Perspective

I should make a list of all the idiotic things I thought before the twins were born.

For example: "I'll have so much more time when I'm not working 40 hours a week! Yes, motherhood is a lot of work, but I'll be at home, so I can multitask."

Heh.

I'm multitasking right now. I'm blogging with one hand while I hold my son's pacifier in his mouth with the other. I'm also holding my daughter's pacifier. Yes, two pacifiers with one hand. My pacifier hand is also being used to massage my son's tummy, because he's in process of having his first poop in 3 days, and he's not happy about how his intestines feel.

And now they're both fussing and I can no longer blog with one hand.

...

...later...

You want to know what else is multitasking? Rocking a car seat in the bathroom because you only have one baby swing and it's occupied by the other baby, who is also watching you do your business on the toilet, because you had to put them somewhere while you go to the bathroom, and since all 3 of you are pooping right now, you might as well make it a party.

...later...

Okay, my husband is home, holding one baby, while the other one has finally managed to get to sleep without dropping his pacifier. These moments are sacred. I got the laundry folded and now I can (hopefully) finish this blog post.

Anyway, what I'd like to do is go back about 5 weeks, & give my younger self a quick reality check.

I'd tell her that feeding a baby is not a quick, 15 minute deal, especially when there are 2 of them. Feeding times take a minimum of an hour every time (frequently longer), and there are 6-8 of them each day. Add to that an hour or two worth of time spent changing diapers each day, and you end up spending more time than your full time job just on their digestive systems. Also, you're doing this at 3:00 AM. And on weekends.

Add to that bonding time, comforting sore tummies, replacing dropped pacifiers, washing endless amounts of spit up covered clothes, blankets, and burp rags, washing bottles, bathing babies every few days, and babies that just plain don't want to be put down, and you're lucky to get some toast made here and there.

Another feeding time is coming soon... but not yet! I'm going to take a quick shower!

Oh wait... baby girl is threatening to go hysterical, & if she's hungry, there's not much Daddy can do about that. Looks like the shower will need to wait.

(Note: I'd also tell my 5 weeks ago self that she'll love this crazy job WAY more than the day-in, day-out of 40 hours a week at a desk. Little to no breaks is worth the payoff.)

Baby Haikus

Caring for newborn twins is fun. Never before have I requested divine intervention for defecation and flatulence.

Last night, around 5:00 AM, whilst lost to the throes of exhaustion, my brain suddenly turned on creative mode, & I found myself composing haikus, of all things. 

Now, infant haikus to my children are my new thing. Here is a sampling of my work. (The 2nd one to my son, Anders, is the result of my 5:00 AM creative session.)

For Anders: 

A storm is coming. 

You haven't pooped in five days. 

I will make you poop!

For Annalaé Rose:

It's just a diaper. 

You are not being murdered. 

Did you just turn blue?

For Anders:

Sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep. 

Don't drop your pacifier. 

Omg please sleep. 

For Annalaé Rose, 3 haikus in succession:

That wasn't a burp. 

Your grunts don't fool me. 

Burp, or no more food. 

Oh, now you're fussing. 

Meh, that could have been a burp. 

K, but you owe me. 

Now you are sleeping. 

I never got a good burp. 

Please don't puke on me. 

Edit: I've been doing a lot of these and posting them on Facebook. I'd like them all in the same spot, so I'm adding them here until I can make a file.

For Annalaé Rose:

There's this thing I do.

I sleep during burping time.

Mommy just loves it!

A conversation with my daughter (in haikus, of course):

O hysteria!

"Life after birth is so hard!

How will I survive?"

"Why the tears, my love?"

"I farted myself awake!"

Oh. Of course you did.

Now a haiku about myself:

I need healthy food. 

Oh look. Babies are awake. 

Pop Tarts it is, then.

Anders's haikus to his pacifier:

O pacifier!

You were made to be spit out.

Now I cry for you. 

Daddy puts you back,

So I spit you out again.

Now I cry for you.

Daddy puts you back,

Roughly seven hundred times,

Since I cry for you.

O pacifier!

None of us will ever sleep,

When I cry for you.

Meanwhile, with Annalaé Rose...

Oh, I'm so hungry!

Latch onto Daddy's bicep. 

That's not a nipple. 

Oh, I'm so hungry!

Latch onto Mommy's armpit.

SO not a nipple. 

Oh, I'm so hungry!

Yummy! Mommy's collar bone!

Nope, not a nipple. 

Oh, I'm so hungry!

Daddy's nose looks so tasty!

Was that a nipple?

Finaly, I burp. 

Hey look, the bottle is back!

At last, a nipple.

How to Pronounce Annalaé Rose

Annalaé is pronounced Anna-lay. Not Anna-lee. And, as Carl said, that's Anna like banana, and not like the little sister on Frozen.

People have a hard time with the Annalaé part of my child's name, even when I say it out loud. I can't tell you how many times people have asked, "Oh, what are you naming your babies?" and when I say, "The boy is Anders, and the girl is Annalaé Rose," they respond with, "Annalee Rose! That's so pretty!"

**facepalm**

I. Just. Said. It. Out. Loud.

Now, if you're reading it, and not hearing it said out loud, I can see the confusion. Like, you can see that it includes the word "Anna," but what the heck is that laé business? Accent over the e? How do you even pronounce that? Are you absolutely sure you want to name your child that? Because school teachers are never going to figure out how to say it and your daughter will be correcting roll call pretty much her entire life.

Yeah, I've heard it all, and I'm still naming my daughter Annalaé Rose. And yes, 2 first names to boot. (Her middle name is Ilana, in case you were wondering.) Originally, when I came up with the name at the age of 16, I had it spelled Annalé Rose, which I still think looks much cleaner and prettier, but it also looks like A-nail, which is a terrible way to have your name mispronounced. So, I threw in an "a" to confuse everyone.

Now, I'm well aware Annalaé Rose is a really big mouthful, and no, I don't expect people to use it every time they address or talk about her. Here are some acceptable nicknames:

Anna Rose: 1 less syllable, and the title of a Vienna Teng lullaby to boot.

Aria: It's her initials. Carl didn't want to name our child Aria, even though I loved the name, so we compromised and made it Annalaé Rose's initials, and agreed it can be used as a nickname. (Spoiler, it probably won't actually be used, but it is available if anyone wants to.)

Rosie: Short, simple, cute.

And I'm sure more nicknames will present themselves as time goes on.

So, yes. I'm giving my child a name that has withstood the test of time. Of all the names I've come up with over the years, Annalaé Rose is the one that has lasted. Elizabeth stayed a couple years. Chloe came and went. But this one? I've loved it for nearly 14 years, and I'm sticking with it.

This pronunciation lesson brought to you by someone who has been called "Samantha" her whole life, but is not actually named Samantha, and therefore doesn't care what people think.

4 days old

My twins, Anders and Annalaé Rose, are now 4 days old. I've learned a lot about motherhood in the last 4 days.

Chief among the lessons I have learned is that no matter how much warning you've been given, there is nothing that truly prepares you for it. 

I mean seriously. My understanding of what motherhood entails seems very clinical compared to what I've experienced in a piddly half week. 

When most people talk about motherhood, they'll tell you about the irrational and unconditional love, but until I went 4 hours without holding either of them, I didn't realize that translated to a desperate need, & a total craving to feel them against my chest and look at their little faces. I imagine it will wear off to a degree, but I love peeking in on them as they sleep to fill that need. 

I was also told about the exhaustion, but again, while I understood what it felt like to be exhausted, I didn't understand being awake at 4:30 AM, having not slept the entire night after averaging 2-4 hours of sleep all week (also after a major abdominal surgery), comfort nursing my son while my husband - who also hasn't slept more than 2-4 hours a night and has to get up for work and school in 2 hours - paces with our daughter, neither of us having any clue what's making our babies cry. I went through the list. Hungry? No, they just ate. Poopy? No, we just changed them. Too hot? Maybe, but taking off one of the blankets wrapped around them like a burrito didn't help a thing. Too cold? Impossible. Our bedroom is at least 5 degrees warmer than the hospital room. Sick, then? Possible. Neither of them were able to muster very effective burps after their last meal, & my girl has a rocket case of the hiccups. Maybe their tummies have too many bubbles. 

As our daughter settled into a fitful sleep and our son began to fuss because my still-developing milk supply ran out, my husband looked at me with heavy bags under his eyes, and a slight smile quirked at the corner of his mouth, which then quickly fell back into the neutral expression that takes so many fewer muscles to pull off. 

"This is what we signed up for," he whispered, stroking our little girl's head. 

And I nodded, because it's exactly what we signed up for, & we knew very well that babies meant sleep deprivation, even if we had no clue what that actually felt like. 

