After years of sitting in offices reading blogs, Maggie Cheung became a stay-at-home mom to Jackson in May 2007. She admits her diaper-changing, playground-going, spoon-feeding lifestyle affords considerably less time for blog reading, but she infinitely prefers it to commutes and cubicles. Maggie is married to Phillip, The Devastatingly Handsome Chinese Man, and when they aren't coaxing the boy to eat his dinner, they are hunched over their respective laptops at the dining room table. Maggie strongly believes in the parenting philosophy known as Whatever Works, even if her personal website is all about detailing her many failings in this area. She hopes to do a better job of not freaking out with her second baby, a daughter, who arrived in September 2008. Visit Mighty Maggie's blog.
Ideally, I would have something thoughtful and insightful up here. I even started a couple of fabulously interesting and, of course, well-written posts, but OH MAN, you guys, I AM SO TIRED OF BEING PREGNANT.
I know that is a horrible thing to say. I know I have absolutely nothing to complain about. This pregnancy has progressed along the same ridiculously easy line as my first, and the only real complication is that of having to take care of a toddler instead of lounging about eating ice cream all day.
We are lucky enough to live close to both sets of Jack's grandparents. (And let me acknowledge that we are lucky we can SAY we are lucky enough to live nearby.) Both my parents and Phillip's parents see Jack (and Phillip and me, although who cares about us) at least once a week. They rearranged their homes to accommodate cribs and highchairs. They have toy boxes and books. They have baby pools and baby swings, and when we are visiting the grandparents I do not lift one baby-rearing finger. No wonder we visit so often.
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We're two hours into the putting-Jack-to-bed process, and it's still not over, as evidenced Phillip's grim expression and the angry flashing lights on the baby monitor. But I am the Picture of Nonchalance, Internet. I am cool. I am calm. And over the past two hours I've had plenty of time to think about how NOT calm I was only a few months ago.
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I have two months left to go with this pregnancy. It's even more frightening when I convert it to weeks. Eight! Half of me is, "OMG, EIGHT MORE WEEKS. AM GOING TO DIE," and the other half is all, "Pregnant? When did that happen? Seriously? Another baby?"
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I took Jack to the wading pool yesterday, and for a full hour I was mom not only to my one-year-old, but also a four- or five-year-old little girl. Jack and I had barely filled our buckets before this little girl arrived from who knew where, eying the collection of cups and buckets we'd brought with us. She was cute and friendly and I didn't mind her going through our toys, especially because she was playing so well with Jack. When Jack wandered a little farther out, she came along. When I coaxed Jack back to our end of the pool, she was right next to us.
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When we marched into the car dealership Saturday afternoon, giant car seats in tow, I was prepared to make the deal. I'd done my research. I'd quizzed the internet. I'd convinced my husband that This Was The Car, and we'd taken a test drive. All we had to do was make sure we could still fit inside once the car seats were installed.
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Ever since I quit my job and became a Stay At Home Mom, my husband and I have tried to stick to a budget. The operative word is TRIED. I don't know that we've ever succeeded. Geeks that we are, we've spent hours entering our financial information into money management programs, coding fancy Excel spreadsheets, and testing out those free online services that help you track where your paycheck is going. But it doesn't matter how complicated our Excel formulas are, they aren't much help when you stop updating the spreadsheet two weeks later.
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Three years ago when we bought our house, we were faced with a disturbing fact. Our college-era furniture was not a good look inside our brand-new, shiny home. So began a year of pawning off the couches on siblings and selling futons on Craigslist. And because, at the time, we were those fabulous creatures known as DINKs (Double Income, No Kids!), our only concern about new furniture was making sure it wouldn't scratch our Brazilian cherry floors.
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I spent the last several days poring over every detail on your new car websites. Every slideshow. Every link. Every last bullet point. And while you made it exceptionally easy for me to examine your vehicle's grille, its spoiler, its GPS navigation systems, and its Bluetooth capability, it was impossible to figure out if I could fit two car seats and a grown up in the backseat.
