Venturing

In the middle of a highly comfortable 88 degree Washingtonian "heat wave" (seriously, the church down the street has set up a "cooling shelter"), we grabbed some friends and took ourselves to Olympic National Park for some adventuring.

Chubble, in case I haven't mentioned it, has a somewhat ambivalent relationship with her carseat. When I say this, I mean that about 50% of the time she doesn't seem to notice that she's in it and the other 50% of the time OMGOMG-YOU-ARE-TORTURING-ME-GETMEOUTGETMEOUTGETMEOUT!!!!! Olympic National Park is about a 90 minute drive away. On our way out she mostly didn't notice she was sitting in a car seat. The way back was torture. In between there was some kid whining but mostly a good hike; we went about 4 miles total and there was a LOT of whining on the last mile ("I want water, why are we still walking, I'm tiiiiiired"). I guess the kids are out of practice.

The camera ran out of battery about midway through (my fault, we have a GREAT camera in terms of battery life, but I haven't charged it in a month or more). But I did get a lot of great pictures anyway!

We entered the forest and it wasn't quite instantaneous cool (in fact, it was just as warm in the forest yesterday as it was down in Gig Harbor, we found out). It was instant pretty though!



The kids really wanted this photo op:



Chubble rallied quickly once out of the car, and really enjoyed riding around in her carrier.



We packed in lunch. Water and lunch for four people = heavy! Boyness was NOT happy to take his turn carrying the backpack! Next time I'll have each kid pack their own backpack - I can carry a pack that weighs this much fairly comfortably, but not while I'm wearing the baby (it just gets to be too much weight on my shoulders, pulling in two directions like that), and it's too much weight for the kids.



There were some massive trees, and there was evidence of more massive trees in the recent past:



And they see...something...something interesting...



The river was definitely the main attraction of the day. This time of year, it's fairly fast flowing (not at peak levels but still really swift), and COLDER THAN SHIT because it's all snow melt.



Chubble REALLY liked her ride (don't worry, I didn't let her dangle like that for long, just long enough to take the photo after she fell asleep).



The kids thought these trees growing on top of this big 'ole boulder were pretty awesome, and they liked the view to the river too. They tried to get me to climb up there with them, but it's hard to do that kind of thing with the baby in a front carry. Most of the trail was quite easy and I only needed to use my hands to get around a couple of times, so it was a good trail for babywearing (not boring, but not difficult either).



Gratuitous sleeping Chubble photo!



Boyness' artistic senses were tingling for this shot. Alas, I couldn't figure out how to get it to work properly with our camera. I know what he wanted me to capture, and maybe if everyone else hadn't been running up the path I would have eventually figured it out. 4 pictures of essentially the same thing with different settings, and this not-very-spectacular photo was the best I did:



Merrily we hike along...moving up the mountain...



The kids NEEDED me to take this photo. Like, they may have exploded if I hadn't!



We like rocks! The mountain is made out of rocks! Awesome!



I think she likes her carrier:



Look, more rocks! Big ones! Girliness really wanted to explore the caves, I really didn't want her to get squished by a gigantic rock, and ~L~ helpfully reminded the children that if something is growing on it, the rangers said to try not to disturb it, and with that we left the humongous rock overhang.



We stopped on a gravelly "beach" for lunch. The kids didn't seem to want to stay in the calmer backwashing waters, until D got pulled and ~L~ had to go in after him, lest he get swept down the rapids (actually, this was really scary, and the kids finally "got" that even where the water looked relatively calm, it was moving too fast for them to wade out even a little).

The kids LOVED this area:



I mean, think about it, the day is hot, there's a cool breeze coming up from the river, there's all this cool stuff to climb on, and a big high place to drop rocks into the water from - it's like the kidtopia grotto:



About a mile, maybe a little less, down a second trail, we found this lovely stretch of beach alongside the river:



And yes, bonus, I am nursing a baby in that photo. We stopped here and played for a while before we turned around and headed back to the trailhead.



There was even a swimming spot - this drops off pretty precipitously, and was maybe 6' deep - we all went in at some point. The water was SO COLD, really we just dunked ourselves and RAN for the sunshine. It was physically painful, that's how cold it was. BittyPrincess went in naked and SCHREAAAAAAMED until she got back onto the hot rocks.



It was a lovely day to get wet and then dry ourselves on the beach.



And then the hike back and the aforementioned screaming-in-the-car episode.

By the time we got home it was after 9pm. Fran had dinner (burgers) ready. Dinner, shower, and all the kids dropped precipitously into sleep and stayed there for 11 straight hours, ready for new adventures today. Alas, they will probably just include washing the van (which got so dusty on the drive up the mountain yesterday that I could close the back hatch and get a shower of dirt) and playing in the yard.

Shiny

Yesterday we washed the van. It took all afternoon. No, really, we took small breaks between steps and stopped for lunch and went to the store for window cleaner and wax, but we started just after noon and ended at 7pm. My standards concerning what constitutes a successful day have clearly fallen far. But it is clean, it got its first wax since we've owned it (pathetic, I know - we've owned the van for about 5 years now), and it's sitting in the driveway all shiny and ready to go drive for 4 hours today. What was I thinking accepting an invitation to celebrate the 4th of July 2 hours from here? At least we'll be driving in a shiny freshly laundered (yeah, we did the carpets too, although that was last week - yesterday we just vacuumed inside and armor-all'd the plastic/vinyl/etc) vehicle. Irritatingly, Francesco and I will have to drive up separately, since he's working today. BittyPrincess thinks we should bring cake to the party. And celery. "Because I like cake and I like celery."

I also had a near-meltdown over the fact that it seems like I care more than the girls do about whether their room is clean. And then I realized my room isn't exactly clean at the moment, either: my dresser is full of random crap I just couldn't be bothered to put away, and my desk has quite a bit of extraneous correspondence on it. *Sigh* I think it's the stuff that's randomly shoved into their bookshelves that is setting me off. If you're going to put something away, do it right. That and the scatter of toys and clothes on the floor. I recognize that I was a terribly messy child and am getting back some of my own here. But I'd like them all to be as particular as Boyness is about his room and his stuff. I suppose it's one of those blessing-in-disguise situations that the two that don't give a shit are living in the same room, so it's not like there's one child stressing out about the mess the other child is making. They're just both really messy.

Rainy Day Updates

This has been a busy week. I'm feeling a little short on brainpower this afternoon, so I'll just outline it all boring-like.

