Now that Bean has discovered how much fun it is to pull herself up on everything (furniture, boxes, pets, dads laying on the floor, etc...) she has decided sleep, albiet necessary and rather wonderful, is for chumps. In fact, she's refusing to do it. Ever.

Man, these milestones are killing me. I'm going to need some eye cream and amphetamines if I'm going to make it through teething/walking/talking. Sheesh.

I know its all my fault too, for being one of those smug moms who gets tons of sleep and thinks she knows the secret. There is no secret. There is only karma. I have definitely learned my lesson.

*Yawn*

she's a babbler. i love it!

Crawling is going very well, the cat is officially doomed.

Something happened a while back and I got too busy to post about it, but since its still haunting me I'll put it out there.
I went in my bathroom, which is where we've had our worst spider problem, and I put Bean in her jumper-thing. I looked down and right below my sink (2 ft away from Bean) was a HUGE spider.

Huge.

So I pull her back out of her jumper and we retreat to the living room. I laid her down and ran to the kitchen for bug spray. I grabbed the first can I found and it, she, was in the same spot so I went to spraying... when three things happened:

1. I realized I had not grabbed bug spray after all, that I was actually furniture polishing the little thing to death...
2. the spider was running very quickly towards me,
3. it, she, had something... on her back... that was falling off... like dirt? fur? tiny baby spiders? TINY BABY SPIDERS!!! HUNDREDS OF THEM!

I grabbed the first shoe I could find and I smashed til I couldn't smash any more... and then, I returned to the kitchen, grabbed the bug spray, and proceeded to kill off as many of the tiny baby spiders as I could... though, they're fast, and tiny. At that point I grabbed Bean, and we sat outside and waited for Husband-Pants to return home and clean up my spidery massacre. It was really quite horrible. In fact, I'm still having nightmares and killing tiny baby spiders around my bathtub.

The jury's still out on whether or not it was a harmless house spider or something more sinister and creepy. Lovely.

At 6 and a half months, Bean is fully mobile. Watch out, world!

Husband-Pants and I went to meet with his dietitian in Little Rock a couple of weeks ago. We weren't nearly as off track as we thought we were, and she was actually very impressed with his progress. He's been weighing in at 320 at home and when he hopped up on her scales he was pleasantly surprised to find that he was 20 lbs lighter! You better believe I nearly threw him off the scale in my scramble to see if the same was true for myself, but alas, it was not. Our scales here at the house must be off. Yay! Husband-Pants hasn't weighed 300 lbs since Jr High school. He can now comfortably wear an XL shirt (well, a big XL, not all of them) and he's starting to lose around the waist again. Yay! I am, as of this morning, down to 161. Quite an accomplishment considering the copious amount of brownies and cookies I indulged in this week (indulged = pigged out). I am officially in a size 13 jean again for the first time in 3 years (holy crap!) and I'm feeling good. We've both got 25 more lbs to lose to be at our weight goals. Its been a crazy long road. :)

Bean is in to everything. She's almost mastered the art of crawling, right now its more of a rocking/pulling with her hands/dragging her feet thing, which is cute in a baby duckling sort of way, with its awkwardness increased exponentially by how many blankets/toys are in the way of where she is and where she wants to be. Its adorable, really. That means we've spent nearly a month babyproofing our home. Currently, the only non-babyfriendly items consist of our wine rack, and bedroom. We thought it'd be a great idea to buy a bed similar to this last fall. The only problem is, its got sharp corners everywhere. I've got bruises on my shins from clumsily searching for the bathroom at night and last week Bean bumped her noggin straight on the corner. It was terrible. We're officially on the hunt for a baby-friendly bed, I'm slowly giving in.

Really though, Bean's a handful. A grimy-handed, drooly-faced, long-haired diaper tyrant that cares only for boobs, mirrors, and pets... Not really. She's a lovable, adorable little monkey that wants to play all the time and love on everyone. She's really enjoying playing by herself now, which is lovely. She weighs 17lbs 3oz and she's 26inches. That makes her 75% in weight, which is fantastic. She's eating solids like a champ, and blabbering up a storm. She's absolutely amazing and I can't keep up with her a bit.

