Happy Birthday, Martikins!

Little Marti is 5 years old today.* I think this means that I can no longer blame bad behavior on her youth.

As bad as she can be sometimes, she makes up for it by having the biggest heart and the most love for her humans as pugly possible. As I write this, she sits on my lap, resting her head on my arm. Yes, it makes typing take twice as long, but I can't bear to make her move.


We may have a new member of the family, but Marti says the more the merrier. And Marti will squirrel her way into any situation. No really—any situation. This is my view when I'm feeding Avery.

We took advantage of the beautiful weather today and went for a walk. I've got my hands full. Especially when I have to pick up poo.


Here she is, hitting the books. I hope one of these covers pug obedience.


Self Portrait: The Pug and Baby Wrangler.


*I had joked that if Avery went past her due date, she and Marti could share a birthday. As it is, they don't even share a birth month.

One Month Later

It's been a month since Avery arrived and we're adjusting to life with the little girl. Kitchen floors have been completed, appliances are now installed, and we're able to live a little more like humans. As human as one can be without sleep, anyway.

I won't say that I can't remember what life was like before Avery. Because I do. Lots more sleep. A lot more relaxation (although I didn't know it then). Quicker trips outside of the house. But life since her arrival? Lots more bodily fluids. Lots more laundry. Lots more laughs. And a lot more love. How can your heart not just explode when you look at this face?

The bodily fluids? Boy, you better watch out. Projectile poo can shoot crazy distances. And the girl has a penchant for what I call "free peeing," her preference for peeing as soon as the diaper comes off. This necessitates many an outfit change and many loads washing her changing table pad covers. I never knew that such a little person could create so much dirty laundry.

Avery also has a thing for making funny faces. We are going to have the ammo for a lengthy blooper reel someday. Take this cross-eyed glare, for example.

For the first two weeks of her life, Avery hardly made a peep. I don't think she officially cried until well past the 2.5-week mark. But she finally found her voice. And sometimes I think she's trying to reach Child Protective Services without picking up the phone.

Luckily, she's easily comforted. While she sometimes lets out a random, quick blood-curdling scream before passing back out a split second later, usually her cries are easily figured out. A diaper change, a meal or a warm snuggle is all it takes to make her happy. Or some daddy/daughter time.


Avery also makes friends easily. Like her bosom buddy, Minnie Mouse.


And Marti.


The Marti adjustment has been fun to watch. I knew Marti would be great with the new addition, and I was right. She seems to know that Avery is very important, and while Marti would like a little bit more attention, she takes being a big sister very seriously. The pug has always greeted visitors with a stuffed animal in her mouth. When Alan comes home, she frantically looks around for a stuffed toy to show off. Now, when Avery makes any sort of peep, Marti looks around for a stuffed animal and takes it to her. It's pretty adorable. Just wait until Marti discovers that Avery drops Cheerios and other yummy foodstuffs.

Marti Finds a Binky

I can pretty much bet that Marti is up to no good when she disappears from my side for any length of time. Earlier today I went into the bedroom to find her soothing herself with a pacifier.

This isn't the first one she's gotten hold of, but it's the first one she's destroyed. The funny thing is that it was in the bassinet, meaning that she was brave enough to reach in and get it. Or jump in and get it. Luckily this pacifier is one that Avery hates—she makes a scritchy face and ejects it every time we even attempt to give it to her—so she wasn't too upset about its demise.

Avery's Arrival

Throughout my entire pregnancy, I had a feeling our little one would arrive early. Never mind the fact that most first-timers go past their due dates, I just had a gut feeling that our baby would show up before September 11. Never mind that people told me to add a week to my due date so that I wouldn't be disappointed when she didn't show. I just knew. Mother's intuition.

I, however, did not expect her to arrive five weeks early. And while I'd joked about starting kitchen renovations late in the pregnancy, I didn't honestly think the little squirt would show up while our kitchen was totally destroyed. Just goes to show—I'm not in charge.

With our kitchen taken apart—appliances in the dining room, no floors—Alan took off work Thursday and Friday to start the process of laying down the floors. We headed to the Depot to buy the backerboard and tiles.

