The reason for this isn’t just that Carrollton’s a big city, but also that we don’t have a lot of friends who live in Carrollton. That’s not to say we don’t have a lot of friends. We do. They just happen to be scattered throughout the various Dallas suburbs.

Interestingly, of my four cousins, none of whom have ever lived in the same town as me, two have settled down in the area. Mike, the cousin who lives in Carrollton–just two miles from me, in fact–is not one of the friends I’ve encountered in town. But I did run into him in Plano (population 222,000) yesterday–and not at the Plano Walmart.

Oh no, it was way more random than that.

Our friends the Mortons live in Plano. They’re having a baby in December, and as we couldn’t attend the baby shower, we dropped by their house with a gift. Just as we pulled up, the Mortons came out with some people carrying a table. And who should be one of the table-carriers? You guessed it, my cousin Mike.

My immediate thought, of course, was that Mike knew the Mortons. Church was the most likely place they’d meet–until I realized the Mortons and Mike don’t go to the same church. Then I remembered Katie Morton is a school nurse in Plano, and Mike’s wife Donna teaches in Plano, so maybe they knew each other from school. Before I could ask, Mr. Burt did.

Mike’s reply was not, “Through our wives.”

Chuckling, he said, “Through Craig’s List.”

Mr. Burt and I gawped at each other.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to my cousin, “you bought a table off Craig’s List from our friends, who you don’t know, and happened to come pick it up at the same time as we dropped by to visit them for the first time in months?”

As it turned out, I still had to be set straight; the story got even more random. Mike wasn’t buying the table. Friends of his wife bought it. Mike was just there with his mother-in-law’s truck to help them get it home. At the same time as we dropped by to visit our friends for the first time in months.

One of you readers who’s good at math needs to tell me what the odds of that are. Pretty astronomical, I’d wager.

Recently an expectant friend asked me what items I absolutely could not care for the Burt Squirt without. At the moment the question caught me off guard, but after mulling over it, I’ve come up with my top five must-haves.

Remember, these are my favorite things that work for my baby. Your baby might have entirely different tastes. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in my first six months of motherhood, it’s that babies are like Lolcats: they don’t hesitate to say, “DO NOT WANT!” and it’s impossible to force anything a baby DOES NOT WANT on him.

Which is why Babies R Us sells thousands of items, most of which parents will buy in the hope that at least one of them will make childcare a little easier.

Bag Balm

Developed by farmers to treat chapped cow udders, Bag Balm is not only more effective than Desitin at treating the mother of all diaper rashes, it’s also far more affordable than the more potent creams, such as Bourdeaux’s Butt Paste. I paid $12.99 for Bag Balm at a local pharmacy (though Google tells me you can get it for less) when the Burt Squirt was about three weeks old; five months later we still haven’t used it all–and that’s with a liberal smear up the butt crack every diaper change. (In our house, that’s 6-8 diaper changes a day, 31 days a month, for 5 months…I’ll let you do the math.)

I’ve been told that Bag Balm also works for mommies experiencing discomfort from breastfeeding. Though I don’t think I’d recommend treating lady parts from the same jar used on baby bottoms (however cute they may be)!

Also, if you do put it to your own use, you might want to forget it was developed by farmers to treat chapped cow udders…

bébéPOD

The Burt Squirt has nearly outgrown his bébéPOD–a source of much sorrow in our household, as the bébéPOD allows Mr. Burt and me to eat dinner without having to hold a baby who wants to be sitting up and a part of the action like a big boy. It may seem like one of those superfluous purchases–why not just pop him in a high chair, swing, or bouncy seat?–but the Burt Squirt won’t sit in any of those for the duration of a meal. I think it’s because they require him to be strapped in, while the bébéPOD allows him to sit up free of restraint.

There’s a similar product on the market called the Bumbo, and honestly I’m not sure one is superior to the other. We chose the bébéPOD over the Bumbo because the wider leg holes and all-around less restrictive design accommodate our chunky child; he would have outgrown a Bumbo before he was two months old.

A tip: Search children’s consignment shops or craigslist instead of buying new. The “plus” version with the tray retails for around $50, but we picked ours up sans tray for $15. Later we decided we wanted the tray and purchased one at Babies R Us for around $12. (Alas and alack, it didn’t come with one of the adorable kiwi placemats.) But you can find the ones with trays used, too.

