One of the three FOUR designs I’ve been working on this week. Kerry was one of the FIRST bloggers I ever met here in blogworld. I was thrilled when she asked me to design for her, as I am when anyone that I actually KNOW does. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Like I just ate a Krispy Kreme. And that’s a good thing.

So, go tell her, “Hi!” And tell her she’s pretty. And smart. And funny. And that she has GREAT taste in web designers.

This is the best thing I’ve ever read:

On the day of the glucose tolerance test, eat a large candy bar (at least 2oz) and drink a 12-oz soft drink (no diet drinks). Please complete this sugar load all within 15 minutes.

Do you know what that means? I don’t have to drink that nasty stuff I did ten years ago when I was pregnant with LilZ. I get a CANDY BAR. and a REAL COKE (which I don’t like, but whatever). How cool is that? Modern medical advances are amazing.

My doctor’s appointment went well, except for the sudden onset of the need to hurl, on top of the bloody nose. Yeah - so now? Not only are my gums bleeding at a rate requiring a daily transfusion, but my nose is joining in on the hemorrhage party. Fun times.

Also - with the new Project Get Healthy and Happy at our house - I’ve been keeping my caloric intake at a level appropriate for someone who doesn’t need to gain ANY more weight in their pregnancy. Before last week, I had already gained 26lbs, and you’re only supposed to gain up to 35, so I needed to start monitoring my calories. After one week of less than 1800 calories a day, do you know how much I’ve now gained? TWENTY NINE POUNDS.

That means, in a week where I’ve cut my calories by about 300-500 a day from the LAST 22 weeks, I actually managed to GAIN THREE POUNDS.

WHAT THE HELL?

I’ve decided I must be growing the freakin’ Jolly Green Giantess inside of my uterus. Or maybe it’s the future headmistress at Beauxbaton Academy - Madame Maxime II. Either way, the weight gain is LITERALLY, out of control. I’m still going to keep my calories under 1800, because if I’m gaining weight on that FEW calories, Satan only knows how much I’d gain if I went back to my 2000+.

So yeah. Long story short? No nasty sugar juice for the glucose tolerance test, tons of SEXY bleeding from my gums and nose, and I’m a whale. That’s your pregnancy update for the day.

I was just working on a few designs this morning (I’m doing THREE in ONE WEEK. I’m KRAZEE with the designing. Yes Ma’am. I also may be a little drunk (parenthetically speaking, of course)) and decided to take a break so I could post an entry before I headed off to work. I couldn’t really decide what I wanted to write about (shocking, I know.) so I got up to refill my coffee (DECAF! I promise!). When I came back? This is what I saw. I’m not sure if she wanted to write the entry for me…or, if she was hoping I would play with her instead of sit at the desk and and work. Of course, since she gave me blog material, I booted her immediately so I could write an entry. And now? She’s going at a bone on the floor, waiting for the next chance to steal my chair.

P.S. Please ignore the obscene amount of wires under the desk. At some point in time, we will make an effort to hide those because the distract from the beauty that is my desk. BUT - that point in time is not NOW.

MrZ’s comment on my last entry:
I’m glad we agree on this stuff. Arguing over parenting issues w/ other parents is one thing, but can you imagine if you and I had opposing viewpoints on this kind of thing? That would be tough.

My reply:
[sarcasm] Um, yeah, I cant imagine, um, what it would be like if we disagreed about anything regarding, um, parenting, which, of course, we havent EVER done, have we? [/sarcasm]

His reply:
[duh] [idon'tknow what i was thinking] Good Point [/idon'tknow what i was thinking] [/duh]

I don’t know if this proves that MrZ is ON CRACK if he thought, for a second, that we would agree on all parental decisions, considering that we’ve had our share of disagreements with LilZoot. Or, if it proves that we’re GIANT FREAKIN’ GEEKS for responding to each other using pretend HTML tags to indicate emotion. I mean, [eyeroll]really…[/eyeroll]

The current “hot-topic” right now in a lot of the mommy-blogging world is the No-Cry Sleep Solution (NCSS) v/s Cry It Out (CIO). For those of you new to these techniques, let me break it down for you. NCSS means under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you let your child cry themselves to sleep. CIO means that if you know they are not hungry, not wet, and not sick…you just let them cry (for a reasonable amount of time) themselves to sleep. For many parents? It’s a tough decision to make. You feel guilty about letting your child cry, but sometimes you find yourself weighing that guilt against the insanity you feel over lack of sleep.

