For the next two weeks, I have the rare chance to spend some real quality time with Asher. Since his summer camp is over and Abby’s goes straight until school begins, my boy’s all mine all alone until he starts preschool after Labor Day. Yesterday, I decided to take him to the local zoo, and then for lunch in the park.

Yes, it was shaping up to be a fine day. Until, that is, I decided to push it.

Bad Thing # 2: Peeing in My Pants

It was hot and we were both tired, but since we needed a baby gate for the bottom of the stairs, I shlepped Mr. No-Nap to Babies R Us on the way home. I should have known better. With brazen disregard for my delicate condition, I lifted a crabby 32-pound Asher in and out of the shopping cart thee times, pulled a giant gate down off the shelf, pushed it to the cash, lifted Asher into the car and finally hoisted the gate into the trunk.

And that’s when I gushed. Like, actually wet my pants.

I called Dan when I got home and he gave me lots of crap for being so stupid and then scared the sh*t out of me, insisting we call the hospital. Since I technically couldn’t be sure if it was pee or amniotic fluid, I agreed. (And as Dan so eloquently put it, "The baby is still only about medium-rare, so we’re not taking any chances.") The nurse told me to come in immediately.

In the end, it was just pee – yay! I’m officially incontinent at 32 weeks! – but I’ve been told to smarten up or else. That means no more lifting Asher, no more ditch-digging, no more free-climbing above the treeline without oxygen.

On a more positive note, there’s nothing like the sound of two hungry, wild kids running around the delivery ward and a nervous husband chasing them down, uttering empty threats, to make you appreciate the simple pleasures in life, like being given a glass of orange juice and hooked up to a fetal-monitoring machine for a hour of sheer relaxation.

If I had three wishes this very moment, this is what they’d be:

1. Eternal life

2. World peace

3. That the Potty Fairy would whisk Asher away as he sleeps and toilet train him by tomorrow morning

While I hold no illusions about the situation in the Middle East, nor do I expect the portrait of me in the attic to suddenly begin aging in my stead, I really was hoping to be done with all this evacuation nonsense by the time Baby’s born. Alas, Asher has been reluctant to say the least, shrieking in protest at the mere suggestion of peeing on the toilet. Of course, I don’t want to traumatize or torture him in any way, but I seriously fear having two in diapers.

(Bonus point: If he’s done by the time he starts preschool in three weeks, it would mean he gets to stay the extra hour and a half each day for "Lunch Bunch" – an ultra-elite group of coprological cognoscenti united by their ability to maintain perfect bladder and bowel control so as to not inconvenience the team of educators who deem tushie-wiping past noon beneath them.)

Fortunately, we have made some major progress this week.

The secret, which I’d forgotten till Abby reminded me, was making him a Chart. A simple piece of paper taped half-ass to the bathroom wall and a packet of Cars stickers was all it took to get him to park his little butt down on the toilet seat and wait for the inevitable to happen. When he peed, we threw a party and he got a sticker. Hallelujah. (Hmmm... I wonder... if I made Dan a sticker chart, would he finally remember that garbage days are Tuesday and Friday?)

So far, Asher has five stickers; impressive, to be sure, but the process is nowhere near complete. When I think about how much I’m dreading the long, dark months of poopy underwear that lie ahead, I want to just send him off to the same guy who took our incontinent, disobedient puppy for three weeks of in-house spirit-breaking.

By the way, why didn’t anybody ever tell me to save those detachable urine-deflectors that came with the potty seats we bought when we were training Abby? It’s so hard to muster enthusiasm for Asher’s success when more pee hits me than the bottom of the bowl.

Is he too little to stand? How exactly does that work? Anybody? Help! Boys baffle me...

Things I hate about the Olympics:

 * They pre-empt my normal August programming of America’s Next Top Model reruns

* Canada’s current medal count comes in at a whopping... wait for it, now ... zero. That’s zero with a zed, y’all!

