Future Self,

Hi, self. I hope you are enjoying life with two children. I’m guessing you are feeling slightly overwhelmed, but totally in love with Cordy and the new baby.

At this point, you may be looking at the new baby, possibly now turning into a toddler and leaving his/her babyness behind. You may miss that sweet new baby scent, melt at seeing the two children play together, and slowly begin the process of getting rid of that baby stuff. Your mind may be drifting to the thought of baby #3.

And if you do think of having a third child, I hope you will read this and put that thought right out of your delusional head.

Oh sure, you may think, pregnancy wasn’t really that bad. Newborns really aren’t that difficult to deal with. That’s nature playing her trick on you. You’re suffering from the amnesia that comes from giving birth to a child and surviving those first hard months.

So should you have forgotten what pregnancy is like, I’d like to refresh your memory of what it is like for you.

24/7 nausea – Your first trimester is not kind to you. The label “morning sickness” is probably the most misleading name for a symptom ever. For 6-10 weeks, you are in a constant state of being just sick enough that any food looks and smells like toxic waste, yet not sick enough to vomit, even though you wish you could. However, you must eat to feel even slightly better, even though the process of eating is so hard. It’s like a 6 week long flu.

Fatigue – You may not have been this tired when pregnant for the first time, but with a toddler who constantly seeks out doom, you barely have enough energy to do the necessary tasks this time around. Think about what a third pregnancy would be like with two children to chase after. The kids would win the battle, with you asleep on the floor while they dance around you, decorate you with markers, and give you a beauty shop hair-cut that only a child could achieve.

The belly – Again, the second pregnancy is so much different from the first. While you had no noticeable belly with your first pregnancy until the fourth month, your belly popped right around 7 weeks this time. Seven friggin’ weeks. That fetus is the size of a kidney bean, yet is already making room. If you try for a third child, will it pop a full month before you’re actually pregnant?

Lack of sympathy – Ah, your first time is always the special time. When you were pregnant the first time, everyone cared about how you felt? First time mom feeling some nausea? Here, have some ginger ale and crackers. It’s like a first time mom has a crown of roses on her head, and everyone falls over themselves to be extra nice to the new first-time mom. Pregnant with a toddler? Heh, reality sets in. Feeling sick? Get over it and change your kid’s diaper. Looking for some sympathy? You’re not going to get it. You’ve been through it before, and you should know what you’re getting yourself into.

Sex – Remember when you actually wanted to have sex? When you looked forward to advances from your husband? When a good night together ended in cuddles in bed and satisfied sighs? The ravages of the first trimester strip all that away. At this point in pregnancy, even though I love my husband dearly, I carefully monitor every action and word so that he doesn’t think I’m even remotely suggesting I want sex. Because with the pain in my boobs and the constant nausea, sex is the last thing on my mind. So, uh, future Aaron, you might want to read this too if we ever consider a third child. That might change your mind and solidify the decision for the big snip.

Spreading – This is something that will be even more important as this pregnancy progresses, but sadly the spread is beginning early this time. And while I can live with the appearance issues, the pain is starting to bother me. My lower back, right where the pelvis joins the tailbone, feels as if my pelvis is being pulled apart, with shooting pains down my legs. It is probably sciatic nerve pain, but whatever it is, it hurts and sometimes makes walking difficult.

And this is just the first trimester. Sure, it’ll get better in a few weeks, when I enter the “golden trimester” of pregnancy, but for now, it’s difficult and I’m really tired of staring at the inside of my toilet.

For other readers, this post may come off as whiny and dull. But it is important that I remind myself of why I don’t want to go through this again. Yes, I chose to do this again, and I am glad that I’m having another child, but I know I forgot a lot of this the first time. And we are both pretty sure we only want two children. But after you get past the most labor intensive part of babyhood, it seems way too easy to fall back into thinking, “what if we had just one more…”

So, future self, if your second child has been a dream child (oh, how I hope this turns out to be true) and you think a third might not be a big deal, please read this and reconsider. Resist the baby siren’s call. Spend time with other people’s babies to get your fix, and leave it at that. Leave yourself some sanity and free time, and remember, the more kids you have, the harder it will be getting relatives to babysit.

I normally like the clothing at Children’s Place. Cute clothes, without being too revealing, and usually no sayings like “Super Flirt” on their tees. Occasionally some of their items make me wonder what they were thinking, but overall, they have decent clothing for a decent price.

Their advertising has always been interesting, too. I’m used to seeing their holiday advertising pictures, usually with a little makeup on the older kids and some glitz to the whole ad campaign. Usually a little over the top, but not too bad.

Then I get their latest e-mail ad. Uh, Children’s Place, WTF?

With hair like that, this little girl looks like she belongs in an old Warrant or Whitesnake video.

Please excuse the interruption in our normal schedule of cute Cordy pics and whining about morning sickness for this public service announcement.

We’re less than a month from Election Day here in the US, and I hope everyone is thinking about voting this year. Lots of important local and national issues and government seats are up for consideration, and your vote could change the entire direction of the country.

When I was younger I was a much less regular voter. Who cares about the local school levy and city council seats, I figured. I didn’t think they impacted me at all – after all, I was a renter, so I didn’t pay property tax, and the city council certainly never seemed to do anything that noticeably impacted me. Sure, I’d always show up to the polls on presidential election years, but otherwise it was too big of a hassle.

As a “responsible adult” now (wow, that was hard to even write), I am more concerned with voting. I have a child, I own a house, and I care about the direction my neighborhood and my city is heading. A school levy is now almost as important as making the choice for president.