And even then, pacing around and burping my son while the incision in my stomach ached and begged me to just lay down, as I was coming to understand what "sleep deprivation" really felt like, that craving was still there. I needed Anders and Annalaé Rose so badly, and I needed to know what was bothering them so I could make it stop. 

Then there are hormones and emotion that everyone warns you about. The emotion started on Day 2, when the lactation consultant came to help me breastfeed. I had very little milk/colostrum at all and had to supplement with formula while using otherwise pointless breastfeeding to stimulate production. It's a fairly normal scenario, & I knew it was irrational to feel like a failure, but between the breastfeeding class where they tell you not to give your child a pacifier for 3 weeks to avoid nipple confusion, & that breastfed babies are smarter than formula fed babies, I definitely felt like a second rate mom for not only using formula, but giving in to the pacifier in the very first night. 

Yeah, for the record, my head knows better than that, & I'm a first rate mom for sacrificing my exclusive breastfeeding goal to insure my babies got the nutrition they needed. 

Even though the intense emotion started 2 days ago, this morning there were more tears. Not for any reason. Just because I'm so tired, and my babies slept too long after we finally got them down and woke up hungry, and I just love them so much, and my mom made me French toast and rubbed my legs, and my pain pills wore off while I slept, and basically feelings. 

They're napping now, and Annalaé Rose is squeaking in her sleep. I'm lying in bed, trying to nap while I process all these thoughts and emotions. There's so much to get done - I'm still recording the birth in my journal, and am only to the part where they whisked Annalaé Rose away without letting me see her, because she wasn't breathing. I wanted to do a birth announcement too, with a creative theme, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to just scratch that. "Hey, I had twins and here are some pics from my phone" on Facebook is really effective enough. It's survival mode now. 

So, to sum things up, motherhood is wonderful, but there's nothing to really prepare you for it besides jumping in. And if any of my non-parent friends are wondering, the joy of motherhood doesn't look anything like this:

It looks much more like this:

And it's worth it.

It's a sign!

It's funny how, apart from mommy forums, people don't really talk about the signs of impending labor. I suppose that's probably because most of them have to do with body parts that are taboo to talk openly about and/or things that look like they were drooled by Jabba the Hutt. 

Of course, once you get pregnant and start reading those mommy forums, people are all like, "Yeah, here's a picture of a glob of bloody mucous I found in my underwear this morning. I think I'm about to go into labor," and you're sitting there just going, "Um.... Ew?"

We talk about contractions, though. The problem with contractions is that they start MONTHS before you give birth, & not a week or two like the other symptoms. I first noticed contractions on September 12, when my mom pointed them out to me after my baby shower. I'd apparently been having them for a while, but since I didn't know what to look for, I didn't know they were happening. 

That was almost 2 months ago. Obviously not proof I'd be birthing babies anytime in the immediate future. And yet, it's the only symptom I knew to expect up front. I'm only just learning about some of the other, more pain-centered symptoms, and I'm learning as I experience them. 

Now, at 37 weeks (1 week after the doctors told me to expect to go into labor on my own... those jerks), I'm getting the unmentionable signs. I've had them for a week now, so we know it's soon. Very soon. Within the next 7 days, for sure. 

Know what the biggest sign is? The absolute proof that I'll go into labor within a week? 

I have a C-section scheduled in a week. 

Yeah. 

Both my twins are breech, meaning C-section, and I'm not going a day past 38 weeks. 

That makes for a pretty good sign of labor, don't you think? 

Priorities

Last Sunday I posted a very historic photo. It was the Super Blood Moon, a phenomenon that is really only once in a generation. Not only is it rare, but it is loaded with significance. Even today, in our modern and secular society, there are people who believe it's an omen of impending destruction.

I spent close to 2 hours fighting a tripod that was in a slight breeze, waiting for just the right moment, & I finally got a perfect picture of the event.

It was a tad grainy, but overall it captured the phenomenon better than anyone else in my news feed, apart from NASA. 

It did pretty well, as far as Facebook recognition goes. 19 likes, which is a good sized number for the crowd my posts usually draw. 

Then, three days later, I posted another picture. It garnered twice the number of likes, showing that it was clearly more important to people than this historic astronomical event. 

What could people possibly love so much more than a once in a generation event that is loaded with historical and religious significance? 

Cake. 

Obviously. 

Eureka!

Whilst organizing my "random junk" drawer in my desk at work, I just discovered I've had Altoids for the last 3 years.

Cinnamon Altoids.

'Tis a beautiful day.

Saturated Markets are Lame.

YA Paranormal Romance is my guilty pleasure genre. Twilight was my introduction to it, and like Eragon is many kids' introduction to the Hero's Journey formula, I was so taken with the elements of the formula that I was more or less blind to its faults for quite a while. Twilight hit the YA Paranormal Romance formula so well that it's no wonder it made such an incredible butt load of money. And it served as an entry to the genre for thousands of teenagers.

Of course, the more I read of the genre, the more I could pick apart where Twilight wasn't that good of a book, just as a lot of former Eragon fans like to complain that it is horribly cliche, and Star Wars/Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings/Everybody else did it better. And then came the Twilight sequels, and by the time I got to the fourth book, I just couldn't force myself to like it anymore.

But, it did introduce me to the genre, and since then I've read a good amount of YA Paranormal Romance.

Most of the books were somewhere between pretty good and great, and it was always fun to see how they pulled off different magic systems. I read one with Native American magic (the spirit animals were especially cool), one with Fae magic, and one with unexplained time travel, just to name a few.

The weird magic systems, however, were the ones based on Christian mythology. My first experience with that was Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments trilogy. Now, she made the magic system distinct enough that it was more or less easy to separate it from Christian doctrine, and to recognize it as a mythology. She played with angels and demons, and more or less left God out of it. The first experience was a little weird, but by the time I got to the third book I didn't even notice it anymore. Also, the addition of rune magic helped add a foreign element that made the use of Christian mythology easier to separate from doctrine.

Still, I wondered if I should really own the books. As much as I liked them, I was reading them in my 20's, and I knew that someday I'd have a 12 or 13 year old girl in the house, sorting through the books in my library, looking for something new to read. And a young teen may not have the experience necessary to separate doctrine from mythology.

Then I encountered Fallen, by Lauren Kate.

Now, I'll admit, I bought the book for the cover. Actually, I bought the first book in the series for the cover of the fourth book. I saw the add for it in the store, gasped at how beautiful it was, then looked it up and found out it was a long way into a series. So, I bought the first book (which also had a stunning cover), and read it in a single day.

Again, the magic system was based in Christian mythology. Except instead of angels and demons, it primarily dealt with fallen angels. And, again, it more or less left God out of the equation, except in backstory. The first book was good, so I bought the second.

The second one... not so much. First, it just didn't draw me in as well. Since I only read it once, I never bothered to pick apart why, but it really just didn't do the trick the same way the first one did. But more importantly than that, it did bring God into the equation, and it presented Him as a tyrant who punished anyone who dared question Him, and made Him out to be the exact opposite of everything I believe God to be.

And that one... I just couldn't separate. I couldn't dismiss that as, "Oh, this is just mythology." It was dealing with the nature of God, and it didn't deal with it well.

And so,I decided I wasn't going to own that series when I had kids. I don't need a book giving them such a negative view of God. They need to see Him as a source of comfort and guidance and love, not a tyrannical ruler who demands submission or else pain and your own perfectly crafted hell will follow.

So, I tried to hock it at a garage sale. That didn't work. Garage sale books go for like 50 cents a piece, and I wanted to recoup some of the money I'd spent on the beautifully designed hardcovers.

Flash forward to today. Lately we've been going through our books and movies and weeding out anything we really don't feel should be in the house with our kids (bye bye, Vampire Diaries season 2! I won't miss you). Incidentally, morally objectionable isn't the only criteria. I got rid of a painfully stupid movie adaptation of a book I loved because I don't want to watch it over and over and over when the kids are too young to realize just how retarded it is. Yeah. "Puerile" and "Stupid" are definitely valid criteria for clearing movies out of your collection.

Anyway, so far we've sold 3 of the books we listed on Amazon, and tonight I realized I still haven't listed the Lauren Kate books. So, I pulled out those gorgeous hardcovers with their stunning dust jackets, and I scanned them into my Amazon app.

Remember how Twilight was the introduction to the YA Paranormal Romance genre for thousands - if not millions - of girls? And anyone who walked through the YA section of a bookstore - or even passed the YA section of a bookstore - in the years following Twilight could undoubtedly see its influence. Vampires, dark magic, gothic covers, teen girls angsting everywhere.

