Smooth

This morning, Dr. J stepped back a little too quickly and almost knocked me and my decaf coffee over. The following then took place.

Dr. J: Whoa Mona! (because we have conversations by talking to the cat) I nearly knocked over a bus!!

Me: [stopped in place, slowly turned, furrowed my eyebrows]

Dr. J: [blink, blink]

Me: [stare]

Dr. J: I mean because you are carrying around two babies. [gulp]

Me: [blink, blink]

Dr. J: [smiling innocently] A smartcar??

Rollin, Rollin ... Rollin ...

It's hard to even think of a day of my childhood without my father singing the theme song to Rawhide (complete with the hi-yaw! and the whip sound). Right now, I can hear him singing it all the way from Hachie.

National Board Certification Portfolio Submission - check.

National Board Certification Test - check. (Passing score? Not so definite, we will see)

Offer on the sale of our house - check. (please, please let this work out!!)


Which means that pretty much everything that was out of our control has a check by it and we are about to be on a massive crunch to complete the finding of a house, purchasing, moving in, and finally ... getting ready for babies!!!

How many weeks have we until they arrive? 12 at MOST.

Gulp. .... and yay!!!

Hello 35!

A few days ago, I noticed a white (not grey) hair in the middle of Dr. J's chest.

Dummmm .... dum, dum, dum .... DUMMMMMMMMMMMM!

After realizing that it was not, in fact, a string, he claimed to be wearing it with pride ... except that he covered it immediately and won't let me see it again. I think whitey will get special recognition on Dr. J's 35th birthday this year.

Bada Boom, Bada Bing!

What a wonderful thing!

We had a 24 week sonogram today and thank everyone so much for their prayers. Both Benjamin and Lucas are looking good (and devlishly handsome, I presume) ... both have normal amounts of fluid in their brains and are measuring 1 lb 8 oz (Lucas), and 1 lb, 10 oz (Benjamin) ... which is right at the 50th and 58th percentiles. Oh to be so normal!

It's a good thing they didn't measure the nose or eyebrow percentile ... their father has doomed them to score well above average there. As long as they get his pigment along with it, I'll just teach them proper brow grooming early on.

The sonogram operator (I know there is a formal name for this) surprised us by giving us a 4d image of Benjamin's face. He looks strikingly like his father (see paragraph 2) and eerily like his Uncle Austin. Witness:

I'm completely preoccupied with trying to pronounce eerily right now. Don't look at it too long either, or you'll want to play scrabble.

Mambo

To the relief of my Colombian husband, these boys are already working on their Latin dances. Unfortunately for this American wife, their learning is at the expense of my bladder and ribs. Where are the days when they just randomly kicked?

We get to see the boys again on Tuesday - please pray for the health of both Benjamin and Lucas!

Superstar of the Week

This probably breaks every rule of effective superstition, but I'm gonna gamble. After what has been an unrelenting 23 week streak of steadily worsening heartburn, I've had three days of relief. My doctor finally told me I could take Zantac and oh what a relief it is (I definitely had a jr. High cheerleading cheer with those very words ... minus Zantac of course).

I get to cap off my week of shopping, eating (finally!) and leisure at the parents house with a baby shower today that I'm super excited about because .... who doesn't love parties with delicious food and punch???

I'd also like to point out that I'm completely in favor of squads of middle schoolers walking behind me and cheering me on. Especially about the lack of vomiting and heartburn.

Pigment-ly Challenged

Truly, life can be so unfair. I emerge from the winter months with pinkish blue blotchy skin that looks as though I've been infected by January. The first few days of sunlight force out all the acne that's been stuffed down into clogged pores for 4 months. My skin literally aches for Vitamin E.

On the other hand, Dr. J delivered some boxes to the post office on Wednesday and came home looking like he'd been on a Caribbean Cruise.

Cause for multiple exclamation points

I.

AM.


DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




I've decided to watch television tomorrow in the main office during my planning period to celebrate. In the meantime, I'm gonna go have a milkshake.

Re-entrance to Society is Near

I am almost dizzy with excitement. Today should be my last day of writing and then hopefully I can even get this edited today as well. I honestly haven't seen anyone but Dr. J, Mona and Ashley in three weeks.

I am so throwing myself a party ... and getting a pedicure ... and getting my hair done. The only good thing about having to do all this so quickly is that it is due before Spring Break, so I can actually take a break next week when I go to Dallas and hit the Gymboree Outlet (and Off Fifth Ave for me, but don't tell Dr. J).

