Jumpin' Sunday

One Sunday morning, you both turned into superheroes. Julia, you had CANDY POWER and a little Sister and the powers of sticky power. You were SWEETHEART (and had socks to match, very cleverly). Aidan, you were FIREHEAD with the power of FIRE, then you were WATERMAN with the power of WATER, then you were CAMO-man, who could camouflage himself, and then finally wound up being STICKYMAN with similar CANDYPOWERS to SWEETHEART.

You were abducted by the villanous BOUNCER and taken to his lair- network of obstacles, tunnels, mechanical bulls, trampolines, and balls to dodge,-so he could steal your crystal power from you and never return it. 

Despite a temporary truce on the dodgeball court, the battle continued through the bouncey afternoon:

Victorious, and kind of forgetting about their super hero identities, the two of you were treated to popsicles- where you seemed to battle eachother for some reason? or maybe you were dancing?- and swimming with the now-reformed villain and his better-half.

And then you moved on to your next challenge: battling the CHESSMASTER!

Week 31- The Magic All-Telling Bump

Julia,

We are now 31 weeks along with you. Your Mom is growing and tired and beautiful! Her feet stink a little, but I rub them every night. I (apparently) stink a lot to her, due to her incredible super smelling powers, but your Mom lets me close enough to her to rub the aforementioned feet. I don't remember smelling this awful to her with Aidan, so hopefully you won't think I stink when you come out.

At any rate, let's try to move on to some non-stink related news.

Developmentally, you are going through major brain and nerve developments AND it says that all 5 of your senses are working wonderfully. Which would be good news if we weren't trying to avoid discussing the olfactory funk that apparently has consumed my being. Hopefully since you'll have taste now, you'll have good taste and you really won't inherit your mother's perception that I am a big stink bomb. I don't smell of garlic and onions and general stank; think of me as sweet...with a hint of sharpness.

Like a pineapple!

Which is quite coincidental, because at week 31, that's about how big you are!

Which is not surprising at all: Look how beautiful your Mother looks!

Can you believe how far you've come in just 20 weeks?

WHOA!

And the 31 week-old belly apparently is giving off 'Julia vibes' like crazy!

A few weeks ago a random Dad at our local yogurtery approached your Mom and said "I'm not trying to be creepy, but are you having a girl?" He could just tell! Amazing...and he was a bit creepy.

Then, this week, we went to a local salad bar, at which kids eat for free (so we'll be going there a lot) and we walk in the door. The employee who opened the door stopped us after we had taken a few steps and said "Excuse me. When is the little girl due?"

It took a moment to click that he- without knowing us from a cherry tomato- could tell you were a girl just form looking at your Mom's belly!

Isn't that incredible?

I gave him a high five and asked how he knew. He said "A man always knows."

Okay.

He also thought your name was beautiful and wanted us to make your middle name your first name. He also wanted us to spell it with a lot of apostrophes in it: perhaps "S'Keineh" or something. Sorry, magic oracle salad bar guy, you're very nice and your gender detection senses are very keen. But, Julia Sekina is Julia Sekina...although the spelling of your middle name is still being debated. But we do know there will be no apostrophes for you, little girl.

But, a rose by another name would smell as sweet. And you, little one, apparently are setting off all the oracles radars with your sweetness: they know you're a girl the moment they see how you're riding in the womb. We are so pleased with the seeming magical nature of these two random occurences, and think it's a good omen that you will be a great girl and strong woman. And nothing stinks about that.

Pickles, Cravings (and Ravings of a Super-Powered Olfactory)

Your Mom's pregnancy continues to go swimmingly- all signs point to a strong, healthy pregnancy.

Unfortunately, this means a bit of an irrational, weak, odd Mommy!

I came home from work on Friday and your Mom was starving. She wanted burgers. And only burgers. So, we went off to burgers.

(Aidan, you did really well at the burger place- chowing down on some free Sweet Potato chips while we stood in line (so much so, that the cashier gave you your own basket of them to enjoy!); you ate almost a whole 1/2 pound patty, vegetables and pickles, pickles, pickles!! But, you're not the only one in the family who loves pickles. Your brother or sister (and your mom)love pickles too. I like them as well, but this ain't about me.)

Your Mom notified me that for lunch on Friday she literally craved and ate the ultimate in cliche pregnancy dishes: pickles and ice cream. Pistachio ice cream. And cottage cheese. And then bagel bites.


