Another Week Goes By

What a week! It's definitely been a busy one. I have, as usual, neglected my poor blog, but that seems to be the normal state of things rather than the exception to the rule, so I think I'll stop apologizing for it and start accepting it as the status quo. Hey, once a week isn't bad! I run across blogs all the time that haven't been updated since 2003 or so!

Last week's main project was a cake made for a friend's baby shower. I was very happy with the end product! It was definitely a harrowing experience, though. She wanted strawberry buttercream filling, something with which I hadn't worked before, and I couldn't find a recipe. So I ended up just folding fresh strawberries into vanilla buttercream, and it looked so delicious that I just piled it on! After covering the cake, I realized that (1) in culinary school we were taught to cover fondant cakes with only the lightest scraping of filling and masking (gulp), and (2) the leftover strawberry filling I had sitting on the counter was bleeding torrents of juice! (Strawberries + Sugar = What??? Juice!!!) Aackk!!

And then, about two hours after I'd finished the cake, I was standing near looking at it, and realized that one of the sides was not straight but rounded. And squishy to the touch! Aaackk!!!! I imagined the worst - mounds of watery filling squishing out of the sides, taking the cake down in a puddle of goo. So I ran around the house like a crazed maniac until I thought of using some wide ribbon to restrain it - so the cake spent the next 24 hours wrapped up in its own little girdle with me fervently praying that it wouldn't collapse. If it had, there would have been nothing to do about it - it was too late!

Thankfully the cake made it all the way over to the shower, and when we cut it, the filling looked just fine! Not watery or anything (I guess it reabsorbed the liquid). But it was a good lesson for me - don't use too much filling!! (Delicious as it may be.)

But I was a total stress case. Running out to the kitchen to check on a teetering cake every three minutes (not to mention waking up all night wondering if is still standing) can do that to one!

So one of my big projects for the spring is over - making K's shower cake. My second big project is being the wedding coordinator for an upcoming wedding. After that I can get pregnant at will (if I want to) and not disturb anyone's plans too greatly! Assuming, of course, that we wait until after our assumed upcoming move (haven't heard anything on house #3 yet) - beforehand would be a disaster. So I guess moving would be the third big project - we can pregnant after that.

I just can't work up any great enthusiasm for getting pregnant. Despite the fact that most of Caleb's contemporaries now have siblings (crazy, crazy women!) I just can't get that enthusiastic about getting pregnant again. I view it with something approaching fearful apathy (is there such a thing?). Don't get me wrong - I loved being pregnant - but it was such an awful experience at the same time that I can't dig up any great desire to repeat it. Of course I'd love to see Wendi (our midwife) more often, one of the benefits of being pregnant (and have her as a captive audience to peg with midwifery questions! heh heh heh), but the remembrance of hyperemesis is enough to make me want to wait indefinitely before plunging in again.

If Joe only wanted one kiddo, I probably wouldn't put up a fight for another. The only reason that I am open to considering another baby is simply that my experience as an only child was not a particularly positive one. I was shy and lonely and desperately wanted a sibling, and I don't want to do that to Caleb - especially as the women in my family tend to be really overprotective as mothers, something that's probably been made worse by the fact that most of them only had one child. Also, we're planning on homeschooling Caleb, and contemplating keeping him in that kind of isolation is just depressing. I'm not the kind of mom who wants to be out in the car running every which-way with activities, so a little in-home socialization would be good.

Also, I think that only-children (speaking from experience) tend to feel smothered with attention. There's a great desire to get away, to hide oneself and one's activities from parental notice, to have privacy and time to oneself. That doesn't happen too much as an only child! So I do want to provide a sibling for Caleb at some point.

But other than those reasons, one would be enough for me!

I guess that another of the reasons why I am reluctant to have another baby is simply that I am just tired. It took me a good 15 months to feel better after the havoc that hyperemesis + pregnancy wreaked on my body; also, I've always had struggles with fatigue. I could easily sleep eight hours a night and take two naps a day and still be tired most of the time. I've always been that way. And running after an extremely active toddler adds to that! So the thought of dealing with hyperemesis, pregnancy, childbirth, an active toddler, and tne exhaustion of the round-the-clock newborn schedule makes me tired just to think about!

I just read a great little article on natural childbirth, and I think I'll write about it in my next blog entry. Natural childbirth is really a paradox - it was the most pain I've ever experienced in my life, but it was also a completely transformational experience - I wouldn't trade it for the world. I think I'll try to explore my thoughts on that in my next blog entry. I'm wandering rather far from hyperemesis gravidarum, but one must take a break sometime! I think I deserve a break after the stress of last week!!

I would like to conclude with two just-learned life lessons:

(1) You know you have too many bananas in your house when there are fruit flies having mating orgies on your kitchen counter.

(2) Never, ever, EVER cut strawberries with a knife that you've just used to cut raw garlic.

Love to all!!