Sorry, I wrote a book... long

I spent the evening cleaning my kitchen counters.  I really have to start doing this stuff earlier in the day as I haven't been getting myself or Jasmine to bed till after 1am.  I was planning on laying around and doing nothing today but those counters were driving me nuts.  There's almost nothing on them that isn't completely necessary at the moment.  Next I have to get the floor clean.  The dogs have been bringing in a great deal of dirt the last few days so the floor is grimy.  I'd also like to get started on emptying the guest bedroom to make it a play room for Jasmine.  I want her to have some where to go after this baby is born where she can get away from it once it starts crawling around.  Her toys will also be safe from it that way.  I'm going to have the old tv set up and buy a dvd player so she can watch movies in there if she wants.  I've got to put a few things on freecycle before I can really get it clean.  (a treadmill for starters)  I'll mostly be happy to have all her toys out of my living room.  One entire corner is devoted to her toys and I'm frequently tripping over them.  The final thing I would absolutely like to have done before baby is born, is to pull up the carpet in the master bedroom.  My vacuum sucks... or doesn't.  The main part of the sweeper, just moves dirt and hair around.  It doesn't pull anything up into the chamber.  We have to long haired dogs that sleep in our bedroom every night and the hair is everywhere.  I just don't want it to be that way when it's born.  The extension on the vacuum, the part that you normally use in corners, works fine and it's what I use to pick up what a broom cannot.  I've had the ability to buy a new vacuum several times since we've lived here but it seems like such a waste considering that most of our house is either wood floors or linoleum.  I know eventually I'm going to have to just buy a new damn sweeper but for now, I'm sticking with being stubborn.  The broom makes less noise any ways.  And most vacuums seem to like to shoot shrapnel at my ankles.  (bird seeds, stray pieces of kitty litter, dirt)  Yes, I'm splitting hairs at this point and time as to why I don't want to spend the money.  There's more fun things to spend money on that vacuums, how's that for my official answer?  We had plans to pull up this floor and replace it before putting it on the market any ways, we just getting an early start.  (and we don't have the money for new flooring but there is old tile under the carpet so we won't be walking around on the floor board itself)  The current carpet has been in this house since it was built or soon there after.  I'd have to ask my grandma to be completely sure.  It's been here for a long, long time.  It looks similar to baby food, the pea kind.  My doberman put the final nail in it's coffin by eating a portion of the middle of the floor one day.  It was one of the few days that I really wanted to hug that bad dog.  In front of my husband I was very that dumb dog ate the carpet.  When no one was looking I was jumping up and down at the thought of the green monster carpet would be gone.  I would just like the major stuff to be taken care of before it gets here so that we don't have to try to find a way to do afterwards.  And please, please, please be a baby that sleeps good... and a lot.  Jasmine did not sleep well.  I would be up till all hours of the night and I finally got to the point that I was just turn the tv on and sit with her.  She was fascinated by the discovery channel, particularly when it was a surgery show.  I think it was the bright colors all mixed together on the screen.  Blood, blue scrubs, white masks, bright lights, it all kept her attention.  Then there were nights when that wouldn't work.  Those were very sore nights for me.  I believe she had some gas issues for a while there (not to the point of being colic) and I would have to do squats while holding her... sometimes for an hour.  And people wonder how I lost all my baby weight within three months, without dieting or working out.  It worked best if I was standing on the bed doing squats, making it even harder on my legs.  Go try it, I'll still be here when you get back.  Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about that whole off balance thing before you left.  Sorry about that.  ;)  Be a mellow kid, be a mellow kid.  My best friend had a baby about seven months ago and this little girl is the most laid back child I've ever seen.  She's only cried a handful of times and it's never that full out I'm dying cry.  If she needed something, she'd just do a few little whimper/grunt noises and that was that.  She goes to sleep the same time every night.  My friend had kids before like mine that never slept and they slept with mom and dad just so they could sleep.  