You Say You Want a Revolution....For Chrismukkah?

Have you seen Restoration Hardware's holiday catalogue? No? Well, Ethan has. It looks like this:

Yeah, the Beatles. The Fab Four. The object of Ethan's obsession, like he was a 16 year old girl in 1962, screaming and fainting.

We were at the mall this past week and from across the hall, Ethan spied the catalogue in the store's door way. Amidst the crowd, he leapt from his moving stroller (one of those finger amputating Mclarens, damnit!) and ran through the people like a stunt man dodging traffic.

Of course we took a copy of the catalogue with us and the rest of the time we were at the mall, Ethan pointed out for me which guy on the cover was John, which was Paul and asked why one of them is named Ringo, since that's really not a name. He wanted to know where they were walking to and what Paul was talking about. And clearly, I have none of these answers.

I assumed that this catalogue would go the way of all other magazines or trinkets that catch Ethan's momentary, 3.5 year old attention span. I underestimated the obsession. Somehow, that catalogue has made it's way into our bedtime story rotation. Every night now we read Knuffle Bunny, Green Eggs & Ham, some crap about the Wonder Pets, and the Restoration Hardware holiday catalogue.

We leaf through the pages and Ethan regales us with stories of how John is going to ride his bike (there's a bike on pages 10-11) to the park or how Paul and Ringo are going to race their cars around the race track (pages 8-9). It's all very entertaining.

So I'm kind of in the market for a Beatles childrens' book. Know of any?

Ironic

The funny thing about these shots that I'm taking to try to get pregnant, after two years of not being able to get pregnant?

They totally mimic the very best, most fun parts of the first trimester of pregnancy. I? Am exhausted. Like, clawing my way to the couch by 4pm, crying about how tired I am by 7pm and falling asleep on the couch before 8pm tired. Oh, and nauseous. Which is awesome (please see my post from earlier in the week about how much I love and am not at all freaked out by the thought of throwing up)

So because of that I'm going to bed. Oh, and so as not to be anonymously accused of being a complainer (ha ha!), I have to say this will be more than worth it, 100 times over, if I am able to get pregnant, and I'll gladly feel like this every day for the next nine months if it works and I get knocked up.

Oy Vey.

Yeah, I said I was going to write about my fabulous reunion with my lover, erm, I mean Target, today. But as it turns out, my kid did something I think is far more blog worthy, so I'm going to forego the hedonistic consumer lovefest that is my relationship with Target for now.

Ethan attends a Jewish preschool and every Friday morning, the kids celebrate the Sabbath. They head over to the small sanctuary in the synagogue, sing songs, march around the room with plush stuffed faux-Torahs. It's pretty much the cutest freaking thing I've ever seen. ever. in. my. life.

I knew all of this was happening on a weekly basis and thoroughly enjoyed listening to my little mensch singing Shabbat Shalom songs on the way home from school on Fridays. But I learned something I didn't know about the services last week when a few other moms and I attended so we could see the adorableness in all it's glory. Apparently towards the end of each little Shabbat service, the school director passes around a tzedakah box, which is the little box to put change in to donate to charity.

I had been sending my kid to school for over a month of Fridays without knowing about the existence of the tzedakah box. While other kids were listening to the plinking plunking sound of nickles, dimes and quarters off on their way to make the lives of others better, my kid was...I don't know. Picking his nose (definitely)? Looking at the ceiling (possible)? Contemplating the meaning of life (highly unlikely)? I have no idea. But he wasn't giving any money to charity.

Fabulous. I'm hoping the director, his teachers and all other adults involved realize that Ethan wasn't trying to impersonate Scrooge, nor were his parents. I just didn't know about it! So that day, when the director whipped out the box and all the little kiddos jumped up to deposit their spare change in the tin can's slot, my heart sunk to my toes, my face turned ten different shades of red and I shoved my hand into my purse, digging around for coins, bills, whatever I could fine. SHIT! As I realized what was going on, and that I had no idea how much money I had on me, if any (damn debit card making cash and coins obselete!!!), I panicked that if Ethan didn't give any tzedakah while I was physically present and in the room, I couldn't claim ignorance and I'd just look like a stingy jerk.

