Still Pregnant, Part II

So, yeah. I'm at the point where friends have actually told me that if I don't respond to a text within 10 minutes, they assume SHE IS IN LABOR.

I am not in labor.

But I would like to be.

Perhaps being slightly more mentally chill at this point is what is allowing me to feel far more physically uncomfortable than I remember being last time around. The carpal tunnel thing is a serious pain in the wrists and also in my feet. My ankles/feet usually feel normal after I've been awake for a bit in the morning, but the wrist/hand pain has started to linger. Driving my car today, it hurt to grip the steering wheel. I lumber to the bathroom every single night at either 3:19 am or 4:10 am, depending on whether I fall asleep before or after 10:30 pm. I can FEEL my hips and pelvis stretching apart and I literally waddle everywhere.

And yet, I'm having no serious contractions and am dilated 1 whopping centimeter.

And so it goes. Walking that weird line between knowing how lucky I am to be pregnant at full term with what appears to be a healthy baby and wishing really hard that said baby would evacuate my uterus already because damn I am cumbersome and uncomfortable.

Today I distracted myself by taking advantage of tax-free back-to-school shopping and hitting a few consignment shops to see what I could find to supplement Zuzu's hand-me-downs. We've seriously been so lucky to receive clothes from a good friend of ours and a few things from David's cousin, both of whom like the same styles/brands that I like in little girl clothes. (My favorites are Tea Collection and Mini-Boden.) I need to pick up a few basics--some separates, and probably a winter coat for playing the snow--but I also looked for a couple of cute things to add to what's already hanging in her closet for fall.

Buying ahead in season/size is still tricky for me. I bought a lot of stuff for Eliza when I was pregnant and summer things went on clearance, and I just gave away the last of the outfits that seasonally didn't work for Zuzu and won't work for Rerun either, even if Rerun turns out to be a girl. So any time I do it, I feel a little shiver of apprehension like I'm tempting fate. But I take a deep breath and I buy it anyway, because I don't need to let fear suck the joy out of shopping. And also I love a good bargain.

Anyway, I picked up a few things for this fall/winter, including a darling J&J jacket, a couple little dresses, and one hot pink velour warm-up suit. Zuzu has been one of those babies who wears the size she is for the most part. She's currently wearing a combination of 18-24 months clothes and some 2T stuff that doesn't show any signs of getting too small.

She actually accompanied me shopping to the first two shops so that David could get some work done at home and was reasonably well-behaved (it helped that both shops had a children's play area). The problem arose when she didn't want to leave the first store's train table. I'm not really in great shape for carrying a kicking, screaming toddler. Plus, who wants to be that parent, right? So when she was reluctant to leave, I bribed her with $1 sunglasses. They are hot pink with rhinestones. They are awesome. She was delighted, and left the store smiling. Totally worth $1.

Hey, Hollywood!

We had a fun mid-week visit from my friend Caroline and her two kiddos. It was great to see them, and Zuzu played pretty well with both Finn and baby Mary. Of course, I wanted her to be less territorial about her toys and gentler with baby Mary, but there were no major crises. Probably just because Finn and Mary were so chill. Like, they sleep when they travel. I can't even imagine! (Seriously, Caroline had both her kids asleep before we got Zuzu to go to bed Wednesday night.)

Zuzu was quite smitten with Baby Mary and loved tickling her, although Zuzu was quite perturbed when Mary didn't want the binky that Zuzu forcefully and constantly offered to her. I told David we are going to hold off on giving Rerun a binky because I don't want to deal with Zuzu shoving it in the baby's face. She's like the binky patrol.

Zuzu and Finn had a good time at the park and I wished that they all could have stayed another night. If only because it is really damn difficult to have a conversation with an adult while simultaneously negotiating the needs of a two-year-old, three-year-old, and seven-month-old! Caroline did get some time to chat after the kids went to bed, but I wish we'd had more time to hang out. We spent all morning at the park on Thursday, but we were basically chasing kids the entire time. I confessed to her that as much as I love this stage of Zuzu, I'm also looking forward to the point in time when taking the kids to the park also means taking a novel and parking my butt on a bench. #MOTY

No bench-sitting when this one is on the loose.

Swingin' with Finn

Splashin' with Finn

Slidin' with Finn

Zuzu has been astonishing us lately with how grown-up she seems. I don't know if it's because there's a wee one on the way so we're just thinking of her as more of a big sister than our little baby, or if she really is looking more like a little girl. Her hair is getting mullet-ish and should probably be trimmed again. Her tummy is slimming down along with her thighs. But she still has no bangs and a baby face, thankfully!

She's really gotten going with stringing sentences together, and she's so fearless and remarkably agile when it comes to climbing and jumping and balancing. Even her daycare teachers have commented on her balance and agility. So I guess maybe she got David's hazel eyes and his athleticism? Today she jumped all through house announcing, "I jumping! Mama, I jumping!"

She cracked us up the other night when I mentioned that she'd had hummus for lunch and she kept saying over and over, "I like hummus. I love bread."

I guess it's a normal thing for toddlers to do this broken-record thing where they repeat the same statement over and over and over again even when you've acknowledged it? (My mom tells the story of me repeatedly asking "Where Santa go?" when Santa passed us in a semi-truck around Christmas one year and I couldn't stop talking about it for the last two hours of our car trip.)

But man, at some point I'm finally like, "Honey, YES. I heard you the first seventy-five times you repeated that statement. Could we take this conversation in another direction?"

Okay, Mama! I like hummus. I love bread.

It's also really cute how she switches back and forth from first person "I" to third person "Zuzu." She doesn't seem to have any confusion about being both Zuzu and Caroline, as she will answer to both and will say "Caroline Duckworth" when I ask for her whole name (assuming she's feeling cooperative and not ignoring me entirely), but she seems to prefer to call herself Zuzu. (So, great choice on nicknames, Mama and Daddy!)

Tonight when we face-timed with Grammy and Bop, I told her to say good-bye and she said, "Bye-bye! See you later!" See you later? What are you? A teenager?

Anyway, that's the rundown on what's happening here today. I hope to be making more exciting announcements soon, but in the meantime I can always post about the Zuzu cloth/disposable diaper situation (because the Internet wants to know, you guys), and/or how I ended up freaking out and then getting a doula at the very last minute, and/or how I want to be BFFs with Chip & Joanna Gaines and also borrow Joanna's wardrobe. Stay tuned!