* Women’s beach boringball... though I sort of like counting how many times the announcers can  squeeze the name "Misty-May" into each sentence. (It’s like vocal masturbation for them)

* Lip-synching 6-year-olds

* The lack of international coverage. I could be wrong, but judging from the opening ceremonies, there may be more than just three or four countries competing

* The extremely serious but often-overlooked issue of barrette addiction in women’s gymnastics. I swear, they’re worse than cyclists and their steroids

* That China banned ethnic Tibetans from working in Beijing during the Games

* Those stupid mascots and their blown-out pupils. They look like Pokemons on acid

* Asking Dan questions like, "Why is the I.O.C. considering making bridge an Olympic sport?" and enjoying his futile, fumbling albeit sincere attempts to answer

* The male swimmers’ mesmerizing lack of body hair (If anybody has Michael Phelps’ waxer’s name, please pass it along)

* The brazen ease with which the announcers can prattle off names like Otylia Jęedrzejczak, Otryadyn Gündegmaa, Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon and Nurbakyt Tengizbayev as if they went to high school with them

* All the pretty horsies

* Watching the wonders of acromegaly and various other pituitary disorders in action everywhere from the pool to the basketball court

* Seeing the athletes’ pores in High Definition. Next time, they should consider giving out medals for the biggest blackheads

* Hot divers lounging out in the on-deck hot tub

Ugh. We’re home.

The kids were so happy to see us, they almost lost their minds. (The feeling was mutual!) But after about 10 minutes of loving them up, I suddenly remembered why we’d left them in the first place: My shrieking, overtired little blessings were bouncing off the walls, bickering over the toys we brought back, whining about brushing their teeth, and pooping in their pants. (Okay, so maybe just Asher did that, but it was a really really gross one.) It wasn’t their fault. It was waaaay past their bedtime. But I also couldn’t help but notice the vague sense of foreboding setting in.

It’s amazing how after an entire week away, after all the myriad powers of sleep and spa and that other great "S" (shopping) have worked their restorative wonders, everything returns to normal in an instant. Not that normal isn’t good... it’s just that normal is so hard sometimes.

And now that vacation time is over, I guess I feel like I can no longer ignore the obvious:

I am about to have another kid. Delivery Day is in eight weeks, if I make it that long.

Jeez, am I really cut out for this? My patience level is pathetic. Always has been. Dan assures me that I’m just particularly exhausted and exasperated lately because of the kick-boxing little bun in my oven, and that once Baby’s on the outside, I’ll feel soooo much better physically that I’ll have more than enough energy to handle all three.

Yeah, sure. Because I’ll be getting so much sleep by then and definitely won’t have bleeding nipples or feel like a deflated beach ball in any way. Seriously. What were we thinking???

If there are any parents of three out there with wise words of comfort or wisdom – something along the lines of "There, there, dear. Three is so much easier that two!" – now would be the time to share them...

I have eaten so much this week it’s disgusting.

Before we left, I swore to myself I would just have a light breakfast every day and continue my regular 1/2-hour morning-walk routine. A small lunch, a healthy snack or two, and then maybe a nice dinner out – a big salad or some fish.

Our first morning here, we went straight to the breakfast buffet and every meal since has been a blur of cheese and chocolate and onion strings. And you know, I’m kind of pissed off at America right now. At home, when I order a salad, I get a plate with some greenery, a few veg and perhaps some grilled chicken on top. Here, when I order a "salad," it’s covered in Buffalo wings and Fruit Loops, and served in something akin to an upside-down garbage-can lid. And of course it’s so delicious that I simply must eat every bite.

I think my fundus is now roughly the size of the Luxor Hotel:

Yeah, yeah, we can all laugh about it now. Because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

Ummm... wrong.

I’m so constipated that I fear the beloved slogan of Sin City will be unable to deliver on its promise of guilt-free indulgence this time. Yes, apart from the large deposit Dan left at the blackjack table at the Bellagio, what happened in Vegas will definitely be coming home with us.

