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It has been hard to get around to blogging lately, and it's been tough to think of what to write. So I'll just post an update on all of us, mostly e-baby.

Somehow my child has acquired a Carolina accent. Not a gentle little drawl, either, but a full-blown 2-syllables-per-vowel kind of thing. Egg="Aayugh." Bed="Bayud." Hands="Hayunds." Head="Hauyd." No="Naoo." When I try to direct her toward an American Standard Stage pronunciation (Sweetie, it's "egg," not "aayugh"), she laughs her head off and says "Not egg, I like aaaaaayuuuuugh!" Perhaps I should have interviewed the day care teachers for proper pronunciation rather than for silly things like a loving and stimulating environment.


She has picked up one thing from her head teacher that I looooove. Head teacher calls everyone "honey" or "sweetheart." Yesterday, e-baby and I were lying on the couch (I, outrageously, hoped to take a nap; 3rd trimester has hit me like the sandman). She started playing with my hair and said, super-softly, "Hi, honey. You're so pretty, sweetheart." I nearly melted right through the upholstery.


All four grandparents were here for Thanksgiving, so now e-baby is totally Tuti-Granddad-Granny-Grampy obsessed. Not only do all groups of objects have to have a mommy, a daddy and a baby (this applies, BTW, to dolls, flowers, spoons, packets of sugar, rocks, cars...), now there are grandparents. Grandparent coins, grandparent greeting cards, grandparent pieces of cheese... The thing of putting groups of objects into little families goes way back, and it has persisted a long time. I gotta think there's some important cognitive schema being developed and refined through all that. One shift that she has made, though-- six months ago, a lone bird in a tree was a baby bird looking for its mommy. Now, a lone bird in a tree is a mommy bird collecting food for her babies. That particular pattern-shift is interesting-- almost like she has let go of some of the anxiety of losing track of mommy. Oh, and now, whenever there's a third bird flying away, it's daddy going to work.


On my own end of things, I'm feeling pretty ambivalent about third trimester. On the one hand, I'm really sick of being pregnant, and tired, and big, and lumpy, and sleepless... on the other hand, I know that having the baby won't make ANY of those symptoms go away. The only relief will be that I can sleep on my stomach again. Sleeplessness? That'll be much worse. Feeling fat? Well, if it's like last time, I can expect that to last for an indeterminate, but long, time. Add to that the likely repeat of baby blues, juggling two little people at once, double the worry about their personal safety... you get the idea. I guess it boils down to this-- although I was madly in love with her from the first day, e-baby was 18 months old before I decided that parenthood was really a lot of fun. A lot of moms I know say that it was a full two years. So I guess I'm really excited about Fall 2010 or maybe early 2011.

Knowing the way I am, working some exercise back into my schedule would probably fix nearly everything. So far I don't see any realistic way that this will happen (outside of that whole fantasy "oh, I'll jog when the baby's sleeping, and get a double jogger to walk BOTH kids to the daycare...maybe e-baby will actually stay in the jogger if there's a baby brother next to her" -- you know, the fantasy world where everything can be made to work just right).

I haven't given up on being able to get my workouts going again after the baby is born, but I don't have a plan right now that I think will actually be workable. Hopefully something will come to me by March or April.