Archive for July, 2008

Today I am 35 weeks pregnant. That means I have about 5 ± 2 weeks left. It seems as good a time as any to mention a few things.

• If you want to be amongst the first to know when she’s born, let me know your mobile number and we can SMS you. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.
• Please refrain from making any comments about my supposedly being “overdue” as soon as it’s September 4th. Most women go past their “due” dates if they aren’t induced, and especially first-timers are likely to go at least to 41 weeks. This isn’t bad, dangerous, concerning, funny, or at all noteworthy. Really. They shouldn’t even call them “due dates” in my opinion, but there ya go.
• If you’re thinking of mentioning how big I am or pointing out I could go/pop/give birth/whatever “any day now,” just know I’ve already heard it. I also don’t want to hear about how I’ve still got “a ways to go.” I am more aware than anyone of my timeline.

If I sound cranky, it’s because I kinda am. I love Dagmar already. I want to meet her. I’m excited to have her. I know it will all be worth it. But I’m not going to lie and tell you I love being pregnant, because I don’t. I know I have it pretty good, and hey, I’m not experiencing pre-term labor signs, HG, gestational diabetes, bedrest, or any number of other Very Bad Things, but it’s still not fun. I’m having an extremely hard time getting to sleep and staying asleep. I pee a lot, I’m out of breath a lot, and, as much as I love the dickens out of her, Dagmar doesn’t always move in the most comfortable of ways. Between kicks to various body parts and the grinding of her head into my pelvic region, at any given moment, there’s a fairly good chance I’m in some amount of pain, and an even better chance that I’m really tired. So you’ll just have to forgive me if I don’t feel like smiling at laughing at the 100th obvious comment of the day. 

That said, I really am in a pretty good mood much of the time. It’s just that it doesn’t take a whole lot to ruin that these days, so I’m just warning you. I’m all hormonal and moody, and I think I’m actually doing a fairly good job of staying in good spirits, but any help I can get from my friends and family is appreciated. And I know some of you out there think it’s funny if you do something I said not to, as long as you wink and nudge at the same time, but please… this is a time when it’s not. 

Thank you.

Comment from old blog

I would never comment on your size. When I compare your pictures to a friend of mine from high school who has been posting her belly shots on facebook, you’re tiny. She just posted her 34 weeks picture and SHE’s huge. She’s using it as her profile picture, so if you look at my friends you should be able to see it.
Aleesha | 2008-08-02 04:52 

Four hours and a few thousand kroner at IKEA means we now have a crib, dresser with changing table, nursing chair and ottoman, and a storage cabinet that we didn’t have before. Much of it was an early birthday present to Dagmar from Thomas’ parents, which is very deeply appreciated! We still have some assembling, rearranging, and freecycling to do, but hopefully I’ll have pics in the not-too-distant future. Until then, I’m off to go see Kung Fu Panda.

One year and one week ago, Thomas and I had our fake wedding. I say fake because we were already married, but we had a ceremony nonetheless, and I’m pretty sure that most of the guests weren’t aware that we were already married. Anyway, I suppose that a week ago was an anniversary of some sort, though we didn’t celebrate it at all. 

I just reread my post from last year about the fake wedding. It’s true; we were able to laugh about the ridiculousness of the wedding at the time. There are certainly worse things than laughing during your ceremony. There’s a lot of stuff left out of that account, though. 

Like how the photographer didn’t actually take any pictures, but decided to have her husband do it. And how neither the photographer nor her husband were actually any good at taking pictures. (She had done some shots before the wedding (with the kidney-shaped silk bouquet with pale yellow flowers), so I have examples of both of their work.) I had requested some specific photos that were never taken, and she took several that I didn’t want, insisting they would look great, but they didn’t. I also didn’t mention how the flower girl didn’t actually do anything at all during the ceremony. As in, anyone attending would have no idea that I had picked a flower girl at all, because there was no indication of anything. The clasp on the pearl necklace I’d picked out broke, so I ended up with a different one. Somehow, my dress never got bustled, so Mom rigged something together at the last minute, just before I went to the ceremony, that ended up working. Even though I was totally clear with the venue about my wedding colors (citrus yellow, green, and orange), all the table linens were dark blue. We only ended up with about 10 photos from all the disposable cameras we left on the tables, because… well, honestly, I don’t know why. They all said they had been used up, but when we took them to get developed, they were mostly empty. So I don’t know if the cameras were lying about the number of exposures, if they had crappy film in them, or if the people developing them screwed up, but at any rate, that was a huge waste of money. Oh, and we had to cancel our honeymoon. 