And to give you an idea as to how PASSIONATE people are about CIO? Here is a comment from Julie’s entry regarding letting her son, Charlie, Cry It Out for the first time.

Well, you’ve alienated me. I thought you were an educated woman. Why does Charlie stop crying? Because he is learning a lesson. That when he cries, mommy may not come and get him. He feels abandoned and his primal instincts kick in for self-preservation (I’m alone in the world, I must conserve energy or die). Some of your readers think he won’t remember. No, at the age of 8, he won’t go, “Remember that time you left me crying for 13 minutes in my crib?” But he will trust you less and that will carry on into adulthood. It’s not too late. Maybe you can rebuild his trust. My son was also a short napper and I NEVER let him CIO. He’s now 17 months and takes a great 2 hour nap all by himself in the afternoon and sleeps 10 hours at night (waking after about 6 hours for a night snack). He’s also healthy, happy, and knows how loved he is. Hope Charlie is the same as a toddler…

Why do the most opinionated commenters always remain anonymous? They lose so much respect that way. Well, I’m going to take a stab at this topic and see if I can get my OWN Anonymous commenter to tell me what I’m doing to ruin my child and future children’s lives.

I am a big fan of the Cry It Out method. Now, lucky for some Moms, this method is not necessary because they are born with children who sleep well. But, when LilZ was a baby, I had never heard of the NCSS. I don’t know if anyone had. So, I used CIO with LilZ and I plan on using it with NikkiZ. I never read any parenting books with LilZ, I just did what my insticts lead me to do, and so far? So good. So why mess with that now? My instincts said, “He’s fine. He’s full. He’s clean. He is just tired and will go to sleep soon.” And he did. And when he didn’t? I picked him up and consoled him until he did. No big deal, in my mind. If anything, I felt guilty for not feeling MORE guilty about letting him cry!

But this is not my point. My point is - WHY do other people care so much about how we get our children to sleep? I mean - we ALL obviously care enough about the welfare of our children to painstakingly decide on a method, and we ALL feel large amounts of guilt over whether we’re doing the right thing. In the end? Isn’t it each of our own decisions whether to pick our baby up every time they cry? Or not?

I believe in CIO for ME and ME ALONE. I do NOT look down on people who use NCSS, so why should they look down on me? I don’t understand. It’s not like I’m beating my child to get them to sleep, or drugging them, or reading to them from the Necronomicon, so why do the NCSSers feel SO strongly that they need to tell those of us, who are OBVIOUSLY GODDAMN EVIL parents, that they believe what we’re doing is wrong?

This is a tough world that we are bringing our children into. They need us to love them and care for them however we see fit. ALL OF US. Parents or not. We should bond together as adults who LOVE OUR CHILDREN, for chrissakes. Grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends. We all love the children in our lives, THAT is what is important. We should embrace the different techniques and be glad there is something for all of us. We should learn from each other, we should support each other, but most of all, we should just agree that as long as we are doing what WE feel is best for OUR child, then that child is better off, no matter how they fall asleep.

And give me a break, all of our kids are going to hate us at some point in their lives. Many will try drinking before they’re 21. Some will smoke pot. Some (many?) will have premarital sex. And some? Will grow to be republicans. There will always be parenting battles to face, regardless of what sleep technique you used. So instead of arguing and fighting about it? Let’s meet for drinks. Especially if it’s Naptime Martinis while my baby is Crying It Out in the next room. It’s always easier to ignore the cries with a good buzz on.