Well, these books are post-Twilight angsty-gothic teen girl novels. And I'm pretty sure the craze is not just over, but so over, because when I looked them up, I found they're selling used for a penny each. That's the hardcover that's selling for such a pittance. No mass market paperbacks - gorgeous hardcovers. And new isn't much better. $3 a piece. When shipping costs and Amazon commissions are added into that, I'd be paying Amazon to get rid of them.

It's a pity I'm not out to buy any post-Twilight angsty-gothic teen novels right now. I'm more into stuff like Guess How Much I Love You, Dinosaurs on the Go, and Milo's Hat Trick. (Incidentally - that hat trick book is the most adorable story of a magician trying to salvage his magic act and getting a bear to jump out of his hat. Totally cute and recommended for any and all picture-book aged kids.)

Anyway, it's starting to look like I won't be recouping any of the money I spent on those books. I mean, I did spend the money like 5 or 6 years ago, but still. I hate the idea of just handing over something that should be worth like 10 bucks.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when paranormal romance comes into fashion, the market gets saturated, and then everybody wants dystopia. Hunger Games, look what you did.

Injustice

I'm seriously about to cry. I just suffered the worst injustice in the history of injustices, and I don't know if I can take it.

So, right as I was about to leave for my lunch break, I got an emergency call telling me that there was going to be a meeting at 12:30, and asked if I could somehow procure lunch for 8 people in just a few short minutes.

I turned to Kneaders, the local soup and sandwich shop (which has the most utterly, insanely good desserts), and they came through. I ordered a sandwich platter and a dessert tray over the phone, rushed over to pick it up, and got it to the meeting room JUST in time. The dessert tray made my mouth water, but I resisted - it wasn't for me.

I ended up leaving for lunch late, but I got the job done. As I was ending my lunch break, I got an email telling me there were leftovers and people wanted to use the meeting room, and what should I do with them?

I called Julie, the girl who emailed me, before someone could come up with a heinous solution like declaring the leftovers a free-for-all. "Put them on my desk," I instructed her. "I'm on my way back, so just move them to my desk, and I'll deal with it when I get there."

I was really looking forward to an extra dessert or two, and maybe a sandwich. And once I'd gone through the leftovers, I could declare it a free-for-all. But since I'd been the miracle worker who made that last-second-lunch appear right in the nick of time, I definitely deserved first dibs on the leftovers.

I rushed back to work, walked to my desk, and there was nothing but an empty tray with a few crumbs on it.

Some brilliant egg head made the announcement that there was "free food at Savannah's desk."

I hate them.

I hate them all.

The meeting room still had the dessert tray in it, though, and I managed to get a mediocre pumpkin tart that wasn't anywhere near the caliber of Kneaders' usual desserts. It was kind of stale and flavorless. But, well, at least I got something, I guess.

I don't know... I shouldn't feel this upset about it, but I'm roiling with emotion. Injustice, anger, downright fury over the fact that all they left on my desk was trash that now I have to clean up. And I don't even get a sandwich. And I don't even get a good dessert - just the stale pumpkin tart.

It's so petty, and I'm so upset.

I've been pretty even keeled during this pregnancy, with only an occasional emotional/irrational moment. And this has to be one of them. Burning disappointment growing to downright hatred and anger.

Pregnant lady didn't get her Kneaders.

Shouting

I know I've said this before, but there aren't a lot of political or social issues I'm particularly willing to talk about online. Sure, I have opinions and all, and I'll talk about them with people, but online is a whole nother beast. [tangent] Yes, I am in favor of breaking up the spelling of "a whole nother" instead of "another whole" to match spoken English. Though, I'll admit it does look weird. [/tangent]

First, talking about said issues online is stripped of all non-verbal forms of communication. No facial expressions (emoticons rarely do the trick), no vocal intonations, no body language. You're left with the words, and the words alone. It's too easy for someone with an opposing opinion to read it, read their own interpretation of your emotion into it (and exaggerate your bias), and start a fight. And frankly, I'm vehemently opposed to fights on my Facebook wall. If you try to pick a fight, I will delete your comment. My wall is a contention-free zone.

Second, it's... well... annoying, usually. The first time you hear about an issue, it's interesting. You form an opinion. You express your opinion. You see a couple other people with similar opinions. That's all fine. Then your Facebook wall gets flooded with EVERYBODY'S opinions, usually expressed in meaningless memes and pictures that are specifically designed to be emotionally charged and/or inflammatory, and don't tell you a thing about what your friend is actually thinking. Sometimes your friend will post an introductory sentence or two, or a quote from an article they're linking to that provides some contextual thoughts, but for the most part, what they post is just somebody else's creation advocating the general position they support.

I can't tell you how many people I've blocked because they keep posting photos and memes advocating this issue or that, even when I fully agree with their position. It's annoying.

So, yes. My general policy on political and social issues is that my husband gets to hear all my rants about them, and the Internet does not.

There are a very few exceptions. For example, when the Snowden revelations about government surveillance came out, I felt strongly enough about it to post a link to the petition relating to it, and it got an honorable mention in a blog post. Also, when the Mormon church was having their Kate Kelly/Ordain Women issue, I felt the urge to join in the online conversation, since, as a Mormon woman, it's a very applicable issue to me, and I had something big to say about it.

The major issue, however, is abortion. I care about this one, and I care passionately. That said, I still keep online interaction with the issue to a minimum. I've never shared a meme or photo, though I'll admit to clicking "Like" on an occasional photo or meme my sister-in-law shares, knowing full well they'll show up in my feed under the banner "Savannah liked this."

I've also never blogged or posted my own thoughts on the issue, mostly because it wasn't something being talked about enough.

And now? Well, with the advent of the Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts" scandal, it's being talked about.

And I'm glad. So glad. I was getting extremely tired of the gender inequality conversations. I'm tired of people crying oppression because someone said something judgmental about their homosexual lifestyle, or because a chauvinist is harassing them on Twitter. That is not oppression. You want oppression? Let's talk about what ISIS is doing over in the Middle East, kidnapping and raping women as their sex slaves, or the fact that you can get executed for changing religions in Iran. Or how about human trafficking in general. That is oppression. Last I checked, people were still allowed to have (and fully express) their own opinions, even if those opinions are judgmental or otherwise wrong. Maturity is to be confident in yourself despite their opinions, not to try to force them to change their views.

But, I digress.

Now that abortion is being talked about, I feel like it's appropriate for me to say something as a part of that conversation.

My stance on the issue was decided years and years ago. I must have been 10 or 11, and the first thing I heard was the "Pro-Choice" argument. "It's my body, my choice." And that made a lot of sense to me. I knew pregnancy was hard - I'd watched my mother go through months of bed rest with 3 pregnancies, only to have 1 of them end in miscarriage - and it made sense that a woman should have the choice whether or not they were going to go through that.

I remember asking my mom, "Why do people think abortion is wrong? I mean, it's her body."

Her answer, in it's utter simplicity, struck me hard.

"Because it's still killing someone."

Oh.

Oh, right. Duh.

I felt a little moronic for having missed that core, basic point, but it made far more sense than the "my body, my choice" argument, because if you have an unwanted pregnancy, there's no such thing as fair. No, having to unwillingly endure the pain and sickness of pregnancy, not to mention the birth itself, isn't fair to the mother, but murdering the baby is significantly less fair to the other party involved. Pregnancy is a condition involving two humans, and the right to live forever overrules the right to live comfortably for 9 months.

There are other arguments too. My personal favorite? Pregnancy isn't the choice; it's the consequence. This is one of the reasons rape is such an utterly heinous, horrible offense. It's traumatic and violent, but more than that, it robs a woman of her choice to risk pregnancy.

And really, pregnancy is not where the choice was made. The simple, biological truth is that sex makes babies. We all know this. And while we have, in this day and age, more knowledge and access to contraceptives than ever before in the history of the world, nothing is 100% fool proof. Condoms break. Pills don't fully block all hormones. I've known a woman who got pregnant after her tubes were tied, and heard of a man who got a vasectomy, but they snipped the same spot twice, leaving half of his sperm producers still functional. Things. Don't. Always. Work.

And if you're going to mess with something that causes pregnancy in very nearly all vertebrates everywhere, you have to accept that it's a very real possibility.

And no, from a gender perspective, that's not fair. Why do women have to take such risks while men don't? But fair is irrelevant. That's just biology, and science is cold facts. If you are a woman having sex, you are risking becoming pregnant, straight and simple. You can try to make it more fair by making the father responsible for the non-physical aspects of pregnancy - hospital bills, housework while mom is sick, procuring maternity clothes, massaging sore backs and hips, etc. That's one of the benefits of being a thinking, reasoning human instead of a set of cats, where the Tom's only role is to wander around until he finds a female in heat, fight off the other Toms, do his business, and then move on. We can use societal rules, or even just simple communication between a pair of people to even out the burden of pregnancy.

