Poor Me

I know no one likes to sit and listen to someone else complain, but reading someone else's complaints is entirely different, right? RIGHT? I just feel the need to vent about how it is the hottest summer since dinosaurs walked the planet and I am hugely pregnant. Not only am I huge, but I am not sleeping, and my heart is beating over 100 times a minute at all hours of the day. Last night I managed to catch a few Z's, but only after I had made up the pullout couch in the livingroom, turned the AC unit on and directed the standing fan precisely in the direction of my hot, swollen feet.

That being said, I must admit that I am at least in a better position than I was the summer that I was pregnant with Lua. We were living in the downstairs apartment of a house belonging to the daughter of the upstairs resident. The woman upstairs refused to turn on the air conditioning and as a result, I was constantly in the HEAT of battle (haha). As soon as she would leave, I would run upstairs and turn the AC on. Just as the place would cool down, she would come home and promptly shut it off again. Even when we would go up and ask (read: beg) her to turn the air on, she would sullenly agree to turn it on but seemed to be under the false impression that if you turned it on just long enough to feel like your head was out of the oven, you could then shut it off again for the rest of the night. It made me feel angry, miserable, and powerless to be in that sort of situation. I would take window AC units over that any day.

What is my point here? Nothing really. Just thinking out loud. Please send me some good sleep vibes, I could really use them. I am getting a prescription for a sleep aid but I am sort of nervous about taking it. I think I will have to though, mostly for Lua's sake because it is incredibly hard to keep up with her on no sleep. Insomnia makes me super emotional and if I never hear my daughter ask in a quiet voice "Mama cry?" again, it will be too soon.

Please Come Again

Oh how I wish I'd brought my camera with me when I went out this morning. Since I didn't, I will just have to describe our lunch date. Lua and I had gone out to the park with our friends Sarah and Carson. Carson is Lua's age and usually the two of them get along pretty well but they do tend to feed off of eachother's chaos. Sarah and I decided to go to India Palace for the lunch buffet (the best buffet ever, by the way). We sat in a small booth and both of the kids had high chairs next to eachother at the end of the table. When we arrived, our table was set with a white paper tablecloth, two large glasses of water, and two smaller plastic cups of water. We got our food from the buffet and returned to the table. Within seconds, Lua looked like she'd been rolling around in a mud bath. she had food all over her shirt and covering her face. Carson kept reaching over to grab the bill of Lua's hat, so she even had food all over her hat. Carson's cup was immediately tipped over, soaking half of the table in water. Not long afterward, Lua's cup was tipped over - onto the table and into my lap - and the entire table looked like it had been involved in a shipwreck. Carson, fascinated by the soggy, transparent table cloth, began pulling chunks of it off and handing them to Lua, who threw them on the ground. Lua thought it looked like fun so in no time at all one half of our table cloth was no longer on our table, but under our feet. Meanwhile, Carson was getting fussy. He has been teething for a while now and Sarah usually gives him Motrin to help his mouth pain but she has been trying to wean him off of it for fear of liver damage. This makes a usually easygoing kid into one hurting, cranky baby in withdrawl. Carson began screaming so loudly that the old people at the table accross from us looked like they wanted to throw their curry at our heads. I brought Carson a bowl of the sweet rice pudding from the buffet to cheer him up. As Sarah fed him spoonfuls, Carson swallowed some and dug the rest out of his mouth with his sticky fingers. He then reached over and offered the remnants to Lua. Lua gladly licked the pudding off of his fingers as Sarah and I looked on, frozen in disgust. Unfortunately, this distraction technique wore off quickly and before we could even go back for seconds, Carson was throwing such a fit that other patrons started leaving the room. Lua thought all the ruckus was pretty amusing, and she chuckled as she ground rice and chicken into the uncovered table. I wanted to leave but was too embarassed to get up from the table with the entire crotch of my pants soaking wet from Lua's water. Eventually, though, it seemed we had no choice. We paid for our meal as the kids ran crazily through the restaurant and the waiters smiled stiffly. Both Sarah and I left big tips.

Before I had a child, I used to see kids running wild through places and think sanctimoniously, how awful that they can't even control their own children! Now I am eating humble pie, or humble samoosa I suppose.

Scary Ice Monster

Recently, Lua started saying the cutest thing ever. I must admit, it was not without some parental prompting. Whenever I would say "I love you, Lua", I would also add, "Can you say 'I love you too Mama'"? After a while, when I would tell her I love her, she would respond "Mama too". I looked so delighted with this response that Lua's face just lit up every time she said it. Today we were in the hallway getting her shoes on when suddenly Lua stood up and faced me. "Mama too", she announced out of nowhere, and put her arms around me in a big hug. I almost melted into a puddle. I mean, how cool is that? My 19-month-old spontaneously announcing she loves me and giving me a hug (usually I have to cajole a hug out of her by promising her food). I thought I would have to wait much longer to get any kind of appreciation out of this parenting thing!

In other news, Riaz and I finally got the curtains up in our bedroom! It's been almost a year since we bought them, but better really late than never, right? It's very relaxing to be in a clean, mini-blind-free room so I've been enjoying it maybe a little too much. Last night I lit a candle on the bedside table despite the 90-degree weather and read until my eyes were too tired to stay open. Luckily I was able to sleep last night so that made it even better. You never really hear about all of the lovely side-effects of pregnancy, such as (in my case) insomnia, restless legs, and tachicardia. My ice craving from Lua's pregnancy has also returned with a vengance: I probably go through a dozen glasses of ice a day. My poor teeth. At least it has the added benefit of keeping me hydrated (and cool).

Wow, all this talk of ice has made me want another cupfull. IIIIIIIIIIIIICE! IIIIIIIIIIIICE! IIIIIIIIIIICE! (sorry, that was my belly talking)