I Think I Need More Milkshakes

OK, first for a little fun, one of my favorite songs: The Milkshake Song, by Angry Salad

I've never had trouble gaining weight before, that's for sure!!  Weight has always been a struggle for me, I've always been, or at least felt like, The Fat Girl.  When I had been so unhappy in my former marriage, I had gained 50 pounds (that, thank goodness, I lost in 2012).  I've been worried all through this pregnancy about not gaining too much weight, especially since there's a family history of diabetes and it started in my mom when she had GD with my younger brother. 

My goal is to end up at 15 pounds over my start weight.  My midwife said that with my weight, her goal for me was 20-25 pounds, but she didn't object to me aiming for 15 instead.  Besides, if I aim for 15 and gain more than I had planned, then I still end up around my midwife's goal, whereas if I aim for her goal and miss, I'm gaining too much weight.

But now I'm at 22 1/2 weeks and I'm still below my start weight by a couple pounds. I had lost 15 during the first trimester from being so sick, and I still haven't gained all of it back now that I can eat again.  Penguin's (no, we still don't have a name for him yet) been measuring on track at each appointment, but I want to make sure he keeps growing like he needs to.  I've been bouncing back and forth within a couple of pounds for the past couple weeks.  This past week I've been fighting off a nasty cold, and it's been messing with my appetite.  I realized at 5:00 this evening as I woke up from a nap that all I had had today was a Fiber One bar and three cookies. 

So yeah, I think I need more milkshakes.  I think I can handle that.

Emotionally Drained

I know, I haven't written in what feels like forever.  I've been constantly tired and drained lately, and all of my energy has been going to work, volunteer stuff I'm committed to, and to the Bears.  I'll write an update on Penguin later, but he is doing fine.  Yes, he, but we'll get into that later.  For now, I need to talk about my mom.

If you may remember, I said one of the last time I wrote about my mom needing a biopsy.  Well, there was good news and bad news from it.  The good news is that it does not seem to be spreading within her body and that it is of the squamous cells, which is a type that generally does not spread to other parts of the body. 

The bad news is that it is definitely cancer and that it is growing out from her body, badly.  I went to her oncologist appointment yesterday since Bear and I were back home for a couple days, and I was there when she showed it to the doctor, and it was bad to see.  It wasn't that I was seeing my mom's equipment, it's that it's in *really* bad shape.  To top it off, she's down to 108 pounds even before starting the chemo and radiation.

She's starting next week with radiation 5 days a week for 7 weeks, with chemo one day a week as a booster to augment the effect of the radiation.  They're also adding morphine to her pain management.  Yeah, I'm scared.

It's killing me not to be home with her through this, to be 700 miles away.  I don't know what I'd be doing without Bear, though.  I was able to get through yesterday's appointment and through church on Sunday without crying until after I was away from her only because I had him for support.  And I also don't know what I'd be doing if not for my church family.  One of the women at church, who is just like my mom in personality, has the freedom right now and has offered to drive Mom for appointments, despite them being an hour away.  And the church has said that they will be her backup and help out with anything she can't do.  This church has been our home and our family since I was about 2.  I'd trust them with anything, and I feel safe with Mom being in their hands.  But I still should be there.

The Energizer J Keeps Growing and Growing and Growing and...

Not much in weight, fortunately.  I am starting to gain a little weight back, but at a reasonable weight...I've been hovering within 2 pounds this week that's up 2-4 pounds from before Thanksgiving.  I can handle that.  Even with the weight I lost in the first trimester, I'm trying to be VERY careful about how much I gain because I know I'm starting out overweight and there's a family history of diabetes on my mom's side getting worse every generation.  I was pleasantly surprised, though, that my midwife said I don't fall into the high risk category to be tested for GD before 24 weeks!!  She also gave me more leeway than I had been giving myself in how much weight I gain.  I've been aiming for only 15 pounds over my original weight, and she said I would be fine with 20-25.  She didn't tell me that 15 was too little, though, so I'm still going to aim for 15 so that if I'm off from that I still hopefully end up in the 20-25 pound range.

