I had a thought the other day: in 5 or 6 years, when our daughter is (gasp!) old enough to go to the bathroom by herself, what happens when she’s with Dad and not Mom and Dad, and there’s no family bathroom?  What does Dad do?

Now, the way I see it, there are a couple of options: Dad can take her into the men’s bathroom with him (once it’s emptied and there are no exposed, uh, parts), or Dad can suck it up and go into the women’s bathroom with her (after announcing himself and his predicament).  One thing that will NEVER be an option is letting my child go into any bathroom alone–I don’t understand parents who think that 5 is an appropriate age to go into an occupied bathroom alone, but that’s for another blog.

I asked Dad what he would do in that situation, and he said he would just take her into the men’s bathroom.  To deal with the urinating men, he would have her close her eyes until they were in the safety of a stall.  Not a bad idea, by any means, but I don’t know that I agree with that.  I think I would feel more comfortable if he took her into the women’s bathroom.  But he brought up a good point: he would never be allowed to go into an occupied women’s bathroom without some stupid sensitive broad crying about a cock in the hen house.  Sometimes, women can be a real drag.

Now, if the roles were reversed, and our son was out with me and needed to go to the bathroom, there would be absolutely no problem with me taking him into the women’s bathroom.  No one would even bat an eyelash.  So why is that?  Why the double standard for mom’s and dad’s?  A father out with his daughter should be able to take his daughter into the correct bathroom to pee.  Why should our daughter have to pee in the men’s bathroom just because she enjoys hanging out with her dad?  There need to be more family bathrooms in order to deal with this little dilemma, in my humble opinion.  Clearly, this needs to be dealt with.

Luckily, we have at least a few years before we need to deal with this situation (and many more like it, I’m sure).  Hopefully, by the time our potty trained daughter and her dad go out for father-daughter time, there will have been an increase in family bathrooms for just this reason.  If not, well, there are going to be a lot of pissed off ladies sharing their bathroom with my hubby and his little girl.  And too bad for them.

I have officially been pregnant for 6 months.  Well, actually, I’ve been pregnant for 5 months and 3 weeks, but whatever.  We’ll round up for the sake of this blog.

So, since I’ve been pregnant for 6(ish) months, that means I have 4 months to go.  I know, everyone thinks that pregnancy lasts for 9 months, but that’s another little thing that most people forget to mention: you’re actually pregnant for 10 months.  Awesome.  Anyway, my point was, I can’t believe that in 4 short months, we will have an actual baby.  Like, a living, breathing, screaming, wiggly baby.  I know that’s what this has all been leading up to, but you kind of don’t really think about it all that much.  At least I don’t.  You have so many other things occupying your mind, and in all honesty, pregnant brain can only handle so much. 

Now, I’m not stupid, I know that pregnancy ends in child.  I get that.  But I guess I’m just not sure how to prepare for the actual baby.  Not just having the baby around, but I mean the baby herself.  How do you prepare for feeding, changing, soothing, not sleeping, getting spit up/pooped/peed on?  It’s not like there’s a class you can take, like driver’s ed or first aid.  You can’t go rent a baby for practice, and unless you happen to know someone who has a baby and is willing to lend it to you for a while, there are very few ways to get hands on practice.  And really, isn’t that how most people learn?  Telling someone how to do something and showing how to do it are two very different things.  What would the roads be like if that’s how people learned how to drive?  No actual driving, but just watching someone drive and explain to you what they’re doing.  The results would be disastrous.  Exciting, but ultimately disastrous. 

Hopefully, bringing home baby won’t be disastrous.  I’m relying heavily on the belief that some sort of instinct kicks in and everything just comes naturally.  That would be great.  And I’m sure that there will be a big learning curve in the beginning.  I mean, I’ve been around kids forever, but I’ve never had one, and I’m sure it’s quite a bit different.  I’m hoping beyond hope that my sweet little baby girl has some patience for her dear mom and dad in the beginning, and let’s us get our sea legs before she really lets loose.  That way we can have all of the excitement, and none of the disaster.  Fingers crossed.

So I started to put together my registry this weekend online at babiesrus.com.  I’ve had a wish list going for a couple of months, but I figured now that I’m getting into my third trimester, people will want to start to buy me (and the baby) presents, so I should have a registry.  Now, having spent a lot of time around babies and moms, I figured I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to prepare for my first child.  I figured wrong.

