Notes From The 2.5 Week Trenches (and to remind us all why having new babies is soul-sucking):

*In possibly the most fitting display of irony (but not the Alanis Morisette kind), after a brief hospital admission (due to the baby becoming intolerant of my Crohn’s flare up) it was agreed by my team of doctors to induce my labor. The morning of the induction, I was already so ill that I needed my chemo meds to calm me down BEFORE I went into labor. It was the best I’d felt in months.

*Dave spent 99% of my labor alternately sleet ping or barfing due to a massive migraine which meant that…

*I spent 99% of my labor numb (which, despite it being better than pain, is somewhat claustrophobic), unable to reach the phone, and crying (damn hormones).

*Likely due to having made fun of Dave’s inordinate amount of recessive genes, I have spawned yet another child who looks nothing like me. In fact, Benjamin looks more like Dave than me. I ask you all, HOW IS THAT FAIR? DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I SUFFERED FOR YOU, CHILD? /stepping off cross now.

*Breastfed babies shit constantly. And it sounds just like a cappuccino machine. There is nothing not awesome about this especially because The Daver is responsible for all Output.

*In spite of the constant sleep dep and the 7 lb child constantly attached to my chesticles, I haven’t felt this good in at least a year.

*I have an excessive amount of flatulence for no longer having a crotch parasite pressing into my guts.. Yes, gentlemen, I *am* taken.

*Having a baby that dislikes almost everyone except you loses it’s novelty after about Hour 6.

*Diapers are fucking expensive as fuck. I guess I got spoiled with Sir I Can’t Crap the first time around. This must be my comeuppance. I am totally aware that I misspelled that. And I don’t care.

*Yesterday he barfed on my nipples. He BARFED on my NIPPLES. HE BARFED ON MY NIPPLES. And then he peed on me.

(I need a nap)

If I’d have known that getting pregnant could be so hard, I’d have skipped the birth control entirely. I should amend that: getting pregnant when you actually WANT to be pregnant can be hard. I don’t actually think that the last time I was pregnant really had resulted from having sex, but alas, I digress.

Now, like miscarriages and abortions, people don’t often bring up the ‘œgetting pregnant’ stuff with any regularity, unless of course they were successful with their first attempt a la ‘œMy boys can swim!’ etc. What they don’t tell you in health class is that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. When we first started trying, I admit that I was nervous. Like most things a la Becky, I tend to stick with my original plan regardless of circumstance and/or desire as I am one stubborn son of a bitch. I assumed (rightly so, considering my last experience) that the first time we’d have sex after going off birth control would result in a (small) bouncing new baby.

When I got my period, I was almost relieved. *Whew!* I thought, ‘œTHAT was a close one!’

The second month I was less so, but still relieved.

By the time I actually got pregnant, I was so blase about the whole thing that I took the test while smoking a cigarette and drinking a vodka/diet coke. I had inadvertantly bought the fancy assed digital pregnancy tests (they didn’t have THOSE 5 years ago!) that doesn’t leave you guessing (is that *really* a line? Shit. I can’t tell. It kinda looks like one in this light.). They are expensive as hell, so I was peeved to be using one to assuage my husband, as I *knew* that I was not pregnant. Hence the cigarette and vodka.

Well, I pissed on the stick, set it down and took a fat swig of my drink. After a few seconds, I double checked that I had properly executed the test (I’m telling you, it’s COMPLICATED), and while I was pondering the flashing bar (I am not so bright) the word ‘œPREGNANT’ popped up. I promptly spit-taked the drink all over the mirror and yelled ‘œYou’ve GOT to be fucking kidding me!’

One for the baby books, I know.

The proper way to tell Dave would have been by sending a singing candy gram or an engraved Tiffany’s rattle to his office (I have ideas, even I cannot execute them), I know, but I couldn’t have been more suprised if the dishwasher had sung Christmas Carols to me in perfect German. I was in no shape to suprise anyone else.