I am growing and changing more in clothes, though.  I still don't think I'm really showing, but at the same time, I don't know how much the BeBand is going to help with my current pants over time.  I was wearing my main pair of jeans on Saturday with the BeBand and I realized that when I pulled them up all the way, they were tight below where the zipper ended and thus below where the BeBand could help.  So we'll be starting to shop for maternity clothes in the next week or so.  Bear did at least find out about a maternity consignment store nearby, so we're going to try there first.

Not much of any more news about my mom.  She doesn't have insurance, so she's applied for a charity that has a cardiologist (since the one she's getting treatment from now does not) so she can try to get cleared for the biopsy. 

Stunned and in Denial

No, it's not Penguin, Penguin's fine.  It's my mom.  I talked to her last night, and it turns out she's kinda been avoiding me because she had news she didn't want to tell me.  There's a medical problem that I've known about that had seemed to be stable for several years.  Now, the doctors are using the C word.  But they don't know for sure.  They need to do a biopsy to see.  But they can't do the biopsy yet because Mom isn't cleared for surgery.  Apparently, on top of everything else, she has an enlarged heart, and because of that, they can't clear her for surgery.  When she first went in about this problem, the doctors gave her Tramodol.  For those who aren't familiar, it's a nonaddictive lightweight pain medication.  As of earlier this week, she's now on oxys every 4 hours.  That scares me.  I'm kinda bouncing back and forth between scared and not feeling like it's real.  I know people lose their parents at this age or well before, but even though I know her health hasn't been great, I didn't expect this.

Skating Along Towards Winter

I haven't had the energy to post much of anything lately!  Even though I'm out of the first trimester now, I still feel tired all the time and like all my energy is drained by work.  It seems I've finally turned a corner on nausea over the weekend and was able to eat well on my birthday.  Good thing, since Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays!  We had our 15 week appointment today, and Penguin is going strong, with a heartbeat about 140 bpm.  Next appointment is December 26, and for our Christmas present, we get the gender reveal if Penguin wants to cooperate!

The other big thing has been the wedding.  We had the public wedding on November 17.  It was rainy, but it held off to a drizzle for the ceremony, good thing since it was an outdoor ceremony!  Sister Bear (my friend Katie suggested that the kids need blog names, and suggested Brother Bear and Sister Bear.  Brother Bear is older, and there is a Baby Bear in the books, so, sold!) hadn't been too keen on the idea of an outdoor wedding, but I didn't really know how to tell her it couldn't be in the church because Mommy and Daddy are Catholic and divorced.

Oh, yeah, and we meet with the head priest at the church on Friday about getting both of our marriages annulled so we can get married as far as the Church is concerned.  Mine should actually be easy, since The Ex and I could not have children without means that the Church deems unacceptable.  We'll see about Bear's.

Oh, and I forgot to tell y'all how telling The Ex went.  It actually went well!  He said that he was happy for me, and it didn't actually seem like "let me just say something nice to get her off the phone," because then we ended up chatting for an hour more.  This from the person that said he didn't want any more contact with me after we got engaged.  Whatever, I'll take it and go with the flow.  I'm just relieved that it wasn't painful.

Wishing I Still Had My Fat Pants

Today was the first time I had to unbutton my jeans and go around with them that way (with my shirt pulled down, and Bear suggested I tie my fleece around my waist to keep it all together).  I didn't keep much of anything as I lost 50 pounds in 2012 because I was so proud of myself for losing the weight and didn't intend to ever need the larger clothes again.  But now I wish I had kept more of it so that I had more transition clothes for before I'm ready for maternity clothes (or able to afford maternity clothes).  I might need to get one of those bands to hold unbuttoned pants up.  I did have gas, so I don't know how well the pants will fit when I don't, but they did feel kinda tight on Saturday, when I didn't have gas, so maybe it was more than just gas, maybe I am starting to actually show a teensy tiny bit or something crazy like that.

So now I'm looking at maternity clothes on Target and Wal-Mart's websites.  I thought I'd never have a reason to do that.  Wow.