I pulled some bills out--I have no idea how much, I didn't even count, folded them up and told Ethan to put them in the can. He of course, had NO idea what to do because, you know, he'd never actually given to charity before because his loser mother had no idea he was supposed to be coming prepared for such a thing. Gah!!! So we created quite a spectacle, the two of us cramming a fold of bills into the tin can.

So anyway, this morning when I dropped him off for school, I made sure to put two quarters in his pants pocket. I told him, "These are for the tzedakah box during Shabbat services, okay?" and kissed him goodbye. I told his teacher that the quarters were there in case Ethan forgot and went on my merry way.

This afternoon I picked Ethan up, we drove home and began playing some rock star game or other (we are always, in some way, pretending to be rock stars). Ethan reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the aforementioned two quarters. And a dime.

"Why didn't the quarters go into the tzedakah box?!" I asked, then, "Where did the dime come from????" Ethan's answer? "The tzedakah box."

Oh dear G-d in heaven above, please don't strike my poor thieving child down. He stole from the tzedakah box. I'm not sure how it's possible since the only opening to it is a little slit in the tin can, but he left the house today with fifty cents and he came home with sixty. We had ourselves as serious a talk as one can have with a three year old about taking money that isn't ours and why it's important to give to people who don't have all the toys and food and comforts in life that we do. And then I went into the other room and giggled until I about peed my pants.

On Monday, I will go into the school, with that whopping sixty cents and explain to his teacher that I'm not sure how exactly that random dime ended up in his pockets (maybe another equally confused kid really just gave it to him while the box was being passed around the room? I don't know, but I am sure it was entirely innocent), but could she please put all of it in the tzedakah box for us.

Maybe next Friday I'll attend the little Shabbat service and make sure that a certain sticky-fingers gets his coins in the tzedakah box.

One shot down, eight to go...

So, I've spent a LOT of time in the past 48 hours on the phone. If not with my infertility clinic, with the insurance company. If not with the insurance company, then with the infertility clinic. You get the picture. Apparently there was some confusion over whether my injectable meds had been ordered, when they needed to be ordered by and whether or not they were going to actually be at my house and accessible to my belly fat and then my ovaries at the exact right moment.

Seriously, if timing sex for conception isn't stressful enough, timing shots of god only knows what hormones and chemicals into your belly for conception is a full-on panic attack of legendary proportions. At least when it's just you and your husband timing the deed, you at least have some control over that. But when your chances of conception are suddenly being controlled by a doctor, a pharmacist and four or five faceless voices on the other end of a telephone line, things get a little more stressful.

I'm not what you'd call a confrontational person. I'm rarely a squeaky wheel; I'll just take my grease when whoever's giving it out gets to me. But with this? I turned into a bit of a harpy.

I tried not to be. All day Tuesday I took deep breaths, and when I called the clinic or the specialty pharmacy, I spoke in soothing, easy tones. I said things like, "I just want to check that..." or "I'm sorry to bother you again, I am just wondering if...". And when the responses I got were, "I will check on that and get back to you," or "No, ma'am, I do not have that order," I took more deep breaths, and double checked with the voice on the other end of the phone that these meds could indeed be shipped overnight, so if I needed them by Thursday, I still had a shot (no pun intended) at getting them on time. And then I'd get off the phone, wait a couple of hours, and start my calls again.

By Wednesday morning, though, I was starting to get a little bit testy. After being assured by the clinic on Tuesday that the prescription would definitely be placed by the end of the day, I discovered, from the pharmacy, that they had in fact NOT been ordered yet. This is when I started to feel the synapses in my brain firing personality-altering messages to my mouth. I called the clinic again, and did a whole lot of interrupting whenever I heard the phrase, "I'll look into it." I do believe at one point I said, "Maria, you're going to do more than look into it. You're going to make sure it gets done. And you're going to call me back to let me know it's done."