Boppy

Of course you can breastfeed without a nursing pillow, or you can use any old pillow to give your baby the boost he or she needs to get to the goods. I never nurse without a pillow because, at not quite six months, the Burt Squirt weighs over 18 pounds and just about breaks my arms during nursing sessions that can last up to half an hour. And I don’t use any old pillow because I find it awkward.

A Boppy fits around my waist to provide a comfortable and stable prop for nursing. And did I mention it frees up your hands? You wouldn’t know it from the pictures of nursing mothers cuddling their babies (making me wonder why they’re bothering with a Boppy at all), but you really can do it hands-free! The Burt Squirt actually prefers I nurse him hands-free; he has a conniption if I touch his head while he’s eating, which eliminates a couple of nursing holds.

Breastfeeding eats up (heh) a ton of time, especially in the beginning when your baby is learning how to nurse. Why not reclaim some of that time for yourself? Thanks to my Boppy, I’ve been able to eat dinner while nursing (even at a table, with friends and family), read books, play board games, and use my computer. If I weren’t able to do these things, I’d have completely lost my mind somewhere around day one of motherhood. It’s nice to be able to stay sane–and retain a semblance of the woman I was BBS (Before Burt Squirt)–while still doing the best thing for my baby.

Exersaucer

God bless the person who invented the Exersaucer, without which we would never eat a home-cooked meal or have clean toilets. The Burt Squirt is too big for his britches and could stand up for hours, but he’s not yet able to do that without Mommy or Daddy holding on to him. We do, of course, but sometimes you’ve just got to let go of your kid for a few minutes so you can fix yourself a sandwich or get dressed.

There are lots of different Exersaucers that feature a variety of activities. When choosing, consider ones with fewer electronic components and more activities–things to grab, spin, chew on, pull, pick up, turn, flip, shake, rattle. Also, get an Exersaucer that fits your baby. We tried one Exersaucer when the Burt Squirt was around three months old, and his arms were too short to reach out for any of the toys on the tray portion–which was a bit of a problem because it was only a tray portion! We went with this model because of there were plenty of toys within arm’s reach (also, because expectant friends offered to let us borrow it till their twins are old enough to use it), and the rest he grew into over time.  The Exersaucer has actually been a fun way to track the Burt Squirt’s growth, and nothing makes you feel prouder as a parent than seeing how proud he is whenever he can finally reach that toy he’s been trying to get for a few weeks.

Except maybe when you manage to clean a kitchen and bathroom and dust your living room while your baby “Exersauces” for a solid 40 minutes.

Vtech Move and Crawl Ball

When we received this as a baby shower gift I was a little skeptical, but the Move and Crawl ball has turned out to be one of our favorite baby toys. In fact it was the first toy that really engaged the Burt Squirt, as, I’ll remind you, he thinks he’s a bigger boy than he is.  He was never a fan of lying on his back reaching for dangling toys in his baby gym, and, when he began to sit unassisted at a little before four months, the ball provided something easy to play with in an upright position. I think it actually helped develop his sense of balance and gave him some core strength.

The other thing I love about the Move and Crawl Ball is that, unlike a lot of other baby toys, the buttons respond readily to those uncoordinated, light baby finger touches. If a baby can’t make something work, he’ll quickly lose interest, but the Burt Squirt’s ability to interact with his ball keeps him entertained pretty much until the cat runs into his field of vision and distracts him. But even Mommy can’t compete with the cat…

Mommy (and Daddy) readers: what are your favorite baby things?

You’d think that such a life-altering experience as pregnancy would be a subject a writer would eat up, wouldn’t you?  Yet this writer has made it six months into her first pregnancy without really blogging about it.

Several things can account for this, I think.  During the first part of my pregnancy (17 weeks, to be precise), I was too sick and tired to blog.  These days I’m feeling better physically, but I most often don’t feel I have the mental capacity or creativity to write; I’m preoccupied (gee, I can’t imagine with what), and I believe that my body is so busy making a tiny person that there’s not much left for making stories of words.

It doesn’t account for the slowdown in my novel work, but I think the biggest detriment to my blogging is Facebook.  When you can share any interesting news or amusing tidbits in one line, or upload a photo album to share with all your friends, why go to all the trouble of writing blog posts?  (Which is an entire blog topic in itself…)  But the writer in me resists this laziness – the less I write, the less I’ll be able to write.  And the sentimental part of me knows I’ll regret not having written anything but Facebook status updates about my pregnancy.

