What it's like so far

We've told our families and close friends, so now I can talk about being pregnant on the internet without fear, right? Isn't that how that works?

So far, here's how it's going:
1. No morning sickness yet - but I fully expect it to knock me out, because I'm a sissy.
2. All I want to eat is fruit. All the time. I ate TWO QUARTS of cherries in three days. And twice now I've managed to eat an entire (large) watermelon by myself in three or four days. Other food sounds okay until it's in front of me, and then I don't really want it. This is especially true for protein.
3. I have to pee all the time. On average, I pee about five times during an eight-hour work day. This is directly related to:
4. I'm always really thirsty. I drink water with lime constantly. Soda is not as appealing as it usually is. (This will not stop me from drinking the twelve-pack of caffeine-free Coke Andy bought me.)
5. My boobs hurt. A lot. Like they're giant bruises. The baby headbutted me the other day and it made my eyes water it hurt so bad.
6. Minor things become a huge irritation. My WIC appointment last week was so frustrating I wanted to cry. Yesterday Andy's sister and her boyfriend (who are in town for the 4th) dropped by unannounced during what should have been naptime, and I tried hinting that yes, the baby would go down better if they headed out, and when hinting didn't work I was ... less than polite. Which then caused an argument with Andy, who had stopped on his way home to get me roses and a watermelon (See No. 2) and the caffeine-free Coke and some ice cream, just to be awesome. So then I felt like a dick, which made me cry. Often, for like an hour at a time, I feel like I'm having the worst PMS of my life. And knowing I'm being unreasonable, which used to help me snap out of it, is not helpful at all.
7. I get these weird little flashes of anxiety, like I just remembered that I have to be the person to tell someone terrible news. Then I remember that the news is actually really awesome and the moment passes.

So that's what's up in my uterus this week.

Fun day!

Andy's birthday was a few weeks ago. I finally figured out what to do for his birthday this year, and I have to say it was a huge success! We had a date day!

We both took the day off today, and the baby still went to daycare. Andy and I started with breakfast at a diner around the corner (the garden omelet, no peppers, for me; steak and eggs for Andy). Then we played a round of mini-golf. Andy was WAY better than I am, but I laughed until I cried two different times and also I got two holes-in-one (to Andy's zero, I might add), so all told I call that a success.

Then we went to see The Avengers! It's the first time we've gone to the movies in about six months. I didn't know much about the movie before we arrived, but it turns out I'm enough of a dork that I've seen most of the necessary backstory movies so I followed it pretty easily. We used to go to the movies all the time (we usually went to our awesome second-run theater) so it was nice to get a chance to do that again.

After the movie, since we were right near the fancy mall anyway, we went shopping for a bit. We lucked into bonus-forty-percent-off-sale-price-day at the Gap! Then we finished up with some mocha-coconut frappucinos before we picked the baby up from daycare.

It was really nice to have a day just enjoying each other's company without worrying about leaving the baby with a sitter or taking her with us and having both of us spend more energy on her than ourselves. I think this might become a regular occurrence!

It's a go.

Dudes? I'm knocked up.

Pee test confirmed it. Doing blood work tomorrow. So far we haven't even told our families (except my sister, who knew we were trying) so no one call my mom and steal our thunder.

Remember last year when I first told you all about becoming foster parents, and promised I wouldn't make this blog a "family-friendly love-fest"? I still cuss a lot, but I definitely talk WAY more about parenting than things that will always piss me off or my thoughts on pajamas or the general weirdness of strangers.

I just reread a bunch of stuff I wrote, and I liked it. When I'm awake enough, I'm going to try to start incorporating more of that shit, because I do in fact have a personality outside of mothering.

So, you know, hooray! I'll keep you updated!

On wanting certainty

So Mary over at Noah Baby Blog wrote a really interesting post yesterday, about how she's always been pro-fostering and pro-adoption but that it hasn't stopped her from wanting to get pregnant and give birth. And I commented, because I totally get that.

When we started this whole foster care thing last year, I didn't know if I ever wanted to get pregnant. But I can tell you that in the last five months, since this perfect baby girl arrived, I've realized I want to get knocked up and have a baby. I've realized part of why this is: I WANT THE CERTAINTY. I don't want to have that heart-wrenching up-and-down mess that comes with fostering and, often, with adoptive placements falling through. I don't want to have to wonder where my baby will be in a year.

We had court on Wednesday, and there's still no certainty about where this baby will be growing up. The grandma has filed for custody, but the county and the dad don't support that. The dad told the worker that he doesn't want the baby to be adopted (but didn't say why), so it looks like they'll have to eventually terminate his rights or place the baby with him - and the longer this gets dragged out, the more likely placement looks, because he currently has two older kids living with him and the biggest argument keeping this baby out of there is her age. I hate that I can only plan our lives together in little tiny chunks. And I know that giving birth to a child doesn't come with any guarantees of certainty, of course, but at least I won't have to run everything by a social worker and other, "real" parents.

