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Time for a little vote.

What do you think, does she look more like Pebbles from the Flintstones or a Yorkshire terrier?

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The other night, I was watching a “Will & Grace” rerun on Lifetime (they apparently don’t use that Television for Women tagline anymore, which makes me a little sad because it was totally appropriate). I wasn’t really watching it, it was more just background noise while I was playing with Cate. During one of the commercial breaks, an ad for those ugly old-lady bras came on. You know, the 18-hour things that are 100% functional, 0% sexy? Yeah, those.

So, the ad is on, and I start singing along with it, because I’m stupid like that. Cate laughs and laughs. I try singing it again a few minutes later, and again she thinks it’s funny. Three days later, every time I sing the song, she thinks it’s an absolute riot.

Want to try to guess the song?

You’ll never guess.

“I’m Every Woman.”

I kid you not. Apparently Baby Girl likes her Chaka Khan. Who’da thunk it?

And because I’m a huge dork and all I know is the chorus, I’m actually downloading the song on iTunes right now so I can sing the whole thing for her.

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I really had to give up on the idea of having my house in perfect condition before my family arrived. Let’s face it, there isn’t much you can do when you have no electricity for nine days. I couldn’t vacuum, couldn’t do laundry, I had to wash dishes by hand… hell, I couldn’t even charge up the drill so I could hang the curtains in the guest room. (Although technically that would’ve been Dave’s job, because I don’t drill.)

So I thought to myself: you know, my parents’ house is often cluttered (not dirty, they just have lots of stuff), my brother probably wouldn’t notice any degree of messiness, and the only reason my sister would ever go nine days without power in Manhattan would be in the event of some sort of nuclear disaster, so she couldn’t really judge me either. (Not that she would.) So what the hell. I did what I could with the house, and let the rest of it go. It wasn’t easy for me, since I tend to be a little OCD-ish about those types of things, but I tried to just relax and be happy that they were all able to fly here for the holidays.

Once I got to that point, I had a pretty awesome time.

You can see the rest of the photos from Christmas here.

Oh, and speaking of photos, since I’m able to use the scanner now (ah, the simple joys of electricity!), here’s my favorite photo from the ultrasound last week.

Have you ever seen such a perfect little profile? I think not. And those lips! I cannot wait to meet this kid in person.

Oh, and just to complete this very visually-oriented post, here’s my first experience at uploading a video on YouTube.

(If that embedding trick doesn’t work, you can see it here.) Some background: we were cooking Christmas Eve dinner, and my sister and I were trying to find some uptempo, dance-y music to keep us energized while we were working. So yes, that is in fact “Bootylicious” and the N’Trance remix of “Stayin’ Alive” that you hear. Our iPods might be a bit dated, but they’re fun. And it’s proof that at any of our family gatherings, all of the action really does happen in the kitchen.

And if nothing else, when Baby Girl decides in fifteen years or so that she wants to sue her parents for emancipation because we are certifiably insane, this ought to help her case in court. I mean for heaven’s sake, just look at how her parents were behaving only weeks before her birth. Atrocious.

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I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not, but since I’m going to be something like 35 weeks pregnant by Christmas, Dave and I decided a long time ago that we would not be flying anywhere for the holidays. Instead? My entire family is coming here. That means my parents, plus my brother and sister. That’s six people if you count me and Dave, and everyone is crashing at our house. It isn’t really a bad thing at all. I haven’t seen them since my cousin’s wedding in June, and they’ll only be here for three days, so it should be fun. I like the “short and sweet” trips – it’s great to get a chance to see everyone, but it isn’t long enough to wear me out. (My family is a very high-energy group of folks.)

I’m not trying to plan an agenda for their trip here. I have a couple of things I’d like to do, but I also like the flexibility of being able to change plans at the last minute, if we feel so inclined. There are only two things that I know absolutely will happen:
1) There will be a huge meal on Christmas Eve;
2) We will go to Christmas Eve church service.

Both of these things are family traditions that I can’t imagine my family (well, ok, my dad) being willing to alter just because the geography has changed this year.

So to that end, I’m getting prepared. For the meal, there are a couple of things that I can make and freeze in advance, that’s really no big deal. My mom will probably be doing most of the cooking anyway, since by that point, I’m sure I won’t need to be standing on my feet for long stretches of time. As for the church service… well, it seems that after having lived in the greater Seattle area for the last five years, I am now in the position of trying to find a church for the first time.

I consider myself half-Methodist and half-Catholic, and for a long time, I really thought that I was more Catholic than anything. But I’ve come to realize that Methodists generally fall into the category of “relaxed and groovy” Christians (read: liberal), so I’m identifying more and more with that as I get older. I like the idea of Christianity that’s based only on Jesus’s teachings and none of that hellfire-and-brimstone stuff that happened in the Old Testament. No judgment of others who happen to have a different lifestyle or belief system than your own? I can get behind that.

