In a few years he's going to kill me for putting this on the blog.

I haven't posted in a little while because there's some rather heavy stuff going on in our family, resulting in TH being out of town for the last 10 days (and counting) and me doing the "single mom" thing until he gets back. But I had to make time to sit down and record this little gem just in case I need a really good embarassing story later.

Scene: bedtime tonight. Normally when TH is here we each take one kid - he usually handles J's bath/PJ's/brush teeth and I bathe/dress/nurse the baby. While he's out of town, however, this is a bit impossible, so since this is my off week I've been bathing Jr. during the day (I wish I could do this on work weeks too but alas...I'm at work) and bathing J at night. Seeing as how he's almost four, I've been allowing J to bathe "by himself" while I get the baby changed and dressed -- i.e. I fill the tub and do the bubbles, he gets in and splashes around (and presumably cleans himself) while I'm in the baby's room across the hall where I can see him, I come back in, double check that he's clean and help him get out and get dressed. Then they both get a story in J's room, he goes to bed, and I commence the nightly nursing/rocking/supposedly laying Jr. down "sleepy but awake" routine.


So tonight I'm in Jr.'s room getting him ready for bed and I can hear J splashing happily away in the tub. A couple of weeks ago I bought him these foam rubber letters/numbers that stick to the wall and sides of the tub:

Disclaimer: This is not really me and J. I don't usually have hair and makeup done for bathtime.

J has been obsessed with taking a bath every night just so he can play with these things. After a few minutes the splashing stopped and I could hear J saying things like "Get off of there" and making this annoying whining sound that he does when he's frustrated with a game or something. "What's the problem?" I called out. "Um....nothing!" he said. Sensing that there was a little more than "nothing" going on, I went into the bathroom to investigate.


As it turns out, a certain almost-4-year-old had discovered that the 6's and 9's of his letter/number set have little holes in the center. And this certain someone ascertained that the little hole was about the same size as a certain...body part that only little boys have. And that certain body part was shoved through the hole in the center of the 9 (or maybe it was a 6) and he couldn't get it back out, because as J learned the hard way, the little hole in the 9 is actually a bit smaller than the certain body part. So I come in to find him standing up in the tub with a bright orange 9 (or maybe a 6) hanging off of his...body part. After laughing my ass off, we proceeded to have one of those parenting scenes that you really never could come up with in your wildest imagination. That thing was really stuck. I tried um, tugging, with no success. Then I thought maybe I could rip the number in half, and discovered that foam-rubber is much tougher than it looks. I briefly considered trying to cut it off--the 9, not the...body part--but even with my surgery skills I'm a bit squeamish thinking about putting scissors near that area. Maybe if TH had been there he'd have had a better idea since, you know, he also has one of those...body parts. Eventually it occurred to me that we were in the bathroom with the soap and lotion...

Let's just say we got it unstuck. Can you imagine if we hadn't, and I'd had to go to the ER with both kids and THAT problem?? It would have made someone's night, that's for sure.

I'm so vain, you probably think this post is about me.

I really wish that I could stop obsessing about my weight. I'm sure that other people around me (i.e. TH) also have the same wish. I don't know why the whole weight issue has been so much harder for me with this second baby than it was after I had J. Well, ok, I know some of the reasons why.

