the question for the calendar

Every night as I go to bed, I look at the calendar and wonder when this baby will come. He's not late. My due date is still five days away, but I thought (hoped?) he'd come early, which he really hasn't. Now I'm just hoping he'll come soon. Perhaps right after my mom arrives tomorrow night...

Both my sister and sister-in-law who had babies in the last year had a scheduled birth, which right now seems really great. Except I want to schedule my naturally-starting/let-my-body-be-in-charge birth. I know you can't do both, so I stare at the calendar and wonder.

While I'm waiting, a brief update on the homefront:

Three weeks ago I took Kiddo to the store so we could buy some things for the baby. (Specifically a blue based bed sheet. This was really important to me. I have it now, but from a different store. They're washed, but not on the crib yet. Blegh.) While there, she saw an E-Z-bake toy, make your own cupcakes or something. She felt she couldn't live without it, and so I bought it for her, and she has been working on earning it ever since. Each day she has various chores, and it's been good and hard for both of us.

It's hard, because I have done much less that I wished in helping her learn how to help out around the house up to this point, so there is a lot of learning/teaching going on. Each of her chores requires work from me too. But it's good, because she's learned how to do things like "feed the vacuum", help more with the dishes, wipe down the bathroom counters, and of course, put away toys. But she has learned these things. And she's had the satisfaction of earning this toy, not just getting it. So I can live with yet another thing coming in our home.

I've also had the chance to tell her that not all chores are fun. Sometimes work is work. She is fond of telling me, one or two minutes into a chore, how overwhelmingly tired she is, and how she cannot continue. My responses are not terribly compassionate. Work is work is my basic answer. And if you want your reward, you do the work.

Yet you can't keep this child down. Within moments of complaining how she is too tired to lift another fork out of the dishwasher, you have to watch where you're stepping, because she is dancing back and forth between the dishwasher and where the fork goes, explaining that she is so happy she needs to dance.


Babs got one of her fevers last week. We spent the next few days with her in our bed at night, terribly sad during the day, and saying pathetic things like, "I can't, I've got a feber." I hoped that the baby would wait until she was better. (She's better, so he can come any time now.) She sings all day long, telling stories through song and playing through song. Kiddo does the same thing, sometimes they sing little duets. They are happy children, and I appreciate that.

I also met with the mothers who will be working with me to put together a little preschool for Babs and some other kids this fall. I can't actually believe I'm doing this, but I am grateful for other mothers who are willing to work with me on this. There are five little kids, but four moms, because there is a set of twins. I'm really grateful they're fraternal so it's easy to tell them apart.

Babs still loves her baby dolls, and has a line of them, in beds of various sorts, in her room where they spend a lot of time sleeping. Today we found another doll that had been packed away, and that was what she was truly grateful for in her prayers tonight.

The thing I am most grateful for right now is my diligent, good, helpful husband, who works, seemingly tirelessly, to continue to get us settled, to take care of the house and yard, to work, and to serve at home to a group of females who seem to need more of him every day. And he continues to give. Plus he teaches Sunbeams. I am so blessed. (In fact, right now, he's doling out cheese and crackers to the three-year old who took a nap today, so isn't as tired as we'd like her to be. Instead of watching TV, which is what his tired body and mind would really like to be doing.)

come back, my ankles

I've never had any swelling with my pregnancies, until this one. My feet are big, many of my shoes are tight, and my hands are wide too. They look like I've been hiking all day, but trust me, I have not. I know it is just the result of being very pregnant (two and a half weeks to go if he comes on time) in the summer, but I don't like it. I don't like that it's uncomfortable (as if the rest of me were feeling so great), and I don't like that there's not much I can do about it (except whine, I'm very good at whining).

In a good news/bad news moment, I'm very grateful that this summer has been exceptionally mild. I'm sure that's helped a lot. The bad news is it will finally be hot this next week. (Maybe I'll go check into a building where they believe in air conditioning, like a hospital.)

I dream of the day that my boy will be born, not because then I'll have him, but because then this crazy pregnancy will finally be over.

Here's me and my enormous belly. Maybe next Sunday I'll take a picture where you can actually see it.

laundry

I don't really mind laundry. I like clean clothes, and I like empty laundry baskets. And as long as you keep the machines moving, it can usually be done in a day.

I don't like that a laundry basket is not empty again at the end of the day. And I really don't like folding the load of kids clothes. I fold, and fold, and fold, and fold, and still there are more clothes. Then once they're folded, there are (what seems like) hundreds of piles of little tiny clothes. But kids really can't sort through a clean laundry basket and find what they need - so I can't really skip that step. I have taught Kiddo how to put away her laundry - but I will only give her one category at a time, otherwise I just have to redo it the next time I go in her room.

As you may realize, I'm starting over with the really tiny baby clothes again soon. It seems that I should change my attitude about laundry, but instead I think I'll just be overwhelmed. And feel ridiculously proud of myself those times when I actually fold and put away clothes. (It's the little victories.)

boink!

My sweet little Babs is at an awkward height right now. Each time she runs to give me a hug, her head makes contact with my big belly and she basically bounces off.

Given her personality, I can't tell whether she's doing this on purpose or not.

Speaking of my big belly, since it is a recent addition (and soon-to-be subtraction) I have no body-sense of how much space it takes up. (I've taken to putting my hand on it when space is tight, because I have a sense of where my hand is, but none for where my belly is.) So in the evening I cook with an apron, so I don't accidentally burn it on the stove. I run into walls, doorways, and tables frequently. I remember this from previous pregnancies, and it's one of the more bizarre features of this time in my life.

But the boinking is new.

rude awakening

Kiddo wakes up slowly. She lies in bed for a while, then heads out to the couch to lie there, drinking her chocolate milk and reading for a while longer.

So she couldn't possibly have enjoyed her little sister climbing into her bed this morning, shouting "We do not suck our thumbs! Stop sucking your thumb!" I wasn't in the room to watch, but I imagine that Babs was also trying to force the thumb out of the mouth at the same time.

(Apparently Babs overheard the conversation with the pediatrician about stopping the thumb sucking, but missed the conclusion, which is we wait until the baby comes and she's settled in school. A couple more mornings like this though, and Kiddo may just decide it's easier to just stop.)