Left my ankles in San Francisco

My nearly week-long trip to San Francisco for work was a successful and not terribly stressful time for all, which is great. Cooper was well mannered and survived some extra long days at daycare as well as a few hours of babysitting with a friend, Matt held the fort down admirably and, in his words, "even managed to keep the laundry and dishes under control" (which I can attest to!), and I stayed focused on work as well as stayed healthy.

Really, a very good trip. The only complaint I have is that I seem to have left my ankles in California. They are totally gone- swallowed up by puffy fluid filled skin. In fact, they left a little goodbye note in the form of a dimple where the ankle used to exist.

Gross. Today the swelling is down a fair amount in comparison to Friday, and I'm optimistic that a weekend not sitting in meetings, and not in planes, will really help the situation. But in the meantime, I have a very puffy and unfortunate looking pair of legs-meeting-feet that seem to be entirely devoid of an ankle.

Bevy of pregnant ladies

I was at a gathering of pregnant women this morning, and I was totally amused by what I saw... namely, how many faces I knew but did not know that they were pregnant. The best score was a woman I knew from grad school- I think she's awesome, she got married last year, and I had no idea that she was even considering having kids (she's quite significantly older than me). I very nearly laughed out loud when I saw her. Not in a bad way, mind you, just in amused surprise. She's due right at the start of March, which I told her was a GREAT time to have a baby, from my past experience.

I also saw another woman I know from grad school who had a baby right when Cooper was born, so she's clearly on the same track as me for #2. And two friends from my new cohort of water aerobicizers, which was fun. And then a non-pregnant friend that was an administrator for the event, to top off the list.

Good times. I'll have to get in touch with some of these people more often. This sort of thing makes me slightly embarrassed that I don't keep up with my more distant friends more often.

As an added bonus, I got about a million compliments on how well behaved Cooper was, and how incredibly cute he is, and how blue his eyes are, etc etc. He made himself happy with four mini bran muffins and two folding chairs for about an hour. So well mannered!

Add it to the list!

Someone here in Missoula fairly recently named their child a totally amazing moniker;

Huckleberry Graham (don't know last name)

I am making a mental note. I will not name my child something that sounds like it should be a flavor for a Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Huckleberry Graham Crunch! Huckleberry Graham Swirl! Or my favorite imaginary last name for this child, Huckleberry Graham Cracker Delight.

Boo-boo

Nope. He didn't get hurt. But Cooper has moved away from calling himself Baby in favor of calling himself Boo-boo. When you hear his inflection with Boo-boo, it is pretty clear he's making an attempt at saying Cooper but not really getting it yet. Sometimes he even calls himself Boo-coo, which is an advance in my mind. The best part is how dang cute it is when he calls himself Boo-boo. It melts me.

Decision

Here are my options;

- skip the doula this time
- pick a new doula
- have the same doula as last time

I see pluses and minuses of each. Dang.

The obese, elderly, terminally ill... and me

I'm trying to find a yoga class that suits my schedule and works for pregnancy. Yesterday I went to "Extra Gentle Yoga" at the local Women's gym to see if that would be a good fit. Obviously, it isn't prenatal, but for reasons of convenience it would be nice if it worked with my needs. I figured I'd skip moves on my back or my belly, and all would be fine.

What I didn't really think about is who goes to "Extra gentle yoga" in the middle of the afternoon. It is three basic categories of people- morbidly obese, elderly, and then this one other young woman. I'd be puzzled by this other young woman if, coincidentally, I didn't know her. But I do. She was just recently diagnosed (despite being around 30ish) with severe congestive heart failure and had to quit her job because of it and be very, very careful of her health.

Of course, I was by far the most clueless and needy person in the class. I'm out of practice, off balance, and shall we say "lumpy." It really was not a good fit for me. I think I need a legit prenatal class. One thing that I am particularly useless for is leg stretching- after years of high school track, many of my muscles became as tight as piano wire and simply do not stretch. So I can't do anything on my back, on my stomach, or that involves stretching my legs. Great.

Years ago, I went to a Yoga for Beginners class and after a few classes, the teacher came up to me afterwards. "I've noticed you really struggle with the calf and thigh stretches. I'm just curious- were you ever a competitive runner? That often causes the problems I see in your yoga."

Sigh. At least I'm not special.

You must be almost due!

With Matt's work schedule finally back to a decent and manageable level, I've started up at my favorite pregnancy activity... pre-natal water aerobics! Yay!

