I talked to my mom last night during the usual Thanksgiving Phonecall and amongst the discussion of parsnips and turkey, we had the following conversation:

Me: So, Kory said he “chatted” with you on IM yesterday.
Mom: Yes! That was a lot of fun!
Me: I think maybe you guys had some communication issues, though, because he’s a little confused about something you said…. *laughing*…. he thought you were leaving Grandma to go work somewhere over Christmas! *laughing more*
….. long pause…….
Mom: Well, I’m considering it.
Me: What is it? Where is it? Kory thought you said cleaning houses?
Mom: It’s HOUSEKEEPING.
Me: Keeping WHOSE house, Mom? Where?!
Mom: In the Grand Canyon.
Me: The Grand Canyon. You are going to be a janitor in the Grand Canyon?
Mom: (sighing) It’s just something I’m THINKING about. I can always change my mind.
Me: Ok, explain it again slowly. I feel like I’m missing something. You are going for over a month…
Mom: No! No! It’s like maybe 2 and half weeks!
Me: Ok, you are going for 2 weeks OVER CHRISTMAS to the Grand Canyon to clean people’s houses…… for what……….purpose?
Mom: Well, to bring in some money for one thing. (Says my Master’s Degree educated mother.)
But also, you know, to do something interesting. Also, it’s not people’s homes. It’s a hotel.
Me: Okaaaay…
Me: Okay. It’s cleaning hotel rooms…. I’m just going to stand here and not judge you, ok?
Mom: *laughs* Look- I said I’m just thinking about it.
Me: But, what about Grandma? (Mom my lives with my 85 year old grandmother) You’re just going to leave her alone at Christmas?!
Mom: She said she’d be fine!
Me: But…Mom……. does she have somewhere to go?
Mom: She can… go to dinner with people… and have company… and she said…….she didn’t mind…
Me: And……ok.……. sorry, still trying to wrap my head around this one. You are going with someone?
Mom: Yes! My friend Adele!
Me: The ex-nun?
Mom: Yes. She…… well, she needs to work a certain amount to keep her unemployment.

………long pause……….

Mom: Also, it’s for a hotel. It’s doing housekeeping for a hotel.

……. long pause………..

Me: Mom, you know what people do in hotel rooms, right?
Mom: Yes DEAR… I think I can imagine what might happen in hotel rooms.
Me: Then… just… ICK… I mean really? You’d want to clean up hotel rooms?
Mom: I SAID I WAS STILL JUST CONSIDERING IT.
Me: Okay……so.

So, what you are telling me is that you want to leave Grandma alone at Christmas and go with your friend, the ex-nun, to the Grand Canyon to work as a housekeeping maid for a hotel so that your friend, the ex-nun, will not lose her unemployment.

Do I have this right?

Mom: *laughs* That about sums it up.

Me: Well… um…. I applaud your sense of adventure.
Mom: It IS an adventure!!
Me: I know. That’s what I’m saying. It’s……… adventurous. That’s the nicest thing I can say about it and still stand here not judging you.
Mom: I’m just THINKING about it.
Me: Okaaay. Well, let me know what you decide…
Mom: Probably, I need to just reconsider this.
Me: Well, I’m not trying to stop you…. I mean, you know you are PRACTICALLY WRITING MY BLOG for me, right?
Mom: *sighs* Yes, honey, I know.

We took The Toddler trick-or-treat’ing for the first time this year.

If you want people to give you HANDFULS OF CANDY at each door, I would recommend bringing one of these around with you. There is something about a poofity, squat giraffe that mind-controls people that I JUST HEARD tell the last batch of kids, “Take one or two” into grabbing handfuls of candy and shoving it in her pail.  Oh, just take the whole bowl you, Svengali giraffe, you!

Oh, that wasn’t cute enough for you?  How’s about some poofity wittle giraffe tushy?

I thought that kid’s Napoleon Dynamite costume was rad, but he was walking with a 15-ish girl wearing Halloween pajamas from Old Navy and her friends who would take the candy and go, “GRAAAACIAS” in the most bored teenager, snarky voice imaginable. Public service announcement: if you are too cool to dress up to go trick or treating, you are too old to be out there.  I highly recommend skipping my house. I have a teensy tendency toward sharing my opinion with others.  Consider yourself warned.

The thing The Toddler had a really hard time with was WHY SHE COULDN’T JUST COME IN people’s houses.

She was shoving people aside to climb her way through their screen doors - surely, her Spidey Sense was tingling with the sure knowledge that inside these homes were TVs and REMOTES and maybe even things on fire, or partially filled with liquid, or maybe covered in poison or full of rusty nails.  Surely, in these houses were computers and laptops and cell phones and stereos that don’t have nearly enough Toddler slobber on them.  She was like a dog on point, flushing out the electronics and the potentially fatal. The siren song of any toddler…. that which is NOT HERS.

We only had one “incident” in the entire 15 houses we went to, and that moment was when the strap to her bucket gave way and her candy spilled in a flying cascade out of her bucket and onto the street.  And she had a moment, that I haven’t seen other than at the doctor’s office, of sheer PANIC.  She flung herself down onto the ground to retrieve her candy, as we helped her.