And I say this as a pregnant woman. I'm 31 weeks pregnant with twins, and I hurt. My back has ached for the last 4 1/2 months, I'm no stranger to overwhelming nausea even while medicated for it, I've had anemia and broken teeth as the twins suck the iron and calcium out of my body to build their own, and my new bust size is throwing out my back. I haven't even gotten to labor yet, and I can say with no question in my mind, that pregnancy is hard. And there are times I've looked at my husband, with all his energy and strength, and how if there's something he wants and it's on the floor, he can just bend at his waist and pick it up, how he doesn't hurt constantly, and I've wanted to scream, "IT'S SO NOT FAIR!!!" at the universe because women are the only ones that can carry babies.

In short, pregnancy hurts. Oh my gosh, does it ever hurt. But that's no excuse to kill someone, even if that person is the biological cause of the pain. Especially when that person is causing the pain innocently. They're not trying to hurt you. Again, you can blame biology if you really need something to blame.

So, with that said and my position stated and expounded on, let's talk about the recent conversation.

It started with Planned Parenthood, and the videos exposing the sale of fetal tissue for research. That exploded into a major battle between the Pro-Choice and the Pro-Life advocates.

And honestly, I sincerely doubt the fight really has anything to with the sale of fetal tissue. Even though "they're selling baby parts!" has become a Pro-Life battle cry, that's not remotely what this fight is about.

(And, honestly, my view on that piece of the fight is that stem cell research is extremely valuable, and if the tissue is there, it might as well be put to good use. But the tissue shouldn't be there in the first place. Stem cell research should be conducted on naturally miscarried fetuses only, donated by the parents. Yes, that severely limits the research, but the research is less important than a human's life. We don't sneak through dark alleys and murder people so we can harvest their brains. We shouldn't be using valuable research as an excuse for murdering babies either.)

So, we're fighting. Pro-Life advocates are calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. They, quite understandably, don't want their tax dollars supporting what they feel is a baby butchery. And I completely agree with that. With such an emotionally charged and divisive issue, why are we being forced to financially support only one side of it through the allocation of the taxes we pay? I want it defunded. I don't want the money I pay going to the murder of anyone, much less helpless babies.

Meanwhile, the Pro-Choice advocates are fighting tooth and nail to keep that funding going. "Women's health" and "gender equality" are their battle cries, and in the current social and political climate, those are powerful cries. Men don't want to be chauvinists, and they obviously can't understand what it's like to be pregnant. Isn't it the right thing for them to fight for women's issues? Women are supposed to fight for each other. If they believe in gender equality, how can they not take up this banner?

And, in their struggle for what's fair, the fact that another human's life is the price of this "women's issue" gets ignored.

The most recent development is a set of Hashtags: #ShoutYourAbortion, which was quickly followed by a response in the form of #ShoutYourAdoption.

The first, #ShoutYourAbortion was to encourage women to boldly proclaim their abortions and defy any shame they might feel. Because, of course, that shame comes from external sources that need to be put in their place, and not, you know, a sense of guilt rooted in the fact that deep down, they know they killed someone. And maybe, for some people, their shame does come from external sources, but I'd be willing to put money on the fact that in most cases, shame over an abortion comes from an innate sense of knowledge that they did something very, very wrong.

The hashtag made me sick when I saw it. I read a few of the stories, and it was heart wrenching. The sheer coldness and selfishness behind it, and the knowledge that every story of a proudly committed abortion was accompanied by the death of a completely helpless baby, left me feeling like the world was crumbling into some sick infanticide glory-fest.

Today came the response, and it was wonderful. #ShoutYourAdoption was spawned to remind people that when you have a pregnancy and you don't want to be a parent, there's another alternative. Yes, you still have to endure the pregnancy and the birth, but then you give that baby up to someone who loves it. Pictures abounded of families and babies who were saved and given good homes, because their birth mothers chose to suffer the pains of pregnancy, instead of killing them. It praised birth mothers for their sacrifice (I saw a couple accompanied by the hashtag #birthmothersrock), and the nobility of their choice. When the whole world was telling them to kill the baby, they instead chose to suffer through, not only giving life to a child who was completely dependent on them for its survival, but also giving a baby to a family who wanted one desperately.

Having been through infertility, I can promise, if a mother chooses to give birth and then give that child up for adoption, it is the most beautiful, kind, and selfless thing she can do for a family. Thousands of people have a desperate longing to have children, and either struggle to have them, or just plain can't no matter how hard they try. And so many babies are dying who could complete their families if they were allowed to live.

In short, abortion is not a right. It's not fair, and is far less fair than an unwanted pregnancy. To be willing to kill someone to avoid pain in your own life is the pinnacle of selfishness and cowardice.

But on the other hand, to endure that pregnancy and then give the baby to someone who wants it and will care for it is beautiful. It is brave and it is noble. That is the kind of sacrifice that makes a woman powerful and good.

So, in conclusion, all I really have to say is that if you're pregnant, and you don't want to be, please please please don't kill the baby. I wish I could say this to every woman who has ever stepped into an abortion clinic. I wish I could stand in front of them and beg them to consider the alternative. Find a family looking to grow, or a woman who wants to be a mother, and ask them to adopt the baby you're growing. Then take a deep breath, steel yourself for the coming months, and keep that little baby inside of you until it's ready for the family that is waiting for it.

Big babies

My family has a history of big babies.

I was 3 weeks early, and weighed something to the effect of 8 lbs., 5 oz. The older 2 of my brothers were both in the 9 lb. range, and my littlest brother was the runt of the litter, 1 week early and also 8 lbs.

Then we have Oliver. My nephew popped out at 11 lbs. even.

So, we've been watching these babies grow, and measuring them at every ultrasound. 4 weeks ago, they were right about at the 50th percentile, and I was happy to see that it looked like I was going to be birthing more or less small babies.

Well...

The babies grew.

They were supposed to gain about a pound in those 4 weeks. My boy gained 2 pounds, and my girl gained about 1.75.

As of yesterday, I had 7 lbs., 12 oz. of baby in my uterus.

If the babies remain this high above average, I will hit 36 weeks (my earliest safe delivery time) and have 15.5 lbs. of baby in there.

They need to slow down on the whole growing thing. Sheesh.

On the bright side, even via a 2D ultrasound, I could see my little girl already has the chubbiest cheeks, and the plushest lips! So, I guess a little extra weight gain is worth it.

I got hospitalized!

I settled down on the exam room bed, my stomach bare and slathered with warm gel. The doctor rubbed an ultrasound monitor over my belly, and I watched excitedly, hoping to see more of my little girl. Just a few minutes before she had been sucking on her own toes and tasting the amniotic fluid, smacking her plush lips around. My little boy was less exciting, grasping his head and hiding his features from the monitor, like he always does. The only interesting thing he'd done so far was kick his sister in the face.

"Have you been having any contractions?" the doctor asked, moving through the various measurements of the twins.

I shrugged. "Well, my mom was here over the weekend, and she noticed I was. It's funny, when I felt my stomach I could feel how firm it was, but I'm not really sure how to recognize them on my own."

She nodded. "Your uterus typically starts getting ready for the babies about now. Are they regular or more sporadic?"

"I'm not sure. Like I said, I don't know how to recognize them, but my mom was pointing them out to me every few minutes or so. She was really good at it. She could just look at my stomach and see them happening."

That was what I said. What I meant was, "Can you give me some training on how to recognize these things, so that I can track them, and if they become regular I'll call the doctor and get it checked out?"

What she heard was, "I'M HAVING REGULAR CONTRACTIONS EVERY FEW MINUTES AND VERY MOST DEFINITELY GOING INTO PRE-TERM LABOR!!!! TEST ME!!! TEST ME NOW!!!"

After the routine ultrasound had finished, I spent the next 2 hours undergoing a Non Stress Test, followed by a cervical exam and a second, much longer Non Stress Test, during which I got to lay in a bed in the labor and delivery area of the hospital, dressed in an open-backed gown while a nurse shoved various and sundry things up my girliness, and a student from UVU watched with fascination.

They even shined spotlights on my feminine regions. I felt like a star.

The first Non Stress Test showed that the babies were fine, but there were the tiniest of bumps in the contraction monitor, and right when they were about to take it off my belly, I had a large contraction.

Well... sort of large. I actually felt my stomach move under the monitor, but I still didn't feel any shred of discomfort over it, so it actually must have been very small.

Anyway, between the big one and those teeny, tiny bumps at regular intervals, they decided I required further testing.