I unceramoniously shoved the stick under Dave’s nose and flopped down on the couch, clearly in shock. Where I sat for the next three hours, staring blankly at the test. When I finally came around 3 weeks later, I did a little research.

Some husbands give their wives jewelery for their birthdays. Mine gave me a healthy hot beef injection.

Due Date: April 9, 2007
Date of Conception: July 15, 2006 (God, I cannot wait to torture the child with this one!)

What a hell of a year.

I’ve certainly had better years (read: threesomes with prostitutes) but I’ve had worse years too (read: threesomes with DISEASED prostitutes), but to say that it’s been a busy year is a drastic understatement.

*The apex of my thus-far scholastic achievement was met when I graduated college. It somehow felt a little empty, spending so much valuable time and money to earn a piece of paper that I have yet to actually show anyone but the poor saps I have cornered at my house to admire said diploma. Job-type-giving people have just assumed that I am actually degreed SIMPLY BECAUSE I SAID I WAS! I mean, I could’ve fooled the system WITHOUT actually having to exert any real effort.

Kinda like this. “Of COURSE I graduated college Mrs. HR lady!”

*I changed my name, and I must admit, Princess Grace of Monaco is a MUCH cooler sounding name. And to be totally honest, I haven’t really missed my old name, although my new signature is kind of awkward looking. I suppose that in time, it will become second nature.

*In an attempt at frugality (me, yeah right) I opted to purchase some CVS-brand toilet paper. BIG MISTAKE. I have learned, via wiping my ass on what actually appears to be wax paper, that TP is something one should NEVER attempt to skimp on.

*Last January, we bought a condo in scenic Oak Park. And painted it. No longer did the walls look like “cat pee on plasterboard” they looked like brightly colored Easter eggs. Then, being annoyed at living in Oak Park, we bought ANOTHER house in St. Charles. No one said we were, uh, SMART.

*This year was a bad one for my cats. My 2 favorites died suddenly and unexpectedly, causing me an inordinate amount of grief and pain.

*I had an actual honest-to-God birthday party to celebrate my 25th year on the planet and the passing of my nursing boards. It was in the TRASHIEST nightclub in the area, but shit, 25 man!

*Any year without a new case of venereal disease is a year well spent.

*I worked in prison to channel my inner Johnny Cash.

*After channeling my inner Johnny Cash too often around my child, he began to pick up some phrasings that may not be suited to the under 4 set. Also, this may have led to my isolation from the mommy’s in the pick-up lane. WHOOPS.

*The kid fingerpainted in poo. Twice.

*I done got married.

*Being married is SO much better than GETTING married.

I’m hoping for a quieter 2006, but I don’t know who the hell *I’m* kidding.

We need to be clear on a point, Internet, I am not particularly squeamish. Unless we’re talking vomitous. Because that will make me very, very squeamish indeed. So much so that I will have to go running into the other room)

Being a nurse, and a mother, and someone with Crohn’s disease, I am no stranger to The Dookie. I have very little issue with cleaning it off of puckered poopers, be it my own, my son’s or even a stranger’s. No huge deal to me.

(no, I will not look at the rash on your penis)

Lately my Crohn’s has been particularly awful, rendering me bathroom-bound for many hours a day. It’s part of the disease process, so I have a hard time being too upset about it. It’s just life for me.

Since I moved from living with one male to living with TWO males, I have learned that having a penis = something besides the obvious and lingering smell of urine in the bathroom. It ALSO = Skidmarks. Since I have the misfortune of doing laundry, I am constantly coming across poo-stains on the seat of 2 sets of tighty-whiteys. Once large and one small.

I’m not sure the correlation, between penis and poo-crusties, but I do know this. I shit more regularly than anyone else in the house (aside from Joey The Mean Hamster) and I fail to import that poo onto the seat of my drawers. Guess it’ll be the subject of an upcoming History’s Mysteries.

