At least everyone else was funny.

The blogosphere lately has been seized by panic. Hyperventilating, can't-see-or-think-straight panic.

Or at least the parts of the blogosphere that are going to the Casual Bloggers Conference in May. The panic has something to do with people revealing their true personalities. Some people seem to be sitting on the fence about going because they have a deep fear of people getting to know them in real life. They're afraid they'll be unmasked for who they really are. "What if people don't think I'm funny in person?" "What if they figure out I'm a nerd?" "What if they don't like me?"

And I have sat back and felt

SMUG.

I know. I suck.

I guess smugness is a luxury if you're not going to CBC and don't have to worry about being outed for who you really are. But that's not even the cause of my smugness. Oh, no, it's way worse than that.

Mine was rooted in vanity and conceit.

 Boo.

See, I couldn't see what the big deal was. I never worry about meeting new people. I make friends easily. Everyone likes me (except for posers, people who suck, and booger eaters) and I never have a hard time being myself. I make everyone laugh and always have something to say. Why would I worry about meeting people in person?

What's that old saying, the one about pride going before . . . ?

TIMBERRRRRRRR!

I got to participate in my own little blogger meet up when Kristina P invited me to join her and some blog friends at Disneyland. Since the baby was cooperating that night and Kenny graciously and bravely agreed to handle the kids on his own, I went. And I wasn't nervous at all. Because I'm stupid.

The only two people I "knew" virtually were Sister Pulsipher and Karen, and then I got to meet Kris, Kristen and Nikol. And I had some good guacamole and very average carne asada. And I listened to and enjoyed the banter around the table. And then I opened my mouth to speak. (Cue ominous music here.)

Thanks to the properties of sleep deprivation, I have been wandering through the last two weeks like they were one, long out-of-body experience. 

Unfortunately, this allows me to have a weird clinical detachment about myself while at the same time having zero control over my filters. I can hear myself making an ass of myself but I have no ability to stop it. It's lovely.

So we're sitting there at dinner and I'm listening to myself talk and everything out of my mouth, EVERYTHING, was an opinion. A STRONG opinion. That's okay. Except for where then I started spewing strong, JUDGMENTAL opinions about every.single.thing that came up. Other blogs. Blogging styles. Loud tables in the restaurant. Jennifer Love-Hewitt. Television. My stupid carne asada.

You could have thrown out nuclear proliferation and I would have been like, "Let me tell you . . ."

I shared my thoughts like I was the Oprah of Tortilla Jo's, a fount of dubious knowledge.

My Other Self, the clinical observer, watched and listened to all of this and eyed the steak knife, wondering if I could use it to give myself a tracheotomy before the next topic of conversation came up. The actual me just kept talking, and talking, and talking.

It was NOT me, though. It was some crazy girl who clearly thought being pompous equaled hilarity for all. 

Shudder.

It led me to wonder if I'm always so awful but I needed severe sleep deprivation to recognize it. 

It was humbling. So now instead of obsessing over what I can find to wear to the Storymakers conference that looks cute on my 6 week post baby body, I am now going to obsess over "how to be a good listener and shut the heck up" when in the presence of other humans.

I suppose it's a good lesson but it leads me to wonder exactly how long and how often I've been a total tool (or whatever the girl version is) over the years. 

Dear friend: if you've hung in with me because you have to (i.e. our husbands are friends, we are blood related, Jesus said be nice to everyone, etc), please know I will be much better company in the future. Even if I never open my mouth to prove it.

P.S. Proof it happened:

Stay tuned. . .

I want to blog. I really do. But nursing makes it hard.

And it's kind of nice not worrying about keeping to a schedule.

Except for a nursing schedule. 

The nursing is . . . interesting. I'm hanging in there.

I really do intend to post a bunch of new baby pictures but I don't know how to upload them and so I have to wait for my husband to do it. And I don't really want to nag him about it since he's also working a full day, cooking dinner, helping with feedings, taking the kids to the park to give me a break, doing the dishes, baking bread and putting the boys to bed. That was just today.

