Queen of Rambles

I hope and pray (except I don’t actually pray) that I had the swine flu this spring. There was a big sign up on the preschool door that they have their first case of swine flu. They are asking everyone who feels poorly to stay home. I bet it’s too late. It’s going to rip like wildfire through the school.

Why, oh why, wouldn’t our doctors test us for the flu this spring? If I knew we already had it I could rest easy. I think we MUST have had it. Bah! Not that I am particularly worried about Death! Dying! Panic! Mainly, I don’t want to be sick ass sick while pregnant. I’m already sick ass sick.

Maybe I should call Erik’s doctor tomorrow and inquire about the flu vaccines. Normally we just wait until his yearly visit, but that’s not happening for another three weeks. I think he has to get three shots that day so I know they won’t want to give him the flu shot on top of that.

I’ve had several of you ask if we are planning on finding out the sex of the baby. Yes! I am about the most impatient person I know. I have to know everything there is to know the minute I can know it. I’ll post as soon as I know. The only secret I’m keeping is the name. We learned last time that it’s best to keep the name under wraps until the baby has actually arrived and been named whatever name it is. I can pretty much guarantee the name won’t be Kai. Sadly. I don’t want to divorce Mike and become a single mother, so I suppose I have to allow him his veto power. Other than Kai I’ve got nothing. I think it would be cool to have a name that has the K sound in it somewhere since Carrie, Mike and Erik all have that sound, but if we are also trying to have a name that works in Swedish I don’t know if that is possible. That would limit our already small amount of choices.

I suppose it is possible we will have a girl and I won’t have to be bitter forever. Like Heather, I’m feeling a boy vibe. Also like Heather, I think it probably has to do with thinking of babies as boys after having a boy. I was 100% convinced Erik would be a girl so I don’t exactly have a great track record.

Erik and I had to have a serious talk today. He was sitting on my lap and suddenly told me I wasn’t cute. Then he told me I was fat. I told him it wasn’t nice to say that and not to say it again, so he just kept saying it over and over until I finally had to send him to his room (calmly and rationally! Whoo!)

When he came back down we talked and he kept saying “Why can’t I say you’re fat? You are fat. You eat too much ice cream.” Then he grabbed my stomach fat to illustrate.

Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.

I know exactly where he gets it from. Me and my big whiny mouth. I’m really going to have to work on that. I know I read about really being self-aware of body talk in front of kids from a lot of mothers of girls, but hadn’t really thought about it since I have a boy. Time to think about it! What a slap in the face to hear such harsh and hurtful words coming out of my son’s mouth and knowing he is just parroting what he hears me say every day.

To totally change the topic, I’ve been researching car seat laws in Sweden and it seems that the laws are not strict–it is just culture custom that has kids rear facing until age 4 or later. Whew! I am hoping we can get away with taking a booster for Erik b/c it would be so much simpler, though his real car seat feels so much safer. I don’t know. If anyone has more official information on the laws, please do shoot me a link. I was just looking it up in English and never found anything truly official.

I’ve also been looking up MD car seat laws and they are much more lax than I thought as well. I was really just looking them up because I am snarky. The gal who co-hosted the baby shower has a daughter who just turned one. While I was there, they stuffed her into her baby bucket car seat to take her somewhere. I had to do a double take. No way in HELL was that safe. Her head and her legs were totally hanging off the edges.

They said something along the lines of her being a little big for it and I tried to tell a funny story about me not knowing you could put a baby in a convertible seat. I thought they had to be in the baby bucket until 1 year of age, but that was not the case. I figured it out when Erik was about nine months old.

The husband got really defensive and told me that someone had told him about a new law that just passed last year that said all infants had to be in the baby bucket until 1 year of age. That doesn’t make any sense at all since it is not safe for a baby to be in a seat that it has outgrown. I want to send them an e-mail with the actual law attached, but I guess it would be too bitchy to do so. They know she’s over a year. They know she has outgrown that seat. If they want to do something about it they will. I was rather taken aback at how defensive the guy was over the whole thing. I guess I have become one of those horrible people who make comments about the way other people raise their kids.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 7:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.