For the third month in a row, I am pregnant.

I considered waiting and telling everyone in real life who read this and will be annoyed that I hadn’t bothered to tell them in person, but maybe, just maybe this time, I want to receive congratulations before I ask for sympathy and support.

So for now, for RIGHT now, I am pregnant.

Will it stick this time? I don’t know. I have no assurances, I’m not blindly naive, and I’m aware that although the third time is considered a charm, I don’t buy it. Maybe this third time is another doomed little sac, maybe it’s not, but either way, I’m celebrating this pregnancy just as I would any other. No amount of magical thinking is going to make this better or worse or change any outcomes at all.

But for now, in a smoove effort to alienate all of my readers, I need to be true to my feelings and tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I’m doubly sorry if I hurt someone here, you know I’m not trying to. Shit, I’ll probably be back soon to tell you that the third time is probably not the charm and possibly gnaw off my arm when this goes down the crapper again.

Today, however, I am pregnant.

And I am happy.

(Can I ask those of you still reading this for a favor, a really simple favor for your Aunt Becky? Can you please send good vibrations this way today? Please?)

Before I get into the post, I gotta tell you all that you’re gonna give me a big head with all of your compliments! All I can say is that I’m not worthy of all of you. I see other people and their blog rolls and I know that my blog readers can beat THEIR blog readers in a fight, and that makes me proud to know you all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

————-

When I was a grade-schooler, the playground for my school (well, one of the playgrounds) had this gigantic wooden bridge leading to the metal equipment. I can’t remember what we called it exactly, but it was a deliberately wobbly bridge, flanked on either side by rusty (probably lead) chains that made the pattern of squares. I suppose the squares were there to hold kids back from falling down below, probably a 5 or 6 foot drop.

A forbidden game for us was “Bridge Tag” and as such, at every possible opportunity whenever the playground supervisor had her back turned, we played it. The rules were simple: two teams, one on either entrance to the bridge, and a fraction of those on either team would gravitate towards the middle. The object of the game was to get from one side of the bridge to the other.

One day when we were furtively playing this game, on my way across the wobbly bridge, I got seriously denied by another kid and ended up falling between the rusty chains onto the ground below. Square on my head.

This knocked the wind out of me, which frightened me enough to go and seek the playground monitor so that I could go to the nurse. When I found her, glowering and smoking a cigarette in front of the school, yelling insults to the kids in her physical proximity, I told her in deep hiccupy sentence fragments what had happened. Instead of whisking me off to the nurse, she put me in the penalty box for playing Forbidden Bridge Tag, and I stood there, still trying to catch my breath while my head throbbed uncomfortably.

Obviously, save for a few missing brain cells (probably the one’s responsible for spelling words properly and knowing when NOT to use a comma) I was fine. I’m here today, have no neurological issues (shut UP!) and had forgotten about it until I was talking to my friend KC last night.

But can you IMAGINE what would happen if this happened today, 20 years later?

That monitor would have been fired well before she didn’t send me to the nurse and instead punished me for my misdeeds, if not for the smoking in front of kids (oh the HUMANITY!) but for the fact that she routinely insulted us about nothing. She was not, as the French say, a Kid-Lover.

The school would have been sued for having such a dangerous playground, and the principal would probably have been sent to prison for…something.

I mean, I’m all for keeping my kids safe, really I am, but I tend to think that this whole safety thing has just gone too far. There’s a point somewhere where you really need to allow your kids to be kids and not be mini-adults.

I recently had to sign a waiver allowing my big son to attend a school birthday party at which some dude brought in a number of reptiles. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the kid to get salmonella or something, but I am pretty sure that this is the awesomest idea for a birthday party ever (hint, hint, The Daver) and that I trust that my son will wash his hands after handling it.

When I scoffed at The Daver’s insistence that Ben get a helmet for riding his bike, I was promptly rebuked by him for ignoring obvious safety issues. While I have any number of scars on my body from falling off bikes and such, I am pretty fond of them overall. They each tell a story. And Ben’s head? On his peewee bike? Not very far from the ground. I’ve watched as both of my macrocephalic children use their heads as battering rams and frankly, I’m not too worried about Ben on a bike. Especially since he’s going 3 feet/hour.

