Could pregnancy be any more fun? In addition to feeling like a large cumbersome whale, I now seem to have developed pregnancy-related PICA. My partner here, Jennifer, told me that I had Pica, but I had no idea what she meant. My generation looks everything up on the internet, so a brief overview of some Pica websites informed me that mostly kids, or crazy people, have Pica - an overwhelming desire/craving to eat non-food items. One woman I read about craved plaster and picked at her bathroom wall for so long that they ended up having to replaster the entire thing. She must have eatens POUNDS of the stuff. Kids usually eat dirt, markers, crayons, chalk . . . and sometimes it can point to a vitamin deficiency (in the case of one woman, who was eating metal and rust). In my case, I’m fortunate (really?) to be cursed with a craving for Ivory soap. So far I have managed to avoid taking a bite out of a bar of the stuff, but it’s terrible. I guess it’s what smokers feel like when they need a cigarette really badly. The nurse midwives just laugh and say that anywhere between 30-60% of pregnant women have Pica symptoms and to just try to avoid eating paint, buckets, plaster, chalk, or crayons. In my case, I don’t think eating soap will be nutritionally beneficial to me or the baby, so I just settle for sniffing a bar of it every night. I really thought I had lost my mind, but apparently it’s more common than I ever thought. I figured I’d go public in case anyone else out there is wanting to chow down on a box of Tide Soap Flakes. Girlfriend, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! If you are not pregnant, however, seek immediate professional help.

Lily’s vocabularly is positively bursting. Most of the time she says words I didn’t even know she knew. We are trying to get her to use “please” when she requests something, although the excitement of her just being able to ask for what she wants often takes over my need to instill good manners in my daughter. Now if I could just get her to tell me when she needs to poop BEFORE she does it, potty training would be a snap. Some new words this week: horse, octo (for octopus), Aunt Jenn, Delilah (Li for short), tie, shirt, skirt, shoes, socks . . . and of course she tells us the color of all of these items, whether we want to know or not.

I’m taking a lunch break and trying to figure out why Lily was up all night. Maybe it’s still her second molars coming in - maybe she just felt like partying last night. Who knows, but I do know that her father and I were up a lot with her. Hopefully a day with the grandparents will exhaust her and she will sleep tonight.

I had my gestational diabetes screen yesterday - that’s always fun. You drink something that tastes like over-syruped flat Sprite, wait an hour, and have your blood drawn. If you don’t pass the initial screen, it’s a fun 3 hour procedure, complete with 5 blood draws. I told the lab tech that if they told me I had to come back for that, I was leaving the country. It’s traumatic enough being stuck with ONE needle let alone five over an extended period. My parents came to the office so they could attempt to entertain Lily. She spent most of the time riding the elevator from the ground floor to the third floor, where the office is. I have a feeling now that everytime we get on an elevator she is going to want to play.

I just went back and read some of the blog entries from last summer. It blows my mind how much she has changed. Feeding her bottles??? Now she feeds herself with forks, spoons - or whatever she can get her hands on. Her ability to speak is increasing rapidly, which helps a lot with the frustration level. Today she wanted her “blayne”, which means her blanket. Once I got it, she settled right down and actually hung out in bed with me this morning. She knows words I had no idea she knew - like “heart” (she saw one on my bracelet). She pays attention now to what everyone says and then tries to repeat it. Usually this is great, but in the case of the “GI-NA”, it was not so great.

I think Mike and I finally decided on a name - Arden Olivia. I wish people would just read it on the blog, rather than us having to tell everyone. Names are almost as bad as being pregnant, because everyone develops an opinion and wants to share it with you. I remember when we picked Lily, everyone couldn’t wait to tell us that the only Lily’s they knew were fat, mean, ugly, or just downright weird. So there it is. I wish I had a cool name like Arden - but I already know enough about children to know that when she’s older, she’ll be griping that she doesn’t have the kind of name you can find pre-printed on pencils and backpacks.

Going on three weeks of being sick . . . no blogging during that time. I feel like ever since I was blessed with Mr. Kidney Stone I’ve been going downhill. I got some nasty bacteria called campylobacter from raw chicken, probably some some random restaurant, and it has taken a toll on my body. Combine that with trying to figure out what the heck this “mass” on my liver is, and I’m over the entire medical profession. We were back at the doctor today demanding some other diagnosis. He gave me a Z-pack and sent me home. We leave for Smith Mountain Lake tomorrow and both Mike and I, as well as the rest of the family, hope I will be able to enjoy it and be healthy. I don’t know who’s more sick of me being sick - my family or me.