2/26/2012:



The cravings are coming fast and furious. One minute she's chowing down on some Long John Silvers, the next she's got the shiver-me-timbers. "As long as I'm eating, " your mommy said, "the nausea goes away." So eat she does.

On Saturday your Mom craved again. This time it was for...wait for it...dill pickle flavored ice cream from this store at the mall. So, we wound up at the mall, and until she got said popcorn, the only word she could say was "popcorn."

A sample conversation went like this:

Aaron: Ooh, this color suit looks good. What do you think?
Holly: Popcorn.
Aidan: Mama?
Holly: Popcorn.
Aaron: Where are we going?
Holly: Popcorn.
Aaron: Can we stop at H&M on the w--
Holly: Popcorn.

So, luckily, before our conversations got any better, the got a large bag of the stuff. It's quite gross. It tastes like 'scratch and sniff pickle' flavoring was dumped all over a bag of popcorn. Your brother loved it, though. Your mom loved it, and ate piece after piece for a few hours. But, the next day, she couldn't even look at the stuff.

The craving was leaving. On top of the cravings, we also have some ravings. She's not mad, your mother; just nauseus and trying to cope...by buying and wearing special nausea-lessening black wrist bands. Fashion statement aside...she's wearing wrist bands! I was 'uncool' when I wore my awesome wristbands that came with my long-gone Scion XD. But your Mom makes them look...cool...crazy cool. But, apparently, the pressure points on the bottom of the wrist DO help relive nausea...or at least the placebo works. Because, she's not as sick!

But, the pregnancy has continued to heighten her sense of smell. Which isn't good because your brother's been sick, and been on these super sweet-tasting antibiotics which do wonders to...well...doo. Luckily, I was able to change most of these not-so-good-nappies over the weekend...but she might just have to pull her shirt up over her nose if it happens while I'm at work.

But that might not help either. All day yesterday she was going crazy, and actually a bit upset, because Aidan had lost his 'smell.' "He smells like daycare, doesn't he? And it's making me sick! Smell him! Smell Aidan!" Between diapers and daycare, you might think your brother stinks- but he most certainly does not (okay, well, diapers don't smell great, but that's universal). While folding towels later that evening, your mom's super sleuthing nose later discovered that it was, in fact, the laundry detergent that was upsetting the sensitive smeller.

So, between shielding a direct line between my outward breaths while talking, thinking Aidan lost his smell and telling me that the dogs need baths badly (which they do), noone in the Weinstein household is safe from the ravings of the super-powered smeller!

Hopefully you're enojying your accomodations though-- from the way your mom is nauseating and smelling, it seems that you've settled in quite nicely to your womb room and made yourself quite at home.

You are about 6 weeks along now, and about the size of a sweet pea.



Although things aren't smelling so sweet out here (to some of us), we just can't stop thinking about you.

If you Can't Stand the Heat...

You know that old saying. Oh wait, you don't? Because people aren't born with knowledge of colloquialisms? Okay. Well, the old saying goes "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Well, look who's still in the kitchen:

Look, winter is fast approaching, and I'm starting to get cold. Sometimes I need to turn the heat on in the house or the car, but your Mother protests.

Why does she protest? Because her hormones have thrown her entire body's thermometer out of whack and at any given moment, especially the given moments when I'm freezing cold, she feels like she is on the surface of the sun.

Now, it's not just my word against hers as far as the temperature is concerned. At work, when everyone is freezing, your Mom is, again, burning up.

One could get pretty comfortable calling your Mom the "Human Torch," and attributing this newofound warmth to some sort of pregnancy super power.

But, as luck would have it, when it's actually warm, your Mom is freezing- which just goes to show you that this whole pregnancy hormone thing makes absolutely no sense at all. Her body is a glitching. If it were a PC, I would hit CTRL+ALT+Del and reboot the system.

But no such luck. Instead of that, I get to endure such fun things as:

+ Waking up in the middle of the night burning up because SOMEONE has pushed all of their covers on top of me, so I'm, in effect, sleeping under two sheets and two comforters.

+ Turn off the heat in the house or car when my fingers are blue.

+ Walk around with my nose running because it must be kept at the temperature of a meat locker in our home.

Now, it's not all bad, though. One cold morning, driving to a Doctor's Appointment, I was really cold. So I did my norm, and cranked the heat all the way to the end of the dial.

