I have never seen anything like it. She didn’t poop yesterday, and was awake all morning, I am so so so very tired, she finally went down around 12:30, and I passed out too. She woke up around 3, and I fed her, and then laid her on a pillow on my lap while I made like Bessie Moo with the pump. She stared at the fan and made silly faces and then, there is no other word for it – erupted.

The noise was fantastic, and as I gazed at the suspicious new color of the leg of her diaper I thought well, at least she finally pooped. Now, for effect, keep in mind I’ve got boob pumps in each hand, so am sort of stuck. Plus, I’m mostly naked, cause clothes are just over rated at this point. All I had on were the rockin’ hospital issue mesh panties!

I decided since she started wailing that perhaps I should disengage myself from the machine and attend to her bottom. So, I did and picked her up, and was delighted to note the poo leaking out the opposite top side of her diaper through her onesie – oh ya, this is gonna be good.

I get her to the changing table and opened the gates of hell. Poo everywhere. Up the front, the back, out the side, and oh – taking a poo covered onesie off a screaming wiggling child? Next time I’ll just cut it off cause I managed to additionally smear poo all over her face and in her hair – rock on super star mom. Five wipes in and poo on the kids head, I realized I was no match for this disaster, gave up, cuddled my shit slicked infant to my chest and started the shower. Luckily Josh had come home early to work from home, so I opened the door and called him and gave him detailed instructions.

“Do not touch the baby, or me. Get a bag and collect the carnage off the changing table (at this point I wish I’d taken pictures, it was THAT awesome), get a clean diaper, onesie, and a towel, and wait for me to give you the clean child.” Luckily he follows instructions well, and got her dried and dressed while I finished my shower.

My thought now is – what the hell do you do if that happens in public? Pray? Cause there was no containing that disaster. She feels better now though thank you very much.

Motherhood is awesome. She was adorable in the shower though, didn’t fuss, just blinked at me with those big Disney princess eyes.

Although I imagine I’d be happy too if someone were holding me in a warm shower, washing my hair, and my bottom for me. Those were the days…..

But, truly? There is nothing like it. It is one thing for strangers to fawn all over you precious dogs and say how cute and lovely and soft they are – I take credit for being able to pick a cute dog, feed it well, and give them regular baths with good shampoo. It is quite another to have strangers fawn all over your baby. Strangers who see babies every day and call each other over to say “Hey, you have to look at this one, she is so cute, all that hair! Adorable.”

Being the curmudgeon I am, I ask “Don’t you say that to all the moms?” Oh no, we say they are nice babies, but they aren’t all cute. Kind of bumps your ego a bit.

I did that. I created, carried, and with quite a bit of assistance brought into the world that adorable little girl. I’m pretty proud of myself and am very pleased with her. Huh. I’m still a bit in shock, but I’m a whole lot in love right now.

Welcome to the world baby Q – I can’t wait to take you home to meet your dogs.

On a brighter note, I am fully enjoying and taking advantage of these last days of blissful silence and blessed solitude. Never in my life have I had such freedom to just be. To do whatever I feel like, and spend my days following my whims. I realize how precious this is, and am absolutely reveling in it. Somehow, the summer did speed by, with last minute jobs to finish up, baby shopping to finish, all sorts of deep cleaning projects around the house. So so much to do, and now, finally, it is done. Yesterday, after weeks of air conditioning, it was finally cool enough to open the house and enjoy a lovely little breeze. Which makes me oh so very happy, because just around the corner is weather cool enough to allow for big fluffy blankets on the bed, and the rattlesnakes will go back to sleep and the dogs and I can head out to the canyon. I love the fall, winter and spring here in souther Cal. Perfect weather, I’ll even take the rain and it’s lovely freshness. It’s the summer I could do without.

While I’m a bit (ok, a lot) nervous about sharing my home and life with a small human being, I am looking forward to toting her up to the top of the canyon and sharing dog adventures with her. I am, for the first time in many, many years, looking forward to the holidays – and dressing my baby up to match my dogs for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and whatever holiday we’ll choose to celebrate this winter. Hey, I can make her wear whatever I want while she’s little and can’t talk. This is the payoff for the last several months of pain.

The dogs have settled in with me, and seem relatively content to hang around the house and just be. They are less stressed because there are *finally!* no extra dogs here, so for a bit, they have mommy all to themselves. A touch pent up, perhaps, as they are so used to the go go go of our life, but they are adjusting. Eventually, I’m sure we’ll get back to our life on the road, but for now, and for the next few months, it’s home we’ll be – and happy to be here.

I think that my life will never be the same. Not sure if that’s good or bad. I worry about everything, cause, well, that’s what moms do. Got that part down.

She’s been mine, and only mine, all these months. Part of me aches to put her in her daddy’s arms, and let her kick him in the ribs for a while. Part of me wonders if I’ll be capable of letting go of her for a minute. It’s bizarre, this bond you create with the unseen in your belly. I so want my body back, but I wonder what I’ll have to trade for it. Sleep? Sanity?

I’m trying so very hard to enjoy these last few weeks where I can take baths in the afternoon, nap all I want, and can still work my life on my schedule. I find I’m impatient though, and ready to get on with it already. I think the baby is ready too. She is forever kicking and stretching, and seems unhappy about her rapidly decreasing bedroom space. Really, baby, I agree.