I also figured that maybe while I’m investigating churches, I could find one that has a Mother’s Morning Out program, and that would be all the better. (Selfish, I know.)

Dave isn’t really into this idea of “experimenting” with different churches to find one that I like. He agrees that it’s important to go regularly when we have kids who are old enough to understand, because we want our children to grow up with some foundation of beliefs. But right now, I’m basically church-shopping, and if Dave doesn’t want to go along, that’s fine. Kris was also raised Methodist, and she’s been more than happy to test-drive a few churches with me. This past Sunday was our third so far.

The thing is, I do really like the more traditional church services. I like it when there’s a choir and an organ and a minister who gives a regular ol’ sermon. That’s what feels church-y to me. Which is why the church that we tried out on Sunday was such a bizarre experience.

We got there right before the service started, so we had enough time to hit the ladies’ room (because, you know, it had been more than five minutes since the last time I had peed), and then we went to find a seat in the sanctuary. Right away, I noticed that there was no organ and no choir. And although they had a piano, they also had a full band – a guy on guitar, another guy on bass, a drummer and a couple of singers. Hmm.

They started the service by launching into song – which was not exactly a hymn, it was more of a song you might hear on contemporary Christian radio. Very pro-Jesus rock music. And apparently this was one of those churches in which the congregation raises their hands up in the air during the singing – I think it’s supposed to symbolize receiving God’s grace or something, but it looks more like an “I surrender” gesture. I have never understood why people do that.

Sometime during the first song, I noticed the one band member I had missed earlier – they actually had a guy on bongos. BONGOS!! And the guy playing the bongos? Had a harley-biker mustache, and he played with his eyes closed, because he was just that into it, man. He would not have been out of place at a Grateful Dead concert.

(I kept leaning over to Kris and whispering, “Bongos!” to make her crack up. Because I’m evil like that.)

After the first song, the minister got up and spoke for a few minutes – he said one prayer, and then did the standard church bulletin announcements. You know, the youth group will be meeting at this time tonight, if anyone wants to volunteer for such-and-such on X date, all that stuff.

Then, the minister sat back down and we launched into more of the contemporary Christian pop/rock singing. Only this time, it was a medley! I was thinking “ok, almost done with this song, then I can sit back down” and they’d launch right into another one. It felt like it would never end.

At some point during the big Happy Christian Sing-along Hour, I turned my head to the left to whisper something to Kris, and I saw over her shoulder that – so help me, I am not making this up – along the side aisles of the church, there were interpretive dancers, people. I counted four of them, and they were all holding flags and waving them around while doing their little dances. The bongos were one thing, but that was the point where I officially lost it and spent the next several minutes shaking from trying not to laugh.

The dancers, for the record, were not synchronized and had nothing to do with each other AT ALL. I guess they were just moved by the Holy Spirit or something. Also, one of the interpretive dancers was wearing some kind of tai-chi outfit – sort of like white coveralls with a big blue sash belt around his waist – and everyone else was in street clothes. If there was a point to all of that, it was lost on me.

I have no idea how long the singing went on, or if that was the whole service. Somewhere around the fifth song in the medley, Kris leaned over and whispered, “Do we have to stay?” I was thinking the same thing, but I was afraid that she’d think I was being rude. So we high-tailed it out of there and went out for brunch.

For the rest of the day, I kept trying to imagine my dad’s reaction to that type of church, and I’d nearly pass out laughing. I know it’s going to be a challenge to find a traditional church in the Northwest, but there has got to be some sort of happy medium. Preferably one that doesn’t include bongos and interpretive dancers. Sweet Jesus. (No pun intended.)

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The scene: Dave and I were lying in bed late on Saturday morning. (We’re taking full advantage of our last few lazy weekends while we can.) Dave started playing with my hair, but not really doing anything, just sort of “arranging” it on the pillow around my face. I was still making a half-effort at sleeping, so I found this totally annoying.

Me: What on earth are you doing?

Dave: I’m fixing your hair. See? Now, you look just like Snow White.

Me: Oh yeah? Where are my dwarves?

Dave: [Gestures at Teenie, who's perched on the body pillow next to me] Well, you’ve got Grumpy right over there.

Me: [Point at Beaumont, who's sleeping on Dave's feet] Yeah, and I guess there’s Dopey too.

Then, I tried to say that our cat Cleo could be both Sleepy and Sneezy, since she is both. (She’s got asthma, so she wheezes a lot, and she has an enlarged heart, which makes her pretty lethargic most of the time.) However, somehow my brain-to-mouth connection malfunctioned.

