The wisdom of Caroline.

"I don't know if we're going to have any more babies, but God knows, because He's the One who gives us things. And babies is one of His presents, right, Momma? I don't know what His other presents are, though."

Trip to the Park

We live walking distance from the park. We don't go as often as we should. The girls love it. Here we are, ready to go.

Caroline, racing toward her first trip down the slide:

She loves to climb these.

I tried to keep Will in the shade. Poor guy. I bet he can't wait 'til he's racing around with the girls.

Lucy is in heaven at the park. Give that girl a slide, and she is a happy camper.

I wish I'd taken a picture when we got home. Three tired, thirsty kids. I was able to transfer Will to his bed without waking him up. Lucy was eager for her nap. Caroline's still fighting it, but she's not going to make it long.

And sleeping kids make for a happy momma.

Phew.

Today is one of those days when just making it to the morning naptime feels like a huge triumph. Toward the end of my pregnancy with Lucy, my back started killing me. It hurt during my pregnancy with Will. And now it's begun hurting me again. I think it has something to do with routinely walking around with 20-30 pounds of children on my left hip.

Anyway, last night, I hobbled up the stairs to help Bob with putting the kids to bed ... and then I just went to bed. I knew I didn't have it in me for another trip down & up the stairs. This morning, I'm better, but not much. I'm a little leery of pain medication, assuming I'm much more likely to do more than I should, if I'm not feeling the warning pain messages my body's sending me. So I've just been trying to lift the kids as little as possible (thank God that Will can now climb the stairs by himself!). The two little ones are down for a nap, and I'm about to lie down on the couch downstairs.

I'm going to be checking into my insurance coverage, because I believe I'm ready to see a chiropractor. I know they often get a bad rap, but I'm ready to give it a shot.

As my college roommate pointed out, I brought this on myself...

That's 40-ish pounds of children I'm carrying, and I do that more than I should.

Honesty. Sort of.

The other day, I went into the girls' room to check on them, and I found Caroline clutching her hands together against her abdomen. I was concerned that she was hurt, so I asked her what was going on. Her response? "I don't have a baby wipe!" Which meant, of course, that she had a baby wipe. She's not allowed to get baby wipes out, since she has been known to remove all the baby wipes from the container, and then jam them back in, but all crumpled together, so they no longer feed out one at a time.

Anyway, sure enough, she had a baby wipe. I was thankful she only had one.

Yesterday, when I realized that she was wearing jeans ... but commando, I asked her where her underwear was. "Not in the toilet!" Good grief. You can imagine my relief when I later found it on the couch. And no, I don't know what it was doing on the couch, or why she would forget that she'd taken it off and put her jeans back on.

And Lucy? Well, I was looking through my House Beautiful magazine, and as I passed this ad, she said, "Bob!" I think he'll be pleased to know that he's featured in an ad. Maybe.

And why does she periodically call him Bob instead of Daddy?

The three sweetest words in the English language.

"You were right."

I'll have to tell Bob. I finally asked Caroline about this picture:

And you know how I thought it was a head, over a torso (with breasts!) with arms & legs? Well, I was wrong.

Turns out, (and now I vaguely remember Caroline saying something about it when I found this drawing) this is a picture of Caroline. With a crown. But not because it's her birthday. Because she's a queen. So the smaller circle, up over the big one? That's her crown. And we may need to work some anatomy classes into our busy schedule, because apparently, her arms and legs are coming out of her head.

At our house, on birthdays, the birthday girl gets to wear a crown at dessert time. The "crown" is my mom's tiara from when she was on Homecoming Court in high school. I used to love trying that thing on when we would visit my grandparents' house in Iowa, so when we were splitting up my grandparents' things, as my grandmother prepared to move in with my parents, I asked for the tiara. I knew that my girls would have as much fun with it as I did. And they do.

While we're talking about language...

Caroline talks a lot about the past and the future, and she has specific (and consistent) ways in which she does this.

To describe something that has already happened, she says, "Last night a year ago..." As in, "Did you make me a cake for my birthday last night a year ago?"

To describe something that's going to happen, she says, "Sometime on Thursday..."

Just so you have a heads-up, that's what those phrases mean. Every once in a while, Bob gets confused and says something like, "Did you tell Caroline we're going to Chicago on Thursday?" And I say, "No, did she tell you that? ... Oh wait. I'm sure I told her we'd go to Chicago some time soon. To her, that's on Thursday." The little goober.

She does like to read, so perhaps she picked this up in the sports section.

Stupor

In most ways, Caroline is like Bob. For example, she smells everything. Everything. It really grosses me out, but Bob is her champion in this. We have senses for a reason! We should use them!, he says.

But when she wakes up, she's a bit like me. If Bob talks to me about something when he's leaving for work in the morning (and I'm still in bed, mostly asleep), I will often respond like I know what I'm talking about. But I have no memory of it afterward.

Caroline, however, is just in her own zone when she wakes up. It's best to give her space so she can enter the world of the living in her own sweet time.

Anyway, Friday afternoon, I had to wake her up from her nap because we were going to meet Bob's mom for supper at the Olive Garden. I woke her up, knowing I would incur her wrath just by rousing her. So I quickly followed up "It's time to get up" with "We're going out to eat with Nena! At the Olive Garden!" She thought that through, and then remembered that the Olive Garden is next to a car wash that she loves.

But since she'd just awakened, she did not possess the ability to sort through her collection of nouns and come up with the appropriate ones. So she said, "Are we going to go see that thing with that thing in that thing?" And I, knowing exactly what she was talking about, because I AM HER MOTHER, said, "Yes, honey. We are."