I hope she loves the dogs, I know they will love her. They love everyone, low standards, what can I say? I hope she inherits her daddy’s joy for every day, and not my eternal crankiness. Cause two of us, that wouldn’t be good.

I’d write about dog adventures, but really, I’ve finally cleared out the house and since it’s just my dogs here now – oh the blessed peace – they don’t do much that inspires writing. Unless you count projectile vomiting, but we’ve done that already. Our adventures have been limited lately, with the heat, humidity, and Karma’s broken toe nail, we’ve been couching it a lot these days. They seem quite content. Enjoy these few weeks of not having to share you mom, guys, cause you’re all in for a pretty rude wake up. If only they knew…

We often share stories, trials and tribulations of our respective clans, and often find that we have the very same complaints. Someone not listening, siblings fighting, someone acting up to get attention, someone else pottying on the carpet. Strange but true.

As I get closer and closer to becoming a mom to a human myself, her advice, support, and knowledge of human babies has been invaluable to me. As I get bigger and slower, I have more free time to actually spend with my friend, rather than rushed phone calls while I am on the road to somewhere else.

Today I took my four beasts over to play at her mom’s house, and she brought her three kids, and her sister’s two kids. We turned the kids loose in the pool, and the dogs loose in the yard. Now mind you, my friend respects and understands the bond I have with my dogs, but has not spent all that much time around them over the years. The kids have only been around the dogs a few times mostly due to my hectic schedule. So I had to laugh today when the kids decided to play ball with the dogs, and completely disgusted by the “slimy” balls, went to get plastic gloves in order to pick them up. You have to admire the ingenuity. Bless my dogs, they were mostly brilliant, didn’t jump on the kids and waited nicely for a ball to be thrown. Karma, though, poor dear, does not understand the concept of playing slowly. She zoomed for the ball, zoomed back to throw it at someone’s feet, anyone will do, and then proceeded to bark madly at them until they got brave enough to pick up the ball again.

My dear friend says “Can’t she play quietly?” Um, no, that does not compute in the collie brain. There is only ONE way to play ball and this is it. “Why does she have to bark at it?” Well, that’s what she does when she’s in drive, and seeing a ball puts her in drive. “Drive?” my friend says, “Well, PARK IT then dog!”

I see the logic and how my friend got there, but it was still pretty damn funny.

You see them all the time, the poor backwards belly buttons of hugely pregnant women, crying out for all to see “Hey, the pressure in here, it’s killing me!” And sorry ladies, but the outies just gross me out. They are, somehow to me, obscene in their sticky-outyness. My belly button is one of the smallest I have ever seen, it’s polite, tiny, and only occasionally traps dog hair. Really, really, it’s the one feature I have that I love unconditionally – all I wanted was for it to be just as cute and perfect after pregnancy as it was before. I hope that if it pops out, which it looks like it will do any second now, it returns to it’s normal happy self once this child has left my body. For that matter, I hope I return to some semblance of normal, although that is doubtful at this point.

As we get to the end of this pregnancy adventure, with only 7 weeks left (give or take depending on baby’s mood), I am, like many other moms, exhausted, feeling large and uncoordinated, really ready to not be pregnant anymore, and terrified of all the future nights of feedings and diapers. Since I am in constant pain, I am looking forward to having this baby out – but I fear I am only trading one kind of pain for another. Oh well.

Really, if my poor belly button makes it, I’ll count myself lucky.

Bear is still here, going to be staying a bit longer. He is, as predicted, doing very well with his obedience and social skills. He’s still a bit behind, but that is understandable given that he is a rescue and the first year or so of his life he was just left out back to entertain himself. I still think he’s a nice little dog, although we’ve learned that he is absolutely terrified to have his back feet touched, and not too fond of the front ones either. We’re working on that. Lots of foot rubs and cookies. He’s figured out that paying attention gets him cookies, so he’s looking at me a lot more, which is nice. He’s very please with himself when he figures out new things, which is also a huge step in the “I am using my brain power now” direction.

I have pretty much announced that I am starting maternity leave to all my contacts and people who refer to me, and what do you know? I think it worked! The phone has been dead silent for days, which is nice, but a bit bizarre. I am now 28 weeks, and although October 1st sounds really far away – it’s only 12 weeks!! Yikes!! 12 weeks, 3 months, oh my holy cow, am I ever not ready for this!! But then, is anyone, ever? Baby is busy and so far healthy, and I am over being pregnant. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long summer.

We are gearing up for Wags for Wishes this weekend, a huge doggie event that is a fundraiser for the Make A Wish foundation. It’s got every dog sport you can imagine – flyball, disc dogs, lure coursing, splash dogs, racing Jack Russell Terriers, earth dog stuff, agility – it’s just awesome. We are racing with our flyball team on Friday and Sunday, and plan to check out the rest of the events on Saturday. This year they are holding at a mall, so we’ll see how that goes. It’ll either be really cool, or a liability nightmare. Can you imagine dogs running wild through Lancome or the Apple store? Ya, that’s kind of the image in my head. That, and drawing way too many spectators that are not dog savvy and will get in the way of competing dogs.

It’s always irritating when spectators walk through the flyball camps and send the dogs into a frenzy of “Intruder, Intruder – must kill!!!” Flyball isn’t at the actual mall, so hopefully we’ll get more of the “in the know” dog crowd.

Will let you know how that goes – should be interesting to say the least.