The Pufferfish Email Address

I had a request for my email address. It can be found by clicking on my profile and then 'email'.

Hope this helps!

Go Away Piggy, Don't Come Around Here No More

The same cousin who called me a goddess? Her husband has the swine flu. And she knew it, but she wasn't sick so she came to the shower and stayed the night anyway.

God help me if I get the rabid case of the rancid pig because of course I haven't been vaccinated. Not for lack of trying, just that my OB practice has still not received their shipment.

I have an rx for Tami.flu in my little hands should it come to that, but I hope to hell it doesn't.

Oh and my mom is starting to wear on me. Is it Wednesday yet? I need Puffer alone time now, please. I just want to sleep and recoup from the weekend. I am SO not in the mood to get things done because I have NO energy today.

PS--But she DID go to the grocery store by herself!! Woot Woot!

Goddess Exhaustion

My mom survived the hippies and I survived almost 8 hours (combined) in a car, one overnight trip to the in-laws, one car trip further north to see the gay dads for dinner, one baby shower for us on Saturday (which was great) and one baby shower on Sunday for my sister-in-law (which we all agreed was the most boring event we'd ever been to). The Sunday shower absolutely killed me as it was in a big anonymous catering hall, with mediocre food and uncomfortable chairs. It lasted waaaaay too long and by the time we left I wanted to cry.

I haven't felt that exhausted the entire pregnancy. It was just too much and made me not want to travel for the rest of the pregnancy.

My feet and legs were swollen for only the 2nd time this pregnancy and I truly felt miserable.

BUT-we all survived and it's so humbling to be 'showered' with so many amazing gifts and told how great you look all weekend.

Best moment of the entire weekend was Sunday morning when Chicken's cousin requested to see me naked and then declared, "wow, you look like a goddess".

I'll take it.

Are They Hippie-Like Types?

I was explaining to my mom how Chicken's parents came to live in the most drive-through, blink you'll miss it, upstate village (you could be excluded from the Vietnam draft if you got married and agreed to be a teacher upstate) and that's how a lot of these 'cool' upstate towns got populated.

She looked at me, narrowed her eyes and said, "So....are they...hippie-like types?"

I burst out laughing because really, in 2009 what do you say about this type of question?

"Mom, I don't even know what you mean by that. Can you define what that means to you?"

"Well, you know....did they practice free love?" (So, that's what I am, I'm a hippie-like type!)

"Mom, I've never asked Chicken's parents if they practiced free love, if you'd like to ask them go ahead. I know everyone smoked a lot of pot, but people are still smoking a lot of pot."

"Oh."

So, we're off to see the hippies!!

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

As some readers may remember, we have been planning a move over here in Pufferland.

We knew when we were doing the donor egg cycle that our lease would expire on Dec. 31, 2009 and that we would have to find new housing.

Although we tried mightily, we could not get out of our lease early and while it certainly wasn't our preference to be moving while I was 8-9 months pregnant, we really didn't have any other choice.

From the beginning, we've had our eye on Brooklyn and so for the past couple of weeks, we've been spending a lot of time looking at properties and neighborhoods. But with the twins, we have to be picky. We can't do any kind of a walkup when the double stroller alone weighs 30 lbs. No dishwasher? Not an option. No W/D in the building? Sorry, we can't live there. Apartment facing a really busy, loud street? Not the apartment for us.

Basically we were stuck looking at all new construction buildings with elevators. Which is fine...but it seems the majority of these were built in haste at the height of the real estate market and the construction is complete shit (from what we saw).

So....

We expanded our search and became quite overwhelmed and stressed about the whole thing.

Last winter we had thought about buying in a certain Brooklyn neighborhood and finding the prices had dropped dramatically, we suddenly realized we don't have to rent. We can BUY a place! Didn't see that coming!

So, we spent this past weekend in this neighborhood looking at places and reacquainting ourselves with the area. On the subway back to Manhattan we were both pretty quiet. It was late afternoon of a gorgeous fall weekend when we came above ground at Union Square. The farmer's market was going on and the scaffolding had been taken off the amazing new playground being built in Union Square.

I stood there staring at that playground and taking in everything around me.