I have no doubt that in my medical record file, the words "Gigantic Bitch" are written in red across my full name. I don't care. Maria can suck it. An hour after that phone call, while we were at Ethan's dentist appointment, someone who was NOT Maria called me back from the clinic to let me know that she had personally seen to it that the order went through to the pharmacy. I wish I could remember her name, but I was so busy being madly in love with Ethan in the dentist's chair (see yesterday's post) that I didn't catch it. Whoever she is, I love her.

A couple of hours later, Neisha from my insurance agency called me to set up delivery. That phone call took about thirty minutes. Have you ever tried to change a poopy diaper while talking on an iPhone to a complete stranger? And iPhone, or any cell phone, I think, is really not designed to do the whole cradle between your shoulder and ear thing and I'm not nearly cool enough to have a blue tooth ear piece. So I dropped my iPhone, and Neisha, about six times during our conversation. I'm sure she was thrilled.

But bless Neisha's heart, this morning at 10am, a white styrofoam cooler filled with baby-making serums and syringes and progesterone suppositories showed up, packed on ice, to my doorstep. A--freaking--men.

Moments ago, Husband looked on in, I'd like to think, awe, as I gave myself the first shot of nine. The needle looks pretty scary, but it really didn't hurt. According to the calendar my RE gave me today, the IUI date is either the 22nd or 23rd, so a full day or two before family arrives for turkey day. But, due to overwhelming demand, I will do my very best to fit a turkey baster joke into my Thanksgiving repertoire.

Tomorrow's post will be about something far more fun than this baby-making riggamaroll; I will be writing about my return to TARGET!!!! SQUEEEE!!!!

Like Mother, Like Son...or Maybe Not.

I'm not what you'd call a "fan" of the dentist. I didn't mind going when I was a kid, really. My dentist was a kind old gentleman who'd been cleaning my parents' teeth for years. He had some stray nose hairs I remember staring at while he dug around in my mouth with his pudgy fingers (in the days before rubber gloves), but other than that, I had no complaints.

And then in high school, I had to have my wisdom teeth extracted. They were impacted and all kinds of fun stuff and the decision was made that I'd be put under general anesthesia in the hospital for the extraction as opposed to having it done in the office. Having had no experiences with surgery before, I had no fear--I had nothing to compare it to and no images in my head of what the prep and aftermath would look or feel like.

So lying in the hospital bed, waiting to be wheeled in to the OR, a kind-hearted nurse with the best of intentions comes up to me and says, "Okay, honey, so later on tonight when you're at home, you might throw up and it will be really dark. Don't worry; it's just because you're going to end up swallowing a lot of blood and that will make the vomit darker than you're used to." Um. Used to??? Used to???!!! I'm NOT used to vomiting. Ever.

I think I've mentioned here before that one of my biggest fears in life is vomiting. I once stopped eating for more than a month except for chicken broth and toast because I saw another kid puke and was so freaked out by it that I couldn't bear to run the risk of throwing up by having food in my stomach to throw up. A smidgen twisted, but it made perfect sense to me at the time.

So hearing "you're going to throw up later" moments before being put under general anesthesia for the first time ever may have caused a wee bit of anxiety for me. And by "wee bit of anxiety", I am referring to trying to get up off of the table right before being wheeled in, saying "I don't want to do this," and I think now, looking back, I was mid-panic attack when the anesthesiologist told me to start counting backwards from 100. Rather than count, I clearly recall saying, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe," and then poof. Sleepy land.

I woke up in recovery fairly certain that I had in fact died, what with the whole not being able to breathe thing. Coming out of the fog, everything in the recovery room was white, cloud-like, from the warm white sheets wrapped around me, to the white walls, to the white gauze packing my face. It could certainly have been heaven. Yup. Dead. Went in for some little tooth business. Came out. Dead. Which? In my mind at the time, probably would have been fine with me IF I could be certain that there was no vomiting in heaven.

I heard my dad's voice, and knew that last I checked, he had in fact been alive, so that meant to me that perhaps I wasn't in heaven, but just in a really bright and plainly decorated recovery room. And was alive. And was going to go home and vomit. Blood.

