms' reports of baby movement to assess, in part, the baby's health and progress. I have literally almost driven myself psychotic doing this movement assessments or "kick counts." It's torture on the days when the baby wants to rest or God forbid take a nap. Anyway, back in May, the hospital did an ultra sound and discovered that my amniotic fluid was a little low, which could be problematic if it goes any lower. This low amniotic fluid may also be a reason to feel the baby less. They discharged me on the same day and told me to stay hydrated.

Well, that's all it took. Since then I have been drinking between 180-200 oz of water EVERY DAY. That's a lot of water. I asked my doctor how much to drink and she said 64 oz. I was thinking to myself, "64 oz? I do that before 10:00 a.m." Needless to say I have taken this to an extreme as I am wont to do. Last time I was at the doctor, I turned in my urine sample, and when I set it on the counter, I could see that next to all of the other patients' urine samples, mine was BY FAR the lightest in color. The other women looked like they were peeing golden saffron. My urine looked like water with a dash-- merely a dash-- of Country Time lemonade. Here's me trying to be the Most Hydrated Mother in 2009. Always gotta be the best.

In a fun psychological twist, I have also developed a habit of dreaming about people drowning. It's a very touchy subject given a traumatic incident in my early teenaged years, so it's very upsetting to me. On Sunday night, I had not one but two dreams about drownings. Those two dreams were separated by another very typical occurrence: a potty break for mommy. Because the dreams are distressing and frighten me, I mentioned them to my therapist. Guess what? That crazy kook thinks that my drinking 200 oz of water everyday may trigger drowning dreams. Hmmmmm. I never thought of that and it actually sounds plausible. Usually when I tell him about a dream I had-- like the time I dreamed that Luther Vandross and I were making out on the set of Soul Train-- he usually says it's an unconscious desire to have Biblical relations with him. When he didn't make my drowning dreams about my repressed desire for him, it automatically raised his credibility about twenty-fold.

So, today I have had only a modest 56 oz and by this time I have usually already consumed at least 100 oz. I'll have to report back regarding my dream life after these changes.