And as a parent, I have been particularly lucky in one regard. Ben has been (literally, NOT figuratively) constipated since he was born. Once the meconium passed in the hospital, he didn’t have a bowel movement for DAYS. As such, although I had to venture into the realm of suppositories, I was spared the “my baby shit in his pants and wiped it all over the wall and crib.”

Until yesterday.

Ben came out of his room after taking a nap covered in something suspiciously brown and crusty. I had fleetingly thought that maybe it was actually dirt. Now, I wouldn’t be happy that there was enough dirt in my house to make that sort of mess, but it was better than the truth. Upon closer inspection, it was worse than I had feared.

Ben had SHIT IN HIS UNDERWEAR AND PLAYED WITH IT. It was shoved under his fingernails, on his face, and in his hair. It was crushed and smashed in his underwear.

I went through the roof. I was so angry that I made Ben sit in the bathroom, after de-shitting him (I wished like mad that I’d had a radioactive suit) until he could remember where poop goes. About 30 minutes while I stewed in the other room.

Several hours later, my Crohn’s came a-knockin’ and I rushed to the bathroom to evacuate my bowels . Noting that the toilet hadn’t been flushed since Ben’s stint in the bathroom, I casually reached over to flush. My toilet, let’s be clear, Internet, isn’t always so good on the whole “flushing” thing, but this, of course, did not cross my panicked mind.

I flushed, and the water didn’t even THINK about going down. It rose into the bowl, stopping JUST before the rim. I pulled out the trusty old plunger and set myself to work. 30 minutes, and gallons of poo soup later, the water STILL wouldn’t go down. Now it was simply all over the bathroom. My white tile was now a brownish-yellow color.

It was then that I called Dave and screeched into the phone “GET HOME NOW, MOTHERFUCKER.”

I stood in the bathroom clutching my guts in agony trying to figure out why the toilet had been stopped up. Lo and behold, while Ben was being punished and I fumed in the other room, he had graciously emptied the ENTIRE roll of toilet paper into the toilet. Maybe in houses with normal plumbing, this would be no problem, but in MY house, my toilet quivers and shakes at the THOUGHT of anything larger than a pea being flushed.

I heard the weather this morning, and it didn’t say ANYTHING about a motherfucking shitstorm.

Daver and Ben are clones. They’ve always been clones.

We’ve joked about it a lot because while Dave is Ben’s step-father and certainly the father in Ben’s life most of the time, he’s not biologically related to Ben. It doesn’t matter a lot to us because that’s the way it’s always been, but it’s so interesting to see someone share so many of the same quirks and eccentricities.

If they shared genetics, it would be one of those “that is OBVIOUSLY YOUR side of the family things,” but since they don’t, we just laugh. Dave’s the cheese to Ben’s macaroni.

The final proof occurred when we ventured out to Pashmina’s condo. Now, upon arrival and close examination, Ben realized Pashmina, not having children of her own, has no *toys* and was directed to play her old Nintendo.

Ben’s first foray into video games was Duck Hunt and was eerily good at it. He actually killed ducks which is something that I’d never mastered, not then and not now. Next Dave gave it a shot. I saw years of painful training behind his perfectly executed shots at the ducks. I sat slack-jawed and drooling as I watched my husband kill them ducks dead.

I was spellbound, enraptured, and utterly unable to remove my eyes from the screen.

Given a couple of more tries, Ben was remarkably better. He even began to shoot at the annoying dog, like generations of kids before him.

Then attention was focused on me. It was my turn. Let me explain that I had not had a Nintendo as a child, I had come from a Sega Genesis household; two vastly different worlds. I had played Duck Hunt maybe 3 times in my life over at my next door neighbors house, and I’d never killed a single duck.

I warned my captive audience of this as I sat brandishing the beautiful orange gun, and I fired. And I fired. And fired again. I sat there, firing impotently while Dave, Pashmina and Ben laughed hysterically. I did not, and probably never will hit one of those damn ducks. Being good at video games is just not in my genes.

Wasn’t then and it isn’t now.

Ben, though, he’s clearly The Daver’s son.