Modern Maternity Clothes

When I was pregnant with Eric I got me some super-comfy fun maternity clothes. I still have the shirts but the one beloved pants and the other not-as-beloved pants had to go, for style reasons. They were really comfy clothes, with lots of stretch and forgiveness.

So I'm more moderner now and with Russell I was blessed to be able to go in and buy some modern-day maternity clothes, mostly from Target. So Liz Lange, bless her heart, has these maternity clothes and they're supposed to be all stylish but mom-friendly. I will now review her work.

This isn't going to be a positive review. Liz apparently thinks modern and stylish pregnant moms don't care about a) comfort, b)wedgies, or c)their gut hanging out. I have had problems with all these things while wearing Liz's "maternity" clothes. One big thing is the stretchy panel up front. I avoided this altogether on my first maternities, with Eric. I thought, ewww! stretchy panel! So Liz Lange must think that also, because most of her maternities have a big fat stretchy waist-band that's designed to sit at your actual waist. That's pretty ok when you're not very pregnant. But once you hit actual pregnancy size and shape, it's STUPID!! My main problem with this waistband option is that it's super-uncomfortable having stuff right there all over your already uncomfortable fatty old belly. Then you have a contraction and boop! the whole thing slides right down to your crotch. This is Lame. So I give these pants a thumbs up for style and early-pregnancy comfort, but a thumbs down for late-pregnancy everything. They're great for going home from the hospital, though, when you're still all fatty but not pregnant.

Then the other style of pants Liz does is the "below the belly" waistband. I have one pair of these, that was on sale for like $5.41 or so. They are great, in that they don't give you a wedgie all day nearly as bad as stretchy-panel maternity jeans. BUT the downside is that if you don't want your gut hanging right out from under your shirt, these are not the pants for you. Mostly they just slip right down to the crotch pretty much all the time. So, not that comfy out in public or modest. So bless their heart, these pants were a good attempt to keep that big stretchy waistband off your uncomfortable "belly" but don't turn out to solve the problems.

And shirts. Traditional maternity shirts are big and wide and long and comfy. But they do make you look big and wide and huge and enormous. So modern-day maternity clothes involve little shirts. Little stretchy shirts. Oooh, so cute, look at her little pregnant belly. I despise the word belly and all attempts to make your baby gut something cute. It's really not attractive, people. It's just something you have to do and Look Like for a few months in order to score the real bonanza. So, like the pants, little stretchy maternity shirts are cute and flattering early in pregnancy, when regular clothes are too tight but regular maternity shirts are WAY too big. And then you get to the "actually big and pregnant" stage and they become RIDICULOUS. First, if you do have pants or jeans with a stretchy panel, whop! Here it is right out in everybody's face, because little stretchy modern maternity shirts aren't long enough to cover that fun stretchy ugly panel. It's not good looking and I for one, want it covered. Second, even if there were something cute about a pregnant baby-gut, and it were great to wear a little tight stretchy shirt over it, the shirt should at least COVER the baby-gut. Sweet old Liz Lange wants her modern-day maternity shirts to be short. For lack of a better word. She feels it's more stylish and flattering, which may be true when you're not that pregnant. But when you're big and fatty, like me right now, longer is INFINITELY more flattering. I tried on a modern shirt the other day and it was so ludicrously short and stupid-looking that I took it off instantaneously. I didn't even want Russell to see it on me. Really dumb. Plus I am super uncomfortable all the time, if my shirt is sticking a) on my butt or b) on my tummy. I feel like Big Edna in the movie "UHF" adjusting my shirt down constantly all day. These shorty little shirts are murder for a person like me, adjusting and pulling constantly, all day, all day.

Finally, I have something to say about stretchy panels. Nothing will ever be as comfortable as my first un-stylish maternity pants that I don't have anymore. I now have and wear pants with the stretchy panel. They might-well work for some ladies. Me, myself? I am in a state of constant Wedgie-ness. In my attempt to be cute and stylish, and wear modern-day clothes, I have succumbed to vanity at the expense of comfort. Is having a wedgie all the time comfortable? No. But then almost nothing about being pregnant is comfortable. That sounds like whining and it might be. Proto-whining, maybe. So either I can have a wedgie literally all the time, except right after a wedgie-pick and before moving a muscle, or else I can wear the waistband-down-to-the-crotch Liz Lange pants and have my gut hanging out all the time. I feel justified in a little tiny dash of whining. I do get into my jammies as early in the evenings as I can. They are regular clothes, but nice and stretchy and comfy. They make me look really tubby and I don't care. I rave about their comfort. Two thumbs up for comfort, if only for 9 or 10 hours all in the night.

I Rocked the Vote

Yeah, I voted. Jealous!?

Everyone was all worried that it would be three-hour lines out the door and hassles til Tuesday because of fever-pitch excitement with this election. Seth voted by mail because he would be working in The Springs all this week, over the entire time the polls were open. People waited in line during the last couple weeks for early voting, for hours some of them. I was ready to stand in line, because I didn't want to bring my own little folding chair to sit in line. And I'm SO GLAD I didn't bother.