Sharing the News

We told the younger child this week while they were with us.  I hadn't thought we'd be able to keep the secret until the wedding, not with the older one knowing and being so excited about it.  And the way ended up being somewhat paved by the 6-year-old herself while I had her alone for the weekend.  One of Bear's concerns was that she had not yet learned that people could have a baby without being married.  But she ended up asking me exactly that over the weekend.  And not because she suspected I was!  She asked because "well, I want to be able to have kids someday, but I don't ever want to get married!"  So we ended up getting into people having kids together without getting married, people using a friend to "provide the guy part," and going to a doctor "to get the guy part."

The kids are both thrilled and excited, and they keep asking if I'm ok and if Penguin is.  When we saw them yesterday along with their mother, the younger one said goodbye to Penguin too when they left.  I felt kinda bad for their mother with that.  But not as bad as I would have if their mother hadn't been pumping the younger one for information over the phone about the wedding and about Penguin.

Now for the next big hurdle: The Ex.  I'm scared to tell him, scared of him never wanting to speak to me again and thus completely cutting me off from contact with MY cats that I let him have.  He already said because I got engaged to Bear that he doesn't want contact and asked me to step back from an event we had been running together (that I had been getting needed income from but that I wouldn't be able to do next year because of Penguin anyway), but he was willing to still allow some sort of contact with the cats.  I have one friend that is also friends with him that sends me pics and updates when she visits him, but I don't want to put pressure on her to be the Official Cat News-Bearer.  But also, The Ex was an ass to her over the weekend because he had a date that didn't go well and she was happy at an event they were both at with her new boyfriend.  So on the heels of that, I'm even more nervous than I had been.  But I feel like I need to tell him before the wedding, since the kids and their mother know and since we're starting to tell more people, even if we're not making the official announcement until closer to Christmas.

So yeah, we'll see how this goes.

Still Standing

Penguin still has a heartbeat is measuring right on track, and they haven't been able to identify any reason for the sporadic spotting, although Bear and I are supposed to abstain until I go two weeks without spotting.  Um, yeah, about that....

Penguin was waving his or her hand in front of his or her face during the ultrasound, it was so cute!  We wouldn't have actually gotten another ultrasound until 20 weeks, just heard the heartbeat in the exam room, but someone had coded today's appointment in the scheduler as a "confirm pregnancy" appointment instead of a normal monitoring appointment, so we got lucky.

We did have to tell the 9-year-old and bring him with us to the appointment.  Apparently their school says kids can't come back after being sick until at least 24 hours after they throw up, and he hadn't kept lunch down the previous day, so we had to go back and get him right after dropping him off and dropping off their costumes at their mothers. (They did a little trick or treating with her and then came over to do it with us since it was our day with them.)  He was excited and happy, though he did ask Bear whether Bear would still love him and his sister the most.  However, later he expressed some concerns to Bear, especially about how it would be crowded and where Penguin would sleep (it's a two-bedroom apartment, so he already shares a room with his sister).  He also said it felt really fast, which is something I've been worried about.  We're not telling the 6-year-old yet.  As part of The Talk, the 9-year-old has gotten the "sometimes people aren't married when they have a baby" part.  The 6-year-old has not gotten that part yet, and so we're still going to try to hold off on telling her until after the wedding.

I did tonight have the first crash meeting of baby brain and pregnancy clumsiness.  I've got the 6-year-old on my own all weekend because Bear is taking the 9-year-old on a Cub Scout campout.  Families are welcome (and I really wanted to go because it's on a ship!!) but the 6-year-old has decided she no longer likes campouts (or anything where she could get dirty except cooking), so we're staying home.  I was making dinner, and as I was draining something, the hot water splashed out of the sink and onto my stomach.  I could have more easily gotten my shirt away from my skin, but it also splashed onto the waistband of my skirt, so the hot water was on there for a good minute before I could get it away from my skin.  I've got 2 nice lines of burns on my tummy now that the initial redness has faded, and there's a small blister on the top line.  I've been a first aider long enough to know what to do for burns, and I'm doing it, but I feel really dumb.  Maybe it's a good thing that on the night I didn't make the dinner I made tonight, I was thinking of ordering pizza since we have a coupon.  Apparently I can't be trusted in the kitchen!  I'm also really glad that my stomach still looks just fat instead of pregnant since I had to walk around with it hanging out while I held a cold wet washcloth on it.  I'm very glad I wasn't hurt worse while Bear is 5 1/2 hours away.