Lounging poolside in Nevada in the middle of the summer is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there’s no shortage of cute waiters happy to bring me my fill of virgin Pina Coladas. On the other, it’s so oppressively hot that I fear the baby may be wilting.

Swimming is the only thing that helps, though stripping down to my bathing suit isn’t easy these days. I’m a bit bashful to begin with, so being grotesquely gravid to boot requires me to summon some serious courage. Happily, my tummy isn’t supposed to be flat for a change, so what the hell!

In this spirit of full disclosure, look at the little lovely I discovered on my side this morning while scrutinizing my form from all angles in the unforgiving fluorescence of our bathroom:

I don’t think it’s dirt.

Foolishly, I immediately googled "stretch marks" and "varicose veins" upon finding it, and now I fear I won’t be able to sleep tonight. With apologies and condolences to anyone who might be similarly afflicted, click here to see the most serious set of stretchies I found. There’s nothing you can do about these streaky demons, either – they simply just happen to some pregnant people.

All the horrible things pregnancy can do to one’s body has got me thinking a lot about Abby and Asher. I really do miss them, cute little buggers that they are. I hope Bubby’s been cleaning behind their ears.

I’m pleased to be bringing you this Pregnant Pause post live on location in beautiful, downtown Lake Las Vegas.

Dan and I are delighted to be celebrating our 8^th anniversary and third Babymoon here, and a little bit shell-shocked at the prospect of being footloose and child-free for the next five days. (Sometimes I think that all the chaos of having kids and staying home with them is worth it just for the joy of leaving them behind for a week in the care of a loved one once every three years.)

Mostly, though, I’m just happy the plane didn’t crash.

I’m severely flight phobic. Have been for years. I’ve tried it all – behavioral therapy, immersion therapy, regular therapy... none of it worked. Normally, the only way you can get me on a plane is with copious doses of alcohol and anxiolytics, but since my blossoming belly precludes the ingestion of any teratogenic mind-altering help, I went straight-edge this time. Okay, I’m lying. I did take one teeny tiny Gravol, but my doctor said it was okay.

It’s not my fault.

Dan doesn’t believe this, but I was supposed to be on a doomed airliner when I was a mere six months old – the ill-fated Eastern Flight 401 that crashed into the Everglades on December 29, 1972, on its way from New York to Miami. It was to be the second leg of our journey south from Montreal, but my parents changed our tickets at the last minute so we could stay in New York to celebrate New Year’s with family friends before continuing on to Florida.

Above 30,000 feet, I fear I’ll forever be doomed to panic attacks, abject terror and intrusive images of jets doing fiery cartwheels off the ends of runways every time I hear a noise or see a flight attendant pout. But I guess if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. As for right now, I’m just happy it wasn’t meant to be on my way to Vegas. Crashing on the way home sounds far more appealing...

I feel a bit bad about my last post. Candy Land, while no doubt moderately evil, does provide good clean fun for innocent children who don’t know any better. At least Abby’s not into playing Grand Theft Auto, right?

And so, to balance out some of those Bad Things and therefore attenuate all the negative energy I’m putting out there, I’ve also decided to post some nice, friendly, positive things from time to time.

Today I’d like to sing the praises of pregnancy. This is especially important since you will soon surely tire of hearing all about my anemia and swollen ankles and constipation and weight gain and leg cramps and blurry vision and mood swings and insomnia and incontinence and bleeding gums and round ligament pains, to name but a few.

The Perks of Pregnancy #1: My Shiny, Lustrous Hair

Part of the miracle of growing a new life is that the gardener gets to stop dying, just a little bit, for nine whole months. Indeed, my skin is aglow, chubbier cheeks have plumped up my laugh lines and crow’s feet, and my nails don’t crack anymore. Best of all? My hair – I haven’t lost a single strand since I peed on that stick.

