Dancing Brave

How I Am Wasting My Time On The Internet

Welcome to my crack: This Web site has so many resources for baby names, it will make your eyes cross, including this awesome time-sucking graph that charts the increases and decreases in popularity of names from the 1880s until present-day.

Basically, you can look up any single name you want, or just do as we've been doing -- filter out one gender and then type in a letter of the alphabet and go down the list. This is how I learned that the name Zain is still kicking around, or that Zaid enjoyed its only burst of existence between 1990ish and 2003. Or that people stopped naming their sons "Orange" just before the turn of the century -- the LAST century -- and that the name Helen, for a BOY, didn't die out until just before the 1940s.

We're finding boy names to be VERY tricky. It's tough finding a middle ground between, like, the ten most popular names ever, and the ones that are super obscure to the point of sounding invented and/or labored. A lot of the stuff in between sounds either overly preppy, overly Chazzy (you know, popped-collar fraternity douche who likes to go out to LA clubs and get bottle service just to be seen, and uses the word "pussy" a lot), or like they'd be fantastic unisex monikers... for a girl. Since our last name is Mock, we're eliminating almost every name beginning with M, and we're having to be really careful about one-syllable names or nicknames because some of them sound too abrupt when you factor in the surname. Nicholas is a nice name, and so is Nick, but Nick Mock rhymes with tick-tock and sounds a bit staccato.

And then you get the names that either sound adorable for a little boy but not so hot on a man, or vice-versa. For instance, we each have/had a grandfather named William, and I think Billy is really cute. But I'm not wild about Bill or Will or William -- for instance, Will Mock just sounds like he's advertising a service, and William feels stiff and formal to me -- nor am I sure my son will want to be Billy until he's 60. Maybe he would. I can't really ask either of them, though.

All of which is to say: We are overthinking this, except on the flip side, I'm not sure that's possible. Because this is more or less permanent, barring any urges on our children's part to make like Kanye and change their names to Martin Louis (as in Vuitton) the King Jr., just to help see the country through a rough patch by letting it live vicariously through some serious crazy. I love Kanye now. Maybe we'll name them Kanye and Martin, in honor of both his identities.

That little digression exposes the real problem at work here, which is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have serious name conversations. The fake ones are way too much fun. Recently they've been dubbed everything from "Clive and Remington" to "Darth and Lando" to "Melvis and Nermal," the latter coming from a baby book that actually has two lists called, respectively, "Unappealing Names" and "Geeky Names." And of course there's the fact that for years we've been referring to my future male children as Jacques Mock (who will be raised to think he's French, of course), Croque Mock (so that we can have a child named after a sandwich, the Croque Monsieur/Madame), and Broque Mock, which is just Brock but with the poncey suffix because we find the letter Q uncommonly funny.

In a way, anything we choose is going to be kind of a buzzkill after all this. Perhaps we'll just bow to capitalism and sell their names to corporations every couple years. Little Coca-Cola Mock and Bank of America Mock will be so very happy with their fat college funds.

Eighteen Weeks and All Is Well

Last week I had wicked AT&T problems -- the phone, and thus the DSL, were out because of bad lines in the neighborhood -- and then Fug Madness started, and well, it was murder on my updating habits. Not to mention that one fun side effect of being knocked up is that I can't sit at my desk, or on my couch at a table, and work without getting a horrible pain in the middle-left part of my back. Usually I make it about half the day before it drives me to complete distraction. It's been GREAT for my productivity.

I'm definitely popping out. My belly button has gotten all shallow, my pants are tighter and harder to keep zipped despite my efforts to rig the button closed with various things made of elastic, and The Belly has gotten to the point where no sweater or shirt can conceal its presence. Good thing I'm not hiding this pregnancy from anyone. It's such a relief not being on a soap opera sometimes. SOMETIMES.

And I am LOVING The Belly. I pat it all the time, sometimes just gently, sometimes with a circular rubbing motion. It's so much fun to let it all hang out, you know? And the more I touch it, the more I imagine it's like cuddling my little beans. It's the best I can do while they're still gestating. Kevin likes to schedule belly time in the evenings, too, where he can pat it and give it stern lectures if the boys are giving me problems like bad heartburn. Of course, someday, I will reminisce wistfully about the heartburn problems when they have taken to giving us REAL headaches, like coming home sick because they ate sand on a dare or fed potato chips to the class goldfish. I assume boys do those things. I assume this because I did not do those things.

