Out of the loop

Last night Eric and I together tackled another pregnancy milestone: removing my belly button ring.

Had I simply taken it out a few months ago when my belly wasn't quite so, well, full, I'm sure this wouldn't have been a big production.

Waiting until you're not actually sure it is still possible to take it out guarantees that it will not be a non-event.

I can be stubborn, and a little proud. I know there's no medal for getting to the end of pregnancy without having to take your belly button ring out but somehow I got attached to the idea that it would be neat to do that.

So as the skin stretched and contorted around the belly button ring I assured myself and everyone else, even as they asked with increasing concern in their voices, that it was fine. All was well.

In the last few days, however, all was becoming less well. The skin around the piercing was really starting to look unhappy, and it was getting a little tender to the touch. The last thing I am interested in is some sort of hideous infection right there so last night I decided it was time to take it out. And suddenly, I wanted it out immediately. It couldn't come out fast enough.

The complicating factor was this: I have had it for 13 years now and I have never once taken it out. I had no idea how the ring actually opened up to come out.

I had this notion that the little ball in the ring was threaded on a little connector piece of the ring and if we spun it, it would open up.

That didn't work.

Eric fiddled with it a bit and managed to the get the little ball to come out, leaving a small (very small) gap in the ring. We had found the exit but the door was far, far too small to make our escape.

That was when Eric went to get the pliers.

Gently, very gently, Eric pried the ring open to create a space that was big enough to slide the ring out, and out it came. I then sprayed it with at least half a liter of bactine and asked it nicely to please not get infected.

Be there or be square

On Saturday night, we did something that I have not done since junior high and Eric has not done since elementary school: we went square dancing.

While it was in many ways quite similar to the square dancing we did as children (most of the people there had no idea what they were doing, no alcohol was served, some of the people there definitely had cooties), I'm happy to report that it was different in the most important way: it was really, really fun.

It started at 8pm and we arrived pretty much on time, which is to say we got there way too early. For the first half an hour it was just us, some older folks eating sandwiches, and a handful of people sitting around looking uncomfortable. One guy wheeled a jogging stroller around the dance floor. Time seemed to slow.

But it finally did get going around 8:30pm. The music was energizing and the caller did a great job getting everyone up and dancing. It was a good crowd and a very family friendly event: there were children and even tweens participating, along with a number of older folks, too. This being San Francisco there was also a healthy share of hipsters and of course plenty of people "like us." (You know what that means, right?) Looking around the room it was clear that everyone was having a fabulous time. Huge grins all around, lots of rosy cheeks and laughing. I sort of felt like we had gone back in time and were in a barn somewhere celebrating the beginning of planting season.

Being 35 weeks pregnant didn't stop me from bouncing around the floor, dosido-ing, swinging my partner, etc until about two hours in when my right knee began to protest. It probably didn't help that I had gone on a five mile hike earlier in the day. Reluctantly, we sat out a few dances and then called it a night.

Tradition

We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day. Eh, it's just not something to get all fussed about. But we do have one important tradition around mid-February*: Love-Inspired Rice Krispie treats. You may remember last year when I made them they were a little, um, hamburger-y. It was Eric's turn this year. Here's how he did:

Yum and yum!

*We thought we had made them for Valentine's Day last year, and so did the same thing this year. What a fun surprise to look back at last year's post and discover that we actually made them for our anniversary. Now that we have a new anniversary in October, I think we can make this tradition about V-Day instead.

Winner

Eric won the Baby Name Brackets. Ethan, the winning name, was one of his original eight entrants. Here's how you know he's the winner:

Before we launched Round 1 we set up the stakes for the competition and determined that the overall winner would get a t-shirt that said "I'm the Winner." It's a bit of a dubious prize, given that I can picture quite a few t-shirts that say that yet which I would not feel like a winner wearing.

It turns out that just "Winner" is the closest we could get without some complicated design-your-own silliness.

