Adventures Of An Awesome (Sometimes) Mother

I am in a bit of a blah mood. Life is chugging along with it's little twists and turns. I am over the majority of the whole morning sickness although there are certain things that send my stomach into flip flops, often rather suddenly. Mostly it is exhaustion that I am fighting. I wish I had the energy to do more with the kids, but mostly I want to sleep. It is not like I can take them to the park or anything with out freezing (not that they mind).

Speaking of the cold, it is kicking my bum in a huge way. We made a half hearted attempt to keep our lovely winter gear that we owned when we lived in Utah, but with all the moves we ended up getting rid of a lot of it. I still have my warm coat, but the icy wind of Kansas cuts through it like I was not wearing much of anything at all. I think the boys are decently outfitted but they don't really complain about the cold, so it is hard to tell. I know about cold, but I have really grown soft after six years of not having much of a real winter.

I am trying to save energy by keeping the house at 68 degrees. I did it fine in California. I could even wear short sleeved shirts in the house at that temprature. Here in Kansas my thrifty ways are not working out so well. I am freezing my bum off. I have to pile on the clothing to even feel a tiny bit thawed out. I don't get it, it is the same temprature but some how it feels so much colder.

I also am rather low on maternity long sleeved shirts which is only adding to my frustrations with the cold. When I was pregnant with Evan a nice friend of mine lent me her collection of maternity clothing, so coming into this pregnancy I had a grand total of one long sleeved shirt and one sweater that I found last summer at a thrift store (it is horribly frumpy but very warm). I am also lacking the shopping resources I had when it came to maternity wear, so I have resorted to wearing large men's shirts. They may not be shapely or trendy but they cover my body and keep me warmish.

Sometimes I really wish I was a bear so that I could snuggle up in my cave and sleep the winter away. When I woke up the baby would be out of the tiring newborn stage and into the toddler age.

We had a fun thanksgiving. My husband's cousin and her family came over for a visit and helped entertain us. We also had the missionaries over, so we had a very full table.

There were a few spots of trouble. My husband sliced off the tip of one of his fingers so his cooking abilities were rather compromised. Luckily he found the bit of skin before it accidentally got mixed in with our stuffing. I was able to hold my nausea in check long enough to put the herbed butter rub under the turkey skin. I forgot to make the mashed potatoes but as was discovered later all but 4 of them had become rotten, so there would not have been enough for everyone any way. I also forgot to put out my homemade cranberry sauce.

Despite all that there was plenty of food to eat and leftovers galore. One of my ulterior motives in inviting the missionaries was so that I could send them home with as much of our leftover food as I could. I hate having piles of turkey left over. I am not all that fond of it in the first place so being forced to eat it months later is torture. We had enough that my husband could have turkey sandwiches for a few days and we could have a meal of turkey noodle soup. That was enough for me.

Poor Evan had a rather tough day today. He tore one of his fingernails in church so we had to scare up a bandage to keep the blood from dripping on everything. Later on in the evening he was goofing off and tripped into the laundry bag holder. It was not until I saw blood seeping though the bottom of his blanket sleeper that I realized why he was making such a fuss about his toe. He had cut the bottom of it somehow. Another band aid soothed him.

We put up our Christmas tree today. It has really been fun watching the kids change from infants who could care less about holidays to kids that are excited about the whole thing. I am having a hard time with this Christmas simply because I have no idea what to get them for presents. They already have so much stuff that I feel like I don't want to get them anything because it will just add to our burden of stuff. I am thinking that I may get them each something small and then donate something bigger to charity so that those with out will be able to share in our good fortune.

I hope that everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. My husband's cousin and her family are over for a visit, so we are going to be busy all weekend.

I thought I would share something that I am super thankful for.

On Tuesday we went to see Evan's pacemaker doc for a followup to check on his battery life. Apparently she was already planning on him having it replaced very soon and had already presented his case to the surgery folks. I was quite taken aback as last time we talked I did not get that there was any sense of urgency when it came to the need for a new battery and possible lead change. Maybe I just had my head in the sand or something.

Leaving the office we thought that it was going to happen December 16th which was already a very full week for me and a bad week for my husband to have to take off of work. I was feeling rather grumpy mostly because of all the rescheduling of appointments that I would have to do to free up enough just in case he has to stay a few days in the hospital time.