Normally, the bottom of my bathtub looks like a colony of tribbles:

But now, I’m like the girl from that stupid Fructis commercial who pulls a pick-up truck out of a ditch with her ponytail. And it’ll stay this way, too, until I stop breastfeeding. Then, within a few weeks, I’ll be nearly bald. My plumber will be on speed dial again, and I’ll burn out yet another vacuum cleaner motor.

Until then, it’s all good.

Since the crafty and well-organized among you already have Martha Stewart and her endless list of Good Things to make the rest of us feel useless, I believe it’s my duty to counteract all that cottage-y goodness by including here, from time to time, a few of my very own Bad Things.

I hate this game.

If Milton Bradley had been around in the early 14^th century, Dante surely would have included an endless round of Candy Land in his description of the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Yes, playing Candy Land is the bane of my existence. Of course, Abby loves it. Particularly the Dora the Explorer version. As if a 45-minute tour through Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain weren’t bad enough, Dora and her pals add just the right amount of child-targeted subliminal merchandizing I feel we’ve been lacking in our home.

Candy Land has been in heavy rotation here since Abby was about three. But at least in the beginning, when there were no Terrible-Two types in the picture, we could make it through to the end of the game in an orderly fashion. Now, we have to start over at least three times whenever we play because Asher tosses the cards into the air or throws the pieces across the room. Last week, he even tried to eat Boots.

These days, I usually rig the card deck to expedite things. Sometimes, I just hide the box and pretend I can’t find it. Candy Land has turned me into a terrible mother.

Seriously. I would rather be in labor, trapped in an elevator, than have to play this game one more time.

Well, so far, the feedback for Pregnant Pause has been great! Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and check me out – I really do appreciate it. (If you want to be informed whenever I post something new, subscribe to my RSS feed here.)

A few of you, however, mentioned that it would be nice to have a visual of my family. While I admit I was a bit hesitant to post pictures of my kids at first, I’ve decided that I think it would be okay, as long as you all promise not to stalk them.

So without further ado, here they are... the stars of the show... my adorable children:

Paris is on the left, and Blanket is on the right. For any interested parties who happen to be in the Montreal area later this afternoon, I will be dangling Blanket over the balcony at around 4.

Bring your cameras!

If you read my first post you know that I’ve come out of the closet. I am Canadian.

While I won’t bore you with all the pros and cons of my nationality right now, I will say this: Unless you’re in the market for bagels or obscure European home appliances, shopping sucks up here... especially in Montreal, where I live.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what it’s like trying to buy the basics, or even just take in 4800 calories in appetizers alone while breaking for lunch...

* Cheesecake Factory

* Pottery Barn, in all its incarnations

* Abercrombie and Fitch

* Restoration Hardware

* Gymboree

* Crate&Barrel

* Pretty much every other obnoxious yet bewitching chain of overstylized retail institutions anchoring each of your glorious malls from Maine to Malibu.

* <<crickets chirping>>

No Seriously... What We Finally Got, Like, Last Year:

* Banana Republic (whoop-dee-doo)

* H&M (not bad for disposable maternity clothes)

* TiVo

* Sephora (and now I owe the Devil my third-born)

* Trader Joe’s

* Anthropologie

* three magic beans

How I’ve managed not to starve to death, naked in the streets, is a miracle. As it is, my kids can hardly sleep up here from the dearth of Indonesian-made pastel-hued gingham sheeting with ric-rac trim. And it’s not like we can buy any of it online, either, since shipping to Canada is way too complicated for most of these Fortune 500 companies.

(Remind me later to tell you the story of how I once smuggled a Pottery Barn Kids 8x10-foot Bunny Rug over the border from Plattsburgh, NY, when I was nine months pregnant with Abby. Dan was beyond furious when I got home, of course, though not because his wife almost got arrested and/or might have delivered his first child alone in a foreign land. Rather, he was worried that my illegal antics might retroactively get him disbarred one day, even though he was only in his second year of law school at the time. What a nerd!)