Though maybe there’s something to not chronicling pregnancy:  if I don’t write about my experiences, I won’t remember them as clearly, and will be more likely to consider a second pregnancy… Because I’m convinced there must be some sort of amnesia that sets in after birth, or women would never volunteer to do this more than once!  (I don’t know what to make of all these women who claim to love being pregnant…)

We found out I was pregnant on the July 4, 2009.  (So Liam won’t be born on the 4th of July, but maybe in a metaphorical sense, the idea of him was.  And maybe statements like that are why I should keep on not writing…)  It was our second month of trying, and I was a few days late, but I’d been late the previous month and gotten my hopes up – and been disappointed by negative pregnancy tests – so I didn’t particularly want to test again and see another “Not Pregnant.”  Jeff insisted, though, because we were going out with friends for the 4th of July and there would be wine.  Also, I’d been feeling nauseous after meals for the past few days, and he put more stock in that than I did.  (All my life I’ve suffered from a nervous tummy, and I wouldn’t put it past myself to imagine morning sickness.)  So I took a pregnancy test.

It was about 6:30 in the morning, and we were at my parents’ house.  I went to the bathroom, then brought the pregnancy test back in the bedroom, set it on the night stand, and lay back down, determined to be comfortable in bed and not think about the results for the next two minutes.  When enough time had passed, I didn’t want to look, so Jeff got up and red the test.

“You’re pregnant!” he announced.

My first thought was that he was kidding, and I said so.  Then it occurred to me that would be a really mean joke, and Jeff would never make a joke like that.  At which point I bolted upright in bed and looked at the test for myself.  Yes, I was pregnant.

We lay in bed together, savoring the moment of our discovery.  I think we giggled a lot, and kept saying, “We made a baby!”  It wasn’t too long before we couldn’t take it any longer, and had to get up and tell my family, and call Jeff’s family to tell them the exciting news.

The sickness, which would last until my 17th week of pregnancy (I was five weeks pregnant when we tested), began the very next day.  I’d cooked mostaccioli for dinner and made it through the meal without incident.  It was later that evening, when I opened the fridge and got a whiff of the cold leftovers, that I lost it, and it seemed like I barely stopped for the next twelve weeks.  I tried every remedy I heard of, and even had prescription nausea meds, but nothing seemed to work for me.  I tried to keep in mind what women who’d been there, done that kept saying:  that the sickness was a good sign, meant my pregnancy was progressing normally, and my baby was healthy.

But the following Sunday, a week to the day since we’d announced my pregnancy, I began to bleed.  Since I hadn’t yet seen my OB-GYN (my first appointment was scheduled for two days later), I had to go to the ER.  The less I can remember about that night, the better – though I was, remarkably, calm, because I did know that about a quarter of all first pregnancies end in miscarriage – but I don’t think I’ll ever forget what a long night that was, lying there for hours, being pumped full of fluids, waiting, and finally hearing the words “threatened miscarriage.”  I was sent home with the order of two days’ complete bed rest, but I didn’t sleep much that night for the smell of hospital clinging to me.

Thankfully, after that scare, I had no more of the same.  Four weeks later, we heard our baby’s heartbeat for the first time.  Jeff was at the appointment with me, and neither of us expected how amazing it would be to hear that “whoosh whoosh whoosh” sound.  Dr. Franken didn’t even have to hunt for the right location to pick up the heartbeat. She touched the microphone to my tummy and immediately we heard our baby.  “There he is,” I said, and Dr. Franken remarked on my use of the male pronoun.  I hoped we’d have a boy first, because Jeff’s parents already have two granddaughters and I thought it would be doubly fun to have the first grandson in the family.

A few weeks after that, we had our first ultrasound, and learned we were, indeed, having a little boy.  I was right!  (Though Jeff refuses to believe I had any kind of intuition about the sex of our baby, since there was a 50/50 chance of being right.)

We named him Liam Alexander, just because we like the name, but I think the meaning is apt:  “strong-willed warrior.”  (Though we could be asking for it with that one…)  As with his heartbeat, we were amazed to put a face to the little creature responsible for making me throw up every morning.  He was still very much developing, but his face was so complete.  I think Alyssa put it best:  “He has a NOSE. On his FACE. Which you can SEE. BABY.”

Many couples, I think, rush out and start buying baby clothes when they find the gender.  We were not above shopping for Liam – but his wardrobe, so far, isn’t entirely practical.  We’ve acquired a few things from a friend who sent me some baby clothes her son never wore, but mainly Liam has Halloween onesies and…

…a dragon costume.