That is the question.

Husband-pants and I are trying to decide if we want to have another bean. If you'll recall, when I was pregnant, I wanted a whole herd of them- lots of little Gerlaughs running about! The more the merrier! Birth control is for suckas! Women were born to have babies! This gives my life purpose and meaning and that's all I could ever ask for!

That was then.

Now don't get me wrong, I had a WONDERFUL pregnancy, and was terribly thrilled about all of it, down to the peeing on myself with every step I took days. My 18 hours of labor even weren't all that terrible... in fact, dare I say I actually enjoyed labor, and were it not for the mountains of medical bills that rolled in afterwards, I'd do it any day. It was empowering, rewarding... and magical, all at once. I am also blessed with a well-behaved, wonderfully bright, responsive, fun kid... who I enjoy spending all of my time with. Really, it would make sense that I'd want to do it all over again, but I'm just not so sure.

First off, I would love for Bean to be an only child, to grow up with all of our time, attention, and focus. I can see so many benefits to it... and I've heard so many times that when you have another, you just develop more attention, more focus, more love, than you ever expected to have, and that neither kid feels left out, but I'm just not so sure. Maybe it was because my sister was so much younger than me, or maybe its because my parents divorced the year she was born, leaving my mom to raise us both and single-handedly support our family, but that kid took up a lot of everyone's focus, and there were times I felt mighty left out. I'm sure that during my rebellious teenage years when I was working every nerve my mother had, that she felt the same way. I wonder at times if that lack of attention caused my "look at me, i'm doing something i'm not supposed to!" attitude in my late teen years, and my sister's "i refuse to do anything to fit in with anyone because i need attention! gimme gimme gimme!" attitude right now. I don't want to deal with all of that, for Bean's sake or mine!

Plus, I'm just now getting the hang of this small business thing. I'm finally getting to the point where I can make a decent living by working at home, which is so wonderful! It was so hard when Bean was little because I didn't have the time, and even now my design time is precious, I have to do as much as I can between breastfeeding, diaper changes, picking her up so she doesn't roll under the TV cabinet, walking about, playing, and learning with her... Why would I want to add another baby to the mix!? This one's just getting the hang of being a real person!

Why, indeed... all of my reasoning so far has gone into why I don't want another one, why I think it'd be better to stop right here... but there's still another side to all of this. Husband-pants wants another one... right now. He wants a little boy, which I completely understand is every father's dream, he wants football practice and someone to watch wrestling with, blue baby booties and pee pee tee pees... but what if we do get pregnant again and its another little girl? Does that mean we're trying for a third? Maybe it makes me an awful wife and abnormal woman but that just makes me cringe! Kids are so much work! I'm way happy with just one, thanks! Now that's definitely not to say that I wouldn't be thrilled if we got pregnant again... I'm a firm believer that if its supposed to happen it will... but planning for another? I just don't think its for me.

That's why this week I'm determined to figure out what to do about birth control... "Oops" just isn't an option until we're totally sure what we want to do. It is, in fact, how we got to this point in the first place, remember? Now that's not to say "Oops" can't be a happy word, its just a much better idea, in my opinion, to have a plan for such things. Its what responsible adults do, right?

My mom tells me I'll get the urge to do it all over again... that it took her 7 years but she finally did. That at some point I'll see someone's adorable little baby and my uterus will scream and bam! its procreation time!! And I don't disagree! Part of me would love to be pregnant again... to labor for hours upon hours and have another warm little baby-scented ball of love... it would be amazing... all of it... but after that part is over, there's another little person who'll be demanding my time and attention all over again. While I'd be just as glad to give it as freely as I have for Bean, I'd much rather give it all to Bean, and to my marriage, and to our family... because really, its pretty fantastic just the three of us.


Now that's not to say I'm not a little bummed about never having a real occasion to use a pee pee tee pee, but for now I'll settle for giving them away to all of my friends who are currently fulfilling their destinies by bringing beautiful children into the world, hopefully some of which are boys that actually have a need for such contraptions.