Saturday - We rearranged the girls' room. I loved the way the girls' room was arranged before, and I'm really trying to buck up and deal with the fact that they want to change it and it's their room, so the arrangement that makes them happy is going to be more important than me thinking it looks good. We got all the big stuff where we wanted it, including leaving a space for a new desk, and left piles of their crap all over the hallway. And went to bed.

Sunday - Escape to visit friends. Yay!

Monday - IKEA in the morning for the desk, and then met with friends at the park; they came to our house afterwards and left around 8:30pm. Nothing of any consequence was accomplished.

Tuesday - Pacific Science Center! Yay! We'd already been to the Circus exhibit, but got to spend more time with it this time. The girls both waited an excruciatingly long time in line to use the trapeze bungee thing. BittyPrincess *just barely* weighed enough to use it, but managed to bounce herself around pretty well. Girliness outdid everyone else there, pulling off at one point 8 forward flips in a row. It was pretty awesome.

Wednesday - Nana day. We got home around 8pm and I did manage to assemble the desk for the girls' room before we went to bed, so there was some headway made on the mess.

Thursday - Friends over. We also chose this day to sort through all the girls' clothing, getting rid of or packing away outgrown items and pulling stuff from storage that would fit BittyPrincess. This was actually a BIG SUCCESS, which is a little surprising given the level of chaos in the house with 3 extra kids running around. The 10yo girls had established a mint - yes, they printed money - and then had the other kids turn in stuffed animals and puppets for money. By the end of the afternoon the artificial economy was thriving.

Friday - Well, that would be today, wouldn't it? The weather STINKS. We went to the library and got the kids signed up for the summer reading incentive program. We went to Goodwill and got a desk chair for the girls. We went to the transfer station and threw all our glass recycling into the bins. And we went to Costco, where (you know it) we spent an appalling amount of money on food - I suppose since we almost never throw any food out, though, it's not like it's wasted. It just hurts to fork over that much in one go.

In the in-between: A million and a half nursing sessions. Feeding the kids, and then doing it again. Minor-league cleaning and laundry. All that fluff-and-nonsense that takes up 80% of the day.

Our week has felt really busy and really satisfying.

I also read Mixed Blood: A Thriller by Roger Smith. I'm still sorting through whether I liked it or not. I enjoyed the writing. The characters were interesting and complex. This book got pretty incredible reviews, but I found I was quite able to put it down at any point, which makes it not such a compelling read as a thriller. What I found interesting was that it wasn't formulaic at all. I'm usually a happy-endings type of reader, but was satisfied with the not-entirely-happy-for-everyone ending here. If you like these kinds of slightly-gritty novels that do have an element of suspense - albeit one that is (surprisingly satisfyingly) not played up too much - you'll like this book.

Drive and Kite Runner

I was going to pack up the kids and go to the farmers' market in Tacoma today, but alas, the day semi-dawned crappy and we're staying home.

Just three posts in and I'm already running out of steam on this book thing, because I don't really want to write comprehensive reviews, I just want to like-it-or-not-and-why and get back in the habit of posting things every now and again. But halfway through this week I've finished a couple of books already so I thought I'd better buck up and post about them.

So...Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink is a work of non-fiction. I try to throw a few non-fiction books into the mix from time to time, even though I'm usually less than enthusiastic about them. The premise of the book is that reward/penalty systems don't work; that they, in fact, screw everything up. This is supposedly a whole new approach to motivating people, but it's essentially something any parent could have told you - if you pay a kid for something once, they will expect to be paid from there on out. The book gives a shout-out to the interest-based way we school, but is primarily about motivating employees with a little bit of aside for self-motivation and kid-motivation. There are echoes of Alfie Kohn, the hero of wussy parents everywhere, for whom I harbor an irrational hatred mainly because his ideas make no practical sense. Drive spends all of 6 pages talking about how to avoid extinguishing kids' love of all things new and learn-y and yet manages to impart more actual attainable advice than Kohn puts out in several hundred pages of "whaaaa my parents sucked *hurt hurt*". People are born loving to learn for no other reason than that it is satisfying to learn. The really interesting thing about this book is how much research went behind proving that we don't stop loving to learn, we just get fucked up by the way parenting and schooling typically work. The other great thing about this book is that the author doesn't go as far as Kohn goes; he says that when something is boring and can't be made more interesting, it is appropriate to have a reward/punishment system. This TOTALLY makes sense to me, and it takes parents off of Kohn's overly permissive wishy-washy never-tell-your-kids-what-to-do (entirely impractical) hook. I got pretty caught up in how this book applies to parenting and schooling, but that wasn't the main focus of the book. Overall impression: if you manage people, even little obnoxious underaged ones, you should probably read this book.

Kite Runner by Khaled Husseini has been sitting on my bookshelf for at least three years. I don't really like reading deep real-life personal-memoir books, because my deep personal real life has enough deep personal thoughts already. About 80% of my reading is escapism and the other 20% is practical application. I can see how this is a good book and why this book had such a following when it was first written. The writing was good, the story felt very real, and I really have nothing negative to say about it except that I wasn't really excited about it. I much prefer A Thousand Splendid Suns, by the same author, because I connected better with that book. Overall impression: worth reading but not on the top of my list.

This week we did lots of things other than reading, so I'll have to post again.

Brave New World

OK, so I'm already done with this book. It's a pretty quick read. Like The Road, it reads a little like a writing exercise (the idea is X, now go!), but unlike The Road, it isn't a complete failure.

"Not a complete failure?" you say, "but it's a classic!" And classics, I say, usually aren't that fun to read. This one was at least engaging. The world that was portrayed had a bit more thought behind it. Character development was really weak, which I could see as part of the point of the book; the characters are SUPPOSED to be weak. Still, I like it when I can really get into the heads of the characters in a book (at least one of them), and that didn't happen at all here.

Impression? I liked it and am glad I read it, and recommend that if you are another of those rare souls that initially escaped this book, you pick it up and spend a couple of hours with it.

Books, books, books

I like to read. I especially like to read while nursing or cuddling kids. I thought: gee, I'm having trouble blogging lately. And then I realized that blogging about my reading for a little while might help me get back into the habit, since it's easy and requires very little creativity, but friends might appreciate it nonetheless.

This week I went through, back-to-back, two of the most disparate books I've ever read. The first was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The second was Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Unless the second had actually featured rainbows and unicorns, it would be hard to think of a way to put more emotional space between the two.