The heartburn has been a treat, though -- feeling like my rib cage just caught fire and is shooting flames out my boobs. I've had it before, of course, as has anyone, but not with this kind of random regularity, without any particular trigger other than my body's ennui with feeling normal. It would be tolerable if I actually DID shoot boob fire. Other than very itchy skin, it's the pregnancy symptom I have experienced the most heartily (we're not at the part yet where my ankles swell to the size of melons); the other night I was doing great until Kevin made me laugh just as we were going to bed, and BOOM, my chest exploded and I spent an hour pacing and gnawing alternately on Tums and almonds while he slept peacefully. Pregnancy is so hard on the men, poor dears. Their wives rend garments in agony and freak out every time there's a twinge for longer than five seconds, and it can be really distracting when a dude needs a nap.

I'm kidding. Well, I'm not, but Kevin has been amazing. He is not one of the douchey husbands you read about in, like, The Girlfriends' Guide To Pregnancy, which I would say is the pregnancy-book equivalent to any commercial where the wife is a stereotypical nag and the husband is a stereotypical schlub who just wants to watch The Big Game. Seriously, that book is all about how pregnancy is icky and you will feel huge and gross and you will throw sharp and heavy objects at your thoughtless husband's head, while he tries to avoid contact with the lunatic whale that now shares his bed and terrifies him with its hormonal hugeness. It is enough to give any girl a complex. There apparently is no humor in NICE husbands, so the whole book takes the easy path of making them sound, as a species, like idiot asshats while also reminding you helpfully that you will hate yourself for the entire nine-month period and possibly a few months more, so SADDLE UP for some MISERY, ladies! Ugh.

ANYWAY: Kevin takes really good care of me. He runs to the store when I can't, even if that means doing it on his way home at 9 p.m. He shoulders a lot of the cooking load. He rubs my aching back and puts lotion on it because it's dry. He came home early from work when I needed him the other day and went with me to the doctor the next morning (more on that in a second) because he didn't want me to be there alone. He is not averse to attending a breastfeeding how-to class with me, so that he can help out when I'm learning because he knows it's going to be really hard (although I might not make him do that, the offer was rather lovely). And he takes pains every day to make sure I know that he thinks I look totally beautiful pregnant and that any extra lump and bump on my body is his new favorite thing about me. I lucked out. Clearly he hasn't read The Girlfriends' Guide To Pregnancy or else he'd know that he's supposed to be a) cowering in fear, or b) asking me for really freaky sex.

I did have a minor scare the other day that turned out to be nothing, but I spent about 15 hours really upset until I went into my doctor the next morning and he confirmed that, yes, everything is sealed up tightly and the babies are moving merrily. Turns out I have a low-lying placenta, which can lead to what I will term "unfortunate leakages" that scare the crap out of pregnant ladies but are in fact not always signs of doom. And I was freaked. At one point while I was shaking and holding the phone, waiting for a return call from the doctor (bless him, he got back to me in two minutes), my eye fell on a pile of ultrasound photos on a table spanning our entire pregnancy, and I just thought to myself how far we've come and how I just could not imagine going back to square one because we are way too in love with the idea of our matched pair of boys. Needless to say, I'm so happy it turned out to be nothing immediately terrible. It's just something to monitor to make sure it doesn't stay low or get lower, and in the meantime, I have to "take it easier." It's tough to say where else on the "easy" scale I can go without slipping into an actual coma. I guess it rules out our light weekend walks. And that two-hour trip to Babies R Us probably didn't help, but how ELSE am I supposed to pick out bedding that doesn't feel horrible?

