99.9 percent effective

i'm eating toast with butter and nutella with vivid dreams from last night keeping me from napping. my sense memory has been hijacked by hormones and i'm remembering the way the ocean feels just off the coast of south maui when i dove underneath at eight thirty in the morning. i woke up underwater with salt drying on my skin and i felt warm and tan. then i remembered i haven't felt that ocean in 9 years and it evaporated, the sea air vanishing between windowpanes.
laying in bed last night, i found myself wrapped in a quilt of regret, patch-worked and worn. do you ever have those moments? when you find yourself in the middle of a masquerade ball and you slowly start to realize that the glimpses behind the masks are video loops of every mistake you've ever made. every bad decision dressed up in borrowed clothes and stilettos and you think i would probably do that differently now that you mention it.
 
finn gave herself a tattoo the other day with a pen when we weren't looking. it was inspired, creative. bryan and i both have multiple tattoos and i realize she mimics us in so many ways. she talks about her boyfriend at preschool and she says she likes him because he says 'yes' and 'no' for her and i bryan and i look at each other and he says 'baby, you need to use your words at school. you need to tell the teachers your words.' and i say (slightly under my breath but yet not) 'besides, your boyfriend should never speak for you.'

i am approximately 11 weeks pregnant with baby number two. i am really sick and the battle to not throw up in public is ongoing. i have a nasty sinus infection left over from the christmas flu (which i had to battle sans medicine since i found out i was pregnant two days before christmas) and i cannot sleep through the night. pregnancy and i do not get along very well and i cannot believe how easy i had it the first time considering i did not have a toddler in the mix. we are blessed and lucky and grateful. full disclosure:  this is baby number two on birth control. we had already decided we were not going to have any more children for financial and safety reasons. we are not where we need to be financially to have another baby and i am no spring chicken. i will be 39 this year. apparently my ovaries heard our conversation and figured it was last call and decided to go big or go home.

i am not ungrateful. we are over the moon about this baby and i know how hard some people try to conceive and i have no idea why the combination of bryan and i together defies birth control. i do not question it. i say thank you and i look forward. and i think that there is no other man that exists that i could ever imagine having a family with and i gather them close to me and say a silent thank you to the powers that be and to my body for ignoring me. then i throw up again and cry a bit and crawl back onto the couch on my left side and try to take a nap and ask bryan to make me more toast. and even though he has the flu, he does.