September 3rd - Crab Day/Carb Day

Happy Crab Day!!!

In Bob's family, they have this little tradition of meeting at Mommom & Poppop's, having a picnic (although we're inside most of the day) w/ cheesburgers and hotdogs, pasta salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, shrimp, cake, peanut butter 'tandy takes' (candy cakes - homemade by Mommom) and CRABS. Whole, nasty, over-seasoned crabs that they break apart with nutcrackers and suck on and it's enough to make you ill. Spiders of the sea, disgusting things, these crabs. I'll eat shrimp - I did a lot today, actually, beause they're low-carb and low-mercury. But crabs I won't touch.

But we also draw names for the Christmas Pollyanna (secret Santa exchange) and in the last few years we've done Ronny's (Bob's 2nd youngest cousin) birthday party. Mmmm cake.

So we took a walk before we left for Crab Day, giving Max and me some excercise. Or rather, I shuffled and waddled along and was tired after 10 minutes of shuffling and waddling, and Bob tried to walk really slow while Max pulled his arm out of his socket. The idea was to get my sugar down, and it must have worked, cause my sugar was 91 when I took it later after eating like, well, like a non-diabetic person.

Considering it was both lunch and dinner, and drawn out over the course of about 5 1/2 hours, what I ate wasn't too bad. I won't be showing a written food diary from today to my doctor or anything, though. 2 cheeseburgers, 3 slices of tomato w/ salt & pepper, macaroni salad, potato salad, pasta salad...well, pretty much everything I listed above. Including a tiny piece of case and 2 candy cakes. Not too bad. But I'm sure a little to carby than I should have gotten. But one day won't make a difference. But yeah. Carb City.

Bob's cousins Mike & Sam were there w/ their 9-month old baby girl, Gabrielle. She had the same due date as we do, November 24th, a year ago. So it was a neat chance to see what our baby might look/act like a year from now. She's a mamma's girl, Gabby. Mike told me that she sometimes screams when he picks her up out of her crib, because she only wants Sam. Sam held her most of the day, with a little protected crawling on the floor, and a brief moment or two with cousin Shannon and Bob's mom. I would have loved to hold her, but I didn't want to upset the delicate balance of baby-happiness. All I can say is I really hope our girl will be the type to go to anybody. I hate this "only Mommy can hold her" business.
Well they have this lovely 9 month old baby who, despite her apparent obsession with her mother, is usually sweet and happy, and could stand in for the Gerber baby any time.
Well they dropped a nice little bomb today - they're 4 months pregnant with their 2nd baby!!!!
Yeeeeeaaaaaah. Wow.
Apparently they give you this mini-pill after you have a baby, with half the hormone dose, because your body is supposed to do the rest of the birth control for 6 months after you give birth. Nature's way of spacing out the kidlets so you can concentrate on one at a time. Well it seems this pill doesn't exactly work very well. In fact, cousin Shannon had an ectopic pregnancy while she was on it. Sounds like something I will want to avoid. Particularly because I don't want to have a newborn and a...let's see, Gabby will be...15 month-old at home at the same time!
I caught the slightest twinge of annoyance from Bob's Mom, since next year WE were going to be the ones with the new baby, and now there will be another in the family just 5 months later. At the next Crab Day, there will be 2 newbies!!! (Geez, it'll be loud!) Eh, Mike & Sam hardly every come to stuff anyway. We haven't seen them since...maybe Mother's Day? Maybe before then. No skin off my hiney. Besides, Baby D. will have quite a doting circle of family around her, being the first grandkid on both sides. I have a feeling I'll have to speak to Laura about the amount of Barbie memorabilia. Unrealistic image of women...and those pants are so damn hard to put on those dolls!

I feel awful for Shannon, though. They have a 2 1/2 year-old, Christin, who's a sweetie pie and very entertaining in her 2 year-old ways. (Snatching the plastic car off the top of Ronny's birthday cake, taking bites off of everything on the table and then putting it back on the platter, having tantrums on the floor...she was good for a few laughs today. Mostly cause it's not my kid doing all that stuff, it's actually quite funny!) But I know they've been trying for their 2nd baby for a while. And Shannon had that ectopic pregnancy a while ago, and a miscarriage right before we got pregnant. So that's two sets of cousins now she's watched get pregnant before her. And being a mommy is clearly what that girls' all about. *Sigh* life's not fair sometimes. Not that that kind of sad event is fair for anybody. But I just feel for her. I felt guilty, sitting there being all...pregnant, and stuff. Shannon's not my favorite perosn in the world (conservative, homeschooling, preachy, & churchy), but she's nice to me and nobody deserves that kind of disappointment.

So we had a nice Crab Day. I believe I actually know where the little slips of paper with the names of the people we're going to buy for, and their gift suggestions. Last year December hit and I had no clue where I'd put them. Hell, Nick downright lost his and had to wait till the end of Polyanna and present the last person with a Target gift card. THIS will be the year of the gift cards from us, however. Seriously, I am NOT running around a mall looking for a specific CD or Snowbaby or Willow Tree figurine. Everybody needs to tell us what stores they like, and BOOM, they're getting the store's card, in a card. Which kind of sucks, cause we have tons of Christmas wrapping paper and I really love making the Christmas gifts look pretty every year. I'm getting pretty good! As for the Polyanna, I didn't actually read the suggestions, I just hope they put a store down that they like shopping at. I intend to start my Christmas shopping right after Halloween and be done in a week or so.

Except Bobby. What will I do about Bobby? Hopefully I'll be healthy & feeling good and I can just pop out and shop for him while I'm home on my first weeks of maternity leave. He does like gift cards, but I can't do that for my husband!!! At least not ALL his gifts!

It's weird to be thinking about Christmas in September. But hey, the time flies once school starts. That's why we do Pollyanna drawing at Crab Day.