Oh my goodness, I love my kids.

Frazzled.

Last night, Lucy was having a rough time. She was asleep, but then Caroline woke her up, and she has a hard time going back to sleep. I went in and comforted her, but she wouldn't stop crying when I left, so I got her some more milk.

Then she woke up around midnight, and again, there was no pacifying. I decided to just her cry it out, but Bob proposed letting her sleep with us. Oh boy. As soon as she got in bed with us (and the two cats) (in a double bed), she decided it was time to play and giggle and touch my eyelids and roll around. I was starting to get really annoyed, so Bob proposed that he go sleep on the couch. I didn't really see how that would fix anything except for Bob, so I nixed that.

Ultimately, Bob put her down in a different room, but with another cup of milk. She finally fell asleep.

Then Caroline fell out of bed and woke up wailing. I went in and held her for a bit, consoled her, and then tucked her back in.

Then Will woke up a time or two. I shouldn't complain because he sleeps through the night EVERY night, but still, I could have used a quiet night from him.

This morning, the girls dumped a huge load of blocks all over the house, I'm waiting to hear back from my doctor's office on whether or not they need to see me (I think I have an infection), or if they can just call in a prescription, I have an upholsterer coming to give me quotes on redoing a chair and couch (and, while we're at it, maybe the dining room chairs, and some cushions for the window seat?), and I really should shower. But if I'm in the shower, will I miss the call back from the doctor? I think it's worth the risk.

Good grief. May naptime come quickly--

Speaking of naptime, Caroline fell asleep on her sleeping bag during naptime yesterday. And when I say on her sleeping bag, I mean while it was still in its stuff sack. Crazy kid.

How to Make Your Child Poop.

Tell her it's time for bed.

I guarantee that she will immediately announce that she needs to go to the bathroom.

Luxury

You know you are a parent of young children when your idea of luxury includes:

a hot bath or shower every day
a trip to the grocery store by yourself
being awakened by an alarm clock, rather than a child
eating dinner late at night, so as to have a quiet meal with just your spouse
doing laundry and putting it away with no interruptions

I could go on, but the more I think of, the more pathetic it all sounds.

Let's just say that today, I'm suffering from the memory from my life as it used to be:

I used to run errands when I wanted to!
I used to go to work everyday.
When I wanted to go out with my husband, I didn't have to find a babysitter first.
Etc.

To clarify, I'm very satisfied (happy, even!) with my life. But there are days when being a "homemaker" or "stay-at-home mom" seems like a thankless, endless job.

Weird.

What does it mean when your three-year-old is carrying around a bucket full of toys, announcing that it's "dog poop and vomit"??

So I had a baby...

Last Thursday, August 27th, Will joined the family.

My observations so far: he's very happy. He pretty much needs to eat, and then he's happy. He doesn't get mad when his diaper's dirty, he's not fussy. He doesn't so much like bath time, but then, I'm betting he'll like it better when he can actually be in the water. It's just sponge baths until his umbilical cord falls off.

I haven't blogged since his birth because, well, my life has been revolving around my breasts. Nursing, pumping, etc. And, though I could talk/write about breastfeeding (and my struggles with it) for hours, I won't. I've subjected Bob to probably more than he can stand. But in a nutshell, breastfeeding was not going well, and now it is. I'm glad.

Today...

I will have a baby.

I'm being induced at 11:30. This is just too weird. I really don't like having it scheduled, but I'll address why we're doing it that way in another post.

So ... even though this isn't the ideal way I'd like to go into labor, I can't wait to meet the little guy!

One Hour Photo

I often think of myself as the "one hour photo" type ... by which I mean that I don't like to wait. (Do you remember when you dropped off your film and had to wait at least a couple days, if not a week, for your pictures to be developed?) And, with the efficiency of today's technology, even one hour seems too long to wait for photos ... to me, anyway.

That said, 40 weeks is a long time to wait for a baby to be born. Granted, for a couple of those first weeks, I didn't know I was pregnant. (Technicality: based on how the OB-GYN world counts pregnancy, you're actually NOT PREGNANT for about the first two weeks that you're "pregnant." Go figure.)

So, I'm 38 weeks pregnant today. I've been having contractions off and on for at least a month. I had contractions all night last night, some of them relatively painful. I got excited, hopeful. I sat up from 3:30-5, timing them. They were coming 4-5 minutes apart. Not bad. But they didn't get any "worse" or stronger, so I went back to bed. I'm not in labor. And as a result, I'm in a really grouchy mood. It doesn't help that I'm tired, that my parents left today after a brief visit, that my dog ate (yet some more) of my home-made bread, that my washer has been out of commission for THREE WEEKS...

And while we're talking about the washer: I had the appliance guys come out three weeks ago today. They said they needed to order a couple parts, that it would take a couple of days, maybe a week. Of course, that seemed too long for Miss One Hour Photo, but I sucked it up and did laundry at my mother-in-law's, which was nice, except for all the hauling that involves. Every day that I didn't hear from the appliance guys, I would think, apparently over-optimistically, maybe they'll call tomorrow! Finally, Bob called them. Turns out a part is on back-order. Honestly, I do not understand why they didn't let me know this. Ugh. It would have been helpful, as the piles of laundry got taller and taller, to know that I should go do laundry somewhere, and not hold out hope that I'd be doing it in my own basement the next day or so.

Seriously, what were they thinking? And I don't even know if there's an estimate on when the part will arrive. But I am NOT HAPPY. Come on guys. Get my freaking washer fixed for me already. I do not want to bring a new baby home to a house filled with dirty laundry...

And may that new baby come soon...