My life at 38 weeks

I'm officially in Week 38 of my pregnancy, and I can honestly state that I'm ready to not be pregnant anymore . . . for now, at least. Everything was all sunshine and rainbows until Week 36, and that's when it happened. I no longer felt like the effervescent Pregnancy Unicorn my friends labeled me as, and more like a giant, waddling sloth vaguely resembling Ursula from The Little Mermaid. 

I feel huge. And what's worse, I'm always hungry. Which doesn't help when my two major cravings right now are Top Ramen and Thrifty Ice Cream from Rite Aid. One packet of Top Ramen isn't enough anymore; when I sit down to chow, I need at least two. Then I waddle over to my car to slither down the street to the nearest Rite Aid, where the ice cream counter guy now knows me by name as I order my (double) scoop of cookies 'n cream ice cream (if they're out of mint 'n chip).

To make matters worse, I looked in the mirror the other day and was startled at how old I looked. When did this happen?! The damn smile lines around my mouth are deeper than usual; the wrinkles around my eyes a bit more pronounced. So much for that fifty dollars I spent on BareMinerals Multi-Wrinkle Repair cream. Nothing seems able to stave away the imminent signs of age that have crept into my life. Couple that with the fact that I'm Frump Girl right now because I'm so huge that only, oh, three outfits fit me these days, and it's enough to make a girl cry . . . or stuff her face with Top Ramen. 

I'm very excited to meet Baby Girl #2, but maybe it's just the weight of our recent move that's gotten me a little down. We've been at our new house for exactly one week and nothing's unpacked yet thanks to Home Depot. Yes, my wrinkles, my frumpiness, my cravings -- they are all Home Depot's fault. They say our flooring won't be installed for another week from now, so until then, J and I haven't unpacked since we'll just have to repack and move it once the installation happens. Imagine pushing "pause" on your life for two weeks, winding through a maze of boxes whenever you need to go to the bathroom (which is often because you've got a full-term baby pushing down hard on your bladder now), and eating everything off paper Chinet plates. All with a toddler. 

What I really want right now is simple: To be skinny again, to own a pair of oversized blue Ray-Bay Aviators, and to be in Palm Springs drinking a bloody mary at Cheeky's. Is that really too much to ask?

Some big changes

The last two months have brought about some of the biggest changes of my life (well, barring the fact that George Clooney also just got married and will therefore relinquish the title of my back-up husband).

I don’t even know where to start since these past weeks have been a whirlwind of news, and it seems like each week brings even more into my life, but I can’t complain because it’s all completely wonderful. The kind of stuff that TLC specials are made of.

So here goes, in no particular order:

J and I are expecting our second baby(!!!). Just typing those words makes me feel old, but I’m coming to grips with that as well (yes, we are that couple who visits our local Country Waffles every weekend for the pancake breakfast special. Our booth is always flanked by the 75+ set, giving us a fascinating glimpse into where we’ll likely be fifty years from now . . . namely, sitting in the next booth over, happily gumming our breakfast waffles.)

ANYWAY, we’re having another girl, expected to make her big debut on November 1st. We’ve decided to name her Bridget (after one of my favorite icons, Brigitte Bardot), and unlike our first pregnancy with Ava, this time we have absolutely nothing prepared for her arrival.

It’s a common complaint I hear from parents with 2+ kids – that you’ve already got all the gear, so the prep work takes a backseat to just keeping up with your first. All I have to say is “testify!” Caring for a toddler while pregnant is no joke. Ava is definitely high energy – much higher energy than most kids, which is cool but also frightening when I need to run errands alone with her, and I end up having to waddle after her with my giant belly as she runs out the automatic doors of Marshall’s with unpaid merchandise in her little arms. (This just happened yesterday). When I finally catch up to her, it’s like dealing with a bipolar alcoholic who has no semblance of reason, and let’s just say I’ve gotten used to letting her do her meltdown thing on the sidewalk of some shopping center, as judgmental people wander by and wonder why I’m just standing there shaking my head with my arms crossed.

I assume they’ve never had two-year-olds.

Her Diana Ross diva moments aside, this has been a fun age with Ava since she’s starting to talk a lot more and wants to do the same things as me, like paint her fingernails, watch Dirty Dancing, and get sonograms of her belly during my baby checkups.

The second big piece of news is we’re buying a new house! Our current home is just too small, so we’re making like the Jefferson’s and movin’ on up to a bigger, better home near the “right” elementary school. The house needs a LOT of updating (think vibrant blue-tiled kitchen counters, old gold fixtures in the bathrooms, that nasty baseboard in the bathrooms made out of rubbery plastic in a flesh tone that you generally see in hospitals), so this will be a project home while we live there, but I’m looking forward to flipping the hell out of it and making it our home, and not the 1970’s time capsule it currently is.

Oh, and we’re moving in about two weeks . . . which means we’ll be bringing Bridget back to that home from the hospital three weeks after our move-in date. Crazy? Completely. I’ve been running around like a (pregnant) chicken with my head cut off the past three weeks doing two things: trying to pack up as fast as I can and finish the rewrites/edits on my book BECAUSE (and here’s my very big totally important news of all this last month):

I found a literary agent for my novel!!!!

She is a rock star agent who had amazing feedback and critiques on my manuscript after my submission. After speaking with her, I went back to the semi-drawing board with the latter half of my book and rewrote scenes, reordered the ones I wanted to keep, and deleted blocks that were unnecessary. I'm in no way married to my writing, and I don't take it personally when experienced people give me constructive feedback, so it really helped to have a discerning eye read what I thought was my fully polished draft, and give me advice on how to make it even better.

I’m closing in on my last edits for the book, and I (think . . . hope??) it’s even better than before. It's hard because I've reread my novel about 10+ times now, so it's getting a lot more difficult to edit, but I'm soldiering through and making a hard push to get as much editing as I can done before Bridget’s arrival in November. 

I have an author site up now that isn't completely finished, but it's getting there. Check it out at www.crystalvogt.com.

On that note, I need to get back to editing . . . and packing.