Seven Quick Takes

I

Working on cooking the third pound of pasta that's crossed our stovetop today... Little Bear and I brought a great big bowl of tuna pasta salad to the Catholic homeschoolers' (plus preschoolers) potluck and get-together after noon Mass. Six families' hungry kids put something of a dent in it, but there's still quite a bit in the fridge, and we'd already planned to have a different kind of pasta salad for supper tonight; I hadn't initially planned to bring pasta salad to the potluck. Matt's really been looking forward to this tomato-basil-feta-kalamata olive Italian salad, and he's had a long week at work so I don't want to disappoint him. Looks like we won't have to think too hard about lunches for a while!

II

These days, I am loving that at many of the times when I really do need to keep sitting down with my feet up, I can say something like, "Little Bear, do you remember the fun pasta that we got at the grocery store? We put it in a bag, and you put it out on the porch. Do you remember where you put it? Can you go get it for me?" And he will jump up with a "Yes!" and run to open the door to the porch (an insulated-but-unheated enclosure off the kitchen we use for storing dry goods and drinking water) and fetch the pasta. It's wonderful.

III 

...and then there are the opposite times:

Me: "Little Bear, you are being very disobedient."

Little Bear: "Oh. Yes, I am!"

IV

Two weeks ago, my chiropractor suggested trying something that was helping one of her other pregnant patients: kinesiology tape. "Right, we're going to hold my back together with tape?" I thought. "Well, nothing else has worked..." This works, though. It works so well. Each week since, immediately after my adjustment she's applied roughly 1"x2" strips over both of my sacroiliac joints, and for as long as the tape stays in place, my lower back pain and sciatic pain are so, so much better than they have been all through this pregnancy. We're not quite sure why it works; I've heard several theories, the most prominent being that it helps lift the tissue off the joint thus reducing pressure and/or aiding circulation, but at this point I'm less concerned with "this doesn't really make sense" and more with "I can walk across the room, and roll over, and get up from kneeling..." The pelvic pain is slowly but steadily getting worse, but that's only to be expected; I'm 31 weeks today. Just about two months to go.

V

I've been so stressed recently about Little Bear bothering our neighbors at night; in the last week we've had a couple of great nights, but also several others when he's been up every hour with at least one hour-or-longer stretch of fussing/crying. His bed is against the shared wall with our neighbor's bedroom, so we can't just let him fuss until he falls back asleep. He says nothing hurts, nothing is bothering him, he's crying "because I'm crying!" i.e. because he's tired. I feel badly for bothering the neighbors, and I also worry that they'll wind up complaining to the landlord and we'll be told to leave; we have a month-to-month lease, which in general seems like a great idea because we are hoping to find a place to buy, but it could result in us getting 30 days' notice whenever the neighbors get too fed up with Little Bear. Or when they find out that I'm pregnant, in anticipation of listening to two kids crying at night.

VI
The masculine instinct to fix the problem rather than simply listen and empathize was very helpful this evening, though, when Matt was able to suggest a solution that actually bypassed/resolved all of my elaborate "nothing can make it better!"ness: No, we can't rearrange his room due to the placement of the baseboard heat and the fact that he sleeps on a mattress on the floor, unless we get him a simple frame (and possibly a box spring, depending on how low the frame is). Then his bed could be in the absolute opposite corner, alongside but above the baseboard, and we could move the white noise machine from the hallway into the bedroom corner abutting the shared wall. Craigslist-hunting we go.

VII
Um, wow. I've never looked at the "baby & kid stuff" section of Craigslist before. This is amazing. Not that we need any of the things; I'm just in awe of the sheer variety and volume of baby and kid clothes, toys, furniture, etc for sale.

Would you buy cloth diapers from Craigslist? A hypothetical question. We've talked about cloth diapering this time, but haven't nearly reached a decision yet.

Hmm. Maybe we could be planning way ahead and just pick up a set of bunkbeds instead of a single bedframe... Ooh, a handmade log bunkbed! That's pretty. Also crazy expensive, but having "handmade" in the title should be a warning that it'll be way out of our price range, right?

Several Baby Bjorns, a Mei Tai...

Okay, all done looking at fun stuff we don't need.  Have a good weekend, y'all. Don't forget to stop by This Ain't the Lyceum for more quick takes!