Pregnant woman vs. the volcano...Coming soon to a theater near you!!!

You've heard of the movie "Joe vs. The Volcano"? Well I'm not Tom Hanks, nor am I Meg Ryan ... and I'm certainly not Joe Banks the main character of the movie who was diagnosed with a terminal illness and fulfills the needs of a volcano god by jumping into a live volcano. I did however have a run in with a volcano of my own variety and not one of the volcanoes that spews "mag - ma" (said so eloquently in the Austin Power's Dr. Evil way).

Well after having such a nice night last Friday night ... (Brief interlude to tell this story first cause it really is the best thing to happen in a while).

Hubbie and I retired to the bedroom Friday evening and as we were watching TV, the baby started kicking...and kicking...and kicking some more. So I told hubbie to put his hand on my babybump so hopefully this time would be the time he would finally feel his own baby move. I've tried everything to get this to happen for hubbie. He was convinced the baby was messing around with him because every time I would call him over to feel a kick, any and all movement would stop. I tried not moving a muscle so that conditions didn't change inside. I tried whispering thinking maybe noises startled the baby out of movement. I tried snapping my fingers to avoid any sort of vocal motion on my part, whispering or other. So this time, I resorted to the whispering method (which one can't prove whether it was the determining factor or not, but what happened next was one of the greatest moments about being pregnant. Hubbie put his hand on my babybump and I placed my hand on top of his and every few seconds I would internally feel the baby's movement and ask (whispering of course) "did ya feel that"...to which he would reply, "no"...and so it went...

baby: [kick kick]
me: did ya feel that?
hubbie: no
baby: [nudge nudge]
me: did ya feel that?
hubbie: nope, can you take your hand off mine, all I'm feeling is your pulse through your hands?
baby: [left hook...jab]
me: how 'bout that one (resigning to the fact it's not gonna happen)
hubbie: YEAH!!! I DID!!!!
me: really? YAY!!!

It was really one of the most exciting moments to date. And proved Friday night watching TV in bed one of the best nights.

So now fast forward to Saturday night...a drive home from Long Island and the opportunity to conspire together about our plans for Sunday. We decided we'd have a "sleep in"...and this we don't do so much...as in rarely...as in almost never do we sleep in past 7 a.m. any morning. i know we're weird, but it's just the way our bodies are programmed. So we agreed that the best way to achieve said "sleep in" would only be to let the dog sleep with us...on the bed...OUR bed...in our room. See, there are two things I need to note... First, the dog if we left him downstairs would be whimpering at the bottom of the stairs at 4:30 a.m. waiting for Sean's usual morning ritual as he gets ready for work to take the poor dog out. Guinness thinks there must be something wrong or daddy overslept if daddy isn't promptly at the bottom of the stairs by the latest 4:15. Second note, we have a gate at the bottom of the stairs preventing the animals from exploring our second floor domain and getting hair everywhere. So every night we are faced with the dog walking us to the bottom of the stairs and more often than not we have to look back at his puppy dog eyes and deny him what has become known as "privileged access only".

This night however, he raced up the stairs and waited for our cue that it was time for him to jump up on the bed. Once he jumps up on the bed it's a whole other thing to settle him down because out of sheer excitement he burrows his head into our head/backs/sides/chest and of course I shield the baby from his antics at all costs. We watched TV for a brief time, rolled over and passed out with dreams of awakening at 10...maybe even 11 a.m. if we were lucky.

Well...at precisely 4:39 a.m. I awoke to hubbie....

hubbie: Guinness...stop that (thinking that dog laying there was licking his leg) and then followed by a comforter restricted THWACK (of hubbie's foot) across the dog's body.

me: So I sit up and survey the scene to find the dog ISN'T laying down...and ISN'T licking his leg...but in fact is sitting up...making the "licking his chops" motion with his mouth which can only mean one thing...

HE'S...

GONNA...

BLOW!!!!!!!!! ...any second!!!!!

So what do I do?

Well, picture a woman 5 months pregnant...flying out of bed...in point 2 seconds...reaching across to the other side of the bed (to hubbie's side)...grabbing and dragging the front legs/paws of what would soon be a 110 pound V...O...L...C...A...N...O spewing kibbles and bits and god knows what else. The damn dog even had the nerve to "dig in" his hind claws deeper into the comforter for traction and resistance against mommy pulling him off the bed only for the dog to face a 3 foot plunge to the floor...and once on the floor (which took about .3 seconds) I pushed his 110 pound butt out the door into the hallway. he was not going to get away with spewing on my bed or on my carpeted bedroom floor.

But it doesn't end there.

We have a carpet runner in the hallway upstairs and when he started his heaving I hadn't yet turned on the light but found the edge of the runner (he was standing on it) and pulled it out from under his paws (kinda like pulling a table cloth out from under a fully set dining room table). The dog amidst the heaving stumbled forward ass over tea kettle and hurled. The runner I had pulled out from under the dog was now what I thought safely on the baby's room, escaping the molten dog spew...but no luck, what I originally thought were dry heaves at first were actually the real thing...and ask me if I really was going to worry about cleaning a runner that hubbie found brand new on the side of the street in the YO which we didn't pay for....UMMMM...NO! So along with all the paper towels it took to clean it up (which hubbie did...I can only assume hubbie didn't make me do it cause I'm preggers :-) it all went in the trash carpet runner, spew and all. And the dog.......he got walked at 4:45 a.m. and then was banished to stay downstairs for the duration of the "sleep in" whether he liked it or not. Hell if I was gonna dart out of bed for a volcanic dog again.

So we pulled up the area rug downstairs so he couldn't erupt on that and once again settled into bed. And you know at that point, being jarred awake so fast and with all the excitement...HA...YEAH....EXCITEMENT...that's how I'd explain it...it was no easy task to fall back to sleep again...but we did it...and the next thing we knew it was 10 a.m. and we had pseudo-successfully achieved our "sleep in".

Note to the dog...your days are numbered for sleeping in our bed. I understand sometimes spew happens...but in 117 days...NO MORE!!! At that point, you're just going to have to suffer sleeping downstairs on your cushy umpteen dollar L.L. Bean dog bed cause once this baby is here...upstairs will be a distant "privileged" memory.