A Few Pictures

Just some pictures of September. :)Ellie getting sprayed in the face, Danny sitting up, and Kate riding a big girl bike!

The girls just had their dance recital last Sunday. I only have pictures of K's tap costume (and not her ballet) and E's ballet (not her jazz).







And this is Little D's (d) new favorite activity: the jumperoo!! :) I actually heard him laugh today for the first time. I was bouncing him in the jumperoo and he absolutely loved it. I have video of it, but I can't seem to upload it on here.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Well, I'll start off by saying I'm NOT keeping up with the Joneses. In fact, they're so far ahead of me, I may as well drop out of the race. Here's why:

A few days ago I woke up to a terrible stink in the house. My first thought was that a skunk must have sprayed the entire side of our house. I've seen a skunk (too cute to smell that bad) wander in our yard before, so it didn't worry me too much. We aired out and the house smelled better. Then, the next morning it smelled bad again. Hmmmm....did the skunk strike again? Air out, rinse, repeat. House smelled better. Closed the house up at night. Next morning? Yup, it stunk again. This was yesterday. At this point, we came to the realization (finally) that the smell was coming from inside our house, since every time we closed it up, it started to smell again. Through thoughtful and scientific experimentation (we closed the basement door by accident), we realized the smell was coming from down there. D (the big one, not the little one) searched the basement for close to an hour last night, trying to find the offending source, but to no avail. So as it stands now, we have a rotting, decaying animal (probably a giant rodent) somewhere in the bowels of our home. We have taken care of the problem by shutting the door to the basement and turning off the heat (so the smell doesn't travel through the ducts). Voila! Problem solved (sigh).

Then yesterday, one of E's friends stopped by to invite her over to play. When she came by I was nursing Little D, and my house was a MESS. And when I say mess, I don't mean I had a few things on the floor. It was a dive. Crap everywhere, laundry piling up, baby gear mountains that I swear I'd need hiking boots to get past...even though this friend was seven years old, I must admit, I was embarrassed by my house. Need I remind you, it also smelled of decaying rodent meat.

On to this morning..

I took the opportunity on this gorgeous May morning to play outside with K, while trying to nurse little D as inconspicuously as possible. I had a chance to really look around my neighborhood.

Our neighbors on one side have gorgeous landscaping. Every tree is surrounded by cute little mounds of mulch (probably ground down from Limited Edition Endangered Redwoods), and has a pile of multi-colored tulips that never want to die. Their lawn looks more like green carpet than actual living grass so much that I have been tempted (more than once) to just lie down on it...they might call the cops, though, so I've fought the temptation. For now. The neighbors on the other side have similar landscaping, except their grass is somehow even greener and lusher than the tulip house's.

Then I looked at our lawn. Our tulips are all dead. Most gave up the fight years ago when we first moved in. I could almost hear them whispering underground "Crap. It's them. Did you SEE what they did at their last place?! Let's get out of here and move across the street." So the five or six remaining loyal tulips have all since died off. In their place we have an abundant and very-much-alive family of sunny yellow flowers. Crap. I mean dandelions. Apparently, in exchange for our tulips, our neighbors sent over every single one of their dandelions. Because they have none.

I'll also give a quick shout-out to my daughter who hasn't been bathed in a week and is wearing a ghastly combination of clothing today that any decent mother would promptly remove from the house and torch.

I'd like to think that I'm the type of person that doesn't get bothered by that sort of thing. But I usually do. I want my house to be clean, and I want my lawn to be beautiful. I don't want my kids going to school looking like their mother went on strike...

But today I let it get to me. I thought about my uncombed hair, my filthy car, house, and children. I thought about the laundry I haven't done, and the terrifying death smell in my basement. And I felt crappy about it. Humbled would be a good word. I felt like a failure.

As I was standing there, pitying myself, I looked at K, who was running around in the dandelions with Scout (our dog) and giggling. And I looked down at little D and saw how content and happy he was. I realized what an idiotic, superficial, and stupid mentality it is to base my self-worth and happiness on how weed-free my yard is. While I don't want a jungle for a front yard, and I'm not about to put our 1996 Mercury Sable on blocks in the yard and use it for target practice, I realized this morning that those things simply don't matter.

Hopefully I'll get my house clean. Hopefully the dead rodent will finish decomposing and stop smelling. Hopefully I'll bathe my children a few times this summer. But for now, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm rocking my baby (who's wearing fifth-generation hand-me-downs), and babies don't keep.



...go ahead, picture me in my cutesy neighborhood, surrounded by knee-high weeds, camo cut-offs, shooting a shotgun at a Mercury Sable.

Just a thought.

If you want to go to people's doors and tell them about Jesus, don't send the socially inept who will stand at a glass door and just stare inside freakishly while a small dog yaps wildly, waking a newborn up from his nap, who then starts screaming, and the mom is on hold on the phone trying to get a referral for her daughter while folding laundry at the same time and then when she answers the door amidst the chaos of screaming baby, screaming dog, and screaming elevator music on the phone you just kind of stare at her until she sighs and says "WHAT?!" and say "We'd like to tell you about Jesus."