And that's totally not an exaggeration. Because he's the best.

I gotta work on my side of the equally yoked thing.

In the mean time, I'm going to take a deep breath and wade back into the nursing fray again. 

Sigh.

Worst idea ever: Shhhhhh.

Sometimes a good idea can go horribly, horribly wrong.

Which by definition then makes it a bad idea, I guess.

I had one of those ideas a couple of weeks ago during our family night. We've been trying to teach Grant to be reverent at church just so DeNae wouldn't take it upon herself to show up in our sacrament meeting to give us the stink eye.

Anyway, we talked about reverence for James (no laying down on the pew, active listening, etc.) and reverence for Grant: no shrieking, even the happy kind.

Grant is at the age where volume control is totally foreign to him. He's like an SNL character who operates only at LOUD. 

So I got an idea. I thought it was a good idea so I implemented it, but I guess the proof is in the pudding and this was a pudding that went horribly awry.

For our activity to follow our lesson, I thought we could teach him a game that went like this. James and I would make loud random noises ("blah blah blah!") and then Kenny would shush us ("Shhhh!") and we would immediately quiet. Then we'd be loud again and Kenny would shush us and we'd quiet right away. The object, of course, was to teach Grant how to respond to a cue to be quiet.

It seemed so smart at the time.

Grant thought it was hilarious. He broke into giggles every time Kenny shushed us. Then Grant decided it was his turn. He'd blabber until shushed. 

Sadly, it turns out that he interpreted the shushed moments as a short interlude before he could holler at the top of his lungs again. So um, I guess the game misfired a little. 

We figured this out almost immediately and quickly transitioned to refreshments. ("What's for dessert?" "I don't know." "Let's just all walk to the liquor store and pick out a candy." "How about if I give James five bucks and he can go.")

Turns out, though, that this is the game which keeps on giving. Grant also loves to shush people. If you're singing, he shushes you. Not because he doesn't like singing; he likes shushing. And it's not just us, it's EVERYONE. It's taken more than one person aback, like oh, say, my mother-in-law. She's not often shushed by toddlers. I explain, but it doesn't change the startlement.

I wonder if this is what they mean when they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions?

A scene from dinner last night

James: Hey, Mom. You know that food that astronauts eat where you just add water and it turns into spaghetti or something?

Me: Uh huh.

James: They should make houses out of that. Then you would just pay like $600 for a drop of water and then it would expand and make a whole house.

Me: I think that's a great idea.

James: Well, I guess if it rained, it could be a problem. The house would get too big.

Kenny: Maybe they could engineer it so that it had a dehydration feature and you could just shrink it back down really small. Then you could move it somewhere else where it fits better.

James: Now that's what I call a mobile home.

Take a walk on the wild side

I'm a mom of three.

I'm a MOM OF THREE. 3.  Threeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

And Monday afternoon, driving north on the 405 freeway, I got a sense of what that means. I was ferrying my newest little one home from an appointment and I realized, "I'm going to be doing this a lot. I'm going to be that frazzled mom in the minivan, running one tyke home from an appointment so I can get back in time to run the tween off to another one."

And I'm not going to lie: I was a little bummed.

What happened to that spontaneous girl that would head off on a road trip just because? Or get a call and head out to a concert an hour later? Or just agree to a last minute lunch with girlfriends without doing the equivalent of a the White House social secretary's job in trying to fit that in between all the million things that comprise my schedule now?

Do you remember how intricate and regimented your schedule gets with a newborn? Because I didn't. Sheesh.

I want to be that adventurous girl again, the carefree girl who nods at passing danger with a twinkle in her eye and who welcomes unscheduled fun with a cackle of glee. 

But no, there I was. In my minivan. Just another sleep-deprived mom driving down the freeway. In my minivan.

My minivan. . .

And then I began to smile. And then I felt a little bubble tickling up from somewhere under my ribcage. And then it escaped as a cackle of glee. Suddenly I realized: I am a woman who IS living life on the edge (as opposed to on the verge of a breakdown). I am a woman with a fantastic sense of adventure who flirts with danger and laughs.

