Eggs and Cran-Raspberry
Yesterday, one of my students asked me what it’s like to be pregnant. I was honest with her, the same as I was honest with my 10th graders back when I was pregnant with Big I.
“Do you get motion sickness?” I asked her.
“Yeah, it’s awful,” she said.
“Well, being pregnant, at least in the beginning and for me, is kind of like having non-stop motion sickness. You’re always feeling ‘green’ and like barfing is just around the corner. You also burp, like all the time and sometimes you have so much saliva in your mouth that you actually choke on it. Then there’s the stretch marks. Once you start to get big, your body basically pulls your skin from your hip bones around to the front and you get railroad track-like stretch marks on the whole path. You also have weird cravings and aversions to certain foods. I love vegetables. I used to eat salad as a snack, but now I can’t even look at vegetables (with the exception of tomatoes-which, let’s face it-there’s quite the debate about whether they’re really a fruit or veggie anyway so does it even really count?)”
She looked at me like I had three heads and I could tell she was making a mental decision to never have children.
“It’s all worth it in the end though,” I said. “It’s just hard to see that when you’re in the midst of all those fun symptoms.”
This pregnancy has been a bit crazy. I’ve been more nauseated with this one than either of my previous two. Last week I started to feel better but I still have my moments. Days when I teach are rough. I need to snack my way through the morning and when I’m teaching, that’s just not possible. I can barely stand to look at chicken. The other night I made chicken marsala, which is one of my all-time favorite meals and I had a hard time getting it down. I also can’t stand the smell of coffee and am wondering if I’ll ever be able to again. All I want to eat is cheese and hamburger meat. Give me Shepard’s Pie, mushroom cheeseburgers or steak anytime. Also, eggs.
My latest obsession is having red beet eggs for breakfast, washed down with some cran-raspberry juice. The burps from that breakfast are enough to make anyone reconsider that meal, but it’s one of the only things I keep going back to again and again. Even Mr. BBM thinks it’s disgusting and there’s not much that man won’t eat. I guess it’s really an improvement on what I used to crave. . . giant cherry slushies and jalapeno-cheese soft pretzels, health wise anyway.
Tomorrow night, Mr. BBM and I are off to the Flyers/Pens game, just 16 rows off the ice. I plan on eating my way through the arena, one cheese-steak at a time. I still have 1.5 lbs to gain back to reach my pre-pregnancy weight after weeks of feeling nauseated and counting carbs so as to avoid gestational diabetes again. I’ll just use the roll as a dish and eat what’s inside. . .
I wonder if they sell red-beet eggs at the stadium?
The Spring Break Fade
“How many of your outlines contain deductive and inductive reasoning?” I asked my class today.
They’ve had three weeks to work on their persuasive speech topics and outlines. We’ve discussed types of reasoning and fallacies in reasoning for those three weeks. I’ve given them example after example. I’ve shown them example after example.
One hand went up, but it wasn’t because he had deductive reasoning in his outline.
“What’s deductive reasoning again?” he asked.
I had to take a deep breath. Nothing irritates me more than when I am crystal clear about what I’m looking for, I spend weeks teaching my butt off and explaining and re-explaining and then they just decide they’re going to ignore everything I’ve told them to do anyway. Most of the time I love teaching; but on days like today, when I feel like I’ve been talking to a concrete wall for weeks, I despise it.
So I went on one of my little tirades. Truth be told, I’ve usually had a tirade or four by this point in the semester. I should consider this a good sign. It took until the end of March for me to need to go ballistic. But the pregnancy hormones raged and I felt like my head was going to explode.
I threw the question back out at them to see if anyone had done the required reading, if anyone had been paying attention. One student raised his hand and told me the definition for inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning. So I did what any good teacher would do. I tortured them with random topics and made them create a ready-to-go speech that was due. . . today. All speeches had to have both an example of deductive and inductive reasoning. By the end of the hour and 20 minutes, they had it down. And I was able to take a deep cleansing breath and get it out of my system.
These students are definitely showing signs of the spring break fade (with 4-8 inches of snow expected tomorrow); it’s not exactly spring. My senior has the worst case of senioritis I’ve ever seen, and my freshmen just want to go home. I think I’m going to have to start taking Hershey Kisses to class to throw at them and keep them on their toes. Chocolate is the only thing that works this time of the year.
Today, I am syndicated on BlogHer! If you missed it the first time around, go check it out here.