Me: And I guess Cleo could be Sleazy…

Dave: [laughing his head off] Sleazy??

Me: I meant Sleepy and Sneezy! It just came out wrong!

We laughed about that for a minute or so, then quieted down.

Me:Yes, Sleazy, the lesser-known eighth dwarf…

Dave: You didn’t see him around much because he was always trolling the woods in his little pimp outfit.

Me: Sort of gives a whole new meaning to that “hi-ho” song, doesn’t it?

Dave: “Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work you go…”

I laughed so hard that I started choking. Poor ol’ Walt, probably rolling over in his grave, and it’s all our fault.

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Ok, this is where my nesting instinct has led me:

Oh yes, the boxes in the garage, they will be labeled. In various fonts. And then, perhaps I will stack them alphabetically. I haven’t decided about that last part yet.

You can make fun of me if you like. Believe me, Dave mocked the label maker plenty when I first bought it. Then he decided it would be a good idea to label all of the cables on the surround-sound system/home network in his office, so he can actually find what he’s looking for when he needs to go un-hook or re-hook something. Which he does all the time. Because he’s a guy.

So, ha! The label maker shall eventually be loved by all. Except Teenie, who clearly expresses her disdain for it in that photo. (Although honestly, as much as I love her, I admit that “disdain” is sort of her default setting. Not with me, of course. She’s all cuddles and purrs with me. The rest of the world? Not so much.)

Moving on: I have no idea why my father seems to be such a recurrent topic on my blog lately, but here he is again. The other day, we were having a conversation and he asked me if I was showing more now than in the last photo he saw of me. (I sent him that picture of me when I was 12 weeks pregnant. Six weeks ago.) I was like, “Um, gee. What do you think?”

But since my dad doesn’t have much of an imagination, he asked me to take more pictures. So I did. And here, we have the belly at 18 weeks.

Before you judge me, remember that I have a very short torso.

Although even considering that, I figure that at my current rate of expansion, by Christmas the circumference of my waist will be approximately the same as my height. Terrifying.

Also noteworthy: yesterday morning I was lying in bed during that decadent eight-minute stretch before the snooze alarm goes off. Unlike most mornings, I was actually awake during this little snooze-break. Dave and I were talking about feeling the baby move; people keep asking me if I’ve felt it kick yet, and it bothers me that I always have to say no. As if I’m going to get graded on the progress of my pregnancy or something. (No kicks before the 20-week mark: C-minus!) The problem is, what with all of the other “tummy issues” that I have on a regular basis (which we won’t discuss here), I really wasn’t sure if I had felt it move yet or not. I was waiting for some really obvious sign. Like, I don’t know, the outline of a footprint on my stomach.

I told Dave that the night before, as I was trying to fall asleep, I felt some fluttering that felt a bit more front-and-center than my usual tummy stuff, and I thought that might have been the baby moving. But I wasn’t sure.

Dave got up and went downstairs to turn the kettle on. (Those Brits love their tea, dontcha know.) I stayed in bed, lying on my side, with one hand sort of on top of my stomach. As soon as Dave left the room, I felt something bump my hand. I’m almost positive it was a foot. It shocked me so much that I yanked my hand away, and it took me a few seconds to recover to even realize that, “Hey! That was it!” So that was pretty cool.

Of course, I’ve been totally unable to re-create it ever since. It’s not like I can teach the baby to kick on demand. Yet.

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I suppose it’s common knowledge that pregnant women have all sorts of crazy dreams, right? And I have been having more than my share of them. Most of them are just bizarre, although I’ve had several nightmares. And not just any nightmares, these are the type that haunt me for the next day or two and give me the chills whenever I think about them. Not fun.

Last week, though, I had the Best. Dream. Ever.

I dreamt that I met George Clooney, and I had the opportunity to hook up with him. I’m not sure how exactly that happened, but he was there and he wanted me. Not a bad way to start off a dream, eh? Alas, I turned poor George down. I explained to him that I loved my husband, so I couldn’t have sex with him. But, I figured that Dave would probably be able to forgive me if George and I kissed for a little while.

I mean, come ON, it’s George freakin’ Clooney. Dave couldn’t possibly hold a grudge for me not being able to pass up an opportunity like this:

If any of you ladies could turn that down, you are of stronger moral fiber than I.

So, George and I made out. It was totally PG-rated, there wasn’t even any over-the-sweater action. But it was awesome.

Ok, so it’s actually kind of lame, but at least it was better than flea’s Clooney dream.

P.S. to Dave: I love you and I promise that George wouldn’t have a chance in real life. Honest.

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