So, I’ve been slacking on the updates.  I’ve had 2 midwife appointments since my last post, and I’ve failed to give you the lowdown.  Shame on me.

There’s really not much to report.  One week I had lost a pound.  The next week I had gained 3.  I’m up 32 pounds total.  Blood pressure is good.  I haven’t asked for any more cervical checks, but I might actually ask for one this week out of curiosity.  I’m still doing weekly yoga, still working part-time, still having back pain and heartburn.  Baby boy is still crazy active.

Holden is going through a bit of a rough patch with his behavior.  I don’t think it has  anything to do with the impending baby, I just think it’s normal 3.5 year old stuff.  It’s been challenging to drag a kicking and screaming boy into time out, when he weighs FORTY POUNDS, and my pelvis feels like it’s going to crack from the pressure.  It’s challenging, but the discipline must go on.  We had an especially rough day on Friday, when my neighbor gave him a friendly reminder about his behavior (totally fine with me, I actually like when other adults chime in).  In response, Holden told her “You can’t tell me what to do.”  Um, woah.  So I made him apologize right away, then left with him to put him in an immediate time out at our house.  I had to DRAG him up the stairs.  I locked him in his room, and after some yelling, crying, throwing things, and having an all-out tantrum, I told him he’d be getting an X for the day.  He’s been working on earning an outer space placemat for the past 2.5 weeks, and at the end of each day, he earns either a check or an X.  He doesn’t have to be perfect to get a check mark, but telling off the neighbor was definite grounds for getting an X. When he learned he’d be getting an X, he started sobbing and after a few minutes alone in his room, he grew quiet.  After a little while, I went into his room so we could talk about the situation together.  Later that same night while tucking him in, he told me that he didn’t know he couldn’t say such a thing to a grown-up.  I believe him (he’s not nearly sophisticated enough to lie about something like that).  And when I started thinking about it, I realized where he may have gotten the idea to say such a thing to a neighbor.  Recently, H was watching another kid play and started to be a little bossy with the kid, and I told H, “You shouldn’t be bossy with him, you shouldn’t be telling other kids what to do, or how to play.”  Of course, it seemed perfectly natural for H to generalize this and say to our neighbor, “You can’t tell me what to do.”  Sigh.  Being three is all about learning exceptions to rules—it’s about revealing all of the many social qualifiers that guide acceptable human interaction.  It’s tough stuff:

Listen to grown-ups

• But not strangers, because they might be sketchy

Don’t be bossy

• Unless another kid is doing something dangerous
• Or they are trying to hurt/annoy you, and you need to tell them to stop
• Or they are hurting someone else

Don’t let other people touch your private areas

• Unless he or she is your doctor
• Or your mom or dad
• Or your teacher is helping you go potty
• And you have granted these people permission to do so

Ugh, so many rules!  In my opinion, this is what makes the age of three WAY harder than any previous age.  Learning how to navigate these social situations is difficult; explaining how these social situations work is exhausting.  Once H gets the words, unless, except, if, but, and, & or fully incorporated into his vocabulary, he’ll have mastered this form of social kung fu.

In other news, my boss was recently diagnosed with cancer.  She had surgery a couple of weeks ago and has started a 6-month course of chemotherapy.  It’s horrible news, and we are all hoping for a positive outcome.  That said, I don’t know about the future of my job, and whether I’ll have one to return to after maternity leave.  Weird, because I lost my job after H was born, but for completely different reasons.  Is the universe trying to tell me something?  For now, I’m going to stay positive and assume that I’ll be able to go back.

Hey, you want to see a picture?  People have been bugging me because I have basically taken no maternity photos during this pregnancy.  So here’s one of the four of us last week (38 weeks) enjoying our unseasonably warm weather down by the lake: