Where did the day go?!

I think I've lost some time today.  It went by quickly.

This morning the little kids discovered/made up their own “educational” game.  They were putting foam numbers in jail (trapped under a laundry basket) in order.  In order to do this, they had to figure out what number comes next.  What kids won’t think of when you leave them alone!  Next, my children decided to make a third eye out of paper and tape it to their foreheads.  They also made paper swords, and other unidentifiable paper weapons, covered in duct tape.  They made ninja kits and fought the bad guys.

Today I am very upset about abortion.  I read some evil, ridiculous articles, and now I’m looking for ways to distribute pro-life bumper stickers.  Just reading the articles made me sick to my stomach.  I can’t believe the level of depravity of some people…

I’ve been having contractions for several days.  It’s the first time I’ve had contractions that weren’t actual labor.  Tonight they were pretty regular but they’ve pretty much stopped.  I’m sure it’s because I packed my bag and called my midwife. :)  That’s okay.  I’m not actually quite ready.  My iron is too low and I’m working on getting it up, and the baby is turned the wrong way at the moment, so I’m doing exercises that are supposed to help.  I wasn’t sure how that would work, but the exercises worked last time with Teddy.

At dinner tonight-

Olie (to Demetri): If you don’t listen to your mom, you’re not listening to Jesus.

Demetri: How does he know such complicated things?

Olie: Because my mom teached me!

Warning: Pregnancy Rant

It’s almost 2:00 a.m.  I am becoming more firmly convinced with each passing day that the last few weeks of pregnancy exist to ensure that when a woman goes into labor she welcomes it rather than dreads it.  Yes, I am whining.  While on the whole this has been the easiest pregnancy I’ve ever experienced, in the last week the combination of symptoms which have come together in one fell swoop to grace my body with their presence are threatening to defeat my nerves.  

In addition to restless leg this evening, I have this new general feeling of discomfort accompanied by an inability to breathe while lying down.  Imagine that- how could a 7-9 lbs baby cause discomfort?  (And why have I gained 55 instead of just 7-9!)  Excuse the sarcasm; I think the lack of sleep is beginning to wear on my manners.  Anyway, there is now no such thing as a “comfortable position.”  I find myself chanting, “3 more weeks, just 3 more weeks” as I rub my feet and curse my ankles, which are finally groaning under the added weight.  So much that I find it difficult to walk.  What I need for the next few weeks is a hospital-induced coma.  What good is a cantankerous mom who can’t walk, can’t sleep, and is finding it difficult to function well enough to remember to feed the animals (or in this case, hungry children)?!  

I will have mercy on the inconvenienced reader and cease to detail my myriad complaints.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire to the hot tub for a midnight rendezvous with the rain.  Fully clothed.  Well, maybe I’ll go find my swimsuit, but it’s tempting. 

*Rant ends; exit madwoman. 

Why do I always have to think up a title for my posts...it's more trouble than the actual posts!

I've tried to post several times in the last couple days, but something has been wrong with this page.  The kids and I are at my in-law's while they are in Florida :).  Everyone's doing pretty well I think.  Incidents have been kept to a minimum, and I'm learning a lot!

I've found some great books lately, and I've actually been getting a lot of reading in because I haven't been feeling up to lots of cleaning and walking around.  My ankles have decided that I'm putting too much weight on them...so I've been sitting down a lot.  Who knows, maybe I'll get that nesting instinct in the next 3 weeks, but for now I'm pretty sedentary.  And glad to have help from Lena and Demetri :).

The boys are enjoying their time here, don't quite understand the idea that we're only going back to California for a month, but are pretty excited about Texas.  They're making the most of the snow and the hot tub.  I told Shawn someday we may have to get a hot tub, because I think my children are half fish.  A pool might be a little more appropriate but I'm pretty sure they'd get by with a hot tub, haha.  On the other hand I feel children are drowning in privileges today and it's not good for them.  I guess I may rethink the idea.  

Progress

Good things:

I am safely ensconced in Kamiah, and the drive was the least stressful 16 hour drive I’ve ever been on- thanks to my wonderful father-in-law who flew to California to drive me up here.

My midwife says I’m doing great, and as of tomorrow I have 6 weeks left.

Teddy seems to be healing quickly!

My sister and two adorable nieces are here for a week :).

Taxes are done, and we now have $0 in credit card debt (…student loans are another story, but it’s definite progress).

My husband sweetly took the time to redo the budget with me, even though it took several hours and a lot of repetition on his part so that I could understand it.  (There really are many different ways to think about money.)

I have been sleeping much better.

The boys and I love it here!

Have a great day :)

Arson

     Okay, not quite.  Every little boy I’ve ever met (and many not-so-little) has a fascination with fire.  Mine are no exception.  

     We found a desk lamp at an estate sale today.  We’ve been promising Demetri a desk lamp for quite some time, so that he can work at the desk under his bunk bed.  …It was a halogen lamp.  I have two floor lamps that use halogen bulbs.  I was aware that they get hot, and we’d never had a real problem with them getting too hot or tipping over, etc.  (I actually found a second desk lamp I loved and bought it for my guest room- which also happened to use a halogen bulb.)  Demetri was so excited!