"Chicken, I'm not feeling it."

"Not feeling what?"

"X neighborhood. I think I'm trying to make myself love it because we can afford it, but I don't love it. I don't want to move there."

"You don't? I don't either!"

"I have a crazy thought in my head, do you want to hear it?"

"Go"

"I think we try to renegotiate our lease and stay right where we are. I would rather be in a large one-bedroom raising twins than to move to a place we really don't like. We love where we live, we have everything right here. Our friends are right here. And the stress of finding a place and moving....it's too much."

"OMG, I was thinking the SAME thing, but I thought you would think I was crazy."

Now the thing about our apartment.....is that we are in the middle of one of the biggest tenant/landlord lawsuits in history. It's in all the real estate news as a few years ago our property was the largest residential real estate sale in history. That made news worldwide.

Why am I brining this up? Well, because while we knew the tenants had won the lawsuit only a week and a half before--we hadn't really thought about how this impacted us because we were moving.

Imagine our shock when we walked into the leasing office the next day and were told they couldn't renew our lease because no one really knows what the hell is going on. In a nutshell, overnight, without our realization, our apartment became rent stabilized. Now, this may not mean much to most of you, but for anyone who knows the NY real estate market, you will understand that we have struck gold.

It has been a whirl wind of a week as we have gone from renting a place in Brooklyn, to buying a place in Brooklyn, to staying right where we are, to finding out we have a rent stabilized apartment.

The courts have not determined what the formula for new rents will be, so for now, we are in lease limbo and hope like hell they will have made a decision by Dec. 31st, when our expires. But regardless, as of yesterday, our attorney has assured us we can stay.

So while I have been busy packing up the apartment (while I still can) in anticipation of moving...and my mom was also sticking around to help me pack....we have found ourselves running around with the measuring tape determining how to make this all this baby stuff fit.

And now...we UNPACK.

All those worries I had about my mom being here? All for nothing. She is a trooper. She is moving furniture and getting things done. I didn't know what we'd be able to do because I can't really move furniture, but I underestimated the strength of my 70-year-old mom. She is going to make it happen.

I now leave you with a photo of the mountain of crap we have to tackle. Hopefully by the time my mom leaves on Wednesday, I can show you photos of a twin-ready one bedroom apartment!

(for those of you who were here for our shower, THIS is what we had moved into our bedroom and why we wouldn't let you enter!) A corner of our living room taken over by baby crap!

24 Week Ultrasound and Perinatologist

Wow. I can't believe I'm at 24 weeks. That's a big one in baby land as it's "viability week" meaning that IF the babies had to be delivered today they would have a 50% chance of survival. I am so thankful that I have no worries these babies are coming out this week, but I do feel like I've cleared a major hurdle.

What's even crazier is knowing that since twin pregnancies come early, and the average is 34-36 weeks, that we could have babies in our house in (GULP) 10 weeks!! That is some crazy shit to think about.

Every morning I talk to them and tell them they are just fine in my tummy and to hold tight, we still have a long time to bake. Don't come early babies! We want you as full term as possible even if I'm moaning at the end "get them out of me"!

Some of you may remember that I had a bad experience with my OB concerning my weight gain and the fact they weren't really treating my pregnancy any different than a singleton. I did find a perinatologist soon afterwards and I have been twice now. This practice takes a much more active approach to the twin pregnancy concerns and I've been very happy. The ultrasounds and doctor's offices are in the same building, so I only have to go to one place to get everything done which is great even if it does mean for a long stretch of time. There is more 'waiting' time here, but everyone is super nice and really knowledgeable. I go every two weeks, because they really want to keep a close eye on me. Oh, and they thought my weight gain was right on track.

Here are some stats:

20 weeks, 4 days

cervix 3.9

placenta is still very marginal

Baby A= 153 HB, 14 oz

Baby B= 157 HB, 14 oz

22 weeks, 4 days

cervix 3.9

placenta is low, but not marginal anymore!