I am totally going to pee myself.

To Ivanka: My iPhone

If I could remember what a Haiku was, this would be a totally appropriate moment for one. Out of respect to those of you that actually know the syllabic requirements, I'll not dare. In any case...

Ivanka, when I spent those 3 hours today thinking you had been stolen, I barely had the will to live. Thankfully, you were on "silent" in my bookbag ... where I put you, even though I can't remember doing it. I wish I hadn't made myself late to the doctor looking for you. I think he was pretty unhappy with me.

I measured 24 cm today which for singleton pregnancies is supposed to go along with the number of weeks you are pregnant. I'm 20 weeks and 24 cm ... so it looks like Benjamin and Lucas are growing steadily.

Oh yeah, we decided on names :) Benjamin Louis and Joe Lucas. Joe is after my dad and Louis is after Dr. J's granddad. But they'll be called Benjamin and Lucas.

Potty Training Prof. McGonagal

I'm oddly intrigued by this idea, mostly just to see if it really works.

Please indulge yourself in Mingus' Cat Toilet Training Program

The only problem is that Mona is extremely trained, do I really want to mess up a good thing? She did however, vomit all over the office for no apparent reason this morning. She's definitely seen me make it to the toilet, why can't give that a go?

And the results are ...

Well before we tell you the gender, there is a prayer request for one of the babies. Both had all thier appropriate parts and measured appropriately. One baby has a little bit too much fluid in the brain. Not a lot too much, a little, but enough they were concerned and wanted to make us aware. They will check again in 6 weeks and my prayer is that everything will look normal with the fluid at that time. I don't really want to go into a guessing game of what ifs yet, we will wait till the next sonogram.

After the nurse told us the gender my first thought was that I already have one Dallas Cowboy onesie and that should get us through football season, but I will need one more. At least I don't have to worry about hunting down cowboy cheerleader uniforms.

My dad is gonna have these guys welding in no time.

The Surge

In my last post I referred to the fact that I had a months less time to complete a huge amount of work than I thought. This means that it all has to happen in the next few weeks along with house selling, house hunting, parental visit and of course, work and life.

This weekend has been declared the surge and by tomorrow afternoon, I intend to have half of all the writing done that needs to be done. Which amounts to about 25 pages of writing. Of course, I have called in reinforcements for help with editing and so far have three offers. Ok, so offers and a plea. Karolina, you may be hearing from me soon.

And so goes ... my pre-oscar watching activity.

Sayonara. For now, at least

I do promise to post on Monday when we find out the genders. I have a SEVERE amount of work to complete in my very near future and thought I had until the end of April to do it, but as it turns out, I was off by a month. Leaving me THREE WEEKS to finish the work.

Let's hope I come home rested every day from work and be ready to ... well ... work more. UGH.

That combined with the house going on the market this week, house hunting, parents coming into town. YIKES!

Ricky and Lucy

The long awaited sonogram photos from last week:

This photo shows the baby on the right (head is to the left, big tummy on the right, blob underneath). Now that the Septum has been located, doc says that the baby on the left will stay on the left and the baby on the right will stay on the right. To the happiness of my friend who has been dying for me to name the embryos, they are now referred to as Ricky (right) and Lucy (left). Pea, popcorn, bean, etc, just weren't really us. Ricky and Lucy are much more tasteful.

I can definitely feel them now. The Ricardos seem to take turns poking and prodding. In these photos, Ricky is sitting on top of Lucy's butt (and is waiving ... apparently it's pretty awesome to be the topmost embryo). Apparently they can switch the up/down, but not the left right. And so goes the first sibling rivalry. Although I'm not sure whether it's more desirable to be up or down.

Anyway, Lucy is laying underneath Ricky's butt in this photo. Lucy isn't waiving and this profile isn't as clear, but Lucy was still very jumpy during the photo shoot.


Dr. J had some difficulty with the scanner at his work, so this took longer than intended. Sorry mom. And Dad and everyone else that's been "patient".

One more week and we'll find out the gender(s)!! Ricky and Lucy will remain their reference until they get official names, which we haven't worked on yet ... so it'll probably be a while.

Tough Luck Ladies! He's taken.