I want to parent this baby forever. But that can't be certain, and I want something certain. And here's the cool thing: There's a very not-zero chance that I might be pregnant. (Either it's a yes, or I'll be seeing a doctor about whatever the hell is going on! I'll be testing tomorrow.)

This current baby is obviously my heart's first child. She will always be my daughter. But I'm pretty psyched about making her a big sister. (Re: possible pregnancy: Yeah, I just teared up writing that while the baby's sleeping in my arms. Hormones! Yeah!)

Oh, hello there.

How y'all living?

I feel like our lives have been very full lately. We've had plans every weekend for about a month, with no signs of slowing down. There are always one million things to be doing. I feel like I'm forever loading and unloading the dishwasher, but there's also lots of awesome things that we've been up to. I keep realizing, over and over, that this is the baby's first summer, so we've been making time for things like laying on a blanket in the grass and looking at things. We're going to put up her swing in one of the trees in our backyard, which will be very awesome.

The baby is six months old now. Remember back in February when we thought she was leaving? Had her all packed up and everything. Right now, she's not any closer to leaving, but she's also not any closer to staying. It's difficult living constantly in a state of not knowing. It's also weird to be making decisions about caring for the baby - for the very large majority of the time, we treat her as if she were our own, so that means things like me wearing her in a sling instead of pushing her in a stroller, and baby-led solids instead of purees (because I have discovered that I am in fact a weirdo hippie). I wonder how her mom would react to seeing how we're raising her kid. I suppose we'll find out if visits resume any time soon; it's not like the mom has been shy about telling us her concerns!

We have Part Two of court tomorrow, at which the baby's mom is expected to consent to the allegations of neglect. This doesn't change anything about our case; it just means that the mom won't have to go to trial and that the case plan (which has been written for about four months) becomes court-ordered. If she doesn't start complying with the case plan, they'll have grounds (in about a year) to terminate her rights. I'm planning to go to court, because I like the mom and the grandma to see me and know I'm invested.

Do you dudes have any questions about the process or the case? I'll answer if I can.

Court is irritating.

So today was supposed to be our pretrial conference, wherein the court would hear the evidence the county has about the neglect of our baby.

Instead, what happened was this:

1. The baby's mom told the social worker she was ready to consent to the accusations of neglect. [This is an eventual expected outcome anyway but would just speed up the process - and it's a total shift from where the mom was last time at court.]

2. The mom's smarmy, sleazy, scumbag lawyer showed up and took her aside for some whispering.

3. The mom's lawyer, dad's lawyer (who was there without the dad, who didn't show), the baby's brother's dad's lawyer, and the county attorney got called into the courtroom for a while.

4. The rest of us got to go into the courtroom, where they discussed, in total, the visitation issues the brother's dad and the grandma are having. The only mention of our baby was in regards to the skin condition shit, which is still somehow an issue. Oh, and the baby's law guardian spoke up and said that if the judge was going to allow the brother to have visits with his dad before his dad was treated (as a precautionary measure), she was going to ask the court that the sibling visits be stopped, because there is significant concern about exposing a child this young to the poison so many times, and because this baby also has eczema there's additional concern about it getting into her bloodstream. So that part was nice.

5. THE JUDGE ADJOURNED, ABRUPTLY.

6. I sat there going, "What? Wait, what? What just happened? Where are we going?" I talked to the worker later in the day and she told me that the mom's sleazeball lawyer talked the judge into setting ANOTHER hearing date, next Wednesday, and the mom will probably consent then. Likely reason: scumbag lawyer gets paid for a full day every time he makes a court appearance.

So I took half a day off of work to hear them barely even mention the case we were there to hear. Andy had to park ten blocks away and walk to the courthouse in a downpour and arrived just as the judge was adjourning, so all around we feel really fucking awesome about our court experience today.

Next Wednesday will be interesting - the baby has her six-month checkup that morning and now we have court in the afternoon, so there's another personal day down the tube. Cool.

To end on a positive note: we got a quart of perfect fresh strawberries in our CSA share today and it's lovely watching the rain, which is what I'm going to go do.

Lazy Sunday

I was going to write a nice post about how we went to the zoo on Friday because the zoo closed early and was only open for foster parents from 6-9, and how we got to hang out with awesome people, and also about how we had an awesome party yesterday to celebrate my brother graduating from college, but instead of writing that post, I'm bumming on the couch with a snoozing baby and being lazy.

To keep you occupied, here's Sarah Von's awesome Web Time Wasters post for this weekend, which contains about one million awesome links. (I particularly want you to focus on this part about pay equality!)

Have an awesome day!