Updatish

I know I've been a bad blogger.  I've been so tired that I haven't been able to manage anything more than keeping up to date (kinda) with work paperwork.  I want to go to sleep at 8 or 9 every night, but I still have a lot of work to do. 

My next appointment is tomorrow morning.  I don't think I'm going to be able to take a deep breath until I'm in the sonogram room with a good result.  Almost everyone else that I've been close to weeks-wise in this journey has lost their baby.  Two other friends (one real life and one bloggy) and I are the last ones standing that I know of.  I think I'm still pregnant.  I'm still queasy and gassy and my hips and lower back keep hurting and I'm SO tired and my breasts are still sensitive.  Oh, yeah, and Bear could tell you that I'm moody as hell (although he's been VERY patient with me...I love this man!!!)  But I can't get past the feeling that tomorrow we'll go in there and there will be no heartbeat and that I'm only still having symptoms because the hormone levels haven't dropped enough yet for them to go away.

I'll update after the appointment.

This could be interesting, though.  The 9-year-old has the flu, and we have them tonight.  (I haven't been able to get my flu shot yet, hoping I can get it tomorrow, so Bear has been having me keep away from him since he got his at work yesterday.)  If he can't go to school in the morning, we'll have to take him with us.  But we haven't told them yet.  Bear thought we'd have to a couple of times because of me being sick, but we've managed to avoid it thus far.  We're trying to wait until after the official wedding to tell them, give them one change to digest at a time.  If we were already married so far as they knew, it would be different, I wouldn't worry about when to tell them or telling them early, but that's a LOT of change to spring on them all at once.

Bear told his ex this morning, without the kids there, that we had had a positive home test and that we were going to the doctor.  His ex had asked if I was pregnant and if that's why we were getting married so quickly.  And my mom had told us both that we should tell his ex before we tell the kids so she's not blindsided when they come back to her house talking about it.  However, Bear did not say that the positive home test had been a month and a half ago.  :-p

So scared

My oldest friend, who had been infertile with her ex-husband, had gotten pregnant with her new boyfriend a little over a month before me.  She had told me before I was pregnant, or knew it, and while I was thrilled for her, I was also hurting, wondering if it would ever be me, especially since that made 2 close friends of mine who had been infertile with exes and then gotten pregnant quickly with boyfriends.  She told me that she knew it would happen to me too.  I told her last night about the Penguin...and found out that she lost her Meatball at 8 1/2 weeks, although she didn't find out until 11 weeks, which was 2 weeks ago.

I got online tonight to write this post, and I checked my reader.  Hidden Infertility and I started following each other in September's ICLW because we were within a week of each other.  She found out on Friday that she lost hers.

I'm so scared of losing the Penguin.  Before Mass on Sunday, I got a call from my ex and found out that he's decided since I got engaged that he no longer wants any contact and wants me to step back from the event that we had been working on together, including right after we separated and right as the divorce proceedings were happening, without any problem.  I also found out that some people who had been my friends have been really badmouthing me and Bear for being together.  My self-confidence is pretty shaky at the best of times, and I was feeling like I wasn't worthy of anything.  And then the homily was about sin and confession and all, and all I could think about was that my baby had been conceived in sin even as he or she was conceived in love, and I started being afraid of him or her being taken away as some sort of punishment.  I don't tend to believe that God works that way, but I was feeling like I deserved punishment, and that melded with the fear that had been lurking in the back of my mind anyway.