Let's start where I started: The Road. This book can be described in a single word, and that word is BAD. It's not just a single kind of bad, it's the kind of well-rounded totally bad that I'd be hard-pressed to put a more complicated label on. If I said it was horrible you might think I was referring to the subject matter in a kind of horrible-but-compelling way, but no, it's not. The subject matter is, granted, horrible. It is also incompletely imagined and shock-value heavy; by this I mean that there are scenes in the book that the author describes in ways that maximize the use of disturbing words and subject matter but that contain elements that do not make sense when you stop to think about them - and it's not the kind of book that is complicated that way on purpose. But let's not stop at the subject matter; the writing is also bad. Yes, I understand that our dear probably-mentally-unstable Mr. McCarthy was trying to use a writing device. It didn't work. Screw the author, it's the visionary that read this book and decided to publish it that should get an award. There's no good reason that anyone who reads with any sort of regularity should like this book. I suppose if you read something bad enough, the good stuff seems even better in comparison...but still, whoever read this complete piece of shit book (it took less than 2 hours to read, so maybe the short story category would fit better) and thought "wow, this should be printed!" and later "wow, this should be a movie" TOTALLY deserves kudos for seeing the money underneath all the crap. Yes, yes, I understand the thinking that "a good book makes you think and this book makes you think." This book makes me think about what a load of shit it was, it doesn't make me think constructive thoughts of any variety. Overall impression? Utter crap. Save your time for more pleasurable literary experiences like reading translated technical manuals.

Onward...

Before I started the second book I read this week, Outlander, I looked it up online in a semi-desperate attempt (because I am not a fan of online book reviews, and now I get to laugh at myself for posting one) to avoid the disaster that selecting based on jacket reviews had caused earlier in the week. "Hard to classify," they said. Well, I have no such problem. It is a romance novel. I don't read romance novels, so you can be surprised when I say that I loved this one. I guess I liked it the way that people like Playboy for the articles or go to Hooters for the chicken wings. I read a romance novel for the phenomenal writing. Because it was, it was, it was. Thank the freaking Lord. After reading my way through the absolutely shitty writing of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series and then picking up Cormac McCarthy, it's kind of a wonder I didn't give up reading altogether (aside from necessary evils like street signs, party invitations, and text messages). Thank you Diana Gabaldon. You have restored my brain's language centers to balance. And the sex was pretty good, too. Extra points for really good plot devices, not leaving holes in the story, and avoiding "movie magic" writing mistakes. Overall impression? Woohooo, requesting the sequel from the library!

I'm now reading Brave New World. Believe it or not, I've never read it before!

Future reading suggestions are welcome.

Her First Sick

Some blessedly short-lived but super-crappy illness has been running through our family. One person at a time (except for Francesco and Tony, who had it at the same time). Fever, body aches, light nausea, and just feeling TIRED. I am not even sure where in the body this particular bug lives, but it drove Tony to 103.7 "and everything looks purple." Motrin to the rescue! The rest of us weren't hit quite so hard and rallied without drugs within about a day and a half.

Chubble, though, totally hates being sick. She's pretty used to being pampered, I think. She refused to eat (I managed to make her eat once) for 24 hours. No big fever for her (she didn't even break 100). The rest of us had gotten all lethargic and she did too. It SUCKED. I think her being sick might have sucked as much for me as it did for her. Still, she even looked all sick and pathetic. I tried to take a sick pathetic picture, but since she is already about the most unphotogenic baby I've ever met, it just looked like all her other "OMG my baby looks like that? Oh, ok, I'm glad you don't think so either" pictures.

She's better now but still being weird about eating, like she's not sure that's such a great idea until she actually gets started. She won't eat half-awake. I can't get her to fall asleep while she's nursing, which was never one of her strong suits but I could get her down when she was tired. Now it's all about bouncing and rocking and other highly me-awake baby soothing activities. Not cool, not cool. Particularly at 2:30am, which we've done for 2 nights in a row. Please, Chubble, you are 2 months old. You had figured out, finally, when night time was. You can do this. Sleeeeeep.

Walking, walking, walking

Today we walked from our house to a big neighborhood park, 1.5 miles each way. Chubble in the wrap facing forward and wide awake on the way there, facing in and sleeping on the way back. Totally doable. Awesome. 3 miles = no obstacle for me and the kids.

Play?

Last week Aunty B and Uncle P visited :). She got pictures and I didn't, very strange. We had a very good visit despite the angsty PNW weather. The kids were THRILLED to see their Aunt and Uncle, and didn't act like complete asses the way they had during the last visit. They got a little wrapped up into our normal YMCA/music lessons/etc schedule, but we did manage a trip out to IKEA, some thrift store shopping, and a day at the Pacific Science Center. And then as we were dropping them off at the airport the sun came out and hasn't really gone away since.

I feel like the dog on Over the Hedge. "Play?! Play?! PLAYPLAYPLAYPLAY" (I looked on youtube for a clip just in case somebody didn't "get" that, but no go) I must be annoying the living heck out of my friends. If I haven't gotten you yet don't worry, either I or Francesco will be right on that the next time we have an impulse to go beaching or parking or hiking or whatever-it's-SUNNY-OUT-ing.

Yesterday the kids and I walked a mile out (another mile back) down our street, collecting a full bag of plantain and chickweed to dry out. Today, we went on a bitty hike at McCormick Creek; we came home, at lunch, and I shuttled Francesco and the kids out the door for their Y classes. I am TIRED. Really, I'm not sure whether I'm being coherent at the moment or not.

Chubble is growing and, well, chubble-ing. It's not uncommon to hear "look Mom, she's chubbling on me!" from the big kids, meaning that she's looking around not doing much of anything. She's getting to my favorite part, when they start looking at you and smiling, trying to figure their hands out and whacking themselves in the faces. I love the weird faces, the cooing gurgling "conversations" (Chubble is either the most conversational of my kids, or I've completely forgotten this stage for the others), the feeling of a more interactive baby when you pick her up and hold her. There is a different "feel" to them when they start cooperating with you while you move them around, and I really love that. We're to the point where I can scoop her up with one hand now (this always seems to freak first-time parents out).

I think we'll keep her.

Yesterday we tried out various carrying methods for our walk, and the best option is still a face-in front wrap. I am anxious for her to grow into her backpack carrier.

I am also TOTALLY ready for her to make friends with her car seat. I can put her in there happy and gurgling, and in a few short minutes she'll be red-faced and sweaty from screaming her little head off. Sometimes she decides, seemingly at random, that the car seat is fine after all, and she'll look around the car happily for the 15-20 minutes it takes us to drive anywhere of consequence. More of that, please.

Good Big Brother

Only one month old, and she's got her brother totally wrapped around her little teeny not-yet-under-her-conscious-control finger.

