Sorry, I suck. Please stand by. Daily photos will resume any second I swear, barring any further sickness/lameness/technical difficulties. To quote the literary classic, “Bugs Bunny and the Space Carrot”: Grumble, grumble, growl, CLANK.
-Tiffany

He recently took a big step backwards on the whole potty training deal. He started having daily poop accidents, which I know are all part of the wonderful, magical process of potty training but still. It was getting really gross and frustrating and laundry-intensive, so finally we switched him back to pullups.

The other day he finally told us why he won’t poop in the potty any more.

“I just don’t won’t to.”

“Oh. Well, why don’t you want to?”

“Bucus!” He shakes his head and his eyes get really big and dramatic, “It’s too terrible.”

He has had this conversation with several different people now, and the answer is always the same: It’s too terrible. Well no wonder sticker rewards weren’t working. You couldn’t give ME a little puppy sticker to do something that was TERRIBLE. He won’t offer any details about the source of the terribleness, so for now it looks like we’re stuck with changing dirty pullups until whatever is too terrible isn’t terrible anymore.

Congratulations! You’ve hit the halfway mark in your pregnancy. By now your baby is about the size of a large sweet potato, and a greasy, whitish substance called vernix caseosa is starting to cover his skin. This coating will protect his skin from weeks of bathing in amniotic fluid, and will eventually ease his way down the birth canal. Your baby is swallowing more these days, which is good practice for his digestive system.

Okay, I’m really glad that the food analogies are back and everything, but was all that greasy slime talk really necessary?

“Waiter, what is this greasy, white substance all over my sweet potato?”

“Oui, oui! Zat ees ze vernix caseosa. Try eet – eet ees very goot.”

“Oh, HELL no.”

Nicolaus noticed it first.

“Oh Mama! You have a wery cool PIMPLE.” He pointed to the odd little red lump on my stomach.

“Oh. I don’t think that’s a pimple sweetie.”

“What IS it?”

“I don’t know. Just a bump.”

Over the next few days the bump grew rapidly. It was about two inches to the right of my belly button, this strange, hard little… what the heck was it? A wart, maybe? Was I seriously going to have to write in my journal that my baby gave me warts? Nice. Next I started worrying that something had bitten me somehow. A spider. A poisonous spider that takes several days to kill you.

My next thought was cancer. A guy I met in London used to make fun of Americans and say that for some reason, Americans always think they have cancer. Well, why not? Lots of people DO get cancer you know. It’s not like people are over here taking radiation therapy for the fun of it. So being a true American, my mind immediately went to work on all of the tragic scenarios of having to decide whether to risk treatment now verses waiting until after the baby was born on some rare, aggressive form of tummy skin cancer. Or something.

This went on for nearly two weeks. The lump grew hard and more swollen and angry looking. If anything pressed or brushed against my skin, it hurt. I looked down one night while changing into my pajamas and realized – half amused – that my pregnant belly now had its own little pregnant belly, both of which were well into their second trimester.

Whenever I really started to worry about it, I reassured myself that I had a doctor appointment coming up soon and that he would almost definitely say, “Oh yes, painful red hard-as-a-rock mystery bumps are a common side effect of pregnancy”

Because – no kidding – everything unpleasant you can think of is a common occurance during pregnancy. EVERYTHING. Nosebleeds? Yep. Sore throat? Oh yes. Gum disease, dry eyes, strange hair growth, horrible pains in your stomach, and a whole myriad of other things that I promise you totally do not ever want to know about? Yep. I keep expecting to hear about pregnancy-induced spontaneous broken bones or lacerations. So I was holding off any serious concerns over this painful skin abnormality until my next OB appointment, when a health professional would be able to tell me whether this scary, wart/bite/obviously cancerous thing on my stomach was anything to freak out about. Other than a few tiny, tiny little freak outs which don’t count because A) they were fleeting and B) wouldn’t YOU start to freak out, just a little?

Then it erupted. I’ll spare you the horrifying details because um, no – oh my GOD ew!- but the bottom line is that Nicolaus was right. Except instead of “Oh Mama! You have a wery cool pimple.” he should have said, “Holy crap Mama. That’s the hugest, most terrifying and disturbing pimple ever in the history of mankind. It is wery disgusting.”

Words from this post that could possibly work as boy baby names: Spider, London, Spontaneous, Tiny.

How do you explain to a two year old why it is totally not cool to sing “Oh Lordy! Pick a bail of cotton…” while you work?

Kevin is in so much trouble when he wakes up.