long time no see (some bullet points, in the interest of time!)

- we spent an exhausting week up north over the 4th with my family. the kids had a great time, & we had a great time with my cousins, but i am taking a self-imposed hiatus from my father, who (in his spectacularly insidious way) managed to blame me for his marriage problems & trash my vacation. a week later, i'm no longer mad, but refuse to include him again until he shows some sort of understanding that his behavior was completely innapropriate. this is probably wishful thinking on my part. the man is (mostly) perfectly normal & pleasant most of time, but when he goes wrong it's pretty awful & after 30 years, i'm tired of forgiving & waiting for it to happen again. he's forgiven, but this time i'm not waiting around for him to lash out again. i'm married, & i have kids of my own, & my family has to come first. i hope at some point he "gets" it, but i'm not holding my breath.

- i am 13 weeks & in the 2nd trimester! (or close... i always forget when the official switch over happens, so i think this is close enough.) i even felt the first little flutters a few days ago-- very, very cool, as this is the earliest i've ever felt a baby. :)

- i had this kiddo's NT scan done yesterday, & the tech gave me a gender guess. we're planning on waiting til baby is born, so altho the guess was kinda fun, i sort of regret hearing it now bc N is 100% convinced that the guess is what we're having, despite my warnings that 13 weeks is really too early to count on anything. & i know a fairly even number of folks whose early scans got it right & got it wrong, so i'm not counting any chickens yet...

- the NT scan (in addition to telling me the baby is just fine) also told me that i lack the ability not to jump on information when it's offered. at our 20 week, i think i'm going to have to announce the instant i walk in the room that we want to be surprised, or i won't be able to say "no" when the ask about gender!

- we have no names for this kid. none. for either gender. no ideas, nothing we "kind of" like, no family names left, nothing. we've always had at least a clue what kind of name we wanted before, & we are up a creek without a paddle so far with this one. i could totally see the kid still being nameless 6 mos from now. hopefully inspiration will strike at some point!

- i really, really want to go see the last har.ry po.tter next weekend, but with the current bizarreness with my folks, & my cousin nannying all summer, we've lost all our babysitters. i am so bummed about this i actually debated asking my mom (which we swore off, as my dad thinks mom spends too much time with me & the kids & we're trying to avoid all conflict), but i'm not sure har.ry po.tter is a good enough reason for me to bend on the babysitting issue. i know my mom would be thrilled to see the kids, but then i feel like i'd be caving on the hard-line stance we've taken with my dad & his crap. sigh. who knew HP could cause so much internal strife?