I have never been "skinny." Never. I don't think I've ever even qualified as "thin." At my smallest, when I was the head cheerleader in high school and looked (in my humble opinion) freakin' fantastic -- I was a size 12/14. So always squarely in the "curvy" category. (TH likes to use the term "thick," which he thinks is a complement but I don't know any woman alive who would get happy about a man calling her "thick.") I was very active with sports and activities, and I had plenty of um, male attention, so it never bothered me that I was technically "plus-sized" back then. I never really felt overweight until I started college. I went to a school with one of the fittest student populations in the U.S. (Boulder has been named America's "healthiest city" several times), and there, I was definitely not the average. The dorm I lived in was RAMPANT with girls who had eating disorders - I'm not kidding, I remember one time I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and two girls came in and I could hear BOTH of them vomiting in stalls behind me and then they just walked out gossiping like it was nothing. Everyone was always obsessing about how fat their legs were or how many calories were in the pasta or how many hours they planned on spending at the gym. It was a whole new world for me. Not only were me, my twin sister, and my roommate the ONLY black girls in the entire dorm, we were also the "thickest." I was so petrified of gaining the Freshman Fifteen that I started obsessing right along with the rest of them, worrying about how fattening every item on the salad bar was and going to rec center to work out in the middle of the night, especially if I'd "slipped up" and had pizza or something. I actually lost a little weight my freshman year, a fact which made me insanely proud. By the end of my undergrad career 5 years later, however, I had gained a bit of weight but still felt active and healthy so it didn't concern me much.

After TH and I got married between my 2nd and 3rd years of vet school, I completely stopped caring about how much I weighed. We were having so much fun - I was always trying different recipes that were heavy on oil and butter, we drank lots of wine, we ate out a lot. Between the grueling vet school schedule, late nights at the teaching hospital, and being a newlywed, working out was put completely on a back burner. It got so much worse when we moved to Vegas right after I graduated - if ever there was a city that is geared towards excess, it's Sin City. After a year of buffets, drinking at nightclubs after work, and still eating out a lot (it was so easy when it was just the two of us), I realized that I was about 30 pounds heavier than I had been 10 years before, so TH and I joined a gym and started eating better. I didn't lose a huge amount of weight, but was back on track with healthier habits.

Then I got pregnant, lost the pregnancy, and immediately became pregnant again with J. I was so worried about everything with J's pregnancy because of the miscarriage - I was paranoid about working out and stopped that altogether, but was still eating healthy and managed to only gain 25 pounds. I easily lost all my pregnancy weight within 6 weeks, thanks to breastfeeding. I was so exhausted and overwhelmed that first year with J, I didn't really even think about my weight much, until he turned 1. At that point, once he was sleeping better and I wasn't bf'ing anymore, I finally got fed up with being fat and really made an effort to get healthier. I started running, which I had never done before in my whole life. I ran a couple of 5K's, started Weight Watchers, and 1.5 years later I was pretty much at my high school weight again....

For about 2 weeks. Literally 6 days after I posted this last year I found out I was pregnant with Jr. Of course, isn't that how it always works? I didn't gain a crazy amount of weight with him (35 pounds), but I fell off the wagon again with exercise and definitely abandoned everything I learned with WW about how to eat. I think I fully expected to just drop all the weight within 2 months like I did with J...yeah, not so much. Right now I'm at a very annoying in-between, too big for my pre-Jr. clothes, too small for pre-J clothes from when I was at my heaviest. Add to that, I'm super top-heavy--even at my thinnest we're talking DD's, you add in breastfeeding and it's not a cute look.

I've been trying not obsess about it but it's hard, especially because I was on such a high last year after losing all of that weight. It was the first time in years that I'd managed to stick to an exercise and eating plan and see some major results. That's the part that is getting to me, I KNOW now that I can do it. But I also know that I just don't have the energy and stamina (mental or physical) to really commit to it right now the way I want. Jr. still wakes up multiple times a night to nurse, and J pretty much doesn't nap anymore, so I can't see where I can fit in real exercise -- it's either at the end of the day when I'm completely drained of energy, or early in the morning when I'm trying my best to cram in 2-3 hours of sleep. I've rejoined Weight Watchers, which is a blessing and a curse. I love WW and the whole points thing, but in some ways it makes me more obsessive about my eating habits to constantly monitor every single thing I put in my mouth. Not to mention a side effect I didn't even think about, I kind of freaked out the first week I was back on the program because I although I lost 3 pounds my milk supply IMMEDIATELY went down so I had to dial back a bit.

sigh...I know I'm being too hard on myself. There's only so much I can do when I'm sleep- deprived and working full time and lactating. I know that if I just calm down and wait another 6 months like I did with J I'll have an easier time getting back to where I want to be. It's just so hard when I look in the mirror, and see photos of myself exactly a year ago looking and feeling fantastic...