Eric seems to be excited to flaunt his prize. Enjoy, Eric. Enjoy.

The Honkers

We've taken a lot of road trips lately which means we have been doing a lot of driving. I think it must be because of this huge amount of time spent in the car that more interesting things have been happening to us on the road.

One time, for a variety of reasons, it was necessary for Eric to make it off the highway via an exit that happened to be several lanes away when he noticed it. As he alternately speeded up and slowed down to navigate over to the exit, he leaned on the horn to let people know that an apparently deranged driver was coming through whether they liked it or not.

Once safely off the exit ramp, Eric leaned back in his seat, took a breath and mused, "I think that's the first time I have used the horn offensively*."

It wasn't the last.

On our way home from Tahoe a few weeks ago we encountered a Prius driving in the dark without its lights on. This is a very dangerous situation, of course, because you can't see it and it is very easy to change lanes into it or otherwise unintentionally cause a fiery deadly crash (and this not even considering the recall-related dangers).

Eric, concerned about this shadowy lurker speeding down the highway near us, tried to alert him to what was going on. Behind him, he flashed his lights repeatedly. Nothing. He pulled up next to him and honked and gestured wildly, causing the Prius to speed up and drive away from us as fast as it could - with its lights still off.

Eric pursued, pulled in front of him and handed Andrew (riding in the back seat) the flashlight from the glove compartment to shine back at the Prius driver. "Do you know Morse code?" asked Eric in complete seriousness. Still no lights.

So Eric did the only remaining sensible thing to do: he sped away as fast as he could to make sure that he would see the inevitable fiery crash in the rear view mirror rather than ahead of us on the road.


*As opposed to "defensively," not "in an offending way" though perhaps one could consider it both.

I'm the Wiz

Last night Eric and I went to a breastfeeding class. Eric was on the phone with his mother earlier in the day and when he told her this she found the idea of taking a class for this sort of thing perplexing, but from everything we've heard breastfeeding is a learned skill for the mother, so we continued in the spirit of over-preparation and headed over to class.

The class was 3 1/2 hours long and featured a lot of talking, a slideshow*, a video and hands-on practice with dolls.

The video was definitely a highlight. It was made by the Royal College of Midwives in the UK and featured a bunch of nursing moms sitting around talking with a midwife about their experiences breastfeeding. They were all extremely British (awful teeth, many fewer chins than women, bulging eyeballs) and one woman in particular looked as though rather than brushing her hair for the video she had let a baby tiger maul her head.

One lengthy section of video showed the midwife coaching a new mom to get her newborn latched on and suckling.

"OK, you've got him all lined up, elicit the gape, now wiz!" She instructed the woman. "Wiz" seemed to mean "quickly get that baby onto your boob now!" based on when and how she was using it.

But the woman was having a hard time getting it all to come together. So they repeated the process again and again on the video, and each time at the critical moment...
"Wiz!" urged the midwife.
"Wiz!" she pressed, still upbeat.
"Come on - wiz!" endlessly encouraging.

I warned Eric that if he tries to tell me to "wiz" while we're getting Belvedere going on the breastfeeding, I'll probably just pee.


*The teacher is an old-school midwife and still uses old-school slides. Like with a projector. She worked with Sergey Brin and his wife when they had their baby last year and said he gave her no end of grief for using slides in this day and age. Apparently, even he couldn't shame her into modernizing.

Water water everywhere

Yesterday when I got home from work, I found amongst our mail a sheet of paper that said "Water services to this address will be discontinued unless a customer assumes responsibility for this account."

How odd, I thought.

So I called our landlord who informed me that, had I read our lease, I would have noticed that we are one of the approximately seven apartments in San Francisco where the tenant, not the landlord, is responsible for the water bill.

"Well, that explains why they're about to shut our water off," I reflected out loud to the landlord.

I called this morning to take responsibility for the account so that we continue to have water in our home. It seemed like the right thing to do.