Poor Lily - she hasn’t seen much fun from me lately. We bought her a training potty and she loves playing with it (not sitting on it - mostly she just drags it around or tries to put it on her head). She’s seen me with my head in the toilet so much over the past month that as soon as we put it together, she kneeled in front of it and put her head into it, just like mommy! Awww, my little puker . . . so sweet. I guess she really does watch what’s going on, even if she has no idea what it means. Let’s hope she’ll get the idea that she’s supposed to sit on it, not throw up into it, sooner rather than later.

Thanks for all the supportive phone calls and emails and sorry if I haven’t returned them. I’ve really appreciated it, and hope that by the time we return from where “Dirty Dancing” was filmed, I’ll be all healed up.

The walking dead has returned. Sort of. I spent yesterday morning at Patient First and last night in the ER trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. Still don’t know - everyone is calling it a virus. If that’s the case, it’s one nasty and drawn out version - we are on day 10 of it and all of us are sick to death of it, especially me. I feel more human today than I have in the past week - now if I can just eat and keep drinking water, I’m sure I will improve.

Since I last blogged, Lily went to the doctor to find out the great news that she had lost a pound since her 12 month visit, and had dropped into the 3rd percentile overall. She’s very small. We have to make sure this isn’t a trend - she doesn’t eat a whole lot and she’s extremely active, so our pediatrician wasn’t overly concerned about it. He said he’d be more concerned if we brought her in for her 2 year check up and she was still continuing to lose weight. In the meantime we just need to have her eat as much as possible!!! It’s doesn’t help that she is going through a picky eating phase - I guess paybacks really are hell, and all those years I refused food are now coming back to me twofold in my own daughter.

Thankfully Mike has stayed healthy through all of this. Basically I’ve been sick since before we went to Texas, which is annoying, to say the least. I have almost forgotten what it feels like to have energy, and I really don’t take my health for granted any more. If I had any doubts about Mike getting his “tubes tied”, they are gone now. I’m not blaming the pregnancy for all of my health problems, but it sure doesn’t help . . . and I think two is enough. I will hopefully blog more regularly now!

Another work “week” is winding down for me - looks like this afternoon I’ll be trudging through someone’s file cabinets in an effort to whittle down my huge bill that we are trading on. Hey, whatever it takes to become debt-free. That sounds almost anti-American.

Lily is trying to talk these days - mom swears she said “milk” and “grandma” yesterday, but neither Mike or I are buying it. At least the grandma part. She barely says “mama”! Regardless, she is trying - I’ll give her credit. We say a word, and she attempts to repeat it back. Usually it sounds like she’s blowing a raspberry at us, but I think the intent is there. I’m not overly anxious for her to start speaking, considering her favorite word is “no” and her favorite gesture, when annoyed, is to start slapping at me, a table, a ball, or whatever tends to be in her way at the moment. I’ve got the beginnings of a teenager on my hands! Since the “terrible twos” have started early, I’m hoping that means she’ll be over it by the time Child Number Two arrives.

Speaking of “dos”, as Mike and I fondly refer to Child Number Two, I’m having one of those months where I question my sanity. I remind myself regularly that I fear my abilities as a mother mostly because I’m so ridiculously tired when pregnant. Looking in the mirror makes me break out in hives - most women grow out when pregnant. My entire body widens. I feel like a wall with legs most of the time. Kidney stones, bladder infections and puking aside, I’m just not a pretty picture of a pregnant woman. Someone told me recently that I was “glowing” - I about died. It was probably just the light reflecting off my hormonally-activated pimples. I have many honest friends who are also mothers, and all of them have admitted to questioning what they were doing when getting ready for Number Two. All of us at one time or another have said, “Why am I doing this to myself? Child One is sleeping through the night, eating, and will possibly be out of diapers soon. So I had to go and screw it up. More breastfeeding - more sleepless nights - more looking like a giant spit up rag.” These same friends reassure me that when Number Two arrives, all of those complaints are forgotten, and faith is blind, so I’m trusting that I will be able to rise to the occasion and be a good mother to Dos.

And no, we’re not seriously considering naming the baby Dos. Dos Del Bueno? Let’s get a little more ethnic sounding, shall we?

Speaking of names, if you have any good ideas, please email them our way - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Girls names are easy - Mike and I agree on many of those, but there was not a single boys name we both liked. We find out the sex of Dos on June 3, so I’ll post on the blog when I get home from the ultrasound.