Not exactly a cyclist, right?

I don’t know, but I think I’m in the minority here: day to day, I’m not overly concerned for my son’s safety. He’s bright enough to look both ways before he crosses the street, he knows not to go anywhere with strangers, and if he breaks his arm falling off a trampoline?

That’ll make a kick-ass story for him to tell later in life.

Oh and as always, the request line for you to tell me something you’re dying to know more about is up and running. Holler in the comments if you want me to tell you the story of whatever burning question you might have for me.

—————

The running joke here at Casa de la Sausage has always been that Alex is trying to kill me. We’ve joked about it since I was pregnant with him, and I think it’s pretty apt. Alex’s aggression makes me look like a wee pussy-cat (not a Pussy Cat DOLL, however) and makes me giggle, since I’m still bigger than he is. FOR NOW, I must remind myself.

This was proven to be completely true last night. But, because I am a nice Aunt Becky I’ll start at the beginning for those of you playing along at home.

When I was pregnant with Alex, I was sicker than I’d ever been before from Crohn’s, from hangovers, from anything else ever. I had a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, which I had not had with Benner or I may not have had another one. I was very, very sick.

Finally around 20-odd weeks later, during the glorious second trimester, it abated somewhat, and was replaced with such severe depression and anxiety that I could barely function. I also ended up in L and D because I thought that my water had broken.

Turns out that thankfully I had just peed my pants, which may not be the most glamorous diagnosis, but I assure you that my mortification was very, very minor when I got this diagnosis.

With the third trimester came a whole new set of problems. Did you know that sometimes your ribs spread when you’re pregnant? I sure didn’t. But it hurts like a fucking bitch. It also made sitting up for any stretch of time completely impossible, so I spent much time laying on my side.

At 32 weeks, I gracefully did the splits when I was washing the kitchen floor, something I have never, ever done before and wound up again in L and D for monitoring. Then my Crohn’s kicked in and I became possibly the most miserable person on the planet.

35 weeks found me back in L and D because I thought, once again, that my water had broken. Again with the peeing of the pants. Suddenly the old castor oil induction started to sound pretty damn good. As did a coat-hanger (to break the amnionic sac).

36 weeks found me back in L and D because my darling son had, for once in his uterine life, taken a nap. This child was so active that I could fulfill my hourly kick counts in about 10 seconds. He just never stopped going.

Finally at 38 weeks, I called and begged my doctor to induce me. My Crohn’s was acting up majorly, my ribs hurt every time I took a breath (I would guess in my professional opinion that he actually broke a couple of them). The pain went above and beyond a minor inconvenience.

When he was born, he was quite a demanding asshole. He nursed 14-20 hours a day, sometimes as much as 18, and while that sounds awesome to someone like me who had convinced herself of her inability to breastfeed, I assure you that it got old very, very quickly.

In fact, until he was 10 or 11 months, I couldn’t safely go anywhere without him for more than an hour. I’d go out only to get called back by The Daver who couldn’t take him screaming for me anymore.

Until he was 11 months old, his intense need for me to be at his beck and call like a wee ickle dictator who poops his pants persisted into the nights. Where he would be up every 1-3 hours looking for a breasticle snack.

Alex’s first year and all his time in the womb I consider to be a write-off. Great kid, sweet personality (mostly), you really don’t want to get on his bad side or you will hear about it for the rest of the day. I love him fiercely and would gnaw off my own arm if I needed to for him. He’s great, really, he is.

But last night, last night he proved to me once and for all that this bitch better start watching her damn back.

I’d gone up to bed around 11pm and was laying there reading with the fan blowing in the mostly cool spring air (I have this thing about needing air blown onto my body while I sleep. And since I can’t hire someone to do this, I’m stuck with a box fan), when I started obsessing about something I had needed to get done on the main floor. I knew that I’d probably done it, because I almost always do it, and I’ve never found that I’ve forgotten to do this, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Eventually I realized that I had better go and check to make sure I’d done this task or I wouldn’t be sleeping for awhile, as my mind would churn like a broken record until I was certain. You thought I was being funny about this OCD stuff, didn’t you?