I whispered to Bear how I was feeling, and he told me that he had already been thinking about asking the priest to pray for me and the baby, if I was ok with it.  I told him it depended on how he felt about it, since it was much more his church, he's the one that really knows the priests, not me.  So after Mass, we sent the kids to go use the restroom (we're not telling them yet, although Bear almost changed that and told them over the weekend since I had been too nauseous to go along on a Freecycle pickup) and went to talk to the priest.  He prayed for me and the baby right there, but I'm still wondering what he thinks about it, since according to the Church, Bear's still married to his ex, and the priest doesn't even know about the courthouse wedding we had.

I'm getting scared about everything now.  I was less nauseous today, and instead of being happy about it, I was scared that maybe I was less nauseous because I've lost the baby and don't even know it yet.  I really wish I still had my appointment tomorrow, even as much as I know I need the money of working tomorrow afternoon, because I want to see the baby again and hear the heartbeat and know my baby is still alive inside me.

Tomorrow, I hit 8 weeks and therefore have a fetus.  Or do I?

Penguin is OK!!

I got in to see the midwife and have an ultrasound, and Penguin is just fine, and we got to hear the heartbeat!!  Not ectopic, not a blighted ovum or chemical pregnancy, amniotic sac looks good, measuring right on track, and has a heartbeat.  And we now have our first baby pictures.  I never thought I'd see an ultrasound for MY baby.

The midwife said I shouldn't have played kickball yesterday and put me off of exercise for a few days.  And far worse, no sex for four weeks, which feels like forever!!  Still, it's worth anything for a healthy Penguin.

Scared

I'm having a little bit of spotting.  I know it's normal to, but I'm still scared.  I called the doctor, and the doctors were across the street at the hospital, seeing patients during lunch.  The nurse said she'd beard the first doc to walk back in the door to ask if the wanted me to come in.  Bear had me cancel my 12:30 client and wants me to cancel my 2:00 client as well (my last 2 of the day).  I know I'm overreacting, especially since it's light, but damnit, I've never done this before and it's scary!

Progress and Stress

Sure, we can go with rhyming for our post titles, why not.

To start, Bear and I are going to the courthouse on Friday to get hitched for insurance purposes before doing the "real" wedding in mid-November.  His HR department has assured him that my insurance will be active Tuesday of next week or so.  Based on that, I called the OB/GYN recommended by a former coworker yesterday, and now I have an appointment for an ultrasound and initial appointment with a midwife on Wednesday, October 9, which is the day I hit 8 weeks.  Bear's taking the afternoon off work to come with me, and I feel better about having gotten it scheduled (and avoiding further lecturing from a friend of mine).

On the stress side, money.  Both money for having a "real" wedding while I'm struggling to get more hours at work and panicking today at the realization that because I'm a contractor instead of an employee at all 3 of my jobs, I get no maternity leave.  And there's not really a hope of that contractor status changing with any of them because of the way the mental health industry is structured in Georgia.  Basically all of the jobs are contract jobs so that the employers don't have to pay benefits or vacation or insurance or even a steady salary, it's all based on how many clients you can see.  I don't want to have to, say, give birth and then go back to work the next Monday, but I may have to, I may not have a choice! 

So yeah, I'm stressing.  Bear's telling me not to push so hard, especially since I pushed myself last night to the point where I was shaking and had blurry vision, trying to unpack and move more things around in the apartment.  But I have to push so hard, because if I want any kind of maternity leave, it's going to come form pushing myself so hard now so that I have money saved.

Holy Crap, Is This Week Real?

I got a nice little surprise on Tuesday!

No, Bear did not propose simply because of our BFP, although we are hurrying up the wedding because I'm currently uninsured.  He had ordered the ring a little bit ago, and we had expected it to be delivered anytime between September 11 and 20.  The timing sure works out, though!

Apparently the ring came in Monday, but he led me to believe that it hadn't come in Monday or Tuesday.  Tuesday afternoon, we were getting ready to go downtown to look at a couple possible wedding venues, and Bear asked me if I was ready to go and if I had everything I needed.  I said I did, and he said, "no, you don't," pulled out the box, and got down on one knee.  Apparently, I looked shocked!