I bought myself a new sporty bikini, dug up my old punch card (had three punches left from 2008, sweeeeet), showed up on time and gave the instructor a big hug. Janet! So good to see you! She was very excited and happy to see me, too. But the first thing she said was a bit of a show stopper- "Oh my goodness, look at you! You must be almost due! You must have wanted to space them really close!"

Uh, no. I just hit the 6 month mark. I wanted to space them by about 2 years, and they will be just shy of the two year goal. I do, however, look far more pregnant than 24 weeks would suggest.

But I was nice and didn't say anything snappy. I laughed and said that I was sure hoping to keep this kid in there until roughly my due date of February 1st. She looked a little embarassed, so I reminded her that with my first pregnancy, I also attained a rather startling shape pretty early on and then kept right on growing until I nearly fell over.

"Oh that's RIGHT! And you had a vaginal birth, right? Didn't your boy weighed nearly 9 pounds?"

Collective gasp from the pregnant ladies in the pool...

I think it's gonna be a long 16 weeks.

Cooper the baby

We've been working hard lately to help Cooper figure out how to say and use his own name. He knows that Cooper is his name, but he never says it. If you ask him "Where's Cooper?" he proudly points to himself and smiles. He turns around when you say his name, he responds appropriately to "This is for Cooper" and so on. But he's never said it.

Yesterday, Matt and I were playing with him and we started asking him about his words, "What's this? Who's that?"

Dada!
Doggie!
Mama!

and then "Who's this?" pointing directly at Cooper...

Baby!

How interesting. We almost never call him a baby anymore- certainly not for months. We call him many things, but mostly just stick with Cooper. I think he must have figured out what a baby is from daycare- his daycare recently enrolled twins boys that look about 8 months old, and a 6 month old. So I bet it clicked that little boys are called Babies.

Today we tried it again and sure enough, he's convinced that he should call himself Baby. Funny.

A few words

Cooper is starting to mimic some words with startling accuracy, when he wants to. This morning he said "orange juice" so clearly that I whipped my head around like a scene in the exorcist. Juice in general is popular, so I frequently hear him piping up during breakfast "Boo-boos! More juice!" which translates into "Hand over those defrosted slightly smooshy organic blueberries and a tiny plastic cup of orange juice and you may avert my impending tantrum."

On the note of "Boo-boo" being his code name for blueberries, his mispronounciation of "ladybug" is particularly charming. He says "Baa-boo," which is a dead ringer for the Polish word for grandmother (written 'Babu' in that case). Anybody in Matt's family can tell you this is a very neat coincidence, because his family considers ladybugs a serious good luck charm as well as way to remember Matt's uncle who passed away from cancer at a young age. So it is very sweet that he points out all the ladybugs in books as Babu, and once when he found a real live ladybug in the garden he got incredibly excited about it.

And then I picked that ladybug up to show him how they can crawl on your hand and he cried like it was gonna eat me and ran away. Which totally ruined the moment. But hey, I tried.

Head colds

Cooper and I have head colds. We both developed the full blown symptoms earlier this week, and for both of us those symptoms seem to be the worst today. Cooper has a mild cough, a very yucky runny nose, and is a bit whiny and needy. I have a sore throat, sinus congestion, and either a badly clogged ear duct or a very mild ear infection on one side.

Luckily for all involved, there have been no fevers, no real misery, and only very minor disruptions of sleeping patterns. Last night Matt and I decided to give Cooper some ibuprofen in case he had a really sore throat like mine has been (you can't exactly tell with a little guy if he has a sore throat or not), and that was a great call. He fell asleep without a peep at 7:15pm, slept like a rock until about 5am, coughed and whined half-heartedly for a few minutes, then fell back asleep until 7:20am.

Right now he's napping, the poor dear. His little nose is all chapped from being wiped all the time. I'm going to follow his lead and get in some shut-eye myself.

Big steps

Cooper loves shoes, and he likes to pretend to put them on. Grandma G sent him a super cool pair of brilliant yellow rubber rain boots this week, and lo and behold- he can get them on! Turns out that all his pretend practice with his tiny sneakers and loafers paid off. With the rubber rain boots, the opening for his foot is big enough that he can get his feet in there pretty accurately. This morning, after mastering this new skill, he was stomping around the house in his pajamas, rain boots, and a little baseball cap that he's taken a liking to.

Awesome.