I heaved my aching calves (not the cows, dumb-ass. I’ve repeatedly petitioned for a calf of my own, but Dave won’t hear of it. Nor will he hear of a baby cheep–chick–, a goat, or a parrot) out of bed and when I opened the door to our bedroom, I was hit by a wave of…something.

It smelled like…something familiar. But what was it? I trouped downstairs sniffing the air (I have an amazing sniffer) and began prowling through the main floor. Not coming from the garage, the garbage can, outside. While I was sniffing and trying like hell to place the scent, it dawned on me.

What I was smelling was gas! Not farts, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed for farts, but natural gas.

My house reeked of natural gas!

I hurried over to the stove (the one source of gas on the main floor) and sure enough, one of the burners was tipped slightly on, which over the course of several hours had filled up the house with natural fucking gas. I hadn’t noticed it sooner because I’d been sitting in it, so my nose had acclimated to it, but since our bedroom had been well-ventilated and I’d come from there, the smell had bowled me over.

Who the hell had been so stupid as to leave the burner partially fucking on?

My darling son, Alexander, who pulls himself up on the oven door and fiddles with the knobs is who. I didn’t realize because I am a complete moron, that he could actually tilt them to do anything at all.

Needless to say, there are 4 large knobs now sitting on my counter, only to go back on when we need to use a burner.

I’m thinking that the dog kennel that we have in the basement, unused by the dog that lives with us, is going to come in very, very handy. Until he hits puberty.

—————-

Any of you have near misses like that? Anything that you should have probably kicked the bucket for but somehow escaped unscathed?

This morning, left to his own choices, Ben decided to put red and green highlights into his hair, a process that was only slightly less painful than getting a colonoscopy (why YES, I have had the pleasure, thankyouverymuch!). To his credit, however, he is a mere 6 years old with the correlating attention span of a housefly, and the whole process did take about 2 hours. I myself got antsy and bored after about 20 minutes, so I can’t say that I blame him in any way.

I’ll post pictures just as soon as I have a tutorial from The Daver (who is sadly back at work after a couple of blissful days off), but I am now perplexed. Am I officially the worst mother on the planet, destined to take my 10 year old to get his tongue pierced and sign for a tattoo (not of a pot leaf, however. Or flames. Even I have my boundries) at age 16?

I mean, since I’ve gotten my own hairs did, I’ve been barraged by strangers asking if Ben was my own child, which leads me to believe that a) I look far younger than my 27 years or b) I don’t appear fit enough (mentally) to have a child of my own. Sweet, I suppose, but also somewhat baffling.

Either way, babysitter or mother, what’s done is done (although it can be easily rectified by a pair of clippers) for now and he seems to dig it. But I’m not sure I could handle doing it again with him without trying to commit suicide by highlighting comb or some such implement OR some medicinal drugging (me, not him).

My nuclear family and I, unorthodox as we are, are really unorthodox when it comes to religion. We are not a religious family.

I was raised by hippie scientists, and The Daver, well, was not. His family was Very Religious, something that has always echoed in the chasm between our childhoods’ and relationships with the in-laws (his or mine, really).

Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means Anti-Religion in any way shape or form, well, unless it takes on the form of discrimination against my way of life. Then, you can kiss my pasty white ass. Don’t hate on me, and I won’t hate on you.

Sometimes it does bother me that I have to strike the ‘None’ box whenever I am questioned about my religious upbringing. As a (almost) fully functional adult (stop laughing. Fuckers), I feel like maybe I should have a clue what I am to do as far as saving my soul is concerned. Luckily, I am typically able to squash that confusion down and focus on life, liberty and the pursuit of cheese-flavored crackers.

Having kids has only amplified the feeling in me that I should do something or another, or do nothing and be at peace with it. And the fact that last weekend, my in-laws gifted my children with a Read And Learn Bible has sent me into a moral tizzy.

I mean, what do I do with it? I can’t suitably answer all of the questions that would likely spring up, and even if he has no questions whatsoever about it, Ben’s propensity toward Know-It-All-Ism would likely make most of the things that I do “wrong” according to his Bible thrown into my face at every.bloody.opportunity.