Bear told the kids on Wednesday, and they asked to be ring bearer and flower girl!  The 6 year old also asked me if she could help me pick out a dress.  :-)

However, between the insurance issues and not trying to send the message of "we're getting married because I'm knocked up," especially to my Mormon stepfamily and to the people that are friends with both us and our exes, figuring out the timing of the wedding is tricky.  If we get married in the courthouse, we get married in a group with whoever else is doing it that day, like a bunch of Moonies.  NOT appealing.  But it would get the job done quickly, and we can get me on his insurance within a day or two of the ceremony.  If we wait, I can't make a prenatal appointment without going to a pregnancy crisis center or whatever, because it's just too expensive out of pocket.  If we do the courthouse Moonie thing and then have a real ceremony and reception later, which we may be looking at, there's the risk of me showing by then and it also then looks more like a shotgun wedding.

Also making it fun is that we can't have a church wedding without it being a random church.  Bear is Catholic, and his marriage, while not originally a Catholic marriage, later became one.  I've been confirmed Catholic, but I identify much more as Methodist.  However, I haven't really become involved in a Methodist church here because I've been going to Mass with him.  So even the one I've visited a couple of times would feel random.  At this point, our best bet seems to be a judge that's in the Knights of Columbus with Bear.

But I'm fretting and stressing about all this.  It's easy to say "screw em," but these are people whose opinions I care about.  And I already took flak from some of the Mormon cousins for getting divorced in the first place.  I don't want to be the cousin they look down on, like some of them do our other cousin who had a shotgun wedding.  And I don't want people thinking we only got married because we were stupid enough to get knocked up, when we have wanted to be married to each other for months and desperately want what we're now calling our little penguin.

Stunned

Bear was right.

I've never seen one of those before, at least not mine.  This pic doesn't include the first three I did because they were freebie ones that expired in 2011.  The directions were pictoral and didn't say how long to hold it in the urine or how long to wait.  They also had a second line on them, but I didn't trust it.  Bear wouldn't let me go to WalMart at 3:30 this morning when I realized those were all I had, so I used those three first and, when they were positive, put a lid on the container I was using while Bear and I raced to WalMart for fresh tests.  On this one, the second line turned blue immediately.  Forget "results in 2 minutes!"

I'm shocked  I didn't think I could get pregnant.  But I'm also really scared.  I know how many pregnancies end in miscarriage, and I'm so afraid.  I'm trying to relax and appreciate that at least right now, in this moment, I am pregnant.  But I am still really guarded, because I know it's a LONG road from here to a take home baby.

But I'm farther than I've ever been, farther than I thought possible.  And whatever happens, I have that now.

One final thing: a HUGE thank you to Lisa!!!  Your comment gave me comfort that I really needed when I looked at my phone before testing this morning.  So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then Again, Maybe Not

Um, I still don't even have any spotting.  And my intestines have gone back to normal.  I'm having some aching in my hips and sides that Bear thinks may be signs of my body starting to change.  He didn't want to tell me what he thought when I said where I was aching, because he didn't want to get my hopes up when he knew how hard I was trying to guard my heart.  I was wincing enough from them early in the evening that he had me lie down with the heating pad for a while.

I didn't test today, because at the last minute Bear had to leave earlier in the morning than I did and I didn't want to test without him.  But we both agreed to test tomorrow.  I started getting those aches I mentioned above in a different spot of my pelvis tonight and I showed him where a few minutes ago, and he just gave me a level look.  I looked back at him, and he told me I was shaking.  I went in for a hug and he told me I was trembling while he held me.

I'm so scared of being hurt.

Is anyone out there, listening?

Well, I Did Say I Wanted an Answer...

Thanks, Friday the 13th, and thanks, body.  I hate y'all very much too. 

I don't have spotting yet, but since I developed the IBS, I've noticed a change in that part of my body every month a day or two before AF comes.  That change came this morning.