There were plenty of things leading up to the big day that didn’t go the way I wanted. Things like my mother insisting that I wear fancy-looking heels, even though I never, ever, ever wear heels and never, ever have, and I can’t stand them, and they hurt my feet. Even though my floor-length A-line dress completely covered my feet and I could have worn anything or nothing on my feet and no one would ever know. Things like my mother insisting on a religious officiant. Things like my in-laws not being able to make it, even though we picked the date specifically because that was the date they said they could make it. Things like my mother dismissing the idea of hiring a band or a DJ, because why on Earth would we need that, and then ending up with no music at all during the reception, and absolutely no entertainment other than food. And don’t even get me started on the whole registering thing. 

 
It’s a good thing I was not a bridezilla. My wedding would have given anyone who’s ever been on A Wedding Story a coronary. I was not a bridezilla, but I do still look back on my fake wedding as a big waste of time and money. We laughed. It worked out ok in the end. But it wasn’t worth nearly what was invested in it, at all. Especially considering we were already married anyway. It would have been a lot less money, time, and stress, and at least as much fun, to order a nice cake and have some friends over at home. (Regardless of how crappy everything else went, I must say the wedding cake was probably the best cake I’ve ever had in my life, and the woman actually made it exactly the way I requested.) 

A year ago, I asked, “what more could you ask for?” I think maybe I wrote that to try to cheer myself up. The entire day leading up to the ceremony was a horrible day. The ceremony was better than I expected after that horrible day, but I was still ultimately let down. I remember walking through 30° Blue, smiling because people were congratulating me and such, and seeing that Amber “I promise you the Billfish Tournament won’t interfere at all, oh whoops, nevermind, it’s at exactly the same time as your wedding” woman smiling back at me. And I remember thinking she had no right to smile at me, and I was almost angry that she actually saw me smiling. I wanted her to feel bad. I had just had a wedding ceremony, and I wanted this woman to feel horrible about it. So clearly I could have asked for more. 

While I know that at the end of the day, how this ceremony and reception went is not important, and I’m not exactly proud of wanting Amber to feel like crap, the truth is that after a year, my fake wedding still makes me mad. I know I need to get over it, but there it is. I liked my cake. I liked my dress. I liked the invitations. And I am still madly in love with the groom. The rest sucked.

A couple weeks ago, Thomas and I went into a store that sells baby junk. There is a whole lotta baby junk that we don’t need, and we had a little bit of fun scoffing at the insane prices on insane items that do insanely stupid things. Then I found their collection of diaper bags. Hmm. I actually do need one of those, I thought. So I looked. Here is where everything went wrong. 

I totally fell in love with this diaper bag. It looks nice. It’s husband-friendly (Thomas didn’t just say he’d carry it, but that he liked it). It has basically every feature you’d want in a diaper bag, apart from being immune to getting dirty. But when I saw the price tag, I decided I could find something more affordable. 

I went hunting. I discovered that actually diaper bags are apparently all that expensive, and most of them aren’t as awesome. I love buying used anyway, so I check for that. In the used bags, my choices are: cheap, revoltingly ugly, and not very practical; affordable, passable, and “could make that work”; and not any cheaper than new. I weighed the pros and cons between getting a passable one, and getting the expensive one I’m in love with. 

When it came down to it, I know myself too well. “If I’d never seen such riches, I could live with being poor,” once sang Tim Booth. Isn’t it so true? I know that every time something minorly inconvenient happened that might not have happened with Awesome Bag, I’d think, “I should have just gotten Awesome Bag!” whereas if I’d never seen Awesome Bag, my life would go on. But I did see Awesome Bag. And by this point, I’ve so convinced myself that Awesome Bag is the awesomest bag in the planet, and it won’t be at the store anymore because someone else will have seen it. There was only one in the store! 

So yesterday, Thomas and I take the bus to Lyngby for the sole purpose of buying this bag, and when I saw that it had not actually been purchased by some other luckier soul, I got very happy. We bought the bag, and returned home. So now I have a diaper bag, and I love it probably about as much as it’s possible to love a diaper bag that you’ve never actually had an occasion to use before. At this point, I can only hope I still love it after I’ve used it for a while.

Comment from old blog

I don’t think it’s silly at all! And you should love your diaper bag because you will have it with you whenever you leave the house FOR YEARS. Splurge well worth it.
Abby | 2008-07-21 20:37

This morning, I was listening to a Happy Housewives Club podcast from the 5th that I hadn’t gotten around to yet. Quite frequently, I disagree with Darla Shine, and most of the ads they play during the show annoy the crap out of me, but I always listen anyway, because I’m a happy housewife and there aren’t many resources for us out there. I like that Darla says what’s on her mind, and sometimes, I do even agree with her, at least in part. It’s fun to listen to, regardless. Except for those damn ads. 