Chubbletastic!

How to Have a Water Birth for $50

I promised that I'd eventually post about the birth pool. I think it seems so primary to the process of getting ready for birth in my mind because it was probably the only thing we really did to get ready for the birth that somebody having a baby in a hospital wouldn't have done. The pool setup and a car seat were the only new purchases I made for this kid during the pregnancy. Not that having a baby was inexpensive; take into account my deferred income and she's one expensive little being.

This is kind of like the cheap-but-not-TOO-cheap person's guide to preparing for a water birth.

Anyhow, without further ado:

Selecting a Birth Pool

I had three main criteria in mind. First, that the pool be sufficiently deep (>22" is my minimum, even given my shortish 5'2" stature), and second, that it not have a terribly large capacity. And then the big make-it-or-break-it quality - PRICE. We don't have deep pockets. Particularly after our break-in. I wanted, ideally, to spend less than $40. This automatically rules out pools that were designed to give birth in, like the AquaDoula or Birth Pool in a Box or any number of available (and really good IMO for varying reasons) options. It even rules out rentals, which in my area run $250 or so.

We accomplished 2/3 of our criteria for $29.99 on Amazon (crap, it's even cheaper now!), and our happy little "OMG we're almost ready for a baby" package arrived just two days later.

The pool I linked is actually a little large. At 72-75", the capacity is about 1/3 more than that of the 60" I would have preferred. That pool, though, was for whatever reason a lot more expensive when I was doing my shopping. The price point changes constantly, so if you can get the 60" (still 22"-24" tall) pool, go for it, it will take a lot less time to fill. The larger pool was so big I couldn't even reach both sides at once. This is desirable in a play pool but not so much in a birthing one.

Accessories

Hose - For sanitary reasons, we needed a brand-new hose. For avoiding-disgusting-toxins-in-the-pool reasons, we needed one that was OK for hot water and for drinking water. This type of hose was a tadbit more pricey, but since we could pretty comfortably get away with a hose that was only 25' long (in most houses 50' is the safer bet), it was just $14. After we were done with it, we ran bleach water through it and set it aside for the next time we need to run hot water through a hose.

Adapter - we were going from our shower (we remove the shower head) to the pool. The adapter was a little difficult to find at Home Depot because it wasn't labeled in anything even remotely resembling an obvious way, and I had to bring a shower head and the hose to the adapter isle and find the one that matched. $2.45 (plus $.50 for thread sealing tape). We did a trial run without the sealing tape just to make sure it worked (HIGHLY recommended, since I've seen "universal adapters" fail at births and it's not a good scene).

Liner - painting drop cloth, $1.49. We wound up not using it for the birth (we did in the trial run and it was a PITA and water still got out, so we figured if we were going to have to sanitize the pool itself anyways we might as well not deal with the crinkly). If we were going to be passing this on to another family, we would recommend purchasing a liner made specifically for pools.

Air pump - this is really important, because these pools have HUGE air reservoirs. It took 30 minutes to fill with the pump and would probably have taken way over an hour with our lungs. We had a pump from way-back-at-some-point that is half-broken, so we didn't buy a new one, but we did need to inflate the pool outside using the car adapter. So we left the pool inflated, propped sideways against the closet doors in the bedroom from about 37 weeks on, mainly because we had no desire to stand outside in the rain pumping up a pool again (even if it wasn't in the middle of the night).

Strainer - women poop when they push, it just happens. You need a strainer. We had a metal one that we planned to boil afterwards if we wound up using it, but we didn't use it. I've mostly seen women use fish nets (some birth kits even contain them), which are very cheap too if you can't get over reusing something you've gotten shit on.

Tarp - we didn't have one, but I highly recommend it for others. We didn't wind up making a mess but it's SUPER common for small splashes to get out of these pools during labor. Nothing fancy, and another painters' plastic will work just fine if you don't already have one, so max expenditure here is still just $1.50 and we spent nothing.

Water pump - NOT NECESSARY unless your pool will be below ground level. A water pump will typically cost more than our pool did. We siphoned the water into our garden. It wasn't THAT gross, really. A little bloody. Yay fertilizer! Out-of-doors, the blood gets consumed/broken down really fast, so it wasn't a sanitary hazard out in a garden that nobody was going to be setting foot in for several weeks. Anyway...pump not necessary. We gravity siphoned and it took quite a long time to empty the pool, but it worked well.

Assorted Other Lessons Learned

We started filling as soon as my water broke, before labor really set in. This was a GOOD IDEA because it was only actually "labor labor" for about 30 minutes, which would totally have been enough time if I wanted to soak the bottoms of my feet. The water stayed reasonably warm overnight with just a heavy flannel sheet over the top of the pool, so we had a good volume at a decent (probably about 90 degrees by the morning) temperature when we woke up and started filling the pool for the real deal. As it was, it was still a little on the cool side (more like 96 degrees than like the 100 we were shooting for) when I got in; Francesco added some water in big pots from the stove to boost the temp after Chubble had actually been born and we were sitting in the tub trying not to let her get too cold. The other reason starting so early and covering worked for us is that we stopped filling the second the water started getting cool, so we were covering a 130 degree pool and we could leave it unattended for 10 hours and have it still well over room temperature when we needed it. The worst thing that could have happened is that we'd have had to siphon out a large portion of the pool water and refill with hot water if my labor had turned out to be much longer.

This isn't one I had to learn myself, thank goodness...those almost-boiling pots of water? They're freaking hot! Pour them as far away from the laboring woman (burns in labor! Ack!) as possible without getting the water or the pot directly on the pool plastic (melting plastic! Ack!).

Clean the pool right away. It's just easier. We don't need to elaborate on how we know that, we just do.

Expense

Pool - $30
Accessories - $18.50
---------------------
Birth pool - $48.50

A side note about utilities - we haven't a clue how much they cost us. Our water bill that month was only slightly more than usual, maybe by between $5 and $10, and that's after filling the pool twice and showering at home way more often than usual. Our electric would be impossible to figure out (this is a factor because it took 3 reheats from the water heater to fill the pool) because we set the thermostat much higher than usual in the first couple of weeks after Chubble got here, and because April this year was much colder than April last year (so no good comparison point).

And, we have a happy fully functional birth setup for under $50!

Poor Abandoned Blog

I have good reasons to abandon the blog, but I should also check in because it isn't like I'm keeping a journal anywhere else.

