Do Penguins Wear Heels?

Yesterday was peanut's meet and greet at his new preschool. I spent the morning over thinking everything -- where were the forms? how many things should I volunteer for? should we do carpool with a new baby on the way and a therefore unpredictable November ahead? what should peanut wear? what should I wear? Really. It was out of control, adolescent nonsense that I'm blaming on my hormones because even I was annoying myself with these non-stop, non-important mini-crises.

Needless to say, I spent more of my morning analyzing what outfit looked nice (i.e., which maternity top was clean, without sweat or food stains and actually matched a maternity bottom with the same criteria) without looking like I was trying too hard that I didn't drink enough water.

The meet and greet went well. Peanut loved his classroom; indifferent on his teachers because he was much more interested in the race cars, tool box and books (for the record, I thought they were lovely) and there was a good group of moms. After we settled carpool decisions (opted out) and volunteered for class parties and reading assignments (pushed into the spring), we headed out to the library to kill some time before meeting the hubby for lunch.

Whatever I had had to drink in the morning kicked in...while sitting in construction traffic on the way to the hubby's office. By the time we got to a bathroom, I was in the throws of that wonderful pregnancy dichotomy of being slightly dehydrated while also having an extremely full bladder. For me, this combo results in some fun cramping and eventually a few visits from my good friends Braxton and Hicks, killjoys that they are.

While, um, relieving myself of the bladder pressure, pumpkin did the strangest sort of flip - think Olympic diver doing a somersault in a pike position with a twist - that I paused for a moment waiting for my water to break. Thoughts of preemies and NICU's and hospital lights flashed in my mind and then it was over. Pumpkin settled into his new position. We had lunch and I headed home to lay down with a gallon of water and my feet up to put a stop to the BH contractions.

By afternoon, I was fine. Except for one, teeny, tiny thing. I've officially entered the waddle phase.

I remember the moment it happened with peanut, too. One night, I got up from the couch and headed for the bathroom and there it was, taunting me on the way down the hall and back. Yesterday, I started to notice in the afternoon but tried to deny it. By my 1:45AM bathroom break there was no mistaking it. Whatever Olympic training pumpkin was doing in there shifted something in my pelvis.

Ah, pregnancy. Along with the joy of in-uterine hiccups, no periods and thicker hair, there's the annoyance of hip pain, skin tags (that peanut keeps pointing out and calling "boogies") and the waddle. Next on the list: swelling. Ew, the dreaded cankles.

Guess that means waddle or no, I better put some heels on now before I can't wear anything but slippers. Would heels in the preschool drop-off line be inappropriate?