Not Maya, she's always slept in her crib and never fusses.  I want THAT baby.  ;)  It'll be interesting to see what personality this kid has.  I just started thinking about that tonight.  I had been so consumed with the omigod I can't do this with two of them syndrome that I hadn't thought of the good things.  I did this with Jasmine too while I was pregnant.  I would have nightmares that I'd leave her in the car seat, on top of the car and drive off.  In the nightmares, I usually wouldn't realize I was without a baby till the next day.  And then we wouldn't be able to find the baby anywhere.  I would always wake up panicked and my feeling of there's no way I can be a mom, reinforced.  The one thing I stuck to during that entire pregnancy and afterwards was that my lifestyle wouldn't change just because I had a baby.  And it didn't.  I just had an extra person with me where ever I went.  A lot of new moms stay at home and never go anywhere for fear that the baby will need something or will have a massive breakdown in the middle of a store.  I didn't worry about that.  If she needed food, I had food, needed a diaper, I had a diaper.  I just kept the things she might need on me and we would go out when the mood hit us.  For about the first year, we took her to some friends houses and she would sleep while we would play cards.  (that ended when that friendship ended)  I still feel the same way with this pregnancy but we'll have to be a little more flexible now than we were then.  We'll have two kids, not just one to contend with.  I'm looking forward to some things and dreading others.  The main dread is sleeping.  Getting them to sleep at the same time, for the same amount of time so that mommy can sleep.  And keeping the crying to a low howl so as not to wake up Jasmine.  Just little things here and there.  I can't wait to see the baby, and know that everything is ok.  The first smiles.  The smiles are worth gold, particularly early on.  When they're that small, you can't stop staring at them.  They're always doing something that melts your heart.  Jasmine still does that but you never know when her devil horns are going to come out.  ;)  I had a dream last night that I was a week from my due date and we still didn't have a name picked out.  Neither one of us had looked at the book at all except for once in the beginning.  I was freaking out, yelling at him to read the book, as he's trying to read the book.  ;)  I'm sure that comes from how Jasmine was named.  When I went into labor, I had a name picked out, Jayden Keith.  After labor was over and delivery complete, I realized I needed a GIRL'S name.  I was awoken a few hours later (they gave me large amounts of drugs to save my life and they knocked me out) and not long after there was a woman from social security telling me I had five hours to choose a name.  FIVE hours to look through thousands of names and pick the right one.  I looked quickly through the book and picked out anything I thought fit her, Shawn did the same and we compared notes.  Jasmine was on both lists and was the only name that really seemed right, even though I had been leaning towards Kayla for a girl during my pregnancy, Jasmine just fit her better.  So she became Jasmine Kayla.  This one's middle name is already decided as well, it will either be Betty or Keith after my grandparents.  As for the name book... I'm the only one that's looked at it and that was in month three, briefly.  I keep telling myself that's what I'm going to do one of these nights instead of causing myself back pain from cleaning and cooking.  You'd think I would want to since all I have to do is sit and read but it's a massive pain in the rear end.  After a hundred names, your eyes just start to glaze over and they all look the same.  I hate looking for names.  (in case you haven't noticed since I've taken names from you all to name fosters)  Ok, enough baby crap.

Tomorrow I'm taking Mama Spice to the other fosters house.  She will be spayed and then put up for adoption.  It will probably be the last time I see her.  She'll get a good home, I'm sure.  She's very low maintenance.  Only issues I've noticed with her is that she likes to scratch things (doors, trim, anything) and that she doesn't appear to used to household appliances.  They totally freak her out.  I don't know that she'd ever been in a house before.  In exchange, I'll be getting my shots for these kittens and wait for it,         another kitten.  ;)  The other foster pulled him from the shelter and feels badly that he's all alone so he's going to be thrown in with my brood of hellions.  He has plenty of kitties to play with that's for sure.  I don't mind more kittens.  They poop smaller and are easier to clean up after.  ;)