Oh. My. God. I remember the fear of that night so vividly. There was no sleeping. I never vomited, not even once, but the fear of it made me so nauseous that I shook in my bed most of the night, wide awake and waiting. And crazy ass vomiting fears aside, recovering from the extraction was paaaaainful. The only other serious pain I'd had in my life up to that point was menstrual cramps. And holy moly, I had those. Like pass-out-from-the-pain cramps. You can see that I have a wicked high pain threshold, right? Yeah. I'm tough. This was like the worst menstrual cramps ever, but in the back of my mouth. Good times.

It was routine and uneventful, medically speaking, but it forever changed how I felt about going to the dentist. I continued to go every six months until I was off my parent's insurance (because I'm super independent and my mom kept making appointments for me until I graduated college. Thanks, mommy!). After that, though, and since, I have been spotty at best, in my trips to the dentist. I'm kind of like the woman in the 1-800-DENTIST commercial who mocks the 1-800-DENTIST guy in the elevator, who can't understand why she needs to go to a dentist. Yeah. I'm responsible like that. I know I need to go more often. And I will. But this isn't about me (contrary to the fact that you've been reading about me since I started this post).

But as a mother, I HAVE to bring my kid. So I did. Today. I took some deep breaths, promised myself I wouldn't pass my own anxiety on to Ethan and off we went. I envisioned much screaming, fearful eyes under the bright lights and tears. I envisioned Ethan looking at me like "why why why would you do this to meeeeee," and a dentist who would throw her hands up and say, "I can't work with him if he's going to be this worked up."

File this under "Mama drama over-reaction" (and I know, that file is WAY full at this point), but the kid had a bona fide blast at the dentist. LOVED it. She had toys for him to play with while she and I chatted. Then she invited Ethan to climb up into her space-ship chair and introduced him to Mr. Tickle (the polishing brush) and talked about sugar-bugs and how she was going to check for them in his mouth. He was full-on AWESOME and I've never been prouder.

There were even x-rays and he did well with those, too. XRAYS! He did gag once on the bite-plate, but even that didn't deter him from enjoying himself. He smiled as the tech replaced the bite plate and zipped another xray picture. Who IS this child?! On the way home he said, "I liked the dentist, mommy!" and later in the day spent time prying my mouth open and "checking for sugar bugs" in my teeth.

So fine; he's got a tiny shallow cavity on one of his front teeth--we're going back in a few weeks so the dentist can buff it out and put a small white filling over it. I brush his teeth a little too hard, so I've made his gums a bit sensitive and have to practice brushing more gently. Other than that, he's in tip-top shape. And if this makes any sense, I am a little less afraid of going back to the dentist myself now.

Finally, an excuse for all my belly fat...

Apparently belly fat is a GREAT receptacle for fertility drugs. Well, bring it! Thank goodness I've been storing up this fat since my pregnancy with Ethan! You know how they say muscle has a memory and can bounce back to it's former shape when "reminded" to by exercise? Wouldn't it be cool if my tummy flab also had a memory and could remember being knocked up? That would be awesome. A couple of shots in the "smiley face right below the belly button" (yeah, that's what the lady called it) and POOF! fat cells start yawning, stretching and saying, "heyyyyyyy, wasn't I pregnant a little while ago? That was awesome. Let's do that again."

I'm sorry. What the hell am I talking about? Oh yeah, I had my injectables training today. The nurse/therapist who did the training was wonderful, very comforting. She came equipped with a 1.5 hour long power point presentation (you read that correctly) about the entire process, detailing everything from what phone numbers and extensions will give you an actual real live person on the other end of the phone in the office, to how many days to abstain from sex before your procedure. To everything in between---and there's a LOT of stuff in between.

Funniest part of the training? On the way in, another woman and I noticed a bunch of green "gift bags" at an entry table, turned to each and said, "Swag at the infertility clinic? Nice touch." Maybe she went to BlogHer, too.

Also? A tiny little women who I think may have been Chinese came into the conference room a few minutes late, meekly sat down next to me and was silent for the majority of the nurse's presentation. As the nurse went from standard clinic procedures into discussing the actual process of giving the shots, this tiny little woman's voice, heavily accented came out of nowhere, "Wait. Doctor doesn't do shots??? WE do shots??? WE do??!!" Poor girl. Yes, WE do the shots ourselves. And not the vodka kind. I wondered why she thought she had to go to a training session if the doctor was going to be the one doing the shots. But it was hilarious. Fortunately she took it in stride once she digested the news that she was going to have to give herself her own shots.