It is no longer winter! WHOHOOOO!!! When I calculated my April due date, way back last August, I pictured myself sitting on a blanket in the sunshine with my infant watching the kids play. I TOTALLY intend to spend as many hours as I can muster doing exactly that. I really, really, really, really (REALLY) needed summer and sunshine. I am really glad it's here.

I decided that "Newbie" doesn't fit the baby. She'll be "Chubble" for now. It's my blog, I can rename her as often as I want. Chubble is now a month old, and closing in on 11lbs. That's over 1/3 more than her birth weight. Crazy, right? Her cheeks are getting chubby and she's accumulating fat rolls. She has a terribly unpredictable sleep (non)schedule. And despite the fact that she's a very noisy/active sleeper, I'm managing to get a decent amount of sleep myself, which probably explains why I'm feeling a lot more mentally "awake" and like myself than I have any right to feel at this point. There's this mental fog that new moms seem to walk around in; it's half hormone and half sleep deprivation. I guess I have the light burns-off-every-morning version rather than the weather-service-warning version. I still reserve the right to revert to full-on mama brain if my baby suddenly decides she doesn't like to sleep at night anymore. Right now the biggest sleep challenge is that I don't know whether she'll be out for the night at 8pm or will cling to consciousness until midnight.

I am having some overly-awake-BittyPrincess (Toddlerness, back then) flashbacks, since Chubble is awake a lot for her age. *THIS IS NOT THE SAME BABY I WILL NOT HAVE TO DO THAT AGAIN*

When I looked back for that link I read a few other posts (because let's face it, saying "fuck" fiftybillion times in that particular post was hardly the high point of my blog), and I realized that my blog used to be more entertaining and had better pictures. Maybe I have had more student-midwife/pregnant/new-mama fog going on in the past two years or so than I was giving myself credit for.

Still, life is looking decidedly normal. Which is a little bit stunning at barely a month postpartum. It's a little different getting around with the baby in tow, but for the most part this has been easier than I had anticipated.

I am VERY MUCH digging the 5 year spacing between Chubble and BittyPrincess. The others are 2 and 3 years apart and that was a lot harder, because there was no such thing as letting them go do their own thing while I dealt with the baby. I can't exactly leave the 5yo home alone or anything, but I *can* take a shower with the realistic expectation that nothing horrible (or even remotely horrible) will happen while I do so.

All three older kids are adjusting really well and loving (sometimes a little too much) on their new sister. At least the loving-a-little-too-much at ages 5, 8, and 10 means they're a little more in her face than I'd like, and are sure that they can get her to stop crying without my help thankyouverymuch, not that they're exploring her eyeballs with their fingers.

OK, I could probably ramble on semi-endlessly, since the baby is asleep and the other three are occupied doing various quiet things around the house, but I need to put bread in the oven and start making dinner.

PS - I suck at taking pictures. Somehow getting out the camera seems like a monumental task lately.

Happy

Oxytocin Makes the World Go 'Round

No really, it does.

If I wasn't so stoned out on that particular hormone, I might post some pictures of the new baby.

She's extremely cute. But then again, she's a bundle of bodily function and love hormone, so how could I not think she's cute?

Elaina's Birth Story

I've been having some trouble writing this story. When BittyPrincess was born, the story was lovely and straightforward. This one winds a bit, and my writing talents veer heavily towards straightforwardness with an occasional sarcasm curveball (not entirely appropriate applied to this particular birth story). Here, about a week later, I'm still of two minds about the whole thing. It was an amazing, wonderful thing. And it was startlingly different from what I'd expected; not in any hugely dramatic sense, although it certainly was dramatic enough for me. In writing I find myself going back and forth from cataloging to analyzing to attempting to explain a phenomenon (the disconnect a really short labor causes) that I'm not sure can be explained unless it's experienced. Nonetheless, here it is.

The very short version is that Elaina Lokelani was born at 1025am on the twelfth into her dad's and my hands after a looong prelabor and extremely short active labor. She was 8lb 0oz, and was (and is) perfect.

The long version ensues...

A week after my big Easter labor fakeout - in fact, matching to the hour when I gave up on labor that particular day - my water broke. I've done that before, the rupturing before labor thing, so we were in somewhat familiar territory. I answered the kids' myriad questions on the topic ("what does it feel like" - "kind of like peeing yourself, only it isn't pee"; "when is the baby coming?" - "Baby didn't decide yet, but sometime in the next day for sure"; "doesn't baby need that water?" etc etc etc). I let Louisa (midwife) know, we filled the tub partway so it wouldn't take too long when we needed it, and when things weren't really picking up by bedtime (contractions still really irregular and not particularly strong) we all tucked ourselves in to bed.

I slept poorly, of course, contracting only every 30 minutes or so but pretty strongly.

We got up around 7 or 8 am and made coffee. I was still on the every-15-30-minute plan. They were BIG LONG contractions, most of them almost 2 full minutes; Louisa and I think they were a last-ditch effort to turn baby into a better position. Didn't work.

At 9 we had a massive breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and oranges.

At perhaps 9:30 the contractions started coming closer together, but still, 7+ minutes apart. It was starting to get really difficult to cope. Fran, the kids and I walked around making last-minute prep including filling the pool the rest of the way, and Louisa started heading my direction, but in a "we still have some time" kind of a way.

By 10 things hurt like hell and I had definitely turned a corner of some sort, into actual, "ok the baby isn't turning, lets shift to get-it-out mode" kind of labor.

Unlike BittyPrincess' labor, I didn't feel peaceful, I wasn't getting good calming time between contractions, and I needed a good deal of support from Fran. I taught him how to do a hip squeeze; he did it fairly well a couple of times and then got it exactly right once, and I swear I FELT my cervix dilate when he did it. Like that gave my pelvis the little extra space it needed, my cervix got the full effect, and WOOOSH there it went. Honestly, it scared the crud out of me and I wandered around for the next couple of contractions feeling really out of place and trying NOT to replicate that feeling, including waving Fran away even though the hip squeeze/back pressure had really helped things feel less out of control.

Louisa was probably headed semi-frantically in my direction already (well, she was definitely headed my way, but I don't know how frantically). About the only coherent thing I could get out between contractions was some extraordinarily whiny variation on "I have to push. Call Louisa and put her on speakerphone. Getting in the tub."

I got about a literal minute of relief when I got in the pool, which was long enough for Fran to set up that phone call, place cameras in the hands of the children, and come back to the pool as I lost it in a way that I swear, I haven't in any of the other kids' births. I mean, I got to the point where I was slightly out of it for all of them but BittyPrincess, but this where I was holding on to Fran for dear life and sobbing into his arm, answering questions by wailing "it hurts" over and over again; *that* I haven't done before. The kids were totally unprepared for that; they knew it could and would hurt, but I'd been silent or close to it for all my other births and hadn't thought to prepare them for the fact that I might be crying and writhing and losing my shit all over the place.

