Migraines, Menstruation, and Muppets, OH MY!

For the first time since September 17, 2005, Aunt Flo's in town. My little friend is visiting (every time I hear someone call their period "my little friend" I can't help but get this crazy vision of a woman whipping out a bloody tampon and pointing it at me and yelling, "Shay hellooo to my leetle friend!" I don't know why). Enough euphemisms--my period started, OK?

And guess what? It still SUCKS. It's funny how even now, after Tori, after everything, I still get this feeling of grief every time I spy blood on the toilet paper. I'm not surprised it started again; after all, it's now been over two weeks since I started decreasing the number of times I pumped a day, and over a week since I stopped altogether. And while Tori is still nursing quite a bit, there must be a lot less milk being produced. So the hormonal signals must have been sent to re-start the ol' uterus and ovaries back up.

If I'd known that, I would have totally kept pumping.

It's funny how absurd menstruating seems after you haven't done it in a while. Almost as absurd as the products around it; I went hunting for tampons on Friday and when I found one I looked at it for a moment and thought, "I'm supposed to put what up my what for what?" It just seems so silly to put a tiny absorbent dildo up my vagina to collect the shed lining of my uterus. Of course, using a pad seems silly too, like I'm joining Tori in the diaper brigade. All options are bizarre.

Weird, weird, weird.

But it does explain a lot. I've had, over the last couple of weeks, way more migraines than is fair. Since mine are often hormonal, that makes sense now. I had a rotten one on Friday afternoon. Not fun at all. In fact, my head kind of hurts now. Damn it all. Not to mention the moodiness, the crankiness, the insomnia. All typical, for me, of getting my period.

The insomnia has been particularly awful. For almost two weeks now I haven't gotten more than four hours of sleep (except last night, thank god). It doesn't help that Tori has developed an innate ability to tell exactly what moment I'm beginning to drift off to sleep; she always chooses that moment to wake up and start crying to nurse. It' s uncanny, really.

I should wrap this up because I'm headed off to a friend's baby shower today. We picked up her present the other day at Giant Baby Store and, naturally, had to also get a gift for Tori. We chose a book with a little puppet of Elmo attached to it, and Tori finally said (for sure) her first intentional word. We held the book up to see if she liked it and she said, I shit you not, "mmmelmoo!" Charlie and I both looked at each other, shocked, and hid it for a second (which made her cry, of course) and then pulled it back out and she said it again.

Yikes. I guess she really is absorbing more television than I realized.

I'll leave you with this hilarious video that Charlie's high school buddy Andrew sent me. Enjoy, and have a great weekend. I'll do a video post tomorrow with Tori!