It's all worth it, though -- every freakout and back twinge and scorched chest -- and especially when I think I can feel them moving. Every night when I lie down, or if I'm curled up on the couch, my insides practically shift with me -- like I imagine it would feel if you took out my internal organs and turned the empty cavity into a lava lamp (a procedure I may have done once I'm finished bearing womb-fruit). Pangs and twinges now might be little baby hands and feet knocking on my belly, although it's way too early to tell that for sure. It's exciting to think we're inching closer to the part where Kevin can feel them, too. I do mean "inching" -- I suspect we're at least a month away -- but hey, that's a month closer than I've ever been in my life. Good times.

XY

So, I'm completely addicted to ultrasounds. It is so cool to see the beans in there moving around, floating, tumbling, even looking like they're crawling. And I can ascribe personality traits to them.

For example, Baby A -- they always refer to them based on which one is closer to the exit hatch, so there's no guarantee it's the same Baby A as before, but I suspect it is for the following reason -- was the trouble-maker a month ago, kicking on Baby B; this time, A actually reached out and started poking B in the middle of the ultrasound. And then A held its hands over its face, as if it realized we were watching and didn't want to be recognized as the perpetrator of such treachery.

I don't think I see them again for a month to six weeks -- I have another checkup scheduled but not an ultrasound, and they don't do them at the same time. Fortunately, I don't have to wait any longer to find out the gender. The technician was able to spot the telltale signs of our wee twin boys. Our identical boys. Boys!

At first, I will confess, it sounded so strange to me to have it confirmed that they're boys. It hadn't really occurred to many people that we'd have some: I'm one of three daughters. I have three nieces. I have a tight group of girlfriends who I know wanted to fuss over little girly dresses and girly hair and girly cuteness. I love my sisters to death, and therefore loved the idea of creating that sisterly bond between babies of my own. Even though apparently it comes through Kevin's line, we still just sort of assumed we'd be in for more girls. We don't know what to do with boys!

I've talked to a lot of other mothers (mostly women who are likewise close to their sisters) who had or are having boys, and most of them reacted the same way at first. I imagine Jo March, despite being fictional, felt similarly when she came from that family of five girls and ended up with boys of her own. It's just a matter of putting aside what you think you know, or thought you knew, and embracing a new reality. Although it was weird to process the idea that we'd be the first in my family to raise little men, I quickly became rather thrilled by the idea of exploring what a mother-son bond means, because given my background that's even more uncharted territory than simply being a mother at all. And then, of course, I embraced that this means Kevin will have to teach them all about the facts of life, and Those Strange Feelings. Score!

Want to meet them? I'm putting the ultrasound pics after the jump, just in case there are people who wanted to know but don't want to know. You know? Anyway, allow me to introduce their fetal selves to you (note: no NSFW baby bits are exposed in these photographs):

All Is Well

Oops -- I forgot to drop by Friday and note that the beans are fine, and the sonogram was great. After my post about how nervous I was, I had intended to come here and let you all know that my mental drama was indeed all for naught, and that life is good. But then I frankly just forgot because Jessica and I got swamped by winnowing down the list of eligible Fug Madness celebs.

I'll post details later!

Checking In On The Oranges

History proves that I am not the LEAST absent-minded person in the world, so the fact that I put away the ice cream in my refrigerator last night (and didn't notice until lunchtime today) can't be blamed on pregnancy entirely. But I do think the fact that I've twice left the house with an unlocked door can be written off to the mind-scrambling hormones. The second time, as I went out on some errands and took with me some garbage, I actually recited to myself, "Go back and lock the door, go back and lock the door," but by the time the bag made it into the container, the mantra was gone and I wheeled around, merrily got in my car, and drove away. Whoops. Both times I came home and, realizing with a thud what I'd done, I checked that our TV was still here. This says a lot -- disturbingly -- about my priorities. Like, screw it if they've stolen the crystal! Take my goddamn laptop! What about the TV?

My next ultrasound is tomorrow morning, and as with all my others, I'm getting mildly antsy. Maybe even anxious. Nothing will be as bad as that first one, I don't think -- the one where I sat there wiggling my feet, kicking at the air absently, silently begging my womb to have an actual baby in the sac and not just air. It's that moment when you realize that, no matter how much you've told yourself not to get your hopes up until it's for SURE, you are already completely in love with the so-far-phantom child and it will hurt physically to find out it's not real.