Because . . .

I drive a TOYOTA. 

I get in it everyday and fire that bad girl up and take a Steve McQueen-ish gamble that I can handle the sudden burst of speed that's lurking under my van's hood, waiting to slingshot me into a wild and untamed ride. I am possibly one tap on the accelerator away from becoming the lead story on the eleven o'clock news.

I am a CRAZY, nutjob of a DAREDEVIL.

Me in my TOYOTA.

I'm BACK, baby!

Advice, please?

This is a really, really boring post in which I ask your advice on breastfeeding. I promise there is nothing funny in here today. But if you read on and can think of some suggestions, you're a saint. Thank you, blog peoples.

Baby Eden has recovered nicely from her jaundice. She started being more alert last night, looking around quietly and watching everything. Seriously, she's really pretty. Eventually I'll get more pictures up.

Anyway, because we had to make extra sure she was eating enough in order for the jaundice to pass quickly, that meant giving her breast milk from a bottle after she finished nursing from me. I really wanted to avoid this because the same thing happened with Grant and it messed up his nursing. I spent eight months pumping and then feeding him from a bottle for every meal. It was HARD.

I'm committed to breastfeeding, but . . . I'm nervous. Eden isn't nursing well. She hasn't nursed well since she was born a whole whopping week ago. I put her to the breast before every bottle meal for as long as she'll stay. Sometimes it's a long time (although I'm not convinced she's getting much), sometimes not if she's really hungry or tired. Then she gets frustrated and freaks out and pulls away. 

A little internet investigation says she's probably got "nipple confusion" and she's wanting a bottle because it's so much easier to eat from. I'm meeting with a lactation specialist tomorrow to see what she can do to help me with Eden's latch. She can also help me figure out how much she's eating and all of that good stuff. Still, even after taking Grant to the lactation clinic three different times, I couldn't get him to nurse. That's how the pumping-for-eight-months happened. I sooooo don't want that to happen again.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone has overcome this problem when nursing. Have any of you had a baby switch from the bottle to the breast exclusively? Did it take long? Was it hellish during the transition?

As much as I want her to have breast milk as long as possible, I can't do the pump and then feed this time. Tethering myself to a breast pump for fifteen minutes several times a day isn't an option with a busy and semi-destructive toddler to supervise. It's either breastfeeding or straight bottle and formula and I really, really, really don't want to do that.

Suggestions? Insights?

Bueller?

Baby stuff

You want to know what's great about drinking Kool-Aid?

It tastes just like drinking Skittles. And yes, that's a good thing.

Baby is doing well. We had a little setback today; she's developed quite a case of jaundice. She's already on a UV blanket and we're making adjustments. We went through this with Grant two years ago so we're not freaked out. I just hoped we'd dodge this particular bullet this time around. Still and all, she got a blessing and she'll be fine. I got a blessing and I think I'll survive the whole ordeal, too. I'll eventually get more pictures up. Right now, life is a round of diapering and feeding and stolen naps.

Oh, baby!

I tried so very, very hard to tell you all this on Monday, but the hospital had such a slow internet connection that I couldn't. 

But this is what I wanted to tell you. I went in for my regular non-stress test on Monday morning and that night, I got this:

Eden Heather Jacobson, born 10 p.m. on March 8. 7 pounds, 20 inches, and perfectly healthy.

They induced me because my ultrasound showed that the amniotic fluid was way too low. It should have been at least an 8 (I don't know 8 what) and it was a 3 (but I don't know 3 of what). So they said, "Hm. We're walking you over to have a baby."

So I called Kenny at work and said, "I know when Eden's birthday is going to be," and I was right.

Anyway, they started the pitocin at 1:00 and I had Eden at 10:00 on the dot. The contractions before the epidural were brutal. Then they gave me the "happy-dural" and I played Settlers of Cataan with Kenny and my friend Jaymee until they told me to push. And don't hate me, but I only had to push through 1 1/2 contractions and that was that. (I'm not telling you about the excruciating pressure on my tailbone for the hour before that where I was convinced that the baby got confused about where she was going to come out. And about how the epidural didn't help with that so much. You're welcome, DeNae.)

I have two blond boys so I was taken aback when baby Eden came out with a head full of dark hair.

Anyway, in the first picture she looks just like every newborn picture, but she's really pretty. I'll get up some better pictures later.

We're already home and the boys are goofy for her. We were mostly ready for her, so that's nice, but my sister flew in this afternoon for a couple of days to help us fill in the gaps.

In the mean time, I'm feeling good and trying not to think about all the sleep I'm going to be losing over the next three months. I'm just watching this baby girl sleep and loving her.

P.S. Four of you guessed March 8. Using ye olde random generator, the winner is: Laura Moffit! I'll be in touch soon about what you win.

What's up with that?

Three little words.

I don't know why they're so hard for me to say.

Three little words, one syllable each, and yet I can't spit them out.

How are you?

How hard is that?

Not very.

But I can't do it.

I'm not saying it isn't weird that I can't. It is. Someone calls and says, "Hey, it's Jane. How are you?"

And I should say, "I'm fine. How are you?"

AND I CAN'T.

Is that just about one of the weirdest quirks you've ever heard?

Granted, it's not socially crippling. I think generally it goes unnoticed, although I encounter those occasional awkward moments when someone is expecting me to reciprocate and I don't. But usually not.

It's not like I made a conscious decision. I didn't sit around as and as a matter of conscience declare: I will not say, "How are you?" But I've noticed lately that I don't do it and I've wondered why. 

Here's my best guess: I don't like small talk because I'm bad at it and when I ask that question, I really want to know the answer. I'm not just throwing it out there because it's the polite thing to do. So since I feel like I can't ask it back with sincerity when it's a perfunctory, habitual and almost rhetorical "How are you?" in response to someone else asking first, well . . . I just don't ask it.

But that's just a guess.

And let's make it weirder: I say "Bless you" when people sneeze. I say, "You, too" when the checkout ladies tell me to have a nice day. (Or I at least say, "Thank you.") 

But I don't say, "How are you?" when people call. Or bump into me out and about.

I'm going to file this under "Life's Great Mysteries" . . .

Making Fagin proud

You people are silly, you know. I appreciate all the "Au Revoirs" from Wednesday but I never said I wasn't going to blog any more until the baby came. What I said is that I wasn't going to knock myself out thinking of blog posts since my mind has been a pleasant blank. I thought that meant I wouldn't have much more to say than a few sentences a few times a week, but . . . 

That was before I knew about our awesome Family Home Evening coming up on Monday. We're staging an intervention. It's the first one I've ever been a part of and I'm both nervous and excited.

It's for our two-year-old, Grant. Turns out he has a serious problem with kleptomania. We're going to be proactive and invite all of our relatives and neighbors over to confront him and love him toward healing. I think he'll appreciate it!

I mean, he's been a full-fledged klepto for almost two weeks now and I bet he's ready for a change. It started on our weekly grocery trip. Grant likes to ride in the race car cart, so he's not directly in my line of sight. Well, the back of his head is, but the back of his head isn't stealing things. His sticky fingers are.

Anyway, all was well until we got to the check out stand. Everything had been rung through and then I realized that somehow my toddler had managed to snag a package of magnetic ABCs, the ones that go on the fridge, and open them, then strew them throughout his race car with abandon. I figured this out when he held out a magnet to me and said proudly, "P!" And after I praised him for knowing his letter P at age 2, I ponied up another couple of bucks for our third (count it: THIRD) set of magnetic ABCs.

Last week, I was a little more wary. I had him in front of me in the Target cart where I could keep my eyes on him at all times. I was careful to keep those sticky fingers out of reach of any shelves including the tempting ones that line the check out lane. I watched the conveyor belt and figured we had it made. Until I got home and unpacked my bags to discover an unexplained shiny new pizza cutter at the bottom of one. The people at the return desk laughed themselves silly on Wednesday when I explained that the toddler had snitched it. And here's the crazy part: it didn't even show up on a receipt. The kid is GOOD.