The plan was to get the backerboard down and be ready to tile by the weekend. We were right on schedule when we took a detour to go appliance shopping on birthday Saturday. Our oven had the minor problem of burning your freaking hand off because the door didn't close properly and then we decided we needed a fridge as well. So we purchased appliances, making small talk about pregnancy and babies with a delivery driver at the store.

Because we hadn't arrived at the appliance store intending to buy a fridge, we bought a much-too-deep one and had to go back to the store to re-order. As we were walking in the store for the second time, the delivery driver asked when I was due. I said "September, I still have a few weeks" and he goes, "Nah...a few hours." When you know how the story ends, you know just how weird this comment was.

So Alan and I get home from appliance shopping. I'm in the kitchen, standing in this exact spot, and Alan is downstairs. I'm looking for squeaks in the floor; Alan is drilling to get rid of squeaks in the floor. Then...my water breaks. Only, I'm not totally sure it's my water breaking. Did I pee myself, perhaps? It's 4:30. Let's just see what happens.

What happens is that contractions start. And I'm slightly confused. Because the contractions are anywhere from 4 minutes to less than 3 minutes apart. And aren't they supposed to start really far apart? And wasn't I supposed to get Braxton Hicks contractions first? And isn't the baby supposed to wait until September? Or at least until the kitchen is done?

So while the contractions are frequent, they're also fairly mild. I'm bossing Alan around, making him clean up our disaster area a bit (in case parents come to town), making him organize the baby's room (because I'd moved furniture to hang stuff on the walls). I pack a bag for the hospital. All the while I'm thinking of what I learned in our (apparently worthless) childbirth classes: "Don't rush to the hospital. You have HOURS of labor to go through. Labor at home for as long as possible. It's not like the movies."*

So we're getting all of our stuff together when all of a sudden the contractions are like, "HEY! WE'RE NOT MESSING AROUND!" And I'm like "Shit, these contractions aren't messing around. Call the doctor." So Alan does and we head to the hospital.

Alan gets in the car. And I just stand next to the car with the door open. Gripping the roof of the car. Unable to get in because sitting in the car basically sounded like the worst thing in the world for my uterus to do at that point. Also, I was feeling like I had to push, which I smartly kept to myself. Alan coaxes me into the car for what is the most miserable 15-minute car ride ever. I wait until we're two stoplights from the hospital before I tell Alan that I feel like I need to push. He tells me "Don't push! Pull!"

We pull up to the hospital entrance, jump out of the car and head straight to labor and delivery. I feared that if we parked, I'd be delivering in the parking garage. We walk into L&D, Alan supporting me as I try to walk, and I say "I feel like I need to puuuush." The nurses look up from the nurses' station with surprised looks on their faces, ask for our last name and direct us to room 7.

As I enter lucky room 7, I'm stripping off my clothing because the need to push is undeniable at this point. No "Hi, nurse, nice to meet you." I'm like "This baby wants OUT!"

As I get on the bed, I'm thinking two things: 1) Please let me be ready to push because if not, I just made an embarrassing scene and 2) Please let me be ready to push because I cannot take hours more of this. Thankfully, I was indeed fully dilated**, so with half an hour of pushing with all of my might, Avery Anne arrived at 7:09 p.m. at 5 pounds, 15 ounces, and 18.25 inches long.

After the craziness of labor, my only concern was that the baby was healthy. So it took a minute for Alan and I to realize that we didn't even know the baby's gender. I was genuinely surprised when Alan announced "It's a girl!" I think I would have been surprised either way. And really, I was surprised to have a baby outside of my belly at that point in time.


Because she was so early, she earned herself a stay in the NICU, so she was there until she was discharged on Friday. She had an IV for a day, was hooked up to monitors and got to go under the lights for jaundice.


Luckily, we were able to stay in a room on the pediatric unit just down the hall from her, so that made the extended stay a little easier. I have never been so happy to head home.

Now that we're home, we're settling in, trying to get into a bit of a routine. Mostly we're just trying to get a bit of sleep and soak in every minute with our little girl. She's changed so much already. She's got my dimples, Alan's chin, crazy blonde hair, the superhero ability to sleep through anything like her dad and the habit of sleeping with her mouth wide open like her mom. She's perfect.


Also perfect? My wonderful husband. I couldn't have made it through that week without him. And not only is he proving to be an amazing support and wonderful father, but he also finished those damn floors. And they look awesome.