This weekend, in doing the final preparations to get the house on the market, I asked Dr. J to find something to do with all the random rods and metal scraps that had found their way to the bottom of the office closet. This closet holds pretty random stuff; games, potting soil, folding chairs, pet supplies, vacuum, and of course those random bits of scrap metal. After much trauma to his psyche, Dr. J disposed of the random bits of scrap metal ... we went through a short marital argument that if you can't remember why we have them, we aren't putting them in to storage, etc.

I went on to stage the house, placing decor and tidying and cleaning. At the end of the day, I went to put something up in the closet and noticed that Dr. J had "staged" the office closet as well.

Witness:


The idea behind staging is to show the future owners how they could use the space, what they could place where. Clearly we are demonstrating that they, too, could use this as a vacuum / miniature tripod closet. Enough space, in fact, to keep their tripod open in case they have an emergency photo op.

I hope there is enough room at the next house for a Tripod Closet.

The Septum

Ok so I teach high school, so I can't resist.

A Septum is a ...
a. part of a toilet that "stores" your solid excretions (also something my father fell into when he was a lad)
b. a line of tissue that separates the food supply of multiples in utero
c. a portable tranquilizer that can be used in cases of extreme nausea (e.g., an overrated writer with a tendency towards the "extreme true-life and therefore sad" romance makes a movie)
d. a phrase heard in the country when choosing all but one boy (get it? everyone 'cept him??)

Too much fun. You should see my physics test from today.

The correct answer is B! This was much case for concern as of late because the doctors could not find the Septum at our last visit. Yesterday we had a 16 week sonogram specifically to look for it and there is was! Right down the middle. Hooray!! The babies looked like they were out at recess, all flipping around for the cameras and whatnot. I have some very cool photographs that has a great profile shot and perfect little hands to boot, perhaps my baby daddy will remember to scan them tomorrow.


4 Days to Dear John. Peace!

16 Weeks and Counting!

The good news should be that the sickness has passed, unfortunately it has just been masked by the cold / cough that Dr. J gave me. I expect to make a massive online announcement when I finally see 9:30 pm again and/or not have heartburn for the last 3 hours of my awake time.

I'm trying to make the most of these last moments of sustaining a relationship with my ankles and toes. In celebration of their visibility, I shaved below the knee and painted my toes. Some people would call this good hygiene, but I'm pretty sure I've never shaved in February before. This was also prompted by my friend showing off her toenail polish remnants in public yesterday. She was completely horrified. I of course, do that all the time, should I have shame?

I've always been a flip flop girl to the point that it causes me physical pain to wear actual shoes once its more than 60 degrees out. Without batting an eyelash, I intend to play up the whole pregnant-with-twins thing and wear shoes of my choosing for the rest of the school year. I've even got my eye on those leather Reefs I passed up last year.


Countdown to Dear John: 6 days. Get 'em!

I cannot be trusted

Back in the day, I used to work in front of a computer. It was always difficult to not be distracted by things like reading news, gossip, blogs and the like on the internet. The amount of "interesting" content out there is astounding.

Today I told myself I'd work for a few hours so I could go and see a movie this afternoon. I desperately need to work and truly have no excuse not to but I found one anyway! Somehow I convinced myself that I was way behind in the musing and goings-on of several of my friends and now I can at least say I am caught up.

My accomplished "work" consisted of
1. I discovered the sound is working on the computer (aka I couldn't watch a you tube video)
2. our external hard drive is not communicating properly (aka i couldn't upload some old photos)
3. We did at least meet with a Realtor about listing the house. Step 1. Got a few more phone calls that need to take place in the next few weeks, hopefully we'll be on the market in a couple weeks at the latest!!

Not much point in pretending to be productive now. I don't know how anyone could work from home.

Spreading the love

Anyone that know me well knows that I hate things that are sappy and ridiculously sentimental. In spite of this, I have agreed to go and see Dear John with friends in a couple weeks. With any luck, the reviews will be so bad that the theater manager will pull it and the producer will burn all the reels over a glass of red wine.

Just kidding Shelley, I'm sure it's perfection.

And today I spent most of the day by myself and it really was a nice day. I'm finally feeling better and I watched a
movie on the couch. In spite of myself, I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to blog some very sappy ode to my friends. I think this would be the hormonal equivalent of drunk dialing, I'm sure to regret that in a new light. People might start giving me Nicholas sparks book recommendations and the like.

In any case, I hope that everyone is lucky enough to have a friend that mispronounces half of the English language. It keeps things very fun and interesting and makes me feel like I have a sufficient vocabulary.

And this isn't Dr. J either. He mispronounces things in several languages.