I think that I have reached a solution today, after mulling it over with my own family, who had many great suggestions (Ben emulated a preacher reading us his Bible this morning over brunch).

I am going to go shopping (thank you Internet, for Amazon.com) for a Kids Torah, a Koran for Children, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead (children’s version, preferably English. The only language that I know well is Latin, which will likely not help me much.). Then, at least, if the only child in my home who can read wants to read the Bible (which I have no problems with), he can read what other religions think about the world, too.

So I sit here and ask myself, What Would The Internet Do (I should get a W.W.I.D? bracelet to consult every time I’m faced with a burning question, right?) if they were in my shoes? Even if you don’t have kids (yet) or want kids (ever), how would you handle this? Or, if you have kids, how DO you handle it?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Yesterday, when I went in to the Beauty School to get my hairs did, I learned something that made my incredibly grubby heart smile: I could get Ben a haircut for $6. $6! A bargain!

Now, having birthed Ben, who was born wearing what I can only describe as a bad toupee, I am no stranger to having to get his hair cut. His first haircut SHOULD have occurred when about half of his newborn hair fell out (on the sides) while the stuff on top was left to be darker and longer than the rest of his head. He looked like a member of Flock of Seagulls.

But, because I was being incredibly sentimental, I refused to cut it (IT’S HIS BABY HAIR, AND I CAN’T CUT IT! IT’S SOOOO CUTE!), and now look back at the pictures and hang my head in shame. What was I thinking?

He began going to the salon with me to get his own hair cut a little after his first birthday because it was just that long and unruly. Had I left it to grow on it’s own, I would surely have picked him up from a weekend at his father’s house sporting a buzz cut, which would have only accentuated the largeness of his head. And TRUST ME when I tell you that he needs NOTHING to accentuate THAT feature.

After awhile, I noticed that he’d return from the salon looking just like I had cut it, only I was $20 poorer, so I took matters into my own (cheap) hands and cut it myself for a couple of years.

Since I have approximately NO eye for style and absolutely no experience in cutting hair, I eventually gave up and started paying someone again. But it STILL looks like I inexpertly cut it, and I hate paying through the teeth for something I can do myself, so I am determined to try out my far cheaper alternative.

————–

I have taken a lot of shit over the years from the male portion of my family (the adults, not the kids) over my practice of painting Ben’s toenails. As a toddler, he’d trundle over to me while I was doing my own nails and indicate that he wanted his done, too. Since he was non-verbal AND I don’t wish to inflict such rigid gender stereotypes on a baby (only GIRLS have their nails painted), I always gave in and painted his nails, too.

No harm, no foul, in my mind.

Well, the males in my family had PLENTY to say to me about that. And often did. Eventually, I made the switch from brightly colored polish to clear, but hey, if the kid wants his damn toenails done (and I’ll never have the daughter to do it with), so fucking be it.

And I can only imagine what they’re going to do when I show them what I have allowed my big son to do now.

I have generously offered to allow Ben to put a chunk of blue (or whatever color he’d like) dye into his hair, JUST LIKE MINE (well, mine is electric red, I’m not so much a blue person) when he gets his haircut. It’s his choice, and I don’t really care one way or another, but since he’d asked to do it when I’d first dyed my hair, I am going to allow it.

And I will most certainly take a hugemongeous amount of shit for it. There will be NO END of what I hear about it.

But hey, I told him that he couldn’t put PINK into it.

So, opinion time, Internet: did I do the right thing? Would you have done this, or am I the worst, most hideous mother on the planet setting my son up for ridicule and tomfoolery?

Several years ago, after holiday festivities had stretched into week after exhausting week once we’d celebrated with both sides of our families, The Daver and I looked at each other all blearily and spent and made an executive decision: we were going to start combining our familial celebrations.

The way we saw it, ANYTHING was better than having to celebrate 14 Christmas’s (each sect expecting us to be pissing cheerful rainbows and sunshine) stretched out over the course of several months weeks.