*We want our money back. IT IS EXACTLY LIKE THE MOVIES.

**My discharge form says that I arrived fully dilated and gave birth within 30 minutes of my arrival to the hospital.

The Opposite of Nesting

Alan and I have been improving our house since the day we moved in. Alan is the driving force behind the renovations and updates, the Home Depot trips and the power tool purchases. I participated fully at first, when my energy was high, my belly didn't get in the way, and the projects involved paint brushes.

But then power tools and pot bellies entered the picture. My belly grew as projects grew increasingly more complex. I'm as helpful as I can be, but much to Alan's chagrin, I'm not quite as agile as I once was.

The lack of help from me hasn't stopped Alan from charging ahead on projects though. And I'm fully supportive because I know that once the baby is here, it's going to be a lot more difficult to carve out the time and energy for big home improvements.

Besides dealing with hidden surprises like The Plurb, and this stenciled mural, which greets us every day as we enter the house from our side entrance...

...or head to the basement...


...we're also dealing with real eyesores, like dirty, nasty linoleum that is coming up at the edges around the kitchen. So we've been looking at floor tiles, talking to the tiling guys, buying tiling books.

And we decided that now was the time to tile our kitchen. Nay, destroy our kitchen. Now, when we're less than six weeks away from our due date. Now, when I can't bend to help Alan with flooring whatsoever. Now.

But we don't turn away from a challenge or a deadline. We turn up our doing-dials and GO GO GO.


After pulling up some linoleum, we discovered that we have hardwood floors in the kitchen. Um, yay! A home improver's dream come true! We had momentary fantasies of throwing out the tiling books and refinishing the hardwoods. Until we dug down a little further and discovered that only the edges of the hardwoods could actually be called "hardwood floors." Because the rest? Completely BLACK. Black...like tar? And something had been nailed over them. And that something had been pulled up. Leaving nails with remnants of whatever material it was under the nails. Everywhere. All over the black hardwoods.

So tiling it is! And so the destruction begins.


I really was reading What to Expect When You're Expecting when Alan snapped this picture. He told me to look concerned as I surveyed his handiwork. I didn't have to try too hard. Marti is also concerned.

You'd think this would be giving me panic attacks, but the funny thing is that I was most apprehensive before the project started. I guess I now see all of the chaos as progress.

The stove, refrigerator and dishwasher are all now in the dining room. The floors are completely ripped up. The tile has been decided. Now all that's left is to rebuild. And eat out every day for a week or so. (Please let it be a week or so.)

Ghetto Fabulous

Thank goodness Alan and I invested in our new-to-us Honda Accord earlier this year. We knew we'd need a reliable vehicle, especially with a baby on the way, and we knew that the Saturn wasn't the young pup she once was. But the Saturn has been great for running errands and getting groceries during the day. Until the day Alan broke down.

He was basically shifting gears when the gear stick shifted no more. Went limp as a noodle. He was lucky to be in second gear when it happened because he managed to get it home, and we managed to get it to the shop. Where we were told it would be about $500 to fix.

Now $500 here and there to keep a car running is no biggie. Except when you're doing it so frequently that you might as well be making car payments for a car that's not all limpy-gimpy. And except when Alan's done a little online research and is convinced that it's much simpler than the mechanic has made it to be, meaning the mechanic wants to give us a gold tooth when we just need a cavity filled. So we told the mechanic to forget about it, and he told us that he could rig it to where we'd be able to get it home.

Using plastic cable ties, he was able to rig it so that we could get home. Which we did, with no problems. I could even go to the grocery store!

So I did.

And the plastic tie came loose. Leaving me at a stoplight in the middle lane of the busiest three-lane highway on crack by our house with a non-shifting gear stick.

Do you know how quickly your body reacts to stress? It's immediate. Because my hands were immediately shaking, and I was immediately wondering what the %@&#!@ I was going to do. And, by the way, how many New Jersey jerks would honk at a pregnant lady with a trunk full of groceries?

Luckily I didn't have to find out because as I sat at the stoplight, I slooowly tried to inch forward. It appeared that even though I couldn't shift, I, by a miracle of all miracles, was also in second gear. After waiting what seemed like an eternity for the light to change, the car slowly groaned forward, and I quickly booked it to the next available exit and took the remaining 3-minute drive home on side streets.