I don't really know why it was like that. Some combination, I think, of baby malpositioning making things actually more difficult, and a sneaky labor that hit me suddenly and happened in a hurry. It was rough but it was also RIGHT. I wasn't scared that things weren't going to work out; it just hurt, a lot, a lot more than given my previous experiences I felt like it should have.

At any rate, Fran continued to verbally reassure the kids, keep up a conversation with Louisa on the phone, and eventually, to catch the baby.

Again, even though I only pushed for a short time, it felt like I put in a lot more effort than I had for any except my first birth. Like I felt all of the downward motion happening, the structure of my pelvis moving as the baby came steadily down. Which actually isn't all that surprising, considering that the baby emerged into Fran's hands direct OP and with her right hand nestled against her cheek. I've never described to him what most midwives do when babies stick their hands and arms in inconvenient spots like that, but either it's just good common sense to brace the arm and help ease it out or he has more midwife in him than he thinks. She also had her incredibly long (4' or so) cord around her neck twice. I had a feeling that she was going to be born all tangled up like that, and felt rather than saw the cord through turbulent water, where it was easy to untangle before bringing her out into the air.

Fran most definitely did not lose his shit. I am still not sure how he managed to think of quite literally everything that needed doing in those few minutes. I know he did get some prompting from Louisa, but that was a lot to get arranged and still manage to be there to get squeezed/hung onto/pulled/whined at by your wife. And reassure kids. And act more like an actual midwife than just doing the standard "dad catch" (I don't know if it's going to surprise any dads that might read this, but when you "catch" with the midwife's hands there, usually we're doing all the tissue protecting stuff we think is important, and you're doing the baby-contact part that you think is important, and everybody gets to be happy; but there's more to catching a baby than letting it land, however magically and importantly, in your hands).

It's an incredible feeling, bringing your baby to you for the first time, watching her take her first breaths and start to cry. Finding out she's a girl.

Every baby reacts a little differently to those first moments. This baby wasn't surprised, the way some babies are. She wasn't indignant, either. She wanted to complain about it, and did, but in a "wow something big just happened to me!" kind of way.

I sat in the pool simultaneously overjoyed to be holding a baby and in complete disbelief that I was, in fact, actually holding a baby. Going in about 30 minutes from "ok, we're really going to have a baby today!" to a baby left me confused and out of body for a while. 30 minutes SOUNDS like a decent amount of time. But even if you're contracting every 3 minutes (and I wasn't quite that close together) that's just 10 contractions. That's not enough time to get used to the concept. It's not enough time to set up your coping skills. It's not enough time for your body to realize what it, itself, is doing.

When I tell people that we had our baby before the midwife arrived, I almost always get "good thing you're a midwife, then!" back. But it really wasn't that way. In those minutes I was just as overwhelmed by my body as anyone else, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything going on in my head at all other than the complete rush of pain and hormones and OMG-this-isn't-really-happening-is-it. There was certainly nothing going on in my head or body that prompted me to be a midwife to myself in any meaningful way. When I felt baby's head emerge I wasn't thinking about mechanics or keeping from tearing or anything other than some washed-out body-deep construct of "CRAP this hurts." I've only caught a handful of posterior-presenting babies and there really was no muscle memory there, and no brainpower to deal with it. There was some part of me that felt her head, didn't make immediate sense of what I felt, didn't get a strong what-to-do signal from my body (it was still trying to catch up), and got overwhelmed and let Fran deal with it.

A few minutes later (I was totally not paying attention to how long; again, confused and disconnected), Louisa showed up. Girliness got to cut the cord. I passed baby off to Fran, birthed a placenta (an event that almost never shows up in birth stories, which is curious; that process isn't exactly fun either but it IS satisfying to be done with it), and got settled into bed.

I checked out fine with a small tear and fairly minimal blood loss. Baby checked out perfect. Boyness wielded the sling scale and she weighed in at 8lb0oz, politely leaving "biggest baby" title to her brother while at the same time soundly outweighing both of her sisters.

Our little photographers got many wonderful - and entirely inappropriate for common public blog consumption - pictures of the entire process. And a few bonus shots of the walls and lamps and peoples' feet. Boyness in particular took some amazing pictures, and I'm very happy about that because BittyPrincess' birth is almost entirely photo-free. Plus it let him hide behind the camera during the process, which is a coping mechanism I've seen dads use when they're overwhelmed, and I think it really worked for him.

We had a couple of names thought up for this baby, but they really didn't feel right for her once she was actually born and we'd met her. The next morning, we named her Elaina Lokelani. The kids favor "Ellie" as a nickname, but haven't really settled into anything other than "baby" yet. Here on the blog, now that her name has been announced, she'll be "Newbie," at least for a while.

I'm totally smitten and so is the rest of the family. The kids can't seem to get enough cuddle time. We have some things to sort out yet; she needs to get on board with latching more comfortably, and with not waking up in the middle of the night ready to visit. But it's totally completely LOVE.

Easter, and a Big Fat Labor Fakeout. Oh, and the van.

'Twas the night before Easter and all through the house...I was grumbling and trying to sort kid Easter eggs. Sorry, too lazy to make that rhyme.

"You aren't the only adult in this house you know," says Fran, taking charge of some of the Easter prep. In a good way. I was about to start hiding empty eggs by accident.

We settled into bed just before midnight, kid easter baskets perfectly arranged and eggs neatly labelled with initials (we've found this stops the running around like crazypeople trying to outdo each other issue) and hidden:




At which point I start contracting every 5 minutes, like clockwork, and they're all big and pressurey. But not getting worse or closer together, so I decide to go to sleep. Semi-sucessful. I was, after all, REALLY freaking tired.

Every 5 minutes all through the morning egg-finding festivities.




We had planned to go to MIL's for the afternoon, to let the kids get spoiled even more and to have dinner. But I really, really didn't want to leave the house. I figured even if I wasn't in BIG BAD RIGHT NOW labor, I was in labor of some sort. We moved the gathering to our house, because again, not in BIG BAD RIGHT NOW labor. Contractions started showing up every 3 minutes instead of every 5. The in-laws showed up.