Anyway, the good news for my creditors these days is that Dan and I are going to Vegas next week for our Big Babymoon Blowout, the guilt of dumping my kids on my mom for a week being only slightly less compelling than my urge to splurge. And so, in addition to the empty suitcase I’ll be toting along to accommodate any impulse buys, I’ve also been shopping up a storm online in order to take full advantage of our temporary U.S. mailing address. When Dan sees what’s waiting for us in the hotel mailroom, he may actually go into cardiac arrest. But since he’s worth way more to me dead than alive at this point, that may not be such a bad thing.

Okay, enough about the shopping already.

Instead, I’d like to leave you today with a more serious question, one I’ve been quietly meditating on all week:

Hi everyone!

Well, I’ve finally summoned the courage to unleash my internal monologue upon the general parenting public, and ePregnancy.com has been gracious enough to lend me a soapbox. Since there are plenty of mommy bloggers already out there chronicling every burp, poop and mispronunciation ejected from the orifices of their adorable offspring, I’d like to try something a little different here.

I will therefore be allotting this blog’s content as follows:

 • Pregnancy complaints: 65 %

• Career confusion: 43 %

• Doubts, fears and misgivings regarding parenting abilities: 31 %

• Marital woes: 26 %

• Shopping links to shoes, handbags and luxury baby items I’ll never buy: 24 %

• Body-image crises: 13 %

• Sweet stuff: 8 %

...which brings the grand total to... hang on... 210 percent of pregnant, bitchy, porky, but always pertinent me.

Yup. That sounds about right.

• I’ve been happily-ish married to Dan W. for 8 years, bless his heart, but more on him later. This is Me Time, after all.

• I’m 28 weeks pregnant, and I already have two crazy kids – Abby, 6, and Asher, 2.5. Dan and I decided to become parents because we don’t really like anyone besides each other, and we hoped making a few people in our own image might restore our faith in the human race. (It has.)

• I write, but I don’t think of myself as a writer. That would require a level of self-confidence (and pretension) that far exceeds both my comfort level and my creative output these days. My aging oeuvre includes two novels (Slim Chance and Marrying Up), one non-fiction book (The Newly Non-Drinking Girl’s Guide to Pregnancy), lots of weird medical history articles, and an upcoming (ghostwritten) book on baby names.

• Embarrassing but true: I’m also a regular contributor to US Weekly magazine’s "Fashion Police" column ridiculing the famous and fashion-challenged. Sadly, my once-grand literary ambitions have been put aside for the pleasures of torturing Paris Hilton and coming up with movie-title puns to humiliate celebrities. I am not proud of this, and yet it is undeniably enjoyable, despite the terrible headshot that accompanies my bi-weekly byline.

• I’m Canadian. I’m not very polite, but I do speak French and live in an igloo.

• I have a hemorrhoid. It’s sort of like the boil on that guy’s shoulder in How To Get Ahead in Advertising in that it gives me good ideas sometimes, but it also keeps my rapidly expanding backside on my mind 24/7.

• I may not post pictures of my kids here. Haven’t decided yet if public brag-books are cool or crazy.

Oh dear.

The order of the above list suddenly seems quite revealing: wife first, then mother, career, country, health and, finally, the safety of my children. Nice. Maybe that’s why I haven’t eaten a single vegetable besides corn in five days and my kids are currently sitting in a cold bath three rooms away.

What else? Well, I do love my children. Adore them, actually. Some days, they’re the only reason I want to get out of bed, depressive little minx that I am. Sure, Dan and I may sweat the small stuff sometimes, but we agree that at the end of each exhausting day, our little ones – and our relationship with each other – are our one true source of joy.

Well, that should do it for today’s eight-percent sweet stuff quota.

In conclusion, I hope that Pregnant Pause will be a healing, sharing place where we can all evolve into perfect people and parents together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and spiritual harmony. Failing that, may my problems make you feel a bit better about your own... and may this blog remind me to count my many blessings from time to time instead of just kvetching about them...