Remember how I called having a second car a luxury? Luxury this:


Will I still drive it once Alan gets the necessary part and replaces the console? You betcha. Will we get a second car seat base and take our first-born child for rides in the Saturn? I think it's safe to say our baby will be a Honda-only baby.

TGIT

Thank God it's Thursday. Or, more accurately: Thank God It's Not Yesterday Anymore. Yesterday was such a comedy of errors that I really felt like the world was messing with me.

A little background. Over the weekend, Alan and I decided to tackle the kitchen wallpaper. We had a three-day weekend and no major plans, so why not? As most of our home improvement projects go, there is always a little more to it than meets the eye. The wallpaper, miraculously, came up easily. But after pulling our first major piece of wallpaper off, we came across an ominous note: Beware of the Plurb.

Oh no. What was the Plurb?

Was it this?

Nope, that's not the Plurb. As soon as I sprayed a littler farther over, I discovered the Plurb, a lovely vegetable-type person with caveman feet and eyes, dating back to March 20, 1965:


The Plurb turned out to be the least of our problems. Once the wallpaper was gone, it was a terrifying scene. The walls are made of some parts plaster, some parts cracks, and some parts we have no idea as the material is unlike any other I've ever seen. However, we didn't let the Plurb or any of that scare us, we plugged along, and Alan spent a day sanding to get the walls somewhat ready to repair and prime.

The sanding? Got plaster dust into almost every single kitchen cabinet, even though we put up plastic. So I've spent the last three days cleaning every single dish in the house. And every utensil. And every appliance.

So all of this leads up to yesterday, day three of cleaning the kitchen to get it into a usable state again. Add in record-breaking heat and humidity and pregnancy hormones, and you might have some sort of idea of my mental state yesterday.

So yesterday. I had to pay an E-Z Pass toll by check because our pass didn't get picked up recently. To do that, I needed our account number. I tried to log in online to get it, but I got locked out after the PIN number didn't work three times. So I call. She confirms that the PIN I am using is correct, but she can't give me the account number. So I have to go outside and get my E-Z Pass from the car to log in. No big deal really, but cue first mini-meltdown. Had I known what the rest of the day had in store, I would have punched myself and said to save it for later.

Later, I'm downstairs finishing up cleaning the kitchen. A nearly fully bottle of kitchen cleaner is on top of the refrigerator. Open fridge, bottle falls to the ground and breaks the nozzle. Must now wait until I have an empty bottle or sprayer nozzle to be able to use cleaner.

Head downstairs to do some laundry. I'd put a brand-new bottle of laundry detergent at the bottom of the laundry hamper so I'd remember to take it downstairs. Of course I forgot it was there, so I dump it out on the laundry room floor. When I pick up the container, liquid soap is going everywhere. So I discover the crack and lay the bottle on the dryer so that I can transfer it to the old bottle once it's empty.

Appointment with Comcast is supposed to take place between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. This appointment window comes and goes with a Comcast no-show. Annoying. I call. Comcast says someone will be calling me immediately. No one does.

I head out to the car to toss in the blanket and three pillows Alan and I need to take to our childbirth class. Discover cream cheese in the trunk from yesterday's trip to the grocery store. Steaming hot.

Alan calls as he's leaving work. "Oh shit. The car is broken."

We hang up. Mini-meltdown no more, sobs instead. My hair tie snaps in half just to punctuate the event.

Alan drives the whole way home in second gear.

I shower quickly because I'm a sweaty mess. Get out, get dressed. Comcast guys show up. "I can't do the appointment today," I say. "May we ask why?" "BECAUSE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AT 3 AND IT'S NOW 6 AND I HAVE PLACES TO BE." Jerks.

Childbirth class. Uneventful, except that we switched locations and had to walk a mile to find the classroom and then got lost in the parking garage on the way back to our car.

Get home. Go downstairs to put laundry in the dryer. Notice a whole lot of laundry soap on the dryer. Turns out the detergent also had a hole in the lid, so turning the bottle on its side just caused it to leak out of the other hole. I wipe up soap, Alan comes down and helps after he realizes it shouldn't take 10 minutes for me to transfer laundry.

I go to bed so the day will end.