Warning: May cause your kid to ask questions you're not ready to answer.

So last weekend TH was out of town for three days and I had the kids to myself. J and I were snuggled up on the couch watching a movie while Jr. slept peacefully upstairs. Our movie choice that afternoon was The Adventures of Milo and Otis, which we found in the clearance bin at Target for only $4 and from the box looked like a great family movie that we would both like. I vaguely remembered this movie coming out when I was a kid, but somehow had never seen it.

For the most part, I would recommend "Miler and Otis" (as J calls it) to anyone with kids this age. It's basically a live-action film about a cute little orange kitten named Milo and a cute little pug puppy named Otis who live on a beautiful farm and have all kinds of adventures. The entire thing is narrated by a British guy who does a great job doing all the animal voices. J was enraptured as soon as we turned it on, and being the animal person I am, I was enjoying it, too. I didn't realize until later that movies like this should come with a warning label: Contains graphic nature scenes that may cause your kid to ask questions that you're totally unprepared to answer.

The movie started out so innocent -- look, the kitten fell in the stream! Now he's chasing a crab who turns around and pinches his nose! Now he and the puppy are wrestling and licking each other and butterflies and clouds and rainbows... But then it got a little darker, which is not a bad thing but I could tell J was a bit perturbed. At one point the kitten floats down the river and gets lost, and the puppy sets out to find him. Milo (the kitten) spends the night in a spooky forest with a scary foreboding owl stalking him. "This is scary," J said, sounding a little nervous. Next thing you know, the kitten is running and the owl swoops down (in unnecessary slo-mo I might add) and kills a mouse and eats it. Um, okay. J actually screamed at that part. "Why did the owl just break that mouse like that?" he asked. He was covering his ears, which he does when he's nervous/scared. "I don't know," I lied. I asked if he wanted me to turn it off, but he said he wanted to keep watching.

After the scary night in the forest, time passes and the next thing you know, Milo and Otis (who still haven't found their way back to the farm) are grown up, and they now have...girlfriends? With no explanation Milo suddenly has a little white cat hanging out with him, and somehow Otis has found another purebred Pug wandering around in the woods and they've hooked up. A couple of scenes later, the girlfriends are both hugely pregnant...and then they give birth. That's right, the cute little puppy/kitten movie has now turned into my vet school freshman year Reproduction class. Not that I'm against J seeing an animal give birth; actually I think animals are a great way for kids to learn about that sort of stuff. But I was completely unprepared to answer the questions that followed.

J: Why does that dog's belly look like that? What are those things hanging down? (Referring to the multitude of nipples).

Me: She's pregnant. She's going to have babies. Kind of like when my belly was big, when Jr. was in there, remember?

J: (During graphic scene of female dog having contractions and licking herself) What is she DOING? Why is she licking her legs like that?

Me: Um, she's getting ready to have the babies. (Internally: WTH??)

J: (As the dog delivers a steaming puppy that does indeed look like a turd.) She's pooping! Why is she pooping?? Why is she licking the poop? She's eating the poop!

Me: She didn't poop. That's a puppy, she just gave birth. She has to clean it off.

J: Why did she poop out her baby?

Me: (Regretting not pre-viewing this movie) She didn't poop out the baby. It came out of her...um, (telling myself to grow up already) it came out of her vagina.

J: (Eyes bugging) Her what?? What's a pachina?

Me: (Realizing that somehow we've never had this particular discussion.) Um, it's something that girls and mommies have, where babies come out.

J: Why did she poop out of her pachina?

Me: She didn't poop out of--

J: (Putting two and two together) Did Jr. come out of your pachina?

Me: Um....yes?

J: (Thinking about it.) I think you pooped Jr. out of your belly button.

Me: Uh, yeah, pretty much that's what happened. Hey, I think Yo Gabba Gabba might be on...

J: I want to watch Miler and Otis again.