As it turns out, we were horribly mistaken. The only thing worse than celebrating Thanksgiving 57 times, choking down approximately 408 pounds of dry turkey and greasy stuffing, was doing it just once. All together.

Now, my in-laws have never been overly fond of me, be it because I am loud and obnoxious, rude and horny, or just because I don’t care one way or another about my socks matching; I don’t pretend to understand the whys about the whole shebang (mayhap showing up to their home the first time I met them wearing a patent leather corset was a bad fashion choice. Who knew?).

And my own parents have (I believe) rewritten history so that they actually birthed The Daver and not me, so great is their love for the guy (hey, at least we agree on one thing, right?). My dad often references the shrine they’ve built to The Daver in their home, where they pay tribute and light candles under a framed picture of Dave for marrying their daughter and taking her out of their care, and just because I’ve never actually seen this shrine with my own two eyes does not mean that it’s not there. I’m pretty sure it is.

So it appears that the only common ground that we all have is our love for The Daver.

Unfortunately, this does not translate well into comfortable family gatherings. Both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year were so excruciatingly painful and uncomfortable that all I wanted to do was to go and hide in my closet with a bottle or three until it was all over.

Thank the stars in Heaven that the major holidays are over for a year, but the minor ones are starting.

Like Easter.

Which both sets want to celebrate on the same day (but not Easter proper).

And we’re at an impasse: do we try (in vain, it seems) to get our families together yet again, thereby ensuring another day filled with discomfort and awkwardness, or do we split it up somehow?

(My love for the holidays, including Easter, nearly rivals my love for Diet Coke, and the fact that they have been reduced to misery really upsets me. I can get over the fact that my in-laws would prefer I was someone else, but I can’t get over that ruining my holiday. My priorities are skewed, I know, but I have no sure fire way of making them like me.)

Shit, I guess we could just change the focus of the holidays entirely to Let’s Pamper Daver And Profess Our Undying Love For Him Days, and maybe we could unite under that guise. I’m sure Dave would like that.

So here’s where I turn to you, Dear Internet, who never leads me astray…whose beauty is unrivaled, and wit unmatched. Those pants look great on you, by the way, have you lost weight? You look amazing today. Seriously hot.

If you were Aunt Becky and The Daver, how would you handle this? Or, if you have nothing substantial to add, tell me an in-law story or three.

After much hemming and hawing, whining, pissing and moaning (and that’s just on my end) and several phone calls, it was decided.

Ben came home yesterday with his very own (rental) violin. It may not be the cello I was rooting for (because seriously, even after many years of not playing, I could still do it in my sleep), but he is more pleased with himself than I’ve ever seen him.

I suppose it’s fortunate, really, that I have such a background in stringed instruments, because I was able to help him muddle through some of his first assignments, while Daver, the maestro of the violin himself, was able to work somewhere that his eardrums remained intact, and not bleeding into the white carpet.

(Ass.)

Oh, don’t get me wrong, maybe I’m still wearing the Bitter Pants because I lost the battle of What Instrument Ben Plays, but I can’t help but wish he’d chosen something a little less, oh I don’t know HIGH PITCHED. A completely unexpected side effect of the squeaking of the the violin strings (E, A, D, G, for those luckily not in the know) is that the dog, who is normally firmly implanted on the couch (I am often able to forget that we have a dog at all, which was, not terribly shockingly, a qualification I had for getting a dog), sleeping through both day and night, only lumbering languidly off when someone goes into the kitchen to make food, howls relentlessly while it is played.

Without knowing it, he’s echoing my sentiments exactly.

It’s just too bad for the both of us, because like it or not, we’re going to have to get used to it.

“I wish I were with my dad!” Ben spat at me yesterday while we poked around the extravagently priced chic baby boutique (I about died to learn that the slipcover I’d picked up for Alex’s carseat was $140. For something he will likely destroy. AND BASED ON EVERYTHING ELSE IN THERE, IT WAS A DAMN BARGIN!). I guess I’d made the error of telling Ben that he did not need a Pacifier Pod of his own for Alex, the cold hearted snake that I am.

Never have such words cut so close to my heart before. “I wish I were with my dad!”