Anyway, there was a segment about teaching your children the importance of Independence Day and love of country. As much as I am not a flag-waving, “we’re #1″-shouting kinda nationalistic American, I do think my country has a pretty cool history that American children should learn about and have reason to be proud of. I don’t think America is “better” than Denmark, but it’s a pretty great place with some pretty great attributes. We don’t always get everything right, but what country does? I think some of the things my country is responsible for suck a lot, and some of those things are too recent to be called history, and some happened a lot time ago, but they don’t make me hate my country or be ashamed of my heritage. Darla said that she asked some kids what they thought about Independence Day, and they responded that they loved that movie with Will Smith. I can join in her sadness that these kids don’t even know that the fourth of July is Independence Day, or why we celebrate it. They should know that. 

Darla asked her guest why schools aren’t teaching this, and the guest said it’s up to the parents. Well, it’s up the parents because the schools aren’t teaching it. That’s not really an answer, is it? I’m not saying there isn’t a reason, just that I didn’t hear it on the show. The reason I would expect to hear is that there’s no time to get to that, because they need to fit in all this other important stuff. I’d also expect that the other stuff is important because it’s on a standardized test. But now I’m jumping to conclusions, I suppose. 

I do sometimes worry that our children won’t identify with being American at all. Obviously, they will be Danish too, and living in Denmark, I expect them to, for lack of a better term, feel Danish. In the States, people tend to know at least a tiny bit about their ancestry, and can proudly state things like, “I’m half German, a quarter Scottish, and a quarter Cherokee.” Danes just say, “I’m Danish.” You might not even have to go back that far to find a Dutch, Swedish, or German ancestor, but they’d still never say, “I’m a quarter Dutch.” What does this mean for my children? If we were living in the States, they could easily have pride in saying, “I’m half Danish,” but what do they say here? 

I imagine having the time, money, and resources to, at some point when she’s old enough, take Dagmar on an American history tour of New England. I’d like to do it myself, for that matter, as I’ve never been. I wonder what it will mean to her. 

It’s just hard to imagine, I guess, since it didn’t happen to me. But I promise you that she’ll know Independence Day isn’t just a movie with Will Smith.

A few days ago, I got a voicemail informing me of something. Today, I got another voicemail from the same person informing me of the same thing again, even though I already acted upon it. And she also said in the voicemail that she would be emailing me. Emailing me the exact same information that she just said in the voicemail, which is the exact same information that she said in the original voicemail. 

Perhaps when I get my iPhone, I will not bother moving my number over. A new number might be nice.

Some people have complained about the angle and quality of these pics, and I just want to say it’s not very easy to do this by yourself, so you’ll have to deal with what you get. This was taken today, just a few minutes ago. It is clear that Dagmar is more cramped than she has been, but she’s still moving a lot, and is still quite forceful about it. 

In other news, our Independence Day Grill Out was a success, despite being on the 5th of July. I had a lot of fun and met some Americans I hadn’t met before, and ate good food. What more could you ask for? I did a little experiment since we have a ton of frozen cranberries and I didn’t know what to do with them. After I made my delicious fresh-squeezed lemonade, I put some cranberries in, just floating in it. I wasn’t sure it would change the flavor at all, but I thought at the very least it would keep the lemonade cool a bit longer since the cranberries were frozen. As it happens, the lemonade started to turn pinkish, and did take on a bit of cranberry flavor. It was quite popular, I must say. I’ll be doing that again! Mmmm.

Comments from old blog

• Care to share your lemonade recipe?
  Anonymous | 2008-07-10 11:59 | # 
• 0.5 L sugar + 1 L water, stir while boiling. When it’s all dissolved, reduce to a simmer for just a few minutes.
  While that’s simmering, you can squeeze the lemons. 12 lemons gets you about 0.5 L, and you mix that with the sugar water.

  This will make a concentrate that you can freeze, so you can make tons of it at once. Then when you want a bit, just add equal parts water and concentrate. I immediately mixed some up for the picnic and froze the rest for later.
  Lorry | 2008-07-10 12:14 | # 

• Oh, the sugar water should be totally cooled when you mix in the lemon juice. Sorry.
  Lorry | 2008-07-10 12:15 | # 
• You look great! I can’t believe how fast your pregnancy has gone by!

  (at least for me!)
  Abby | 2008-07-14 12:52 | # 

• thank you 
  Ryan | 2008-07-15 13:52