Bouncing Back
It is a difficult task to write, when you are feeling like you have to barf all the time. I spent the past few weeks being green and unlike what Kermit claims, it’s not fun, cool, or trendy. It just plain sucks. This past Saturday, something miraculous happened. I woke up and didn’t feel like I had to throw up for once. Sunday was the same. Monday I felt great too. Tuesday was awful. Why you ask? Well, Mr. BBM decided to make coffee while I was on campus and I came home to a house that smelled horrible.
This morning, as I was getting ready to take Sassy to school, Mr. BBM asked me what my plans were for the morning. Sneaky little sucker was trying to see if he could sneak in making a pot of coffee. I called him a bunch of names and threatened his existence. He decided to make tea.
If I have to get fat, feel nauseated all the time, and have major food aversions, then he can avoid coffee until I can handle it, which might be never.
The past two days have been great, besides feeling like I could take a nap anywhere at any time. On Thursday, my students were looking at me like I had two heads or something. I told them, “You’re not used to this, are you? Mrs. B is back baby! I’m finally feeling better. . . BUT DON’T FOR A SECOND THINK YOU CAN START BRINGING COFFEE BACK INTO MY CLASSROOM!”
I think the first trimester nausea is finally coming to an end. I am 11 weeks and 1 day pregnant today. Lots of people have asked me where my belly is, and I’ve been busy telling myself that it’s all those months of hard work on my abs. They are not giving up without a good fight. Besides a little bump, it’s definitely not obvious yet.
In other news, Sassy got her cast off on Monday. It was violent and insane and I had a hard time keeping a calming look on my face with the way the lady was going at my little girl’s cast “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” style. Sassy was not happy about it and spent a lot of time crying and saying she wanted the cast back on. Her knee and ankle are stiff and sore from being frozen in time for four weeks and although it is Friday, she has yet to really walk on her own. She seems to have forgotten how, and I’m tempted to get her some physical therapy, despite the doctor saying she would bounce back without it.
I know my kid. She doesn’t bounce. She has a mentality like an adult and she thinks about everything entirely too much, exactly like I do. I really think physical therapy would do her some good. In the meantime though, she’s got a mommy who has been through PT many times and I’ve been having her do some exercises and ride her big wheel to get her motion and strength back again. I think, that at this point, it’s about 90% mental and I get that. I really do. But it is frustrating because I have to carry her almost everywhere. Despite the fact that I’ve been through this mental business so many times, I am having a hard time keeping my patience with her. Despite going through it just last year, it’s easy to forget after time passes. I’m trying to remember those early days of wobbly legs and doubt to help her through, but this kid has got to start walking soon. My back can’t take much more. It’s simply not a matter of “sucking it up.” It’s really difficult to get over physical hurdles; more-so to get over the mental ones. Mr. BBM told her he would pay her $20 if she walked on her own this afternoon. I have never seen a child more motivated by money. She just might do it.
Everything in Care Bear Terms
It was inevitable. Despite all the well-meaning people (thank you!) who showed up with coloring books, sticker books, learning books, activities and books in general, Sassy has become quite addicted to the TV during her three weeks of hanging out in a full leg cast. More specifically, she is addicted to our Wii system and the Netflix that comes along with it.
The sticker books are filled. The activities are all completed, and the coloring books are mostly finished too. Finished also? My brain cells, which have been so overly subjected to Wii Party music that sometimes it’s all I hear, even when it’s not on. There’s also this song from her favorite Care Bear movie that she plays over and over again, that goes something like this, “I like you, I like you. I like you. I like you.” It’s enough to make you bang your head into a wall until you thankfully lose consciousness.
This week, Mr. BBM had a very untimely business trip to Raleigh NC. I told him that he was probably looking forward to getting away from us. He protested. “Of course not!” I mean, why would he want to get away from his 5-year old daughter who has to be carried everywhere, including to and from the bathroom? Why would he want to leave this house where every smell sends me running to the bathroom and I can’t even cook because the smells of cooking and looking at certain foods, send me nearly over the barfing edge.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I told him. “You mean to tell me that you’re getting a week away from ‘Hop-a-Long’ and ‘Pukes-a-lot’ and you’re not happy about it???”
Mr. BBM laughed hysterically and then said he is concerned, because clearly, if I’m creating nicknames like that, I’ve been watching entirely too many Care Bear movies. He is so right.
Please say a prayer this cast comes off next Monday; because if it doesn’t, I’m going to require a long-term visit from Cheer Bear, stat.