I once read a quote (at least I think I did) about how you have to start letting your children go when they start school, but I think you have to start much earlier. Like birth.

Although we made it work, Ben’s early childhood was not one of the easiest times in my life. Initially I had to go back to work at about 2 months postpartum (someone had to buy diapers and formula, and since Nat had been laid off and therefore lounged about his parents house all day, that task fell to me), and school began a month later. I wasn’t around much, as you can imagine, and even when I was, it was a constant barrage of how ineffectual I was as a parent (spoken by my mother), so I tried to be around even less. I was living under their roof while they paid for school, and although I resented hearing about how much I sucked on a daily basis, I knew from experience that fighting it was futile.

I soon gave up my dreams to become a doctor or virologist in order to earn a quicker more high paying degree, so that I would be able to support myself and my baby son when I graduated, instead of slogging along making $10/hour working at some shitty lab while I went to grad school. As well documented my hatred for my nursing is, I’m not trying to put myself up on the cross here, I chose it, I chose wisely with the best information I had available to me at the time, and I did it and I am not sorry about it. Just whiny.

As a baby, Ben was an odd duck (mayhap this is why I like the odd people that I meet), preferring to bond with his mobile, the grandfather clock and some ugly old knobs on my parents antique hutch. He had very little use for people in general, choosing instead to personify inanimate objects up to and including all 9 (well, now 8 but this was before Pluto was ruled a non-planet) planets and box number 3 from his advent calendar, which he slept with regularly.

Between his preference of inanimate objects to people and his schedule, which sends him to Nat’s on most weekends (well, when Nat doesn’t have anything better planned), I can honestly say that although he shared my body for 9 long months, we’re not all that close. You see, I’ve been forced to let him go for so long that I realized recently that I’ve never had him as my own. All of the mother-y things I do, I do for both of my children and I do it without feeling sorry for myself (something my own mother could take a lesson from), but I know in my heart of hearts, as Ben will always be on the Autistic Spectrum, only one of my children will understand all that I do and why I do it: Alexander.

Dr. Spock (in the only baby book I read with any regularity) reminds you that you love each of your children differently, and I see this as the truth. Ben and I coexist peacefully, and I love him dearly no matter how indifferent I appear on your computer screen, and there is nothing in the world that can change this, but Alexander is mine.

When I was pregnant with Alex, I had exactly one desire: that the baby be born to love me and genuinely like it when I am around. If that sounds a little sad to you, and it probably does, remember that although Ben loves me in the best way he knows how to, if Dave were to come home and announce that I had moved to Tibet for the next 6 months, Ben would accept this and move on with his day. Alex doesn’t like it if I so much as pee with the door closed.

Kids aren’t born to us to make us feel better about ourselves and right all former wrongs, nor would I expect them to, but sometimes they heal old wounds without even trying to. This is part of what I love best about Alex, he has redeemed me in my own eyes, but it’s only a byproduct of him being less Aspy than Ben. Alex has highlighted all that is abnormal about Ben.

Ben’s quirks make him who he is, and I love him dearly for who he is: one of the kindest, sweetest, most polite and thoughtful people I have ever met. Most of the decisions I have made about my life after he was born straight down to who I married have been to benefit him in some way or another, and I don’t begrudge this in the slightest. I am proud and honored to be his mother each and every day of the week, and I want nothing but the best for his life.

Without trying to, he successfully opened up some nasty festering old wounds, the type who lay dormat for years at a time, and I was so hurt by them that I could hardly speak. I gave him the silent treatment for the first time in his life and after he left to go with Nat I just couldn’t shake his comment (which to him, was completely innocuous, as Ben has no idea how I feel about Nat and his lack of true parental responsibility. “That’s more my realm” is a direct quote from Nat when asking why he hadn’t paid the dentist yet.) for the rest of the day.

I guess kids really do break your heart over and over again, don’t they?

Somehow, I suppose, I had mistakenly hoped that it would be his choice of wife that would have done it to me.

Tentatively, so far so good.

My father has undergone his second surgery, and is recovering well, despite having an occlusion in his great vessel that “looked like a bomb had gone off” inside(whatever that means).

I am slowly exhaling. And am now completely exhausted.