If you are not a registered voter, make sure you get registered soon. If you are a registered voter, look up where your polling station is, and make decisions about when you plan to go vote. If you know you’ll be busy, make plans to vote absentee.

Here in Ohio, I’m actually a little nervous of voting on Election Day. You see, Ohio has these wonderful electronic machines designed to make voting so much easier for all of us who can’t operate a punch card. They’re made by Diebold (where the president of the company is a die-hard Republican who promised he’d win the election for Bush in 2004), and they are a touch screen system. Simply touch the names of your choices, hit confirm, and voila – your votes are cast into the electronic ether!

Now, anyone who has had a post eaten by Blogger can tell you that electronics can fail. Did your vote really go through? Was it really recorded? There is no paper trail for these machines, so there is no confirmation that your vote was submitted, or recorded properly.

Then there’s the small issue of hackers. Oh sure, we’d like to think that no one out there would want to do anything to forcibly change the outcome of an election, but let’s be honest: lots of people would give their left arm to force an issue their direction, even if it is not what the majority wants. That’s why after reading this report by Princeton University, I’m even more nervous about using these machines. It seems that an amateur hacker, given access to a machine for less than a minute (which is easy to do behind the little curtain), can easily insert malicious code into the system to change the logs and voting outcome. Even worse, that same hacker can nearly as easily install a virus that can silently affect all the machines at once. A simple computer virus could steal votes without detection.

So if you’re in Ohio, or any other state using these machines, I urge you to consider voting absentee. Absentee voting has a paper trail, and has to be hand counted, so you know your vote will count. We also need to tell our state governments that these machines, in their current vulnerable state, are not acceptable voting devices, and demand that they either make the needed security changes to protect the votes, or fall back on another system.

And I’m not trying to say that because the Diebold CEO is a die-hard Republican that Republicans are trying to steal votes. The truth is, anyone can hack these machines.

So get registered, get educated on the issues affecting you, and go vote, one way or another. Maybe this year we can get the national voter turnout higher than 35% to find out what people really do want for this country.

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This PSA was paid for by the “If you don’t vote, you can’t bitch about the government” committee of A Mommy Story.

When it comes to relatively inexpensive good food, Fazoli’s is a must for us. Aaron can always get one of his two staples there – lasagna or pizza – and I can experiment with the variety of pastas available with the create your own pasta bowl. Nothing like a giant plate of carbohydrates to make a person smile.

Cordy has also picked up on her mama’s love of starch, and will now beg for pasta until her next fix.

So it was no surprise that when we took her there for dinner on Sunday night, she was a happy, happy child.

Oh God, send me more pasta please!

Mommy, can we come back tomorrow? And the next day?

Sure, you can say a lot of bad things about Ohio (and who hasn’t?), but one thing I really love about being here is the weather. If you like experiencing all four seasons, Ohio is the place to be. We have all four, fully-defined seasons, although not always occurring in the correct order.

Fall has to be my favorite of the seasons: the crisp air, warm during the day and cool at night, the changing colors of the leaves, the bright blue skies, the bountiful harvest. Ripe, fresh apples, sweet corn, and of course, pumpkins.

So of course when my friend Kristi, from the blog Life with Aveline, invited us to her family’s farm for pumpkin picking, horse-drawn hay rides, corn mazes, and a petting zoo, we couldn’t resist. Today we drove the hour north to Honey Haven Farm to meet up with Kristi, Laura, Jessica and others.

It was also the big debut of Kristi’s newest baby, Scarlett. Seeing that tiny little person asleep in the sling made me remember why I wanted another baby again.

Aaron and I worried about how Cordy would act during the day, since we were arriving right before nap time. Interrupting nap time can lead to, well, a grumpy troll of a child. But the day was perfect – not too warm, a light breeze, and sunny – so it was worth the risk.

When we first arrived, we met up with Kristi, who was attending to the baby, so we wandered around on our own for a bit. Cordy immediately saw Kristi’s dog, Elvis, and ran for him, petting him gently and following him wherever he went.

After that, we found our way to the petting zoo in the barn. Cordy ran back and forth between the animals before settling on the goats, mostly because they were the only ones close enough to pet. She would reach through the fence, pet the goat, then look at me and say “Mooooo!” I tried to explain that these were goats, not cows (there was a calf in the next pen, however), and she then tried again and said, “Baaaaa!” Sigh.

We tried to get her to go see other things, but she was fixated on the goats. I walked over to look at the straw maze for the kids in the barn, hoping Cordy would follow and be interested. Looking back to find her?

Still with the goat.

Finally she did wander over to the maze.

While in the maze, she ran into Aveline, who had just woken up from her nap. The two had never met before, but were quickly plotting in the back of the maze.

Then it was time to ride the wagon out into the field to pick our own pumpkins. Cordy loved petting the horses. Once in the field, Cordy was fascinated with all of the running space. Once her feet touched the ground, she was off, yelling, “running! running!” just in case we weren’t sure what she was doing.

We did have to grab her once to keep her from running right in front of one of the wagons. We walked the field, looking for just the right pumpkins. Cordy’s crazy running led us to a good section of the patch that hadn’t been picked over, and so we found three nice pumpkins.

By the time the day was over, Cordy had learned the word “pumpkin” and was proud of her new toys. We ate a little ice cream while chatting with Kristi, then packed things up to start for home. Cordy was well past her nap time at this point, and the meltdown was nearing. Not even 5 minutes into the drive, she was asleep.

Thanks to Kristi for inviting us up to the farm. We had a fabulous time, and we now have three lovely pumpkins to display outside the house. I love fall!