The results?
 
My babies are not stressed, and I am not in labor.

Now we wait for the bill...

Pregnancy Update!

1.) My twins have passed the viability landmark!!! 24 weeks is the point where the doctors will try to save them if they're born prematurely, as they have a 30-50% chance of survival. I'm at 25 weeks, which is a solid 50%. This would be a bigger deal if I were having signs of preterm labor (I'm not... at all), but it's still a significant milestone to cross.

2.) Apparently I have diabetes. I have to take a 2nd test to confirm the diagnosis, but my first test turned out high. Darn. As this is the first shred of a complication I've had the entire pregnancy (which is an absolute miracle, considering it's twins), I'm trying not to complain too much. That said, "sugar free" is synonymous with "sadness," and I'm counting down until the two placentas are no longer screwing up my ability to process blood sugars, and I can eat cake again. I want cake and gummy worms whilst still in the hospital.
[Update: I took the 2nd test, and I don't have diabetes. Bring on the cupcakes!!!]

3.) That said, I don't have even the slightest shred of preeclampsia, which is the other major complication twins gives me double the chance of getting, so I'm pretty dang healthy.

4.) I need to buy maternity clothes. Badly. My shirts all show off the bottom of my belly.  Shopping trip!!!

5.) Though I'm a mere 5 days away from the end of the 2nd trimester, I have been LOVING this extra energy. I still can't exercise at all, but it's SO nice to have the freedom that extra energy brings. Doc says it's not permanent, and I can feel it waning, so I'm basking in all of it that I have left.

6.) As the resident amateur photographer who always took senior/engagement/wedding photos for my friends who were too cheap to hire a professional, I am now struggling to find an amateur photographer who will take maternity shots for free because I'm too cheap to hire a professional. I've given so many free photo shoots over the years that I feel like I've earned one of my own, and yet I know very well that finding people with a comparable amount of skill to myself who will shoot for free is about impossible. I need more amateur photographer friends.


7.) Last week I was at 32 cm at 24 weeks. That's apparently very large, but not too large considering I've got double kids and double amniotic fluid making me swell. Essentially, my belly is big and adorable!!! Also it hurts my back.

8.) While browsing Pinterest for maternity photo ideas, all I can say is I am SO SICK of people forming hearts with their hands. Come on, people! It was cheesy to start with, and now it's cheesy and unoriginal to boot!

9.) Welcome to the wonderful world of Braxton Hicks. I don't like them. The end.

10.) I've hit the point where the kids be all up in my diaphragm and lying on my back induces suffocation. Fortunately, I am now the proud owner of a brand new body pillow, which makes sleeping on my side dramatically more comfortable. Another thing I'm going to do as soon as the kids pop out of me is flop over on my stomach and take a nap there.

11 weeks left! Or 13... or 15 if you really want to count to the due date I'm definitely not going to reach. I'm counting to the earliest "your kids will probably come" date. 11 weeks until I can sleep on my stomach, eat cake, and cuddle my squishy blobs of happiness!

Outtakes

Giving myself and Carl a set of scrabble blocks and instructions to caption a photo of baby shoes doesn't always end with necessarily mature results.

As an example:

My big brother thinks this photo will haunt all three of us. I refuse to believe that. He's hermaphroditist. (Like sexist, but only toward hermaphrodites.)

Then there was Carl's contribution:

When I showed the same brother these gender-neutral brown shoes, he accused me of being "progressive," complete with quote marks that I'm not quite sure how to interpret. 

That resulted in: 

And to a degree that's true. I've always planned to have a dinosaurs and spaceships themed nursery regardless of the gender of the occupant. 

But if you think I'm not going to stick my girly in a froofy dress, you are dead wrong. 

So, these are the gender reveal photos that didn't make the cut. 

I hope you enjoyed them. 

Twin Gender Reveal!!!!

You know, Pinterest is an amazing resource for creativity. I've been all over that site, looking for an idea for a gender reveal photo for my twins.

There's just one problem. 

When it's Pinterest's idea, it's suddenly not creative anymore, and every idea I've thought about using from that site has made me feel like a poser, a total copycat. 

In addition to that, the cute little pink and blue balloons, or pink shoes by scrabble pieces that say, "It's a girl!" are adorable and all, but you have to admit... they're a little cheesy. And I have a really hard time accepting cheesy into my life. A very hard time. 

Maybe that's why it's taken me until 22 weeks into this pregnancy to announce the genders of my twins, despite having found out at 16 weeks. 

Anyway, I finally decided I'm well past that 20 week mark, and I couldn't hold back any longer. I have made my official gender reveal photo. So Pinterest, thank you for the inspiration! 

Tada!!!!!!!!

Boy AND girl!!!!!!

Names to be announced and/or decided on at a later date... possibly not until after they pop out of my uterus. 

A new date to count toward...

It seems a huge part of the pregnancy experience is pain.

There are awesome bits - I love feeling my little minions roll around inside of me, and trying to guess from the location of the movement which one it was that I just felt.

Hunting for names has been a mixture of great fun and panic as I realized, about 8 weeks in, that there wasn't a single boy's name I liked that wouldn't get him beat up on the playground, and what if I had two boys, and had to come up with first and middle names for both of them??? (Fortunately I know the genders now... and will reveal that in a later post... so there's no more "what if" to it, and I'm set to be serious about name hunting.) But flipping through name websites and books and asking for people's opinions has been, more than anything, oodles of fun.

And my all time favorite part is baby shopping. Tiny shoes, baby clothes, books! I found this adorable tiger suit at DI the other day, and it was only $3, and shockingly clean for used baby clothes. And I'm putting together my registry and looking for the lowest possible prices on car seats and cribs and everything else I'm going to need in just a few more months. I've never been much of a shopper, but give me a baby to shop for, and I'm absolutely helpless.

Oh! And I know it'll be months and months, and maybe even over a year before they're able to make good use of bath toys, but I found this squishy pirate ship that launches foam balls. Put a set of twins in the bathtub with one of those, and it's a surefire recipe for squeals and giggles and a huge mess on the bathroom floor. I can't wait to see them use it! Heck, the night we got it, Carl and I were firing foam balls at each other.

All in all, the pregnancy "experience" is a total joy.

But it's also a constant state of pain.

Some part of my body has hurt - with absolutely no relief - every single moment of every single day, for the past 2 1/2 months. Sometimes the aching of my back is drowned out by the pain of a stabbing headache, and I don't notice it as much. My bladder always feels sore - either suddenly full right after emptying it, or just sore from being used as a trampoline. My lower and middle back take turns being more sore than the other, and don't even get me started on round ligament pain. I have to hold my stomach when I walk to stave off the ache, and it only sort of works. And I know it's going to only get worse.

Essentially, as much fun as the shopping and the name hunting and feeling them grow is, I'm really looking forward to the part where they're out of me, and I have my squishy babies. I've been counting down for a couple months now, using November 8 as my target date.

At my first appointment, my OB told me that they wouldn't let me go past 38 weeks, so even though November 22 was my official due date, I wouldn't be pregnant that long.

Well, this past Tuesday, I got the best countdown news I've ever had.

I went in for my 20 week ultrasound - the big one where they measure everything to make sure the babies are growing right, and check the gender if you didn't get an early gender ultrasound. As she was checking Dinky Squirt A's measurements, the ultrasound technician was giving me advice on prepping for twins.

"The nice thing about twins," she said, "Is that you can cut a whole month off your due date."

My eyes widened. "A month? My doctor said two weeks..."

"Well, that's only because that's the absolute longest they'll let you go. Most twins come on their own around 36 weeks. The uterus gets so heavy, with 12 or 14 lbs. of baby in there, that it just drops them, and you go into labor."

36 weeks.

I checked the calendar, and it came out to be October 25 (which just happens to be my littlest brother's birthday).

So, even though that's the beginning of the "when they'll probably be born" time, it's my new target date. And it's only 15 weeks and 1 day away. October 25 is only 3 1/2 months from today.

I am so much closer than I was last week, when I had 18 weeks left.

3 1/2 months until I have my squishy babies.

What to Do When Rome is a Jerk

The last couple days, I've been seeing someone comment on my mom's Facebook posts, and this person's name was Iceni Boudicca.

I saw that name, and I was like, "No way that's her real name." I checked with my mom, and yeah. It was an online alias. Her real name is really pretty generic.

But, it got me all excited, because I vaguely remembered the story of Boudicca from a class I took like 6 or 7 years ago, and I remembered her as being... um... something like a powerful Celtic woman who like raised an army and chased Julius Caesar off the island of Briton or something like that because his men killed her sons or something like that. Errr... yeah. Something along those lines.