My first clue that I was not actually in labor should probably have been that I continued to contract while they were around. Contract, and look like a tired, grumpy hobbit:



Eventually they left, I called L(MW), and we started filling the pool. I was still not convinced I was in BIG BAD LABOR. Even though I was all spacey and the contractions were 3 minutes apart and they hurt. Somehow I knew to hedge my bets. I told the kids the new baby might decide to come today, but if not, we'd have a hot tub party in my bedroom.

Yeah, when L showed up I was all of 3cm with a slightly malpositioned baby. I continued to contract but things slowly let off until by 8 or so it was pretty clear nothing was going to happen after all.

HOT TUB PARTAY!!!!!



So the kids had a great time in the pool. After they got out, I floated around for a little while and then tucked myself in to bed and slept like a ROCK.

Woke up all sick and irritable. Of course.

So that all pretty much sucked. I've done this pregnancy and birth thing before. I even help women decide when they're in labor. I'm reminded that I don't know shit. I also have been reminded by several birth professional type friends that not only am I not the first person to ever pull a complete fakeout, several of them have done it. Must be yet another profession-related curse. You'd think that being out of practice for 8 months would make me immune, but apparently if you conceive while you've been acting as a midwife you get the full-force curse.

We followed Easter up by going the next day to a nice meeting at L's for birth professionals, where I got to hear a pelvic floor specialist talk. Which was great until the van wouldn't start.

L rocks, she let me borrow her car so I wasn't stranded an hour and a half from home. And fed us. And essentially kept me from turning into a complete sobbing mess. We left the van at their mechanic and drove home just 6 hours after we had intended to leave.

Today, we're $1000 (ok, $1052) lighter, with a new instrument cluster and in-dash computer. The lights no longer blink. I'm assured that the van will reliably start from here on out. Or at least, if it doesn't, it won't be for the same reason it hasn't started in the past. I was supposed to stop by the Dodge dealership on the way home and get the new gauges calibrated properly, but even though I made an appointment with the dealership, apparently the guy who knows how to do that particular job wasn't available. THANKS. I thought that was why I made the appointment, to avoid exactly this brand of bullshit? So back to Bremerton tomorrow.

All of this is not the fault of the mechanic we used, who seriously undercharged us for the amount of time and effort he spent on our van and was pleasant to work with. He doesn't have a website of his own, but here's a listing: Mac 'N Jack's Island Svc. Not that I'm going to drive a lot of business on Bainbridge, but it can't hurt to put a plug in when you have a particularly good experience with someone.

Even though (ouch) $1052. Ouch.

Ouch.

Ouch.

(Sucking it up...OUCH...Sucking it up...)

In which the children attempt to redeem themselves

I'm still sick. A whole toilet paper roll full of snot kinda sick.
The kids have lost their snark, though. Events today included:

• Singing Christmas songs while making Easter decorations
• Bringing many extra pillows into my bed to read with me
• Making tea
• And more tea
• Ballet dancing in the living room...to Hootie and the Blowfish
• A rousing rendition of "Food Glorious Food, We Can't Wait to Eat It!" when I set out dinner (a fairly simple mixed-greens salad with homemade vinaigrette, Gorgonzola cheese, and slices of chicken...surprising thing to break into song about)
• Nagging-free kitchen cleaning. Including the one not assigned dishes taking out trash and compost - without complaining! And cooperative pot-and-pan washing!
• Several fight-less rounds of Trouble, Candyland, and Chess

My uterus has decided that now is not the time to have a baby, and has been pretty much quiet all day. The uterus part, that is; the baby has been wiggling and hiccuping away. Perhaps my body has decided that as long as the snot factory/headache/sore throat persists, it wouldn't be a good idea to have a baby. Or maybe it's the fact that I shifted baby higher in my pelvis by semi-accident (I tried to rotate him/her away from being stubbornly posterior, but got "float" instead). I'm already doing most of the posturing things that are supposed to keep this little bugger in a better position; babies fit better when their backs are along the front or left side of moms' bellies, and have the roughest time when their backs are lined up with moms' backs. And yeah, that's where this one is, and has been for a good long time. Boyness came out that way, and his labor was more painful and more confusing than the others. Anyhow, I'm doing the positioning things and they're not working. The latest attempt (the one that resulted in a relative state of "floating" for baby's station=distance from certain pelvic landmarks) involved the ever so comfortable (not) inversions with a little wiggling thrown in for added baby-movement encouragement. Failure.

Waiting for kids to get their little butts abed so I can stuff Easter eggs and stick Easter fun into baskets. I'm feeling really happy with myself for purchasing this stuff a couple of weeks ago while I still had any desire to be out in public at all. And while I was thinking "I'd better do this well, it's likely I'll be ignoring them for a while shortly after Easter."

(Who was I kidding? Like I said before, I will be pregnant forever.)

Tired!

It is going to be winter forever in the Pacific Northwest, I have decided. It is rainy and very windy today. A tree that I keep hoping will just fall and get it over with is resolutely not falling into my backyard, even though some other foliage is out there setting a good example. Our power went out, and back on. Between possible lack of power and tree limbs in the road, it would be a crappy day to have a baby.

So (not entirely due to the weather) I have also decided I'll be pregnant forever. My uterus is being extremely noncommittal about this whole labor-or-not thing, and I think it's just never going to make up its mind. At this rate I'm going to decide "screw it," take a trip 90 min from my house and wind up having a baby in some store somewhere. Last time I felt so full of peace and knowledge about the whole labor/birth. This time I'm just like "shut up uterus, I know you're just kidding again." On the plus side, I guess, during 12+ hours of contractions that were exactly 7 minutes apart yesterday, I accomplished a lot of those silly little last-minute things. Fran came home from work, spotted the baskets of pads and diapers etc, and asked if I wanted to do squats or "something" to get labor going. I promptly laid down in bed and picked up a book without answering him. He asked if he should get labor snacks ready, and all I said was "sorry for the fake out" and fell asleep.

And then I woke up every 30 minutes all night.

Now I have a sore throat and feel kinda spacey. Sounds like what Boyness has; he has spent the last few days whining about his throat, taking his temperature every so often just to show off the high numbers, and drinking Throat Coat tea.

I realize I'm not even to my due date (in fact my due date is about half a month away). I wouldn't mind being pregnant for longer, if my uterus would just stop playing its little "made you look!" game. I don't want to sound like a complete ass to women who habitually wind their way up to the 42 week mark. I kind of do, I realize. I would happily be pregnant for longer if I could do it a little less sick, tired, and contracty.