How do I feel?  Crampy and grumpy.  Other than that, very proud of myself for locking down the possibility of hope as well as I did.  I learned my lesson well when I had been trying before with the ex.  It's nowhere near as bad as it would have been if I had allowed myself the weakness of real hope.  I was right.  Telling myself it's utterly impossible helps.

Late? What is this "late" you speak of?

AF was due on Wednesday.  I've been under a lot of stress lately, but this calendar year stress has been making it come a couple days early each month, not late.  I've been having some cramping, but I haven't been able to tell if it's PMS cramping or if it's from my IBS, since I regularly have cramping in the same areas from that.  No spotting of any type.

I'm sure AF is going to come any day.  Bear has hope, if nothing else because it would be funny as hell  if God made it happen this month, while I'm juggling 3 PT jobs trying to get enough hours to make ends meet.  He asked me this afternoon, prefacing it with an apology if I was offended by it, to take a prenatal vitamin.  (He had hidden the ones I came across from before, at my request.)  I wasn't offended by it, but I had him get it and bring it to me, because even though I know now where they are, dealing with the bottle just feels fraught to me.  But I took a vitamin, because I really ought to take a vitamin more often anyway, especially since I've been under a lot of stress and not eating that great.

(As a side note, one of my friends pointed out long ago that the word "fraught" really can just stand on its own.  As that friend said, things are always "fraught with danger" or "fraught with peril," nothing's ever "fraught with puppies" or anything like that.  So you can just say something is "fraught," and that suffices.)

I didn't test today, and I'm not testing tomorrow.  If I don't have anything by then, I'll test Saturday, but we have the kids today and tomorrow in the mornings.  I don't want to deal with the mechanics of testing or with the emotional response one way or another while they're here.

Aside from taking the vitamin Bear gave me, I'm not doing anything differently at this point.  I'm trying to drink a little less Diet Coke anyway, because I know I should, but I don't drink coffee.  I can't afford alcohol at this point!  So, nothing to do differently.

Well, except for check every time I need to go to the bathroom for spotting.  Including going when I just barely need to go, to check.  Because I don't want to mess up my underwear, so I want to get what Bear calls "toiletries" in place as soon as I have spotting.  That's why.  Really it is.

Edited to add: Bear and I just realized that today is Friday the 13th.  Well, that makes this more fun.  :-p  And for the record, if I'm just late from stress, I really with AF would hurry the fuck up and answer the question.

What Would You Say?

This question is part of the GRAB(ook) Club, an online book club open to anyone and everyone. This month's selection was The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. 

I had not gotten around to reading the books or seeing the movie yet, but my 11-year-old sister got the ok from my stepmom last year to read the first book.  However, my stepmom would not allow her to read the rest of the books at this point.  At one point while I was reading it, Bear expressed surprise that the 9-year-old didn't see the book lying around and ask again to read it.  Apparently he was asking a lot to read it last year, and several of his third grade classmates were reading it.

Now that I've read it, I definitely don't think that he's ready for it.  He's reading Harry Potter again, but the violence there is much less direct.  People are killed, but aside from Dobby, no one gets a blade in them.  The good guys are using Stupefy and Expelliarmus, not trying to figure out when they'll have to murder an ally or feeling blood spray over them.  The institutional governmental control in Harry Potter, especially in Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows, opens up questions and discussions about prejudice and oppression, but they're imprisoning Muggle-borns, not killing them on-screen or making them kill each other.

So, I have a couple of questions.  I'm looking more at about the 8-10 year old age group here, both because I haven't known of kids much younger trying to read it and because I don't know how old the kids are that the rest of y'all are interacting with but my older one is 9 and I know Mel's two are in that range.  If you were talking to a child in this age range about the books, what would you think if they asked to read them?  And if they read the books and wanted to talk to you about them, either because you're their parent OR because you interact with them for another reason, what would you most want to discuss with them and why?

After you answer my question, please click over to read the rest of the book club questions for The Hunger Games.  You can get your own copy of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins at bookstores including Amazon.

I hate those days when I feel like everyone can get pregnant except me.