Baby A= 140 HB, 1 lb, 2 oz

Baby B=152 HB, 1 lb, 2 oz

both are measuring 2 days ahead

22 weeks, 4 days

cervix 3.8

placenta is low, but OK

Baby A=151 HB

Baby B=144 HB

Both are measuring right on target

This last u/s they could not get good measurements (or photos) because both Chicklet and Shadow Boxer were facing toward my spine, but since they had done a major scan 2 weeks before, they were not concerned and both babies seemed to be doing great.

My blood pressure has been great and no protein in the urine, so I've been given gold stars as well.

Next up in two weeks: Gestational diabetes test and checking of the iron levels.

Here are some new photos in 3D! I must admit we almost didn't post these because it looked like our children had enormous noses. Then we looked at some other 3D photos and realized all of the babies noses look huge and squished, so we stopped being stupid and vain. And anyway, when Chicken was concerned about the nose size, I just said "hey don't look at me, I'm just the surrogate!"

Here is Shadow Boxer being swished by Chicklet. I think that's Chicklet's butt in SB's face.

20 weeks, 4 days

Chicklet with arm up by face; 20 weeks, 4 days

Chicklet with both arms up; 22 weeks, 4 days.

Shadow Boxer curled up with an arm; 22 weeks, 4 days.

This Could Be A Long Week

My mom is flying in tomorrow and I'm a little nervous. My mom doesn't make me nervous, she's a calm person and is pretty easy to get along with. She loves Chicken and is very excited that I'm pregnant which was huge as it shows how far she's come. It wasn't always this way, but she's had 20 years to come to terms with her daughter's 'lifestyle' and I started prepping her on the idea that we wanted to make a baby years ago--maybe 3 or 4 years ago--because I knew she needed time to come around.

The nervous part is that she's a right-wing, Christian conservative, born-again Southern Baptist and we have very little in common. I mean....so little.

We can't talk about politics or religion, obviously. We can't talk about current/world events because my mom doesn't follow anything larger than her local newspaper (and that is a very small town newspaper). We don't like the same movies. She loves to shop and I can't stand to shop so that's out. I don't like her cooking, so I would prefer she not make dinner. And the list goes on.

But her trips to NYC have always been quite successful (versus my trips to her house which have been so spectacularly unsuccessful that I once left the house on Christmas Eve with every intention of hitch hiking back home--2,000 miles away. I no longer will visit on any major holiday--religious or not).

In NYC we can always stay BUSY. We both love walking about this city and just seeing new things--so we DO have that in common. There is always something to do, somewhere to go. You can go, go, go and....never really have to spend that much "time" with each other where something else isn't the focus. This has worked really well. And in the times we aren't 'going' I have found myself in that uncomfortable silence. You know the kind.

I've never had my mom come visit where we didn't have a gazillion 'things' planned to do. But I'm not doing much these days! I need more sleep and I can't ever be far from a toilet (because if you try to drink a gallon of water a day, you'll find out a nearby toilet is a very necessary thing). I can't walk all over the city nor do I have any desire to go to a museum and stand for hours. I don't even want to cram myself in one of those little seats for a Broadway show. I *might* want to go to a movie, but it probably won't be one she wants to see. I do a lot of sitting around with my feet up, reading books and drinking water.

What the hell do I do with my mother??

She won't go out alone, even to the grocery store around the corner and I honestly can't entertain her like I normally do. I would really love it if she said "you know I'd like to spend the afternoon at the (fill in the blank) museum" and I could give her the directions to get there and everyone would be happy. But that's not going to happen.

She does love our cats and is perfectly content chilling with the cats, so at least that's a huge bonus.

Most of the time when she visits, I try hard to accommodate her idea of acceptable menu items. This means no Asian or Indian. Did I mention those are the two major food groups we live on in this house? But this time, I'm sorry, I'm pregnant and I need to eat what I'm hungry for.

She's either going to have to deal with "Asian" the same way I deal with her cooking when I go to her house, or order her own dinner! This is the one thing I'm holding firm on.

She was telling me about the size of her suitcase and it occurred to me that I knew when she was arriving, but I didn't know when she was leaving. "Wednesday. Unless you want me to leave sooner."

"Let's talk about that on Monday, shall we?"

I love her. I really do. But this could be a very long week. Wish me luck.

At least we have baby stuff to talk about. Let's hope I'm worried for nothing.