I got to see Amy's little runt today on ultrasound. It was very exciting! We saw the little backbone and little ribs and little pelvis, fingers, face. And it jumped around a bit. She's only 16 weeks so it was too early to tell what flavor the baby is but the umbilical cord was between the baby's legs anyway making it a moot point. Oh, and we heard the heartbeat. I loved that part. Oh heck, I love it all. Amy's midwife is wonderful--just the kind of midwife I'd want to be. And she told Amy to try to look pregnant since she isn't showing at all and she's 4 months already. She's getting some dirty looks from other pregnant or formerly pregnant women who started showing at 2.5 months.

Joey's on a sleepover marathon. She spent the night with a friend last night and said friend is now spending the night with us and tomorrow she is going to a slumber party. Good thing she'll have Saturday to catch up on all her missed sleep. I suspect she'll be exhausted by then!

I've become a converted ironer. I hesitated to mention it because I know a few people who read my diary are confirmed non-ironers but it's true. I've joined the ranks of the pressed. It started innocently enough--I ironed a few of Joey's clothes that were linen and entirely too wrinkly to wear. While I was at it, I figured I'd iron a linen shirt of mine that I hadn't worn in a year or so because it was wrinkled. Then I noticed that Ed had a pile of wrinkled shirts that he couldn't wear so I figured I'd just go ahead and iron them, too. After two sweaty hours, I had all the wrinkled clothes conquered and put the iron to rest.

A few weeks later, I did some laundry and a few of Joey's cotton shorts came out so wadded up that there was no way to wear them so I ironed them for her. And Ed's shirts again. And then it started to steamroll. A few weeks ago, I had a stack of shirts to hang and several of them were too wrinkled to wear outside the house so I figured I'd be a dear and iron them for Ed. And then I ironed a dress of mine that I'd laundered. And while I was putting away those ironed shirts, I noticed several long-sleeved shirts of Ed's that he had recently transferred from the off-season closet into our regular closet. They were terribly wrinkled. "How could I have hung these up in such a state?" I wondered. And then I remembered that I used to hang up shirts like that all the time. Somehow I've turned into one of those people who can't hang up a wrinkled shirt. Who irons clothes days or even weeks before they're going to be worn just so they're ready to go at a moment's notice. I pulled those nasty wrinkled shirts out of the closet and ironed them right up, crisp and sharp.

It turns out that ironing isn't such a bad thing after all. I go into an almost Zen-like trance while I'm doing it--stomping out the Evil Wrinkles with my Iron of Truth and Good Housekeeping. I usually watch TV on the bedroom TV while I'm doing it which makes the time pass by even more quickly. Actually, I mostly listen to the TV rather than watch it because I have to keep my eyes on the big hot thing with steam coming out of it lest I injure myself in the peformance of my June Cleaverly duties.

Just last week, as I put my freshly washed 440-count pima cotton sheets on my bed (the best sheets in the entire world, by the way), I noticed that the part that goes under my child was all scrunched up. "I could iron that up real quick," I thought to myself. And then I had to draw the line. I will NOT iron my sheets. No way. I can't do it. That would be too over the top. I mean, I've been tempted to get some lavendar linen water for my ironing board but I think ironing sheets is entirely too much. So I put them back on the bed all scrunched up at the top. I'll just have to live with wrinkled sheets. But I damn well won't put up with wrinkled T-shirts. Shhhh...don't tell Bev.

Time to extract my fair ladies from the tub so they can watch Survivor. Ta!

--L