Motivation in a 9-year-old Package
In August, Big I came to me and made a request. She wanted to quit ju-jutsu so she could concentrate more on swimming. After she failed to achieve county qualifying times for a single event and after missing out on a ribbon at the novice meet too, I was a little surprised. In the past, she tried t-ball and field hockey. Neither of them held her interest and she wanted to quit almost as soon as she started. I figured that swimming would have discouraged her too. As she watched her friends collect trophies and ribbons, I feared that her motivation to continue would wain.
It didn't.
She asked me for private lessons in August and I immediately signed her up. I also signed her up for a 6-week fall training program at a local USA swimming club. She had the opportunity to swim up to five days a week. She usually swam three days a week, plus her private lessons. She started to improve; it was obvious; but without any time trials to really know, we could only mark her improvement visually. Her strokes looked better. Her endurance was definitely improving. It was neat to watch.
Each week of the fall program, Big I would come home from school on Monday and tell me what her week looked like homework-wise. Then, she would plan out which nights she wanted to swim. She made herself a schedule, got her homework done on time or ahead of time and never complained about going to swim for an hour each night.
As the end of the fall program approached, we figured she had improved and we would take her back to the school's age group swimming program. We thought we would let her experience a little success. We knew USA swimming was highly competitive. I didn't want her to get discouraged. But when I asked her coaches if she could stay and practice with the team until age group started, her coaches told us not to go. I mumbled something about letting her experience some success and her coach waved that thought away. "Let her experience success when she's 14, when it really matters. Right now, let us work on her strokes and make her good."
Mr. BBM and I spent our anniversary weekend discussing things. USA swimming is a bigger commitment than age group swimming. The season is longer, the meets are further away, and the monetary commitment is a lot bigger too. We decided to listen to her coach, one of the first ones who has really paid attention to her and given her individualized attention, someone who stops her as soon as she's doing something wrong and fixes it immediately, someone who asks us to come in on off days to work individually with her. We kept her with club swimming.The coach to swimmer ratio was too irresistible to take her anywhere else.
The fall program turned into the winter program and participating in invitational meets is optional. However, after swimming in one of the dual meets, Big I had a blast and did so well that we thought we'd sign her up for one or two.
This weekend, Big I participated in a two-day swim meet, the last of the season. She has been competitively swimming for only 15 months as of this past weekend, and what she's done over the past few months is nothing short of amazing.
She took her 50 free time from a 49.85 in the summer to a 35.94. She took her 50 Breast stroke time from a 1:06:35 to 48:77. She took her 50 butterfly time from a 59:07 to a 41:94. She started swimming 100's too. From the first weekend in February until this past weekend, she knocked four seconds off her 100 IM time to a 1:32:26. She swam a 100 breast stroke in 1:44:27. Her goal was to get into the BB time standards this weekend. She did so in three of her six events. She earned ribbons in four of her six events this weekend. And this is USA swimming. She was lucky if she won a heat ribbon last summer.
Big I has one month left of the winter program. Then, she'll have two weeks off before starting the 6 week spring program that will prepare her for summer. I'm thinking that her summer coaches will probably fall over when they see how much she has improved. From the beginning of February to the end, she shaved a combined 20 seconds off of six events. Just imagine what she'll do by the time she has her first summer swim meet!
Last year, she was disappointed that she didn't qualify for a single event in the county championships. Mr. BBM recently got on the website and checked the times needed to qualify. She already, would qualify in each and every event. In most, she blows the qualifying times away.
What's cooler though, than all the shaved off seconds and the recent influx of ribbons, is that this kid LOVES to be in the water like no other kid I've ever seen. She lives, eats, breathes swimming.
Last month, I took her to a high school swim meet. One of the coaches is Kristy Kowal, 2000 Olympic Silver Medalist in breast stroke. After the meet, Big I met her and asked her to sign her cap. I got a picture of them together too. It was a moment I don't think she will ever forget. She listened to the stories about how Kristy swam exhibition events until she was in high school. She admires the hard work that Kristy obviously put into her swimming and she has decided she's going to do the same.
At night, Big I will frequently write in her journal. A couple months ago, she wrote swimming goals for herself. It's time for her to write a new set, because she has met each and every one of them. After all the frustration of watching her give less than full effort at t-ball, field hockey, karate and ju-jutsu, I think it's safe to say that she has found her sport. I couldn't be more thrilled for her or proud of her accomplishments. I truly believe the sky is the limit for her. She set her mind to it and she's doing it. I don't know very many 9-year olds who are committed to something the way she is to swimming. She's pretty amazing.
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