Happy 4th and 3 days late

Happy 4th of July to my American friends.

I’m overdue to have a baby, as usual. When telling the kids how late they each were, my youngest said of the oldest, “She was a little overdone, but

Home again, home again, jiggity jog

Where to begin?

It’s embarrassing to admit that I thought of you all many times on this trip, sometimes even by name. I do have friends in real life too, honest! But I was frequently thinking of how I would write up certain things for this blog and you, my beloved blog buddies.

After I got through the security check in San Diego, I sat down and typed this:

The first pat down was painless. They not only had the footprint floor mat facing away from the maddening crowd of the security line, they took me a little ways off to the side. There was an onlooker this time (like in D.C.) but only because my “patter” was a trainee. She was gentle (unlike in D.C.). The only hitch was I needed to hold my pants up while she frisked my legs. “This is embarrassing enough without my pants falling down,” I said. She was kind enough to let me break protocol and put my arms down for that part of the procedure.

When she checked my belly, I said, “Yes, it’s real.” Both women laughed and gushed over how cute and petite it was. I managed to survive that part. 😉

They wished me a Happy Mother’s Day, and I was on my way.

So TOTALLY not me.

Even though it was a little sad to be traveling on Mother’s Day, since I’m obviously a mother, thanks to this beer gut, I got a hearty Happy M. D. from the kind lady I bought my lunch from, as well as one of the flight attendants, who gushed over my belly, asked me several questions, told me a little about her son, and then finally continued beverage service. When she finished she came back, leaned her arm against the overhead bin above me, and we chatted some more.

The woman who did my pat down in the Birmingham airport on the way home asked me similar questions in the same exact tone as she gave the run-down of the procedure. Matter-of-factly she said, as her hands did their business:

The news that isn’t fit to print, but I am anyway

“Betsy, you’re waddling,” I was told last night as I walked into a restaurant for a friend’s baby shower. (The friend, btw, was not in attendance because she was at the hospital in labor. We celebrated in her absence.)

So it’s as I feared.

This is what I’ve become. Picture the waddle.

The sprained muscle I mentioned in my last post has only gotten worse, and the other side of my body is getting thrown off to compensate, thereby exasperating my pregnant-lady walk. At seven months, I should not have the pregnant-lady walk!

Not to mention the pain. I decided it was time to take action by rubbing cream on the affected area, you know, my “lower back.”

Oooh, the cooling sensation. Not bad. Why didn’t I do this sooner?

Wait? What’s happening now? Why is it burning? My gosh my as—er… lower back is on fire! How did a cream that started out cool turn my backside into a bunsen burner?!

You know you’re at the end of a pregnancy when

Your five-year-old tells you not to sit in a chair “because you might break it.”

Thanks, honey!

~Kim, mother of 4

Kim adds, “In his defense, I

“I always rely on the kindness of strangers.”

This post has been a long time in coming. I’ve had so many thoughts in my brain that have ended with, “I should totally blog about that.” I’m sure many of you have felt the same. Where would we be without our blogging outlet, am I right? Remember life without cell phones? Total insanity of the Dark Ages.

Anyway, on to the kindness!

Note: This is not a picture of me. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People are totally nice to pregnant women, as well they should be. Once when I was preggers, I was at the grocery store attempting to unload my cart onto the conveyor belt while also holding a fussy child. Another mom spotted me and immediately came over to quickly unload the cart for me, saying, “I remember being in this stage of life. Please let me help you.” She wasn’t even pausing to get an “okay” from me. She sort of seemed like she was in a hurry, but wouldn’t have taken no for an answer, even if I had (stupidly) told her not to bother. She quickly got the job done, wished me the best of luck and was gone practically before I could offer my thanks. Super cool lady.

Super cool old man story:

There she blows!

Head of a fetus, aged 29 weeks, in a “3D ultrasound” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was pregnant with our second, my daughter came with us for the boy/girl reveal at the 20-week ultrasound. We had just taken her to the Jonah Veggietales movie. So, at the ultrasound she looked from the screen to my belly to the screen, and shouted,

Always the helpful one

Baby dinosaur 163 (Photo credit: tomylees)

My son loved dinosaur eggs. He had pictures of them in his room, and knew everything there was to know about them. The only problem was, he thought this information applied to all animals.

He was talking on the phone with my mother-in-law, explaining, matter of factly, “Mom has a big egg in her tummy right now. Dad gave her a seed to

Why can’t I just have a CHICKEN POT PIE?!

Sometimes pregnancy hormones make you feel like you’re insane.  When I was about nine-weeks pregnant, we were on a road trip, and finding something that I thought I could eat was a challenge.  The one thing that actually sounded good was chicken pot pie, so when we saw a Cracker Barrel, I thought I was good to go. 

If that’s the case, my swimsuit’s going back in the closet!

While pregnant with her third child, my friend explained to her five-year-old son that the baby in her tummy has fluid all around him like he’s swimming in water. Her son pointed at her bottom and

As if being nine months pregnant weren’t bad enough…

When my baby was three-weeks-old, an old woman said to me, “Honey,