Where Have I Been?

Time is rushing by me faster than I ever imagined it could.

Miss M is 22 months--a joy that I will save for a separate post. She is full of light and laughter and words and SENTENCES, and cracks me up all the time. Tonight we were watching tv while she played with her toys. There was a scene where a character was very ill, and all of the other characters were very upset about it. She looked up and said "people sad." I just loves that she gets what is going on around her.

I am 23 weeks into this pregnancy. 23 weeks!!! How did that happen? When we first got pregnant, a nurse warned me that this pregnancy would fly by, and that I'd have no time to sit with my feet up on the couch and enjoy it like I did when I was pregnant with Miss M, and boy was she right! Every day is packed to the gills. Right now, all I do is work, play with Miss M, prepare for Thanksgiving (we're having 20 people over!!! And you should see the size of my dinky European oven!), and Christmas shop (online, at night, when Miss M is asleep--Toys R Us is having a buy one-get-one-half-off sale on Legos and Duplos through Saturday, if you have a child who is obsessed with them like mine is). We had our big scan a few weeks ago. Numero Dos is still a girl. Everything looked pretty good on the ultrasound, and they gave us a video of the whole thing, and photos, and 3D photos. In the 3D view, her bone structure looked very much like Miss M's did when she was a baby. It was cool to see live, but the 3D photos are a bit creepy, I have to say. The only odd finding, which I'm trying not to freak out about, was that there are choroid plexus cysts in the baby's brain. We were assured that these have no real clinical significance, and generally disappear on their own with no impact on development. Dr. Google is similarly reassuring. There are some studies that suggest such a finding is linked to genetic disorders like Trisomy 18, but we did CVS and it came back clear for that. So, I've been trying to ignore that finding. The upside to staying so busy is that I don't have time to worry myself over every little thing like I did with much of Miss M's pregnancy.

Work has continued to be insanely busy. We have more staff now, so it will hopefully slow down, but it's been more than I'd hoped for, frankly. I'm enjoying it immensely, but I'd like there to be less of it. I'm traveling a ton. Mostly day trips, but still. My inbox is overflowing and I have piles of emails to return. I feel like I will never catch up, and I am hopelessly behind on the bureaucratic stuff. Like receipts. I hate expense reports. Can't someone just give me carte blanche with a credit card, and we'll call it a day?

We've done a bit of traveling recently--a long weekend in Normandy for fun, and a week and a half in Scotland for work. T and Miss M were able to join me in Scotland for part of the trip, and of course the best part was playing in the gorgeous hotel pool. Miss M loves to swim. We're going to be enrolling her in lessons, possibly starting this week. Normandy was amazing--charming old stone villages and good food. It was also heartbreaking to see all of the WWII stuff.

I am feeling good. I overdid it a bit this last week hiking and dragging around my luggage and my back is a bit sore, so I treated myself to a pregnancy massage today. I can't decide if it actually helped at all. I will definitely be sleeping with my hot water bottle tonight. I am such an old woman.

And although it has nothing to do with me personally, can I just rant for a minute about the Penn State child sex abuse scandal? Grad student McCreary walked in on a 10 year old being raped, and walked right out again? He did NOTHING to intervene? Really??? And then he told other people, and no one reported it to the police? With all that has happened with the Catholic church sex abuse scandal in the U.S. and was actively happening and all over the news during the timeframe in question, no one thought to go to the police? Really??? Let's set aside the legal requirements for a moment. Everyone anywhere in that chain of knowledge, from Paterno to university officials to other coaches, are absolute scum. I don't care how many games they won or how much money they have made in PA. You don't walk out on a child being raped. You save the child. Period. You SAVE THE CHILD. And you don't make the call on what did happen or what should happen--you hand the information to the police, and you let THEM make the call. That's the job of law enforcement, not football coaches and school administrators. I also have to say, I don't understand the reaction of the community/students who support Paterno. Paterno is not god. He is a man who was good at his job. But as good as he may have been at his job, he also knew about child sexual assault, and did nothing. That is utterly unacceptable. Maybe his age played into it--when he was a young man, people did look the other way at pedophiles. But we don't live in that world anymore. My heart breaks for those children who have been victimized by the Penn State sports establishment. Sandusky isn't the only one who needs a trial.

I haven't been anywhere near the internet lately, so I am way behind on what everyone has been doing, but I promise to catch up soon. I hope everyone is well!