My babies

Here are just a few pictures of my boy and girls. I'm pretty tired, so I'll save any real writing for another time. :)

Some more scattered thoughts

It's getting harder and harder to get to the gym. I haven't skipped any days yet, except for horrible weather, but I'm more and more tempted each time to stay home and take a nap.
I always feel so much better after I work out, but getting there is probably the hardest part. Today my arms feel like they weigh one hundred pounds each.
My goal is to exercise throughout the entire pregnancy. So far I've kept it up and I'm 33 weeks along. While that sounds far, the thought of seven more weeks lugging this baby to the gym is pretty daunting right now.

The lack of sleep at night isn't helping me reach my goal, either. So. Tired.

The girls, on the other hand, seem to have more energy than ever. E is manic in the evenings and K never stops talking. I've been stealing their "I Spy" books and burying myself in them just to tune out the world. It actually works quite well. I find the more detailed and focused my "job" is at any given moment, the more calm sane I feel. Looking at "I Spy" books is a perfect example. I can literally block out the world and look for a tiny fork on a page. It relaxes me. So did peeling four or five oranges before dinner last night. Did we need that many oranges? No. But the peeling was therapy for my frazzled nerves.

I'm noticing that need for quiet more and more lately. Yoga would probably be good for me, but let's be honest: when would I do that?? D starts track season soon, so it's going to be trying for me. The days will feel longer and I'll be at the end of my pregnancy. At least spring is coming soon. I haven't even minded the winter. I like the different seasons. It's bitterly cold outside today (5 degrees the last time I checked with negative windchills) and the snow is piled well over our mailbox, but I like that. I like extreme weather. But what's nice is that soon after the baby comes, we'll start seeing signs of spring and I'll be able to get out and walk to the park.

This has been scattered, but really, I don't care. That's how my brain works lately. :) And on that note, I'm going to go find something for lunch.

Random Thoughts

Today has been long.

I can never go fully green, because I love out-of-season produce too much. I'm eating a nectarine as I write this, and recently finished off $8 worth of raspberries. Honest-to-God raspberries. Delicious.

My body hurts from this pregnancy. A lot. Thank goodness tomorrow is my day off from the gym. I want to collapse in a jacuzzi. Instead, I'll sit on a hard bench at ballet. Oh well. It'll feel better than the elliptical.

Testing my blood four times a day hasn't been that bad. I hate to admit it, but it's been pretty enlightening. I never realized how many carbohydrates I ate in a day. A conservative estimate would be about 8 billion.

I was moody with the kids today and I hate when I'm like that. They must wonder which mommy they'll get on a certain day. That's no way to parent. I'm really trying to get better, but I must admit, this pregnancy is taking a lot out of me lately and it's hard to be patient and upbeat.

I have some cute pictures of the kids, but don't feel like putting in the effort to upload them on here. Some great shots from Christmas in CT, but I'm way too lazy.

For my after-dinner snack (when I don't have to test my blood for 12 hours), I had both a nectarine and a jello chocolate mousse cup. So good. It's amazing how I won't even touch something like a cupcake or ice cream anymore. And because I have to do this for the rest of my pregnancy, it could very well become a habit. Ten weeks of avoiding refined starches and sugars could really set me up to better eating for good. Can't really complain about that.

I hate having to go to the gas station.

My house is messy, but not trashed. But it's irritating seeing all that stuff on the counter. I could clean, but I just can't get up right now.

The dog just got her hair cut and she looks like a giant rat.

I opened the pancake mix for the girls tonight and saw bugs in the box. Seriously. Bugs. I didn't even recognize them. That's probably the nastiest thing I've ever found in my kitchen. Guess I should seal that up better from now on. Needless to say, the remainder of the mix went straight to the outside trash. Ewwwwwwwwwww......

I'm wondering if I'm crazy for planning a natural drug-free childbirth for a baby that is almost expected to be over ten pounds. I wonder if I could actually do it. I act tough, but really I'm pretty wimpy and unsure of myself most of the time.

D just bought me some bigger-sized maternity clothes as a surprise and it made me cry. I told him it was the most thoughtful thing he could have done. I had been yanking my shirts down over my giant baby belly for a while. Strange that I have to wear a size large maternity shirt.

I'm grumpy today. Really really grumpy.

Our town is so well lit that I drove most of the way home tonight without realizing my headlights were off.

I could really use a steamer right now. You know those drinks that are just steamed milk and flavoring? So good. Starbucks makes a good one.

Blessed

Every once in a while, something makes me stop and realize I am blessed. I have a wonderful life that I did nothing to deserve. I have an amazing husband who I could not imagine living a day without. I have two beautiful girls who are sweet, healthy, smart, and wonderful little creatures who may drive me nuts sometimes, but who I love more than anything else in the world. I have a little boy who will be born in a few short months who I already love so much. I can't wait to kiss his sweet tiny newborn mouth and hold my cheek against his.
I know I will not appreciate my life every day and there will be days that I want to run away and hide, but today is not one of them. Today, I can see clearly. I am blessed.