We actually were a little hesitant to start shopping for lots of stuff for Liam.  Halloween is gender-neutral (well, maybe not the dragon costume…) but as the ultrasound technician was only 85% sure he was a Liam, we waited till our 19 week ultrasound confirmed his maleness.

People criticized me for posting the picture of his teenie weenie peenie on Facebook, so I’ll refrain from embarrassing my son by instead posting the picture in which he is sucking his thumb.  That is my favorite picture of Liam to date, the one that makes me melt into a puddle of mush.  There’s something so comforting in knowing that my baby boy is nestled snugly inside me, contentedly sucking his thumb.  And it’s just such a baby thing to do.

In the weeks since the ultrasound, Liam has gotten up to even more baby things.  We’re feeling him all the time now.  I first felt a little succession of taps when we were at a Ben Folds concert at the end of September, but now he’s progressed to kicking and punching and flipping and rolling and head-butting.  He is one active little guy – and Jeff’s mom says that’s just how Jeff was in utero, so we’re expecting a little bundle of energy when he’s born.  I love feeling Liam move – every time it happens, I can’t help but stop whatever it is I’m doing and put a hand to my belly.  Or not put a hand to my belly, because I like to watch him move, too – even though there’s something slightly freaky and sci-fi-ish about that.  But as much as I love feeling and watching Liam, I think what I love best is how Jeff reacts to his movements.  The first time he felt a kick was the most joyful I’ve ever seen him.  (And considering my husband is pretty much always happy, that’s saying a lot.)  Of course, that joy was contagious.

As much as, on the whole, I’ve not enjoyed being pregnant – the sickness and tiredness really were horrible, and even now I’m frustrated by my inability to concentrate and my loss of motivation and by the changes in my body that make showering and dressing a big chore – I have loved what pregnancy has done for our marriage.  I was afraid I’d be hormonal and unpleasant to be around, but I think it’s actually mellowed me a lot, made me more patient, more eager to please and be pleasant and kind.  I find myself wanting to spend more time with Jeff – not that we didn’t spend time together before, but I find myself taking more of an interest in his interests and just wanting to be with him.  Probably on some subconscious level I’m aware that soon we won’t have each other’s undivided attention and I’m making the most of every moment we have while it’s still just the two of us.  I’m also more aware of what a wonderful husband he is.  Throughout my days of sickness and bed rest, he was so patient with me, taking care of me and helping out more around the house.  He never gets annoyed (or never shows his annoyance) when I’m tired or sore or complaining.  He’s never afraid of what might happen or what’s to come, and that eases all my anxieties about giving birth and becoming a mom.  We’ve taken a lot in stride the past six months, and we’ll continue to do so in the months to come.  So I’m very grateful to pregnancy for preparing me (us) for the future, and strengthening our relationship through this shared experience.

Moving on from that gush of sentimentality, now that Liam is 100% confirmed male, we’ve begun to prepare our home for him in earnest.  We actually found a high chair on a curb, which we picked up and cleaned up and have restored to like new.  Craig’s List provided a stroller/carrier/carseat and a crib and changing table – and the bedding for Liam’s jungle-themed nursery.

I will have everyone know that Jeff is the one of us responsible for carrying our the jungle theme to the extreme.  We went to IKEA one afternoon, and my normally frugal husband insisted we get Liam a stuffed hippo, elephant, crocodile, and shark (you know – a land shark), along with a sunshine light fixture and that nifty leaf canopy.  Ever the interior decorator, I of course did not argue.  We’re going to paint the walls a lovely shade of green and do leaf murals.  After we’ve dealt with a little leak problem that’s cropped up…

And…that’s my pregnancy to date.  Except for a picture of the pregnant lady herself:

There I am, at 23 weeks.  I am amazed at my hugeness, and slightly alarmed to know that I’ve got four months to go and will get huger still… I shall endeavor to blog about that experience.  Though if there’s anything I’ve learned from this post, it’s that words are really inadequate to describe what it’s like to bring a child into the world.

This is what happens when you order a new TV, purchase a new TV stand from Ikea, and get a little too antsy about listing your old stuff on Craig’s List so you’ll be all ready when the new stuff arrives.  You get stuck with only a 13” TV/VCR combo in your massive entertainment center.  (That new 50” plasma is going to look like IMAX in comparison.)  You also have to reschedule the Wii night you remembered, an hour after a stranger drove off with the old TV, you were supposed to be having with your cousin and his wife this Friday.  Whoops.