About 3 minutes later, your Mom exclaimed: "What are you trying to do? Smoke me out?" And she turned the heat back down to a compromise level of tepid warmth.

But my hands were still cold.

So, we used her super powered heat hands and my mere mortal susceptability to the elements to solve our mutual problems. By clasping hands, her warm mits heated my frozen fingers. In return my frigid digits cooled her hot hands.

The only problem was that no one was holding the steering wheel. So maybe that wasn't a good idea.

This trick also works for cold hands giving soothing hot foot rubs and hot hands warming a cold headachy noggin. This trick does no favors in cold hands touching the belly though. I have to wear mittens or rub my hands together to warm them up before I can do that!

As winter comes and Dallas gets colder and colder, though, I know your Mom is going to be a hot commodity, literally. We can keep warm together; and maybe I'll be able to roast a few marshmallows over her head.

So even though your Mom can't stand the heat, and I can't stand the cold, we're both staying in the proverbial kitchen because, well, to continue the cooking metaphor, we've got a bun in the oven!

Super Smell & The Quest for a Lullabye

Something stinks. And, according to your Mom's renewed super sense of smell, it's still me! After not hearing much about smells for quite some time (probably due to the cold and sinuses blocking that sniffer's super sensibilities), we are now currently experiencing a resurgence in your Mother's acute sense of smell!

The other day I went in for a smooch and Holly notified me that I "smell weird."

"What did you eat?" She asked.

"A slice of pizza and tuna fish." I replied.

"Yup! That's it! That's what it stinks like!"

Okay, admittedly, that snack wasn't my finest culinary hour, and tuna pizza breath would probably offend a regularly-powered nose.

But then yesterday, we were talking after we both got home from work and I was notified again that my breath stank once again. I did have a sandwich for lunch, but no tuna and pizza to speak of.

"You've been eating cloves of garlic again?" she asked.


First of all, I only did that like twice, and secondly, I hadn't done it that day!


But her nose was so sensitive that I was instructed to speak out of the corners of my mouth...like the Ninja Turtles.

Now HIS breath would certainly reek of Pizza and small acquatic organisms.

So, it's entirely possible that I suffer from halitosis. But I seriously doubt it. My mouth is so clean you could eat off of it! I think what we're really dealing with here is pregnancy Super Powers rearing their ugly heads again. First victim: anyone that might not smell like roses 24 hours a day. Namely, me and my breath.

Hopefully side-of-mouth-Ninja-Turtle talking will put that issue to bed.

Speaking of putting things to bed (how was that for a segue?), I started thinking yesterday about what Lullabyes we want to sing to you.

We could sing the Ben Folds Lullabye we heard at his concert (which you seemed to react well to, since you did kick your mother a lot during that concert).




And then, there are tons of Beatles candidates too, including Blackbird (which my old College roommate taught me to play on Guitar), I'm So Tired, Let it Be and Golden Slumbers.



And also a strong candidate is "All the Pretty Little Ponies" which- with a little bit of Hebrew added in- is pretty much the Lullabye Mimi and Pops sang me and Aunt Rebekka when we were growing up.

Ignore the "My Little Ponies" in this video. They are frightening doe-eyed monsters.

I also am quite fond of Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence," though I don't think it's a lullabye.

But, in an effort to sing that tune to you last night, I came across a very serious, chronic, hereditary illness from which I suffer: Lyric-itis. I inherited it from Mimi (who famously sang the song "You make me so very happy" as "Me so Me so very happy")

In "Away We Go" (that movie we were watching when I felt you kick) this pregnant lady sings a pretty cool lullabye to her niece: Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." SHE KNEW EVERY WORD TO THE SONG off the top of her head! I couldn't even get through one verse of "Sound of Silence" before I started make words up. I couldn't even do "Let it Be" without the song playing along with me! Singing you a Lullabye is gonna be pretty tricky if I dont' know any words to any songs.

So I started compiling a list of songs whose lyrics I do know:

• Boehmian Rhapsody
• Row, Row Your Boat
• Some of "Rapper's Delight"
• Quite a bit of Weird Al's "Yoda"
• Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

Yeah, these will all make terrible Lullabyes. I've got to start memorizing some lyrics!

In any case though, please be sure that after we tuck you in and turn on your nightlight (which your Mom made herself! Check it out below) and BEFORE we start singing you a Lullabye, I will brush my teeth, rinse with Scope and eat a mint- just in case you get your Momma's nose.

