I don’t know if the Braxton Hicks contractions make me have to pee or if a full bladder makes me contract, but it’s a vicious cycle. I wake up several times a night, doubled over in pain. And even if I’ve had nothing to drink in hours I have to pee over and over again. Cleaning gives me contractions, cooking gives me contractions, lifting gives me contractions, walking up stairs gives me contractions. And the assholes who write all the pregnancy books and tell you BH contractions are painless were obviously never pregnant with a third child. I am miserable.

I’m even more exhausted than usual because of the uninterrupted sleep and the worst part is that I still wake up even if the kids (who almost never do on the same nights) sleep through. I’m not positive, but it feels like this baby is no longer breech. Instead, the baby is sideways. It is not comfortable to have 3-4 pounds of baby sideways in your abdomen. And the foot cramps, dear god, the foot cramps. I hate them in the morning, I hate them in the afternoon, I hate them in the evening, but most of all I hate them when they strike in the middle of the night. Then I have to get up to pee, only I can’t walk because on top of the painful contraction I’ve got a crippling foot cramp going on at the same time.

The beauty of this blog is that I can read back to see if everything sucked this much the first two times. I haven’t looked yet because I’m curious to see just how much I’ve blocked out. There is a hormone that makes you forget how painful labor is. Maybe it works for pregnancy too? I remember with F I was constantly getting punched in the cervix. And I know I had BH contractions with T, but I don’t remember them being so regular. And by regular I mean regular enough to make me miserable but not regular enough to mean I’m anywhere near labor. It is going to be a long couple of months.

The baby on the other hand? My sweet, darling boy? He has been possessed by the demon that has left F. For the last 3 days, from morning until night, T has been torturing me and his brother. He refuses to eat, he hits and pulls hair with little provocation, he has been throwing everything. The puzzle F is working on? T rips it apart, screaming like a banshee, and throws the pieces down the steps. The cereal he asked for? Dumped on the floor. Anything within reach on a surface? Thrown to the floor or down the steps or both. The eggs that need to come to room temperature before adding to the cake? Smashed on the kitchen floor. My coffee this morning? Spilled everywhere. The entire kitchen floor has been spot cleaned in the past 2 days. His pants? Keep disappearing. He has taken to removing his pants and diaper several times a day. And he’s fast, too. I’ll turn my back for less than a minute and when I turn around he is pantsless.

I just don’t get a break.

F’s birthday is on Monday. Four years ago today, March 5th, was his due date. He is going to be four. Four. How is it even possible? I have to make a Triceratops cake today. The Thomas Era seems to have come to an end thanks to the marketing geniuses behind Dinosaur Train.

Mama
dada
hi
howard (haya)
more
moo
baaaa
meow
woof
oink (unh)
oooo (cock o doodle doo)
vroom
beep
roar
up
thank you (ank)
milk (sounds like more or moo)
night night
bye bye (sounds like night night)
baby
Joshua (ha e ah)

He sings all day long, to himself and to us. He sings two Raffi songs, Baby Beluga and Joshua Giraffe, Twinkle Twinkle (though sometimes he’s singing the Alphabet song or Baa Baa Black Sheep), Lovin You and the mama or dada song which he just made up a few days ago.

He is fast and athletic, often getting himself into precarious situations. He loves to climb and jump.

He is very focused when he plays. Without his brother torturing him he can play on his own for an hour or more. He loves to put train tracks together, drive cars up and down his parking garage, and play with blocks.

5. CD/iPod headphones - place them inside mom’s pants toward her pubic bone and play classical music for 10 minutes 6-8 times a day.

Never occurred to me to put my ipod in my pants.

Speaking of weight gain, I’ve started to gain weight for real; I’m up between 22-25 pounds depending on the scale but I still find myself asleep on my stomach some mornings. Clothes are an exercise in humiliation. Even though I’m carrying small, most of my maternity shirts are too short and my pants are too big. I’m always showing off either a butt crack or belly gap, even with a stupid belly band over my pants. It’s not good for my self-esteem. I’ve taken to wearing makeup, just so I don’t feel so shitty about how I look.

This baby is breech. I know that it’s not a big deal yet, but both of the boys were head down by this point and the last thing I want is a c-section recovery. My OB told me not to do any interventions yet (chiropractor, acupuncture) since the baby still has plenty of time to flip. But I am a pessimist by nature and the six weeks until my 36 week ultrasound is a long time to worry and wait.

I baked two loaves of bread, a few dozen cookies, 2 dozen mini and 8 large sweet potato muffins, a focaccia, 2 pizzas, and made some sauce to go on the pizzas. The cookies are all gone, the boys ate more than dozen mini muffins, we ate half a loaf of bread and most of the pizzas. The focaccia is for later.

In a few hours, after B shovels the 2 feet of snow from the sky and the 3 extra feet of snow the plows pushed in front of our driveway, then goes down the hill to shovel the two feet of snow in front of the properties he manages, we’ll pack the car and begin our annual trek to New Hampshire. This is the trip where B ice fishes for 10 hours a day leaving me inside with the children. We go with two other couples (three this year) and it’s always a good time, except for the fact that I’m bitter about being stuck with the children. Oh, and the drinking. There is a lot of drinking. We are the only couple with children and our (who am I kidding, my) ability to drink freely is hampered by parenting. Then add in the pregnancy and my good time is further curtailed. But I’d be even more bitter if I was stuck at home with the kids while he was off gallivanting with friends for 4 nights, so I go. Without the kids it’s a 7 hour drive. With the kids, it’s 9. This is F’s first post-potty training long car trip, so I’m a little nervous.

And it should be noted that while packing for two children is ridiculous, packing for two children and three adults going to a cold climate in the winter is even more fucking ridiculous. Between the sweaters, snow pants, hats, gloves, boots, pack n play, toys, books, and diapers you’d think we were going a way for a month, not a long weekend. It’s a good thing we bought a giant car.