Basically, she was an awesome sauce Celtic mama-bear who took on the Romans and won. That was what I remembered.

And, after trying to tell my husband how awesome she was, I decided I'd probably better actually research this and see if I was even remotely close to right.

Well...

No.

I was way off.

I mean, she was an awesome sauce Celtic mama-bear who took on the Romans and made them cry to their mommies and stuff, but in the end the Romans stayed in Briton, and she may or may not have died. Also, Julius Caesar had nothing to do with it. This was roughly 100 years after he got assassinated. Also, far as I know, she didn't have any sons. She did, however, very most definitely have two daughters.

So, here's the corrected story of Boudicca, told from researching Wikipedia, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio. And let me tell you what, reading Tacitus and Cassius Dio, who were writing from a Roman perspective, totally makes the reader root for the Britons. Like... Rome was seriously a jerk.

So, in 43 AD, during the reign of Emperor Claudius, Rome paddled across the channel from Gaul (aka France) to Briton, declared that it had been a part of the Roman Empire since Julius Caesar had a couple skirmishes on the beach, and started picking on the locals, as Rome was wont to do.

As their military took over several cities, some tribes held up their hands and said, "No no no! Don't take us over! We're your allies!!!"

Because, let's face it. It's better to be an independent ally to Rome than to have your village burned and your women raped and be forcibly subjected to Rome.

Rome was fairly used to this, and, while they weren't really planning to leave anybody as an independent anything, they were willing to play nice. After all, it's easier to annex a province diplomatically than to waste soldiers in unnecessary battles.

So, the rules of this game went like this:

Sure! You're our ally! Great! This arrangement lasts as long as your king is alive, and then your king will bequeath his entire kingdom to Rome in his will. Yes, he has to. No, his heirs don't get a say, and are completely irrelevant.

According to Wikipedia, this not only happened in Briton, but was also how Galatia and Bithynia (wherever the heck that is... oh... Google says northern Turkey) became part of the Empire.

The king of the Iceni tribe, over by modern day Norfolk, was a guy named Prasutagus, and he was married to Boudicca. He was a mix of very smart and very not.

Smart: When Prasutagus got bullied into bequeathing his kingdom to Rome, he made an attempt to preserve his royal line and the independence of his people by specifying in his will that it was to be joint-rule between Rome and his wife and two daughters. According to Tacitus, the Britons made no gender distinction when it came to rule, and by their standards, Boudicca and her two daughters were legitimate heirs.

Not smart: Upon allying with Rome, he discovered this little thing called "borrowing money," and found he could live really, really comfortably with all kinds of wealth and conveniences. He could just ask for money and people would give it to him!

Moron.

Now, granted, one translation claims that the debts incurred by Prasutagus were actually the work of a guy named Seneca, who gave his people 40 million sesterces that they didn't even want in hopes of gaining a high rate of interest, but that translation is in dispute, and more likely than not, Prasutagus was just really unintelligent about borrowing money.

Anyway, as can be expected, when Prasutagus did, in fact, finally kick the bucket, there was trouble.

Decianus Catus.

This man, Decianus Catus, was the Procurator of Briton, aka the treasury officer. He declared that all debts were to be paid back, and the whole Iceni tribe was liable for it. He confiscated Prasutagus's lands and property, and enslaved his nobles.

And what about that will? You know, the one that gave joint-rule to Rome and Prasutagus's heirs? Well, it was completely ignored. Rather than rule with Boudicca and her two daughters, they had Boudicca flogged and then raped her daughters.

Like I said, Rome was a jerk. And yes, "jerk" doesn't even come close to covering it, but you get the picture.

So, what did Boudicca do about this?

Well, her husband left her the kingdom in his will. That made her queen of the Iceni, and she had a kingdom to defend, and defiled daughters to avenge. She went to the neighbors, particularly the Trinovantes (though others got in on it too), and made herself some allies.

According to Tacitus, they all got together and, I kid you not, "dwelt much among themselves on the miseries of subjection, compared their wrongs, and exaggerated them in the discussion."

Because forced conscription of their sons into the military, taxing a people that were doing just fine on their own before the Romans came, enslaving not only the nobility, but anyone who didn't readily submit, confiscating property, and raping their princesses (all of which was described by the very same Tacitus who wrote the above sentence), is totally just the whining of a bunch of people out to exaggerate and find an excuse to fight.

Yeah. Nice move there, Tacitus. You're a real genius of propaganda.

Anyway, the Trinovantes hadn't managed to be an independent tribe the way the Iceni had, and they were more than happy to accept Boudicca as their leader. Boudicca raised a massive army and marched on the city of Camulodunum (modern day Colchester). This place was the former Trinovantian capital, and had felt the wrath of the Romans to a particularly brutal degree. In addition to enslavement, the locals had been forced to build a temple to Emperor Claudius at their own expense. Hence, it was a rather symbolic location for the Britons, being one of the major sources of oppression.

Boudicca razed it to the ground. Archaeological records show that in 60 AD (the year the rebellion started), the city was methodically torn down.

A Roman general brought the Spanish 9th Legion to defend the city, and while he survived the battle, his legion did not. They got creamed, leaving only himself and some cavalry to run away.

And remember Decianus Catus, the guy who came in and took all their stuff?

Yeah. He ran away too. He up and ditched Briton all together, making a mad dash for the safety of Gaul/France, where even the ancient Romans totally mocked the cowardice of the French, something we are still doing to this day.

After whomping all over Camulodunum, Boudicca led her forces to Londinium (aka London). The governor of Briton, Suetonius, who had been campaigning over in Wales, rushed back to defend Londinium, then went, "Uhhhhhhh.... we are so getting murdered here," and took off running, leaving the Romans inside undefended.

And, I'm sure you can guess how that ended.

Yep. Another city leveled.

Next Boudicca hit Verulamium (modern St. Albans), and scored another major victory. By this point, she had gathered more and more of the people together in their revolt, and victory appeared to be unstoppable. And, according to the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Emperor Nero, at the very least, considered Britain lost to the Empire.

And Cassius Dio? He said my absolute favorite thing about this whole revolt:
"...a terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities were sacked [funny, Cassius, but I counted three], eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame."

That's right, Romans. Wither in shame. You mess with a woman's daughters, she will raise an army of over 100,000 and burn you to the ground.

The Romans, however, eventually won out. Governor Suetonius rallied 10,000 Roman soldiers, which was still dramatically smaller than Boudicca's army, but better trained, and gathered them to what he considered to be the perfect battle ground. The tactics of the Roman legions worked best in open spaces, so Suetonius found a narrow plain - an open space for their legions, but that was still somewhat boxed in, preventing Boudicca from unleashing her full force all at once.

And Suetonius was right. It was the perfect battle ground, and according to the Roman account of their victory, they lost 400 men while the Britons lost 80,000.

And what happened to Boudicca? That's pretty unclear. In Tacitus's original account, he doesn't say anything about what happened to her, but attributes the end of the revolt to the rebels' "indolence." 20 years later, after a couple notable people had died by suicide (including Nero), he claimed she poisoned herself. But, Cassius Dio claimed she died of illness, contradicting Tacitus and indicating the latter didn't actually know how she died. The illness claim, however, is also in dispute, because Cassius seemed to be looking for a conclusion to her story, a way to excuse the lack of information, and also didn't actually know what had happened to her.

Personally, I'd like to think she survived, and then maybe moved with her daughters up to Scotland, where the Picts and Scots were as free as the Britons used to be. She obviously escaped capture by the Romans, or else they would have known what happened to her and gloated over it. But, they clearly didn't actually know, so that leaves the end of her story wide open.

I love an open ended story.

Boing!

Today I went to kiss my husband goodbye, and my stomach quite literally bounced off of his.

I think it's safe to say the babies are growing.

Dinosaur Character Development

Alright, let's talk about Jurassic Park.

No, not Jurassic World, specifically. Jurassic Park. Like, the whole franchise. Though, admittedly, there's quite a bit about Jurassic World at the end of this post, including big spoilers, so if you haven't seen it yet, only read this if you have a deep and abiding love for spoilers.

Let's start with the book.

So, reading the novel by Michael Crichton has pros and cons.

Pro: The plot is much more fleshed out, and doesn't have holes. "How the heck did Alan Grant know a T-rex's visual acuity is based on movement? You can maybe infer that from a fossil, but not enough to bet your life on it, and he treated it like a known fact!" Well, according to the book, he actually didn't know that until he got to the park and found out they had discovered that on the live T-rex. Same with the hunting tactics of the raptors.