“OH NO! OH NO! OH NO!” reverbrated through the neigborhood of white paneled houses with matching mailboxes.

“OH NO BUCKET!!!!!”

She held it in her arms the rest of the time, no longer trusting the strap…. and I have to admit, she never said “Twi-ah-tee” any time that anyone could hear her other than us.

But I’ll tell you this, she said, “Tank Too!” at EVERY SINGLE HOUSE and that’s what counts, toots.

And, yes, I totally taught her to cut across people’s lawns.

DUDE! You can’t waste time with sidewalks and streets. Cut across the grass! Cut across the grass!

Time is candy, man.

Time is candy.

Many of you already know… in fact, I waited so long to post here about it because I absolutely did not want anyone I loved to read about it here - because while you may be imagining that I handle sneering comments like, “Gee, so glad I had to READ YOUR BLOG to find out“, with diplomacy and grace… I fear, I do not.

I would respond by either going, “Tough shit, jerkface.” or immediately bursting into tears.    Some people have fight or flight response, I have asshole or sobbing mess response.

That said, if I haven’t told you… please don’t think I don’t love you.  I just finally had to get it out. I couldn’t wait any longer.

Here is a clue:

Now, we’ll play multiple choice!

The woman pictured above is:

a) Wearing a really badly screenprinted shirt

b) Evidently unaware that she is being attached by a giant leech baby

c) Shockingly alluring

d) Pregnant

If you answered d) Pregnant, you are right!

If you answered c) Shockingly alluring, you are my new best friend (and also probably a little drunk)

So… there it is.  The Teen will be 17 in December.  The Baby , I guess will have to undergo a name change at some point?  The Toddler?  I suppose she could be The Baby because the new one is still The Embryo, soon to be The Fetus - which sounds like a place to buy bongs, hemp jewelry and rare Clash EPs..  Anyway, she will be 2 next month… and this one… this little cupcake…. is due the end of May.

We have no place to put this new baby.  I have a large shoebox from the boots I bought last winter and it’s looking promising.  We don’t have the $2000 a month it will cost us to have both the kids in the Montessori/Reggio school we love.  We don’t know how we will manage 2 little ones at once.

My OB revealed to us that the hernia (that wasn’t cancer balls) that I had surgically repaired  back in June with it’s own little soccer net has busted back out, thanks  to an expanding uterus.

It will need to be repaired again.

With a new soccer net.

She doesn’t know if I can go the whole pregnancy without it being repaired, so I get to see the surgeon again next Wednesday for a consult.

She said, “Boy, I’m surprised they did the repair surgery if you were going to have more kids!”

I said, “Well, we didn’t know we were going to have more kids.”

When I see the surgeon on Wednesday, he will probably say, “WHY DIDNT YOU TELL ME YOU WERE GOING TO GET PREGNANT WITHIN 3 MONTHS OF HAVING THIS SURGERY??”

To which I will reply, “Well, my goal in life is to eventually look like Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. Also, we didn’t know we were going to have more kids.”

The OB investigated the patchwork that is my abdomen.  She ran her fingers down each scar from each old incision. One.. two.. three… four… five… six…

She looked up at me.

“I don’t….  I….  I’m just not…. “, she stammered.

“Honestly, I don’t know where I can take this baby out.“  (I have had 2 prior c-sections, so I have no other option)

“Maybe HERE…”, she said drawing an invisible line with her hand across the middle of my stomach, horizontally, dissecting my belly button.

Oh, goody.

Her plan is that she’d like to deliver the baby and then step out of the OR and have the surgeon step in, take me deeper on my anesthesia and repair the hernia AGAIN, all at once.  Which to me sounds like a really complicated dance move.  Will there be a nurse by the OR door wearing a Spice Girls headset keeping the show going?

AAAND… 5..6..7…8…. Cue OB! GO! GO!  Let’s move it people.  Baby is out. Repeat baby is out. Cue surgeon! And ACTION!.Annnd.. tell me what you want, what you really, really want!

The OB, I like her.  She said, “This is it.  No more births, ok?” … and I’ll admit it…  I was scared.

Did we make a mistake?  Was this the wrong choice?

We struggled for months to make the decision, Kory especially so.  Weighing the good, the bad, the hard, the money, work, what’s best for the kids, what’s best for our family… and we decided, finally.

We decided we were done.  No more kids.

And then…. we mourned.

A family with 2 only children, essentially…

And then we waivered.

Ok, Universe, we aren’t going to get all fancy or anything.  We aren’t going to TRY, but we won’t PREVENT.  For 6 months, we’ll live in this effortless zone of possibility.  And you know, I’m overweight. I’m 37 years old.  I have chronic anemia.  It’s UNLIKELY to say the least, but we can live with it - because we’ll be able to tell The Baby that we tried.  We’ll be able to tell OURSELVES that we tried… and that’ll be enough.

And two weeks later, I was pregnant.

You hear that sound?

That’s the universe laughing.

And in the spring, when the leaves are fat and green and the nights are just starting to buzz  and smell like barbecue… when the kids are waiting for the last day of school until delicious summer break… when the lilacs start to bloom…

We will welcome our new love and we will marvel at how we could have ever imagined our lives without them.

We will kiss tiny feet, as they kick the air from their big DSW shoebox.