For this week's shopping trip, I was on to him. We hadn't even made it through the bakery before I realized that he had captured a four pack of caramel apple dippers and was busily trying to liberate them from their cardboard prison. This was an especially proud moment for me because I caught him even though he was in the race car cart. I know: super fine parenting, right?

So Monday's intervention should be fun. I mean, granted, he doesn't really have enough words to figure out what the h*** we're talking about, but I'm sure all the arm-waving, tears, and flood of pleading will make an impact. 

Do they have rehab for two-year-olds?

Hello, mellow.

Clarification: I'll still be posting. Just not so . . .longly. (See? I'm already struggling to come up with real words. We don't need pages-long posts from me at this stage in the pregnancy. We also don't need 8000 posts on my pregnancy which is pretty much all that's on my mind.)

I am looking at a living room that is in the very vortex where chaos and panic intersect. It's drowning in pink tulle and daisy spangled rompers with a dash of whatever food Grant threw down from his high chair when he was done. 

I'm trying to reorganize all the lovely bags of goodies people gave us for baby Eden into categories and piles that make sense, but preparing for a little girl is definitely different than getting ready for a boy. There's pink. SO much pink. I kind of love it, but it's foreign.

Anyway, in light of the billion details that still need tending to before this baby girl gets here (washing car seat covers and bouncy chair cushions and piles and PILES of new clothes), I think I'm not going to knock myself out over any blog posts if they aren't just coming to me magically. Today, one is not.

Life is good and full. At the moment, I'm just living in it and enjoying it and going with it--but not so much thinking about it. This is an excellent way to live, for me, but it's not so good for blogging since I recently pointed out that I'm a slice of brain blogger and lately I'm not thinking about much. When I get to thinking, I get to writing. Mainly, I'm just chillaxin' (as Crash might say). 

I'll be commenting as much as ever at your blogs, but unless something (or someone) really ticks me off or amuses me over the next while, I may not have much more to say than, "Hi. Still here. Mkay. Catch you later."

And here's how I know I've grown as a blogger: I realize that that's totally okay.

I'm a girly girl. I like spa days and makeovers and lip gloss. But I've had way less time for these things since Grant came along two years ago and I think my time for pampering decreases proportionately with each new kid I have. I'm due in three weeks and my other two have both been early, so I decided it was time to do some pampering so I'd be ready to welcome Baby Eden.

Thursday, I got a manicure and pedicure. I picked a color for my toes that I wouldn't mind staring at in the stirrups for a couple of hours. See? Even when I'm being self-indulgent, I'm practical. 

I got my hair darkened because (1) I don't have to worry about roots growing out and (2) it looks better on me.

So, James was two weeks early. Grant was five weeks early. Tomorrow I'll be at 37 weeks and this how big Eden is:

Anyone think I'm making it to 40? Let's have a contest: Whoever picks the right date wins a prize. I don't know what yet, but probably a book. All right, here are the rules: Anyone who puts their guess in today or tomorrow is eligible. Closest to the right day wins. My actual due date is March 23. Kenny says she's coming Thursday. Happy guessing!

 Anyway, besides being as cute as I can so I can meet my daughter (and also because I won't have time to do any of this again for another six months), my mother-in-law and aunts threw me a Super Rad baby shower yesterday and this little girl is ready to go.

Seriously, they made a bear cake:

I can't believe I don't have more pictures of the incredibly cute decor and food my family made. So cute! 

And a cool hair ribbon holder that matches Eden's cute bedding:

And lots and lots of cute clothes. My husband is a little worried it's too much but he sort of forgot that you have to change the baby's clothes three times a day (at least) due to copious vomiting. Then he looked at everything and said, "Oh, yeah. That should be about right."

Come on, Baby Eden. It's play time!!!