I'm relieved I didn't have to actually stick myself in the belly today. We were given a variety of shots to work with, but administered them into a foam square instead of our (my) own chub. So if everything goes according to the current plan, on Thursday I will start shooting my belly full of hormones for nine days. Then, the night of the tenth day I'll give myself another shot to force my body to ovulate and then off we go for the IUI.

My hope is that we get this process done before it's time to sit down to the dinner table on Thanksgiving. My family's not one to discuss these sorts of matters over a meal, but I may not be able to resist a turkey-baster joke unless the IUI is already behind me.

Is It Really Only Monday?

And ONLY day #9 of this reeeediculous NABLOPOMO??? I have officially dropped the Nablopomo ball on the other two blogs, but I will power away on this one, leaving you all wishing that I was just a little bit better at this writing thing when I have to churn something out every day. Because truly.

Really, though, things are lovely. No school today, so Ethan and I met a bunch of the preschool moms and their kiddos at a park. The moms attempted conversations while ducking to look under jungle gym apparatus or craning to see over the other moms' shoulders, to make sure whichever kid was theirs was still somewhat visible and not dangling from the top of a slide or one of those obnoxious twisty ladders. The weather was crisp, the kids were ecstatic to be running around like maniacs, the moms were chatty, and there was coffee. Your basic perfect morning.

A little after 11am, I heard someone call to their child, "Are you ready for lunch?!" and then the blankets came out, spread over the grassy area of the park. Lunch boxes emerged from moms' bags and kids sat around rifling through their sandwiches and whatnot. Things their prepared, organized moms had thought to bring for them. Erm. Oops.

As soon as I heard the word "lunch!" I remembered reading it on the email "playdate....ending with a picnic lunch!" What an awesome idea! If you remember to pack the damn lunch. I, however, did not.

Before getting to the park, however, I'd stopped at Whole Foods to make a small purchase for the purpose of getting out cash to use at the park (they have a $5 parking fee). E saw a box of Annie's Organic snack mix (the healthy kid's answer to Chex Mix, right?), so I grabbed that, requested $20 cash back at check-out, and off we'd gone to the park.

So that box of glorified Chex Mix? Oh yeah. That was my kid's lunch at the park today. As the other kids were eating pasta salad and sandwiches and pieces of fruit. The lunch of champions I happened to have on hand? Chex mix. And to wash it down? The last quarter of a bottle of water I had in the car from this weekend. Because I am nothing if not an excellent mother.

I'm grateful that in my preschool experiences with Ethan, I've never come in contact with "those" moms; the ones who look down their nose at you or seem to judge you at every turn. It's very likely that I'm completely oblivious to the looks and judging, but I doubt that given my penchant for self-doubt and social anxiety. For the most part, every single mom I've met, here and in Los Angeles, through Ethan's schools, have been so friendly and laid-back and fun.

So many times I could walk away feeling like "that" mom, but I don't. Most recently (aside from today's delicious and nutritious lunch offering), I returned for afternoon pick-up at preschool after a shopping trip to Sephora where I happened to have tried on a glitter-based eye liner. That wouldn't come off. So perhaps some of the moms might have thought, "well, now we know what Ethan's mom does with her four hours off each day...*cough* stripper *cough*", but they never said it or looked at me sideways or direct their child away from me if they come near. So it's all good.

Hanging out at the park today with this new group of women reminded me of my mom friends in LA and of my mom friends in Virginia. So many other kids' moms have touched my life in the past 3.5 years. I can't help but feel incredibly blessed not just in that my kid is so freaking awesome on a daily basis, and that I get to watch him grow up and be this amazing little person, but that through his mere existence and the fact that he's got a life to lead that involves school and friends and all of that, I get to meet new people all the time, too. Life's pretty sweet.

Oh, and as a side note? Tomorrow I get to go to the infertility clinic and learn how to shoot myself up with drugs that will shock my ovaries into spitting out eggs like a pitching machine. Awesome.