I walked Jules to school, which is also our polling place. I walked into the special gym-door marked "Voter Entrance." I showed my card, signed my name, and stepped into my computer-voting-booth pretty much instantaneously. I am leery of computer ballots with no paper trail; BUT there was a paper trail on this. Just my name and voter ID stuff, but there was the stack of papers relating to those who had voted on this machine, right there. So, more confident. Everyone was all, there are so many initiatives and amendments on our ballots, voting will be so slow. But instead, I took a little cheat sheet I made up beforehand, after researching the candidates and issues. So that made it go really quickly. I had Russell with me. He just sat on the floor eating a peanut butter sandwich, being so good. I had him come in my little booth and push my "vote" button for me. And then we went home. It was SO FAST. No waiting. No lengthy ballot-reading. Plus a sister from our ward was in the booth right next to ours when I left.

No fuss, not really a lot of muss. During the John Kerry/ W. election, I sat up all night, just chewing my fingernails watching the "coverage" and then the next day I had a humongous headache, because of the stress that had been building up for weeks and months. This time I am determined not to get that headache, even though I live in a 50/50 battleground state. My goal is just not to watch very much of the "coverage." Weren't there any fabulous car-crashes or kidnappings or business-closings today you guys can report on?

Second, Second

This is a cozy photo of our couches right when we got them. Since then, I have taken away all the throw pillows. I got tired REAL QUICK of scolding the children to pick them up and stop playing with and on them. So, they disappeared from the scene. I do plan to make new more play-able and floor-able pillows using some pillow forms I got free from Dot 'n Jay, who got them from one of the storage-units they bought at auction, but obviously I haven't done it yet. How cozy and warm this picture looks!

First File, First Picture

I felt so successful doing that tag thing with the fourth photo in your fourth picture file that I decided to do one with my first file, first photo. Maybe next I'll do the 2nd, 2nd and then the 3rd 3rd and so on.

I actually have no active knowledge about this picture. It's taken on the back deck of our townhouse we rented for a year when we moved to Denver. The date on the picture leads me to believe that it might have something to do with the first day of school. Why else would I just take a random photo of Eric on the back deck, and why else would he be wearing a shirt with buttons and an undershirt, unless I made him for a special occasion like the first day of school? So that's what I think it is.

Here's Your Tag

Jodi tagged me to do the Google image search and I tried to do it but failed. Maybe in the future I'll try it again. THIS tag, however, proved to be the easiest one I've ever seen. This here picture is one of many, MANY pictures Eric and I have taken of his Bionicle creations. A couple of them he has uploaded to his Lego page and named. I don't know if this is one of them. I think this picture was actually taken by Eric, judging by the terrible framing. But it could have been me. You know what? No, it couldn't have been me. No way am I taking the picture and leaving the plunger in the frame. As a side note, Eric has been just taking the didge lately and grabbing his own photos of things, so it's a major blessing for Seth's peace of mind that my sister Dorothy found an awesome spongebob USB camera on sale at Target for 5 bucks for Eric's birthday. I feel that he will love it. Eric will. Seth will love Eric NOT using the family camera. I will love the software the comes with it and allows you to superimpose SpongeBob into your photos. So this is my "fourth file, fourth picture" tag and I don't know if it's fair to tag other people or if it will make me feel like a loser if they don't do it, so I'm going to go ahead and just tag.....mmmm...Gretch. And Jon. A little Blog Fodder for ya there.

I HAVE Read Something Good Lately

I saw on the list of 100 books Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne. You know, it's funny. I'm 30 some-odd years old and I never actualy realized there was a real official book. I should have. It's totally obvous. It had to come from somewhere, plus my sister-in-law Jodi was sending me quotes from it on my mission. My thing is, I don't know whether to let myself like Winnie the Pooh, because it's been so adulterated over the last 80 years. Plus the characters and stories have been totally raped since they've been bought by Disney. "Classic Pooh" merchandise?

So I took the children on a whim to the library, because Eric needed another Harry Potter book. And while we were there, on a whim, I looked up Winnie the Pooh, and there it was. The original book. Jules ridiculed me for checking out a Baby Book. Haha! Little does she know!

I actually really liked this book. I love the random capitalization, because I do that too. I love the cleverness and the way not everything is explained out in full detail. And most of all, I love Eeyore, and I'm about to write in my favorite quote, which I read out loud to Seth after reading it and laughing out loud.

The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought,"Inasmuch as which?"--and sometimes he didnt' quite know what he was thinking about.

Classic! So, great book which I'll probably read aloud to the children sometime in the future, and too bad about it getting totally watered down and cheatinized. I actually feel the same way about Curious George. Although he's not quite as clever.

Read Anything Good Lately?

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them! :)"


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I don't have anything underlined because I can't figure out how to do it. I love the usual things, the classics, the Narnia. Also I take issue with some of the things on this list. NO WAY is this the definitive 100-best or top-100 books list. Bridget Jones' Diary? Please. And why list The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe separately from the Chronicles of Narnia?

So anyway, This reminds me of the time I got a flier of the "100 classics not to miss" from the Provo City Library and set out to read all 100. That's why I can put so many titles in Bold. Also I can proudly list that I have read several other "classic"-type books that aren't on this-here list: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and like that, plus the book I'm currently reading, Death Comes for the Archbishop. I didn't think I would like it but it's pretty interesting so far.