I was watching Bethenny Ever After last night and it's when her baby is still pretty tiny and she and her husband go to his hometown, which is presented as this insanely small town, backwards, almost Ozarkian in it's small-townness. What's funny is that my cousin lives there and I just think of it as a normal town, but I guess the comparison between NYC and there is supposed to be made and you're supposed to realize how GREAT NYC is and how hard everything else sucks. And the thing is, to a certain extent I agree, I love NYC but it annoyed me last night. ANYWAY. She and her husband have to talk to his parents about them wanting to suck up all the time with the baby, and how maybe it's unrealistic to expect them to visit every weekend, and have every first holiday with them, etc. Todd was sleeping next to me, and it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway, but I could RELATE. I still get white hot mad when I think of my MIL assuming that Joseph could come and SLEEP OVER when he was an infant, a newborn! I mean, he was my first baby! I could no more imagine dropping him off at her house for the weekend than I could dropping him off at a church or hospital under Safe Haven laws. In Bethenny's case, she has it a little harder because her in-laws lost their other son when he was very young, so B's husband is their only child and the baby is their only grandchild, etc. But she is better than I am at handling it, and she says, UP FRONT and OUT LOUD, that they have to do things by themselves, as a family on their own. It's uncomfortable but at least they're talking about it. We would never talk about that with my in laws. There could seriously be a big pile of shit in the middle of the dining room table at dinner and no one would ever mention it. Freaks.
I wish I could tell people about the baby. I have a terrible cold and of course I can't take anything and my Dad was saying the other night, "take some Nyquil!" and I was thinking, I'd LOVE to but I can't. I can't take anything except worthless Tylenol. But I can't tell them that, and I put "ultra sound" on the calendar for next week and then I thought, crap, my MIL will probably be up here this weekend, so I had to cross it out and just put the time instead. I'm glad that Todd knows, and my sister, so at least I can come clean with some people. I guess we'll wait until 12 weeks, but that feels like a long time, particularly considering that my birthday is in a few weeks. Also, I feel nuttier than usual and I would maybe get some sympathy or something if people knew I was PREGNANT and tired or PREGNANT and kooky.
As usual, I have no way to wrap this up. Oh, I forgot! We are having NAME issues. I guess if you're going to have this many kids, at some point there will be some disagreement about names. The name that I thought of for a girl is like #782 in 2009. So, it's unusual, I suppose. It's a saint's name, which I am very into, and she has a great story, very compelling and having to do with motherhood. So I really like it. Plus it's long, which I like, because my kids' last name is short and one syllable. I thought Todd liked it too but the other night he started saying we should give her a 'normal' middle name, in case she ever wanted to go by that. And I mean - HOW am I supposed to think that he likes that name? When he calls another name 'normal'? And here's the thing, the 'normal' name that he wants to use for the middle name is #763 in 2009! Nineteen places different than my insanely crazy loony name! So I think, it's not a 'normal' name that he's looking for for the middle name, it's ONE HE LIKES BETTER. So why not just say that? If he didn't like a name, I would not use it, I wouldn't. There was a certain boy name that I always loved and thought I would use for my first boy, but my MIL wrinkled up her nose in such a way the first time that she said it that I knew I would never use it. I couldn't see her wrinkle her nose that way for the rest of my kid's life! And now that's how I feel about my perfect girl name, that her father has ruined it. So now I am just hoping it's a boy.
