Boys are a different species. I know this because I grew up with two brothers. Being the only girl in my family was essential training for my current position: mom to Max. Max is all boy. He prefers to be outdoors at all times, thus enabling him to eat dirt, weeds, rocks, and ruin all of his clothes and shoes with mud. His self-appointed full time job is to rearrange all of the natural elements in our backyard. He takes special care to remove all the dirt from our plant pots and to strategically throw rocks into the pool and onto the lawn so his dad can run them over with the lawnmower. He is quite skilled at this task. When it is time to come inside I strip him down at the door and carry him (kicking and screaming in protest) straight to the tub. He loathes being indoors. He hangs on the door handle, cries, and begs to be released into the wild whenever we are inside. Unfortunately for Max, my medical compression pantyhose and I don't last too long in the 85-90 degree weather. Unfortunately for me, Max has no patience for nylon/pregnancy induced heat stroke. Let's just say we have some long days.
In other family news, my brother Tyler got engaged last night to his girlfriend Kathryn. Congratulations to both of you! I am very excited to have equal numbers of boys and girls in our family, as I have been outnumbered for quite a while.
The weather is cooler and the pool fence is in place. Max can finally play outside! This warranted the purchase of his first outdoor toy-- a sand box. We picked it up yesterday and he has been enthralled with it. Totally absorbed in the mystery of sand. I tried to get a good shot of him playing but I could not get him to look at the camera. I was putting on a one-man circus complete with song, dance, clapping, snapping, and a jiggling over-sized belly. He didn't look up once. I guess I can't compete with sand. Here is a shot of our pool fence...it turned out better than I expected it to.
You can check out more pictures on flickr by clicking on the box to the right...
I am vehemently opposed to wearing nylons. I don't like them. They are synthetic, itchy, scratchy, uncomfortable, and, in my opinion, only appropriate for women over 50. I don't own a pair. Well, I didn't own a pair...until today. I can explain. With the arrival of pregnancy number two came the unwelcome arrival of my first varicose vein. That's right, just one. A small one, at that. Nonetheless, being the paranoid pregnant person that I am, I decided to point it out to my OB at my last appointment. He immediately grabbed his pad and wrote me a prescription for medical grade compression pantyhose. A prescription for pantyhose? While I agree that pantyhose should not be available for purchase by the general public, was a prescription really necessary?
Me: "Um, do I really have to wear them?"
Doc: "Yes, you don't want it to get worse."
I went to fill my prescription (not covered by insurance, by-the-way) and the total came to $115 for one pair. Yikes. Luckily they didn't have my size. I came home and found the same thing on-line for $25. I am wearing them right now. The package should have come with a warning label of the possible side effects. The wearing of this product may cause bothersome sensations such as creepy crawly, itchy scratchy, heebie jeebies, and general anxiety and paranoia. Avoid wearing this product in houses with an internal temperature of 80 degrees or more to prevent heat stroke, hysteria, and excessive perspiration. Wearing these things for the next six weeks will be sheer torture. After the baby comes, I will consider donating them to the federal government to be used in the coerced interrogation of convicted terrorists.
In the meantime, I'll be waiting to exhale.