     This evening as I walked past the children’s door I saw a faint glow.  Figuring the two little boys had turned the light on again (Demetri was still up reading in a different room) I went in to turn it off.  It wasn’t the light on the ceiling, it was the lamp.  Additionally, there was a strong smell in the room, and ashes on the floor.  Olie had put a piece of paper up to the lamp to try and catch it on fire.  It worked.  Goodbye new desk lamps.

     I don’t read much news, although I do research products occasionally.  Anyway, I’ve never heard much about halogen lights.  Several hours later, after the hoopla over Olie’s venture into the world of arson (is unintentional arson possible?) died down, and the talks, lectures and mandates had officially ended, I looked up everything I could find on halogen bulbs.  SO not a fan! 

     We are counting our blessings and actually very glad to have had this experience.  Now we know, and nobody got hurt.  There are much harder ways to learn lessons.  (Still- it was a bit scary, and it’s the kind of thing that causes me to wander through the house looking for other possible safety hazards.)

If It’s Not Broken Don’t Fix It…If It Is, Well, Thank Goodness For ER’s And Insurance

Shawn and the kids went to the park.  I stayed home and made dinner and pita bread. It wasn’t a huge deal when one of them was crying when they all came home.  Injuries while at the park are rather common among our boys, or while riding bikes or scooters, while cleaning their rooms, or pulling weeds in the garden.  They’d been going down the slide one last time before coming home- Teddy on Shawn’s lap, supposedly a safer way for a toddler to go down a tall slide.  Shawn isn’t sure what happened.  When they got to the end Teddy just started crying and saying his leg hurt.  I didn’t think much of it, but Teddy was so very sad that Shawn put a cartoon on for him.  The crying immediately stopped, and he was happily engrossed in letter shapes bouncing across the screen.  It wasn’t until everyone gathered around the dinner table that I thought something may be wrong.  He got down from the couch and immediately fell down as he tried to put weight on his leg, and of course started crying again.  We put another cartoon on as the other boys ate and we looked up Urgent Care hours and insurance procedures.  I was going to stay home and clean up and put the kids to bed but I ended up going, mostly for moral support and because Shawn thinks I’m good company. 

 

Halfway through the paperwork at Urgent Care, Shawn asked me if I’d seen the sign at the receptionist’s desk.  Sign?  What sign?  I was too busy writing up Teddy’s life history, which was taking far too long for the short two years he’s been on this earth.  “It says the person who does X-rays isn’t in today.”  Hmm, maybe we should come back in the morning?  Just then one of the children bumped Teddy’s leg, and the previously cheerful, normal-looking little boy was sent back into hysterics.  We asked for directions to the ER.

Although it felt just a tad silly to be going into the ER with a child who had gotten hurt on the slide and who didn’t seem to be very upset about it at the moment, we figured an X-ray wouldn’t hurt.  So we trooped in, and had a relatively short wait (during which time Shawn tried to convince me that it was dumb to be there and we should just go home) and went to triage.  As I waited in the children’s play area for Shawn and Teddy, I heard screaming and knew a doctor/nurse had appeared to do something horrible to Teddy, like take his temperature or smile at him reassuringly while asking questions.  For some reason that child is absolutely terrified of doctors (or really, any stranger at all, but especially ones who try to touch him, talk to him, or look at him) and usually yells at them to go away and not look at him.  I’m not sure if that’s strange or characteristic of his age group, but my other two weren’t quite so vocal about their mistrust of strangers.  Yeah, Shawn said the temperature and heart beat was a blast. 

They were going to take two sets of X-rays but after one they sent Shawn and Teddy to another room.  Shawn said he should have figured it was because they’d found a break the first time so they didn’t need the second set.  They didn’t even need to strap Teddy down to do the X-rays- although Shawn said that wasn’t exactly pretty either.  It’s nice to have a smart phone with little kid games on it.  It’s still enough of a novelty to carry strong persuasive powers.

By the time the boys and I got tired of waiting and set out to find them, they were in an express room for discharge.  We happened to come in at precisely the right moment; the nurse was trying to lure Teddy’s mouth open for Tylenol with a Popsicle.  He was having none of it, until Olie walked in and said “I want a Popsicle!”  That did it.  He opened his mouth and let me squirt it in so his brothers wouldn't get his treat.  I was only told that he was being discharged, by the way, and did not yet know that his tibia was broken.  I figured it out when the doctor came in to put a splint on…which was not nearly as easy as the getting the Tylenol down him.  We all managed to live through it, and got out in one piece.  Teddy did relatively well, with a lot of cajoling, distracting, some screaming, and a little laughing.  Compared to a few of his mega-tantrums, he was an angel.  So we got ice cream on the way home.

Shawn is sheepishly glad we went to the ER, and considers it a decent reason for getting very little sleep tonight. He figures his teachers will forgive him for sleeping through class tomorrow.  Teddy still hasn’t figured out that he can’t walk for a while, and was continually telling us to get that “thing” (the splint) off of him.  I’m planning on lots of cartoons, games on my phone, books, and other distractions.  I imagine not being able to walk will get old for a two-year-old before lunch tomorrow.  Since I can’t pick him up very well right now (I can get him about as high as the couch) our range of motion and activities are limited. 

I'm grateful that it doesn't appear to be a very bad break (for all I know about these things), that it's our first broken bone, and that we were in a place where it could be addressed quickly.  Hopefully he heals in record time with no complications.