Con: The characters are poorly developed, have no real arcs, and are so obnoxious you hope they all die. I spent the whole book wishing John Hammond, my #1 very most favorite character from the movies, would die a horrible death. And don't get me started on Lex. She was younger in the book - eight years old - and I've never wanted to see an eight year old get eaten by a dinosaur before.

Pro: The mysterious illness of the sick triceratops is figured out. Also the dilophosaurus is dramatically more terrifying, since it's nine feet tall, like it's supposed to be, instead of five. And the pterosaurs were fantastic. All in all, the dinosaurs in the book were much more realistic, and it addressed concerns like the lower levels of oxygen that their bodies weren't designed to handle.

Con: Ian Malcom will not shut up. You thought he talked a lot in the movie? He has whole chapters devoted to his diatribes about chaos theory, and you really wish that T-rex would have just done him in before he could spend the rest of the book boring everybody.

Ultimately, I'm glad I read it, and that I read it after seeing the movie. It gives me the option to pick and choose what I like from the stories - the characters from the movie, and the dinosaurs from the book. But, if you can't handle seeing your favorite characters get turned into horrible people that you want to die, then don't read it.

But there's one element of that book, and more particularly the movies that came from it, that I want to discuss.

The character of the dinosaurs.

The movie really didn't have time to get into the real world concerns of de-extinction, especially for such an ancient species. They're just there, in all their toothy, terrifying, and magnificent glory. The brachiosauruses are munching on tall trees, the stegosauruses stomp around happily, and the T-rex runs on a brutal rampage, eating everything in its path.

The book talks more about the genetic manipulation done to these creatures, and how much filling in those genetic gaps changed the creatures they were bringing to life. And despite that, they're still designed for a world with higher oxygen levels. We see a stegosaurus lumbering across a field, wheezing his labored breath as he struggles to get the oxygen he needs to walk.

And in the book, the dinosaurs were animals. In one scene the main characters get past the T-rex because it has just killed and eaten a brontosaurus, and it wasn't interested in them, beyond defending its kill.

This is, in my opinion, one of the primary problems with the movies... all of them. The T-rex just never stops eating. Same with the raptors.

Now, when the T-rex first stomps her way out of her pen (which somehow became ground level just long enough for her to walk out of... plot hole!!! She really should have jumped out of it, because that would have been cool), we can assume she was hungry. All she'd had to eat that evening was a piddly, little goat. So, yes. Trying to eat the kids, then Malcom, then successfully scarfing the lawyer, are all totally acceptable behavior for a hungry rex.

A couple hours later Ellie and Muldoon show up and save Malcom. The rex had just eaten a whole lawyer, which, though probably downed in 2 bites, was still a hefty meal. The rex's stomach couldn't have been much bigger than a grown man. The all-knowing XKCD supports this theory in their scientific breakdown of how many people a T-rex would need to eat each day if unleashed in New York. They say about half of a grown adult would do the trick.

Yet, despite the meal she'd just fully consumed, she goes chasing the jeep and tries to eat 3 more people.

Now, there are always other explanations. She could have been defending her territory. But, if that's the case, why did she chase them so far? And when they were clearly gone, why did she still keep running after them?

The next day the T-rex eats a full gallimimus, bigger than a grown man, and then shows up later the same day to eat a 6 foot raptor.

It. never. stops. eating.

And then we have the raptors.

On day two of the debacle, they escape from their pen, and we can infer that they were ravenously hungry. The cow they ate the day before was long gone, and with the park having so many problems with a rampaging, insatiable T-rex, they probably hadn't been fed that day. (This is, of course, assuming raptors eat every day, which is believable since they were more like birds than reptiles.)

There are three raptors. They escape, and it's safe to assume that at some point one of them breaks from the pack, because when our hapless humans encounter them, two are out hunting, and one is stuck in the control bunker. If a grown man is more than enough of a meal for a T-Rex, it's more than enough to feed three raptors.

But between those three raptors, they eat not one full grown man, but two. Mr. Arnold becomes a meal for the one stuck in the bunker, who was clearly too full to finish the whole thing, judging by the arm she kindly dropped on Ellie's shoulder. And Muldoon becomes lunch for the other two.

Now, the raptor attacking Ellie in the bunker is totally understandable. It was in an enclosed space when an unknown fellow-predator-looking-creature shows up way too close to its kill.

But what about the infamous kitchen scene?

We have two very full raptors, no more than a couple hours after their last meal, stalking around, outside their normal territory, obviously hunting.

What?

About the only way to explain this behavior is that in this story, dinosaurs are not rational, normal carnivores who eat when hungry and defend their territory. They are unstoppable killing machines who kill and chase and eat in a never-ending cycle of carnage.

Jurassic Park II, Lost World and all that, tried to give the characters of the dinosaurs a bit more depth. We got into the parental instincts of the T-rex, and all the attacks that happened on Isla Sorno were completely justified and made total sense. The raptor massacre was the work of a full, enormous pack, some of whom probably didn't get in on the meal and were apt to go chase Malcom & co. around.

But as soon as Rexy starts stomping around San Diego, he's eating animals and people left and right, with no rhyme, reason, or sense. He's supposed to be looking for his baby, but he's just running around chomping people and biting stoplights.

And then, in Jurassic Park III, we see the raptors get some character development. Their packs not only communicate with each other, but they also protect each others' nests. And, in the end, when they get their eggs back and hear an indication of danger on the beach right next to where they're at, they do the rational thing and run away.

But the spinosaurus?????????

It witch hunts the entire party throughout the WHOLE movie! Like, it saw them and it wants them dead... even though it's had plenty to eat throughout the course of the movie, including multiple party members. It just keeps popping up over and over.

All of this culminates in Jurassic World.

Ahem, SPOILER WARNING.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE.

The Indominus Rex.

Fascinating character development for a dinosaur. In this instance it made total sense for the dinosaur to rampage everywhere killing things. She wasn't hungry... she ate two people that morning. But she wasn't interested in eating after that.

Owen explained it perfectly - she'd been raised in complete solitude after eating her one sibling, never leaving her pen, and not only was she completely dysfunctional from it, but she was in a new world that was both fascinating and frightening. She stomped around slaughtering whatever she could, because she was messed up in the head, and it was her designers' fault she was like that.

I liked the Indominus. I thought she was an awesome monster.

And the raptors? So, it took the character development of the past films - their communication and pack mentality - and built on it. It showed the difficulty of accepting a human into their pack, even though they had imprinted on him as babies, and up until the very last scene of the movie, they were true to their monstrous selves. Despite him being a pack member, they still tried to kill Owen when he turned his back to them.

When they go out hunting in a pack, even accepting the human soldiers as part of the pack, they still turn on the humans and massacre them with very little provocation.

Theirs and Owen's struggle to allow Owen to be their Alpha is a character arc for the raptors that runs throughout the entire film, and it has a satisfying conclusion. And in that final scene, we see the three remaining raptors and Owen fighting the Indominus as a deadly pack of four.

And that's really how it should have ended.

Buuuuuuut, no.

You just had to go and get the T-rex involved, didn't you?

Rexy was obviously hungry. All she'd had to eat that day was a goat before the park broke down. And yes, other than this brief mention, I'll ignore the ridiculousness of girl-in-heels outrunning a T-rex, since that's not the point.

Now, the T-rex, true to the character established in the rest of the movies, completely irrationally attacked the Indominus. The Indominus was bigger with more teeth and longer claws, but Rexy still felt that insatiable need to rampage and attacked it anyway.

And the one remaining raptor fighting with the rex? Sure, I'll accept that, if I must. The raptor had been trying to kill the Indominus anyway, and it's not like it was a coordinated attack or anything. It was a little cheesy, but I suppose it did make sense for two dinosaurs to try to kill a third dinosaur simultaneously.

Okay, now here's where I have a problem. The Indominus is defeated, and ends up in the lake where it's not going to be eaten by either Rexy or Raptor.

Rexy is still hungry.

There is still a crowd of humans huddling nearby.

Rexy looks at Raptor.

Raptor looks at Rexy.

Rexy nods at Raptor and then walks off in peace.

Whaaaaaat??????

I mean, come on! What was that? The rex is still on her feet, and for some reason she doesn't feel like slaughtering things?  And the raptor isn't going to irrationally attack the rex?

For keeping the character of the raptors so incredibly consistent throughout the course of the whole movie, that was a sickening break in character for both the rex and the raptor.

I think their "alliance" against the Indominus ending in peace was supposed to be heartwarming or something.

It was not heartwarming. It was stupid.

So, let that be a lesson to anyone and everyone hoping to write dinosaurs. You can make them realistic predators, or you can make them irrational killing monsters, but whatever you do with them, DO NOT BREAK CHARACTER! Even when the character is a monster, it can grow and develop. The raptors did that beautifully. But don't make your monsters experience sudden and inexplicable change because the script writers think, "Oh, this would be cool."