The next morning I got a call from the surgery office to schedule his surgery. The lady on the phone presented me with a number of days in January and gave no explanation as to why the later dates were suddenly opened up. I did not probe further into it because I was thrilled that a better time was offered to me when it had seemed so firm earlier.

So, January 20th Evan will be getting a new pacemaker generator and hopefully a new lead. Putting in the new lead will be a much more invasive procedure, but this lead has been giving us headaches for a while now. This is the same one that was acting up after his surgery and drained that battery. Really he should not be needing new batteries so soon, they are supposed to last 3-5 years instead the paltry 2 that this one has lasted.

It is hard for me to believe, but Harry is now three years old. Time sure flies! It is amazing the things he can do now and how much comprehension he has gained. On Friday I bought him an Elmo balloon for his birthday. It rather rapidly deflated much to his dismay so I promised that as soon as daddy got home and we had dinner I would go to the store and get him a new one (I returned the old one as it was obviously defective). He was so very calm an mature about the whole ordeal. He was thrilled with his new balloon and calmly accepted that he could not take it to bed with him until he realized that I meant what I had said and then he sobbed like the two year old he still was. That sure beats the almost instant temper tantrum of a toddler, that is for sure.

Picture # 1 was pretty easy to guess. Those are the wee little feet. Picture #2 is the femur. Teh technician tried to get hands and arms but the baby was keeping them tightly crossed and they were hard to get pictures of. Picture #3 is supposedly the baby's face. The technician seemed pretty confident of that, but to me it looks like there is an alien inside me.

I just read this article and all I can say is wow!!!

Today was rather a crappy day and it was topped off by my destroying dinner thanks to my addled pregnant brain. I forgot to make sure we had the right cheese for the lasagna, I totally forgot to get ricotta cheese and it was too late to ask my husband to pick some up at the store as he was already at the store getting me the mozzarella cheese that I needed (we only have one cell phone and he never remembers to bring it with him) and finally I barely avoided burning the top of the dinner thanks to me forgetting to put the aluminum foil over it. The odd thing is that my lasagna hating kids actually ate it and my husband loved it. I didn't, but I guess I will just be happy that others did.

A part of my grumpiness was that my ultrasound showed that I was actually not as far along as my last menstrual period would suggest. My new due date is May 11th. Sigh! I guess that midwife must have been imagining things when she thought I was measuring bigger. At least the dream that I had that I was having twins was debunked as only one baby showed up in the ultrasound. And before you ask, it was waaay to early to tell what sex the baby is. It was hard enough to even get a very good peek at the baby thanks to the earliness of my pregnancy.

I now present to you the amazing gray blob pictures. See if you can guess what each picture is a picture of. The people that get them all right will get an imaginary prize which will be determined later.

Back in the day a great way to drive your sibling insane was to repeat everything that they said. It was delicious fun that was only ruined when the sibling finally stopped talking altogether. Now I am not laughing. Evan is in one of his phases and this phase is him repeating me. Sometimes it is just the last word I say and sometimes it is the entire sentence.

My patience has been getting quite the workout. I find it quite ironic that part of our job as a parent is to teach our children patience and to do that we have to develop an even greater amount of patience than we had previously. If you had an adult at work following you around repeating everything that you said you would go insane and might even have murderous thoughts. You would have the option of talking to someone with higher authority or even quitting your job if the annoyance was great enough. With your kids a higher level of behavior is needed. You can't just quit on your kids or shut them in the room so that you don't have to hear them. It is a good thing that Evan is so cute and lovable.

Harry got an early birthday package from my parents today. Of course it had to be ripped open right away. Inside were two Sesame Street DVDs and a musical card. Harry was immediately taken by the card, he laughed so hard that I was worried that he would collapse. At first I was amused and thought the card was kind of cute. After a long afternoon of Harry playing that song over and over again I was convinced that my mother was out to get me. My husband became the mean parent and took the card away after being home only an hour. Apparently he does not have the noise tolerance that I have developed.

This card is not the only noisy thing that has been gifted to my kids by my parents. There have been numerous toys that have earned battery removals. I think the most notable was the Tickle Me Elmo that they gave Harry last Christmas. Elmo is quiet most of the time now, but every so often he gets rediscovered and my day is shot. I think that next time we visit I am going to give each of the boys a musical card to play with at grandma's house. I wonder how long they would last.