You should know that I hate that place. I used to enjoy it when it was downtown, small and contained. But then they moved into a larger space, a giant, beautiful space, and now I hate it. It is too big. Too much to do in a two hour block. Not enough activities that are actually engaging. I’ve been to children’s museums in other states that manage to teach things through play. Ours has dropped the ball on that. And to make it worse, there is entirely too much corporate sponsorship. Do they really need a play McDon@lds in a museum? Anyway, I hate it there, but the boys love it so I take them anyway. And when it expires this year, as much as the boys love it, I am not renewing the membership.

Anyway, I should have known it was a terrible idea to take him there on an already shitty day. I pulled the car out of the driveway and got T into his seat. F tried to climb into the car but it was too slippery and he needed my help. I helped him into his seat, got his arms into the straps, tightened, and one of the straps came out completely. Not sure how, but it disengaged from the thing on the back of the seat. This meant that I had to take his seat out to fix it. The childless among you may not understand what a pain in the ass it is to mess with a car seat. Even with latch, it’s still an ordeal to loosen the belt that keeps it secure, undo the latch, fix the strap that came undone, put it back together, get the seat back in, and tighten it enough so it’s safe. Especially when it’s 20-some degrees outside, I’m standing in a 2 foot bank of snow, the metal latches are frozen, my fingers are frozen, and both kids are outside with me. I should have given up and brought the kids back inside, postponing the outing for another day, but I soldiered on.

25 minutes later, after a car ride of me explaining the rules and expectations of behavior, especially my expectations of what was going to happen when it was time to leave, we were at the museum. The boys played nicely and I didn’t have too much trouble keeping them both in sight. But then I was helping T down a slide, and in the two seconds I wasn’t watching him F ran to the opposite side of the museum. I had to get the museum staff to locate him. When I caught up with him I didn’t lose my mind or yell. I reiterated the rules about staying close and he remembered our earlier talk about safety and strangers. He apologized and stayed very close, asking to see something else for the next hour.

I gave him plenty of warning as it got close to the time to leave. I told him we we were going to do one more thing, stop in the gift shop so he could look at the trains, get our coats and leave. We went to the arts and crafts room and played for a bit. The boys had a snack. We went to the gift shop. I said it was time to get our coats. And F started to freak. He didn’t want to ride in the stroller so I let him walk across the entrance hall to the coat room. Halfway across F took off running, back into the museum. Wisely, he stopped to see if I was chasing him and I managed to catch him and drag him into the coat room. T was ready to nap and gladly put on his coat. I had to muscle F into his coat, then muscle him into the stroller while he screamed and screamed.

He didn’t want to wear his coat. I told him had to because it was freezing outside. He didn’t want to sit in the stroller. I told him he had to because he’d run off two times and I needed to be sure he was safe. Screaming at the top of his lungs he kicked off his boots. I put them in our bag and pushed him out of the coat room. T was sweet enough to hold my hand and walk beside me. F screamed through the entrance hall and out the door. People stared, probably assuming by the volume of his screams that I was beating him with a fire poker. I pushed him down the long ramp, to the parking lot, his screams growing impossibly louder.

Some asshole parked right on top of my car, meaning I could get T into his seat, but there wasn’t enough room for me to get F or my pregnant self in since I couldn’t open either of the doors wide enough. I got T safely buckled and briefly considered keying the asshole’s car, but didn’t just in case they were having as bad a day as I was. Not knowing what to do with F, who was still kicking and screaming securely strapped in the stroller, I opened the tailgate and threw him in the back of the car along with the stroller.

I climbed in the passenger side door, over the console to the driver’s seat and turned on the car. F, who has had car seat safety drilled into him, started shrieking for me to stop, he didn’t want to sit back there and he needed to be buckled into his seat. He climbed into his seat and I buckled him, which didn’t stop him from screaming the whole ride home. At one point I left Boyfiend a message asking if I could just leave him in the car all afternoon long. Then I took a short video with my phone of the screams which I sent to B, so he could enjoy it along with me. I’m not sure how I managed to restrain myself, but at no point did I yell back. I didn’t even respond. I kept my mouth shut.

Halfway through the 10 minute ride F stopped screaming about going back to the museum and started screaming that he wanted to stay in the car. He screamed I don’t like you. I ignored it, even when he said it again and again. He screamed I don’t love you and I wanted to ignore it, but instead I told him that I loved him, and even when I’m mad and even when he does things he shouldn’t. I will still love him. I will always love him. That may have been more for my benefit than for his. I wanted to, but did not, tell him that I wanted to fucking kill him.

We got home and miraculously, T managed to fall asleep through the screaming. Rather than mess with both of them, I gave F what he wanted and left the car in front of the driveway, locking it, and imagining that passersby would see him screaming in there and call the police to report me for neglect. I brought T in the house, leaving the still screaming Fiendling in the car. T woke up as soon as I put him down, so I changed his diaper and got him a snack before going back to the car to get F who had calmed down sufficiently in the few minutes I was in the house. He’d gotten the top part of his strap unbuckled, but he still can’t finagle the bottom so he was still in his seat. His face was red and tear stained and he was hiccuping. He said, mama, I love you. I asked if he was ready to go in the house with me and he said yes. I collected his socks and hat and mittens and carried him into the house and got him a snack.

T never got his nap. I never got a break. F is still on the verge of a tantrum and I hate myself for taking away TV and computer privileges earlier, but there is no fucking way I’m going to back down on this today, even though I’m losing my mind.

I don’t know how how I’m going to get through the day. I am already in tears.

T wanted very much to wear his winter boots this morning. I wonder if he knows we’re supposed to get 10-18 inches of snow.