I cannot even begin to explain how badly I underestimated how much stuff babies require.  I had all the big stuff nailed, like a car seat, stroller, crib, and changing table.  And I remembered diapers, bottles, stuff like that.  But I didn’t anticipate the baby minutiae: thermometers, nail clippers, burping cloths, baby wipes, nursing pads, diaper rash cream, washcloths, soap, laundry detergent (yes, special baby laundry detergent), baby first aid kits, Gas-ex for babies, the list goes on and on (just imagine how much fun comparison shopping for rectal thermometers is, by the way).  And this doesn’t even include the fancy-schmancy stuff: wipe and bottle warmers, night vision video monitors, ergonomically designed pacifiers, BPA-dye-fragrance-chemical-free everything.  It’s mind blowing.

And I’d just like to say, there are way too many different brands and styles of EVERYTHING.  Why do I need to wade through 1400 different strollers?  One has to be the best.  Same with cribs.  And diapers.  And rectal thermometers (46!!! different kinds of rectal thermometers in UNNECESSARY).  There’s a “Sex and the City” episode where Miranda is lamenting about buying a crib, and she says there should be a store where they have 1 crib, and it’s the perfect crib, and it’s the crib for you.  I’m with her on that one.  I didn’t do this much research and development when I was looking for my husband.

I find it so hard to believe that I’m going to actually use all the stuff that we will eventually get for our little girl.  But that’s the rub, isn’t it?  It figures that the one thing I don’t get is the one thing I will need at 3 o’clock in the morning when the only store that carries it is 40 miles away and closed.  So we will bite the bullet and register for all the little things that no one uses but everyone needs.  At least I’ll have more presents to open.

YouTube removed the music from our video, because they are mean.  It’s ok though, now you can pay attention to the baby and not be distracted by silly songs.  Hum along to the video if you must

This video is from Dylan’s second 3D ultrasound, taken a week ago when I was 5 months pregnant.  There was over 30 minutes of adorable footage, but Daddy and I realized that not everyone would fawn over it like we did (everyone SHOULD, because she’s beyond beautiful, but whatever).  So my super smart Asian husband edited it down and added music and captions and everything.  I, by the way, couldn’t even figure out how to play the original DVD on the computer.

Thank you to Daddy for making this fancy video and adding music and special effects.  He’s so smart.  We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did.

Well, the baby’s first holiday passed today with some fanfair.  I do realize that she is still in my uterus, and she has no idea what Easter is or what the hell was going on outside my uterus, but still.  She had a blast.

The day started as all Easters do (or should): with an Easter egg hunt.  This one was orchestrated by my sisters, both of whom have actual children that don’t reside inside their abdomens.  So my sisters hid the eggs in Erin’s backyard, and the hunt commenced.  Now, this might be good time to tell you that there were 2 babies/toddlers, 2 five year olds, and a nine year old, all of whom are of normal heights (my reason for including this information will become clear very soon).  So, we all go into the backyard to find eggs, and it becomes apparent that while Erin hid eggs for the very small kids, Maggi hid eggs for someone else’s incredibly giant, teflon kids.  There were eggs inside light fixtures 10 feet off the ground, eggs on high tables, eggs in thorny rose bushes, eggs in orange trees.  It was like the decathlon of egg hunts.  Needless to say, it all culminated with my nephew falling out of a tree while trying to get an egg.  It’s all good, he was fine, no blood or broken bones.  And that badass kid got the egg to boot.

After it was determined that Elias was going to survive his fall, there was a lot of playing, candy eating, Wii competitions between my nephew, my husband, and my brother-in-law, some more candy eating, a great deal of screaming and some tantrum throwing, a much needed nap for the young one, and a very delicious breakfast/lunch at Cicis (sooooooooo yummy).  All in all, a pretty fantastic Easter was had by all.

This all gave me very specific ideas of what I do and don’t want for her first official Easter next year.  One, I don’t want Maggi to hide her eggs (I don’t know if Maggi will get her egg hiding privileges back anytime soon).  Two, I’m not sure that giving children an almost endless access to sugar is a good idea outside of Halloween; one of those days a year is plenty.  And three: I do want, for Easter and all other holidays, for her to be able to spend it with her aunts and uncles and cousins, because they are top notch.  Even Maggi the deadly egg hider.  Maybe next year she can be in charge of the donuts instead.