All subsequent ones, though, I just panic that maybe something is wrong. That one of the babies disappeared (although fortunately, now we are past Vanishing Twin point, I believe), or one stopped growing, or... the list goes on, and it's not fun. It's for pessimists. The thing is, I don't actually truly think any of these things has happened, but I can't stop myself from being afraid. Because I spend the entire time between ultrasounds getting excited for the next one, and right on the verge of it, my mind comes to a screeching halt and goes, "WAIT. What if it's not as happy as you expect?" And then I start to think, well, what if I'm not as big as I'm supposed to be and it's A SIGN? What if I should have felt a flutter by now? What if not having food cravings MEANS SOMETHING? What if the fucking toxic-smelling fumes emanating from our new dishwasher have WARPED THE BABIES? (Seriously, I think they are warping ME.) What if I didn't take proper care of them while traveling? What if, what if, what if? I love them too much already, am too attached to the idea of my twins, for it to be anything but two beating hearts and two growing beans. Hence the nerves. Any other wrinkles, we'll take as they come, as long as they've got pulses and brains and they're getting bigger.

I think it's too soon to find out the sex, which stinks, because it means more waiting. I am getting nice and round, though; I'm up about ten pounds, my stomach sticks out, and my butt is getting unmanageable. The next step for me is finding a prenatal yoga class -- I'm on the trail of a few near my house -- so I can keep my muscles from atrophying, and possibly forestall further proliferation of the cellulite that's spreading like a virus down my thighs, although I think that's a futile fight for now. And of course, I need to make sure the beans (or the navel oranges, as that's apparently how big they are supposed to be by now) are thriving in there. That's step one. Everything else can wait. Fortunately, I only have to tap my toes and twiddle my thumbs for 20 more hours.

Sorry, Steven Carrington, But I'm Out And I'm Staying Out

Y'all know by now that it takes a LOT to make me quit a TV show. My curiosity always gets the better of me, whether it's that I'm dying to see just how far off the rails thing will go, or because things get better. But Heroes was too much.

It's been ages since I've seen an episode; a few hours into the season, Kevin and I just threw up our hands and admitted we couldn't be bothered any more. None of it made sense. All of it felt desperate. And it came down to realizing that we just didn't care any more. They saved the cheerleader. It didn't help. The end. Before I deleted the season pass, I hung onto the saved episodes, figuring maybe I'd watch them on a bored, slow day, while I pecked away on my keyboard and only paid it half an ear's worth of attention. But even that was too much. It got to the point that when I mercy-DVR'd a recent episode that purported to be all about Jack Coleman's character -- I love him, he's the show's best actor, and Company Man in season one was a great hour of TV -- I could only get ten minutes in before I said out loud, to the empty room, "Oh, forget it, I can't be bothered."

That is saying a lot. Grey's Anatomy has butchered McDreamy into kind of a pompous, bitchy ass and made us sit through George and Izzie AND Izzie having fantasy dead-man sex with Denny, but I'm still with it. There's something comfortable about it to me, as if the sound of Ellen Pompeo's opening narration is akin to putting on an old pair of slippers and settling in for the night. I know what I'm going to get, I know I'll still probably get sucked into the Patients Of The Week, and there's still enough decent acting to go around that I can handle the stupid parts. I dug Bones even when they randomly made lovable lab tech Zach a cannibal's apprentice, because the cast chemistry and the Boreanaz factor were potent draws. I stuck with freaking Private Practice because I couldn't believe how bad it was, and then it got better, and suddenly, I accidentally like it. Ghost Whisperer holds sway over me for reasons I can't even articulate, because it's not that reliably well-acted or written, her dead husband spirit-jumped into some other dude's body, and Jennifer Love Hewitt gave up the crazy eyelashes and nightgowns and seasonally inappropriate dresses. Seriously, I have no idea why I'm still in, but I'm there, probably because it's relaxing and unchallenging and, again, soothingly reliable. And Brothers and Sisters boasts such an exemplary cast and a still-relatable and strong premise that I really enjoy every episode even when the stories are all over the place and some characters appear to be scrambling for definition (something Sarah Bunting discussed in eloquent detail on Tomato Nation recently, although I am not tempted to quit the show yet, whereas she is -- understandably -- ready to smack them for the uneven dialogue).