Coolest Night Light Ever! Made for you by your Mother! Sleep tight, little guy!

Prints and Nails

Since we're pretty sure you're a boy, and you had to watch three girly movies (though one was arguably an adventure movie, based on a chick flick premise), it's time to talk super hero powers again.

In your Mom's belly, you are really displaying some mutant powers. This week, your skeleton is hardening changing from some sort of rubbery cartilage into bone. So, apparently you've been very similar to Mr. Fantastic, and now you're actively hardening your skeletal structure. That's pretty much something Colossus would do. No, that's better than what he can do: he can only harden his skin; you're hardening bone! How cool is that?

In another body-altering, mutant power move, you've developped finger prints this week! That's right, your one-of-a-kind bio signature is developped. No two people's fingerprints in the world are ever identical and that means that your mother and I will be able to find you anywhere, so don't get in trouble.

No wait, that's not what it means. It means that you have fingerprints! You're slowly but sure turning into you! Think about how far you've come already. When you were just a sperm you didn't have fingers at all-- now you have fingers with uniquely patterend swirls of raised ridges on them! (but you lost your tail in the process, so that's kind of a tradeoff). So with that superpower of fingerprint creation, plus the ability you possessed to move your ears to their proper positions and shapeshift from a tadpole to a humanoid, you're kind of like Mystique! Except not as blue. But we'd love you anyway if you were.

Interestingly enough, being pregnant with you has given your Mom some more super powers in recent weeks, in addition to the super human hearing and smelling. But, where you got finger prints, your Mom gets finger nails.

That's right, her super-human abilities now include fast-growing nails. I know, pretty lame right? It's not quite as cool as Sabretooth or Wolverine, but they do get so long so quickly that people ask her "are those fake?" The long nails are good for back scratches, though, I gotta admit.

Maybe I should convince your Mom not to cut them for the rest of the pregnancy, to see if they'd look like this:

Yuck...those are creepy, but she kind of looks like Storm, except instead of lightning bolts coming out of her fingers she has disgusting, repulsive growths. Never mind on challenging your Mom to grow them that long. That picture actually makes me kind of sick.

But, neverheless, it's kinda cool that both you and your Mom are getting super powers during this whole adventure, even if some aren't as cool as others. Hey, at least you guys GOT powers, all I'm stuck with is the ability to pop my toe knuckles and ramble on about super heroes an awful lot. I'd take fast-growing nails over that anyday!

Holy Holly Hearing!

Pregnancy continues to give your Mom super powers: super taste, super smell, super-sensitive vision.

But, now there are another couple of super strengths to add to the list.

SUPER JAWS and HYPER HEARING

Even though she pretends not to hear me on regular basis, your Mom's hearing seems to have been suped up by pregnancy too. And, not that she had a glass jaw before, but man, she might be able to pull a plane with her teeth now!

Last night at around 11:30 pm, your Mom was hungry (surprise, surprise). So, she got herself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. She started chomping down - CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH.

I looked around for a microphone to see why that noise was so loud, but there was no artificial amplification!

I assumed it was her high quality wooden teeth that made such a loud noise; and I stand by that hypothesis. Pregnancy may have given your mother enhanced jaw strength. No Frosted Flakes survived the incident to confirm or deny that claim.

According to your mom, though, Frosted Flakes is just too loud of a cereal. The decibels put out by chomping on one Frosted Flake is simply too loud for those with super human hearing. In fact, the Frosted Flakes were hurting her ears. Something like a "Cheerios" puts out a pleasant and more subdued sound, she explained, but those Flakes create a cacophony of chomping. But Holly's super hunger was able to win that battle, and she ate the whole bowl, while serenading me, Preston and Toby with a symphony of crunch-Crunch-CRUNCH!

So, add two more radioactive superhuman abilities to the list: a bite that would make Washington and his wooden chompers jealous and hyper-sensitive hearing that most would need spy equipment to duplicate.

Now if only I could get her to stop pretending to not hear me when I'm whining! I really have important things to say when I'm whining!

P.S. Remember when I said that the nausea was waning? I totally lied. She's still nauseous a lot. It's definitely less than it was before, but last night she had to hit the Candy hard (before the cereal) to help calm the nausea. I definitely claimed "Mission: Accomplished" far too early on that one. Maybe you shouldn't listen to me either!