Dinosaurs are characters.

Treat them as such.

And thus concludes my rant on the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

Rawr. You're dead.

So, Jurassic World is coming out this weekend. Even though the trailers made me think it's going to be a poorly written disaster of an addition to a brilliant movie that should never have had any sequels, I'm going to see it anyway. Carl and I will be hitting up a matinee on Saturday, where we will most likely enjoy beautifully designed dinosaurs rampaging through a sea of helpless tourists, cliché dialog, and unfortunate plot holes.

Last time I watched the sequels to Jurassic Park, it had been a very long time since I'd seen them, so I made a game out of predicting who would die.

This time I'm taking it a bit further.

I present,

Dinosaur Death Bingo!

The rules are simple. Print out pictures of characters from the actors' IMDB profiles, arrange them in the most strategic way you can think of, and mark them off as they die.

There are also a few rules like, you have to include the 4 main characters on your bingo card, the death must occur by dinosaur and not boating accident or something, and they have to actually die, not just suffer an unknown fate.

Seriously, I'm so excited to play this game. All I can say about it is that Carl had better beat me, because if I actually win this thing I may shriek, "BINGO!!!" in the middle of the theater, right at the most terrifying moment of death. I mean, can you imagine watching Jurassic Park for the first time, in a dark theater, and right when that bloody arm falls on Ellie's shoulder, some moron in the crowd yells out, "BINGO!" Or worse, when Muldoon, the South African hunter guy, looks up and mutters his most infamous line, the words, "Clever girl," are drowned out by the hyper shrieking of someone you can only assume is an Alzheimer's patient who forgot they weren't in their nursing home on Friday night.

I don't want to be that person.

Carl, please don't let me be that person.

Update:

Neither of us got a Bingo. I made a critical mistake, putting all my "most likely to die" in a single row, and one of them almost died and then was epically saved by the protagonist. One of Carl's "most likely to die" turned out to have a completely different role in the film than he suspected.

Sad, sad, day.

But, on the bright side, it was a much better movie than I thought it was going to be! (Minus the final battle... but I'll spare you the rant on dinosaur character development.)

Random Thought of the Day

What if there was, like, a rapper or something, and his name was Tyrone, and he was all like, "I have issues," so he made his rapper name T-Issues, but everybody just called him tissues, and he got so made about it he became the next unibomber.

And the old wives say...

Yesterday we went to hear our babies' heartbeats. I've seen them a couple of times before, (at the 7 and 9 week ultrasounds) but this time was especially exciting, because it's the 12 week heartbeat appointment, and according to an old wives tale, it's one indication of gender.

Now, I know all these old wives tales are unreliable, and give you a hint rather than anything solid. About the only solid indication of gender you can get is when you look at the baby (usually via ultrasound, though sometimes at birth) and it does or doesn't have man parts.

But, I've seen some really good old wives tales for predicting gender - the two best being the heartbeats and how you're carrying the baby, high or low.

I remember a friend of mine once told me in no uncertain terms that she was having a boy. She was about 8 months along, and while I didn't ask about an ultrasound, my thought was that she must not have gotten one. Her torso looked more like a barrel than a bump. She was carrying that baby so high, it must have been sitting on her lungs.

Surprise! A month later, she popped out a girl.

A few years later, I was visiting home and saw a lady in my parents' ward who was basically carrying the baby between her thighs. I had never seen a bump so low before. I immediately assumed boy.

A month or so later, the announcement popped up on Facebook - Baby boy!

Now, those were extreme cases, but I've usually been able to guess gender by how the baby is carried, unless it's smack dab in the center. And it's usually not obvious until quite a lot farther along in the pregnancy.

In my case, it's a bit tougher, because there are two babies. If I have one of each (fingers crossed!), well, I doubt anything is going to look like anything. Also, it's not like there's going to be any space in there for the babies to sit high or low. They'll sit wherever they can squeeze in.

But, that said, when I look at my miniscule bump in the mirror, it does look pretty high. Extremely high, in fact. Maybe, just maybe, they're still small enough that I can use the old wives tale and say, "I think we're dealing with 2 girls here."

But then came the heartbeats.

Now, heartbeats have a little bit of accuracy - typically over 140 bpm is a girl while under 140 is a boy. But, if the baby is moving around a lot, their heart rate will increase, and a boy can totally fool you into thinking he's a girl.

Baby A had a heart rate of 165. I think it's safe to say Baby A is probably a girl.

Baby B's heart rate was 155. Girl? Or active boy?

Impossible to say, I suppose. But from the looks of things, I'm definitely having at least one girl!

So here's to the ultrasound in 8 weeks. I have 8 more weeks to resist buying little dresses and hair bows and girl shoes and hats and and and and ...

The Payoff.

Have we all seen the movie Big Hero 6? If not, it's awesome, and I highly recommend it. Yes, it is painfully formulaic, and the "twist" is quite predictable if you're over the age of 6, but it has a lot of good laughs, and beneath the fun it deals with incredibly deep themes of death and loss and healing. The emotional punch of the character arcs are well worth the formula-to-the-letter plot.

That aside, there's actually a specific moment in the movie that keeps playing in my head: The song played during the credits.

Yes, I know that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot or character arcs or anything like that, and when I watched the movie, I basically only heard the incredibly bouncy and fun tune of the song and told myself, "I am so downloading this when I get home."

And I did. And I listened to it. On repeat. For a while.

The song is "Immortals," by Fallout Boy.

I'm really not entirely sure what the song is talking about. It's like a bunch of disjointed thoughts that sound - maybe - kind of profound when said by themselves, but make absolutely no sense when strung together.

One line sticks with me:

"Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith / is when it's tested again and again every day."

The first time I heard that line was around the beginning of this year, right as we were picking up infertility treatments again after Christmas break. When I first heard it, going through such an intense struggle to keep faith in what I was doing, that concept really resonated with me.

I know, when we endure trials and move through them with faith, we want there to be a very specific payoff. If we're reaching for something incredibly difficult - a college degree, a relationship, an infertile body to produce children - we want that faith to end with the result we are reaching for. And when it doesn't - over and over and over and over - we wonder what happened. What's the point of that degree of faith when it's not paying off?

And yet, even when we're not getting the payoff, we can see some payoffs growing from having to hold onto it, again and again, every day.

That was a key piece of my experience - lessons learned from having my faith tested every single day. And as the months passed with my very specific payoff not being realized over and over, I had to step back and realize exactly what I was getting.

Some things were obvious surface improvements. For example:

With the extra motivation to make my body as healthy and functional as possible, I exercised and ate a lot more vegetables, and my whole body became healthier. Over 6 months of patient work, my BMI shrunk to its ideal range, I gained a lot of energy, and I felt great about myself and what I looked like.

I became better at sticking to a budget. Let me tell you what. Infertility treatments are not cheap, and my insurance wouldn't cover squat of it. As our budget shrank, I started tracking it. I stopped buying the easy microwave food that costs 3 times as much, and made sure that if we were approaching the end of our "eating out" budget for the month, we actually stopped going to Burger King.

And some things were much deeper:

I learned endurance. I learned how to keep going through to the home stretch, and not give up even when stressed about money, enduring heavy discomfort from the treatments, and experiencing severe emotional baggage from constant failure.

I learned sacrifice. We're officially not going to Scotland, now that every extra penny we had went to doctors. Also, I have absolutely no idea how we're going to pay for pharmacy school, but I'm sure we'll figure something out.

In that same vein, I learned priorities. I had to make a very conscious decision about what I wanted more, children or financial stability. And letting go of the security of that savings account was a huge learning experience for me. I had to let go of having my plans all figured out with the financial pathway to them decided. I had to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and step out into the terrifying unknown. Like I said, I have no idea how we're going to pay for school. And, I had to learn how to be okay with that.

And faith. I had a 20 month crash course in how to cling to what I know in the face of what I don't. I knew the Lord was in control. I knew I had been promised children. I knew the Lord keeps His promises. I knew I had been instructed to continue with the treatments. I didn't know when, or what more I'd have to go through, or how much harder it would get, but I stuck with what I knew. And I had to make that decision over and over and over, because that faith was tested constantly.

Right now, I still enjoy the song, but my favorite part of that line has become the first word: "Sometimes."

Because sometimes that really is the only payoff - the constant testing of your faith, and the growth that comes from it.

But other times, that's not the only payoff.

Sometimes, when the testing is over, you get exactly what you prayed for, hoped for, and clung to with seemingly irrational faith.

And sometimes, you get exactly what you wanted, but doubled.

I'm having twins.