All of which is to illlustrate just how crappy Heroes became. Seriously, if I am out -- me, of all people -- then it must be a complete f'ing disaster. I think its defining moment of crapitude this season was putting its worst actor, Milo Ventimiglia, in scenes with only himself. That was unwatchable. It was like seeing a brick wall try to out-emote a berber carpet. In fact, I'm sort of amazed I made it through Time-Traveling Hiro Lands In Feudal Japan, Changes Lives, and Falls In Love. This show is the perfect example of one that, like Lost, desperately needs an end date in sight so that the producers and writers can stop treading water and take it to their end game. Lost was floudering until ABC negotiated a finite series finale and turned everyone loose to mete out all the show's enduring secrets. Even if it gets weird, and it has a bit, I will ride it out because I know it's going SOMEWHERE, and I'm deeply curious as to where, and that curiosity will be sated one way or the other. Alias would've benefited from a similar limited-season treatment.

So although for the sake of the people who work on the show, I wish it could go on forever, I think someone needs to pull the trigger on Heroes -- but slowly. That might be the only way to get viewers like me back in: promise an ending, suck in the folks who found it to be a rudderless ship, and prove that you knew where it was going all along. Give it an ending that makes the journey something other than a waste of energy.

Week 15 Commences

So naturally, after barreling out of my first trimester with big announcements and equally sizable glee at how well I was feeling, things have taken a tiny turn for the queasy.

It's not too bad, actually. When we were in New York, I'd be a little unsettled-verging-on-seasick in the mornings, because unlike at home, I wasn't rolling out of bed and straight into the refrigerator. Sneaking a Ginger Snap before my shower was about the extent of it until my hair was dry, and I was dressed and bundled up and ready for my free pastry at the (very nice) breakfast buffet in the lobby. Then I slipped back into the routine of never feeling completely normal until I'd eaten a nice sizable lunch -- but I armed myself with some ginger chews in case of emergency, and a scrunched-up plastic bag in my purse on the offchance that something ugly threatened to happen. (It did not. Well, not at the hands of my stomach, anyway. I can't vouch for what my face or my prematurely deployed -- but ridiculously comfortable -- $12 Gap Maternity jeans may have done to other people's stomachs.)

Upon coming home, though, I started getting headaches. Nothing crippling, just ever-present dull aches for which I am only allowed to take Tylenol. Which is as helpful as taking an ice cube. Given that I would rather not take anything unless I'm desperate, I held off on using the pills except in instances where I absolutely had to take the edge off in order to, say, leave the house and acquire sustenance. Nausea also came back, lightly, but almost on cue half an hour to an hour after I'd eaten. Luckily, I have no food aversions, so simply eating ANYTHING tended to settle things. But it made for a rough start to Oscar week.

By Thursday, things had normalized, and by Friday I felt great -- perfect timing for Carrie's birthday cocktail gathering on Saturday night. It's the first time I've seen anyone but Jessica while sporting any semblance of a bump or bump-like configuration, so that was really fun. I'm addicted to rubbing my stomach. And I figure, I might as well do it while I think it's enjoyable, before it gets so huge that I'm wailing about how I just want to see my FEET again, already, please.

And of course, then I woke up this morning way too early and never felt right thereafter -- nausea snuck back into my life, I woke up from a nap with a wicked headache, and it's still gently throbbing away, reminding me that I should not get too comfortable with feeling relatively normal.

If this is the worst of it, though, then I still got off easy.

And I would like to sing the praises of my "spring '08" -- hence the deep discount -- jeans. I love that I got them on such sale because they are considered out of season, as the style is Long & Lean, which Gap itself considers one of its evergreen cuts. They look exactly like dark-washed regular Gap jeans, except that there is no zipper, and the waistband is about four inches of soft navy-blue cotton that covers up some elastic. They are comfortable for days when I'm sick of fastening my tightening regular pants with a hair elastic and eventually be all that fit. I can't wait until I'm so addicted to them that I stop wearing non-maternity pants altogether, ever, for the rest of my life.