Oh, and if the kids would stop being complete whinerbaby contentious pains in the ass. All three of them in dish-it-but-can't-take-it mode in a HUGE way. Yesterday we TOTALLY had a bad kid day despite me trying to rally them behind a showing of Star Wars and some ice cream (--> complete "that was my spot" "his foot is in my way" FAILURE). And yes, today may be shaping up towards almost-as-bad status, although I'm not having to step in and yell at them as much. I understand they're as sick as I am and almost as tired. No matter how good my "you don't try to kill people who irritate the crap out of you" example is, the kids seem incapable of following it. Yesterday was one of those rare days where if I left the kids to their own devices I might actually be down a child or more.

THANK GOD for coffee, hot tea, good books, and the internet. 'Cause if I have to go out into humanity again (as I tried to today, and OMG was it torture) feeling like this, I will literally infect humankind with my misery and life as we know it will be ruined.

ETA (edited to add) - allow me to tag on the fact that not all of life is doom and gloom, and that I had way too much fun at my mother blessing this past weekend, which I can blog about (including a few pictures hopefully) when I don't feel like a big fat sarcastic bitch. You know, the sort who answers "uh-oh, you'd better be careful" from some innocent old lady with "don't worry I won't fall on you and squish you." (True story.)

Time Flies

The kids spent Sunday with their Nana; they went to see the ballet in Seattle. They reported that it was very short and I can't tell if they were disappointed about that or not, but since they were all really hoping to see Swan Lake (about 3 hours long) again someday, I'm leaning to "mild disappointment." All three kids have a surprising love of the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

In the meantime, B and I went into Gig Harbor and walked around all the shops full of highly breakable items that I never take the kids into. We came home in the afternoon and it was QUIET. Very nice.

On Monday, we loaded ourselves into the van and did a whirlwind tour of IKEA and other area shopping destinations, including stopping by our favorite garden center and letting the kids pick out plants. I stipulated they had to be partial sun and cool-weather hearty. The kids complied and each picked out three flowers and one herb that met the criteria.

I am apparently running at 30/10 (hct/hgb) = anemic, so we stopped on the way home for more iron supplements, steak, and (not at all productive for iron building) ice cream. I ran the grill, only the second time I've done it. The girls were SURE I was gonna fuck things up...I assigned them to watching the steaks, which apparently in their world included moving them around a lot. They informed me the steaks were ready to come off the grill more than a little early, so it's probably a good thing it took me another few minutes to get out there and harvest them. The steaks came out satisfyingly rare.

Side note: yes I'm pregnant and eating rare meat. If you go online (or in most pregnancy books), you'll receive pretty heavy-handed advice along the lines of "rare is not an option during pregnancy." This alarmist POV is based on the idea that all meat is hiding horrible salmonella, listeriosis, and toxoplasmosis infestations. There are times when you need to be cautious and times when it makes sense not to worry so much. My steak, cut and packed on-site, is unlikely to have much of anything horrible on it in the first place, and if it did it would all be on the surface (cows don't walk around with salmonella or listeriosis infesting their muscle tissue=meat, it's spread around during butchering). Giving the surface of a steak a nice sear is going to take care of that quite well. On the other hand, if my meat is ground, I'm generally going to want to make sure it's well cooked all the way. Particularly if I buy it in factory-packed tubes or somesuch. And I do avoid lunch meat, but that's more an issue of the fact that I always avoid it because I don't much care for it.

I've found it interesting that the more I know about the warnings pregnant women are given, the more likely I am to ignore most of them. Particularly idiocy like not eating spinach (and I've seen lists that basically encompass everything you can get fresh from the ground) because it "might contain salmonella." But you can eat all the twinkies you want, right? Nothing scary in those (I've never seen a pregnancy do-not-eat list that includes them)? No BPA in the cans of beans I'm supposed to be eating? Let's not forget all the tuna WIC wanted to give me last time around.

Anyway, back to the recap. On Tuesday, we went to Nana's for piano and guitar, and saw Aunty B off. Then we went home, and the kids carefully potted their plants:



We had our first backyard fire of the season (no pictures). And a very late night when Fran let the kids stay up and watch Blues Brothers again.

Wednesday was GLORIOUS. While BittyPrincess took FOREVER (all morning and then some) to fold and put away her laundry:



The rest of us enjoyed the lovely 70-degrees-and-sunshine weather outside:



And someone came over to fix our shower, which had been leaking into our den. This apparently had been a problem forever, and a plumber that came by last week was absolutely certain that the plumbing wasn't the problem, the shower door was. So yesterday the handyman (who lives nearby and apparently has a daughter that Girliness plays with sometimes) came by, advised that we could probably get by with caulking things up properly, and then our landlady decided we should go ahead and get a new shower door anyway. It turned out to be a good thing she did, because when the handyman took off the old door, we found out that the installation had been seriously fucked up. Instead of cutting down the rails, some idiot had cut the tile AROUND the rail, so water was literally flowing into the wall straight from the shower door rail through that hole...that yes, OMG the stupidity, runs straight into the wallspace. The wall/subfloor/ceiling would absorb only so much before leaking, which was why the problem was intermittent. Our shower isn't put back together because we hit the end of the day without the necessary supplies to replace the tiles. Handyman dude said it would be possible to patch but the patch wouldn't be visible and would be much weaker than the surrounding tile, so we wouldn't know there was a problem until the walls and floors were saturated again (and then those would need to be replaced AGAIN). So the plan is to replace the tiles and then install a shower door the right way. Hopefully today. I want the shower back.

He seemed enthusiastic about our plan to use the shower as the source of our water for our birth. BittyPrincess showed him the pool and everything. We're sure the whole setup will work. At some point I'm going to catalogue the bits and pieces of what is involved in setting up your own birth pool, including expense. Because I think it's interesting.

Anyway, we also did the Y yesterday. And Fran took the kids to Kids Gig in the late afternoon while I made dinner (and admittedly spent some time sitting outside reading and not doing anything productive).

I'm not sure what today holds, except that it is cold and rainy (yay spring?) and BittyPrincess woke up with a seal cough.

Props to my Midwife, and some minor kid cooperation

On Saturday we headed out to Bainbridge Island, where my former classmate and now midwife had her clinic opening party. Her practice is Gumnut Blossom Midwifery, located on Bainbridge Island, WA. Props to her for getting her clinic space opened, and even more so for not throwing up her arms and quitting the whole deal during the fun newly-opened-practice process she's going through with insurance. The clinic is lovely, the company was lovely, and the kids had great fun running around hopefully not causing too much trouble. Eventually - after the kids had each gone several rounds with the snacks - we extricated ourselves and headed back to Gig Harbor.

It was yet another pretty day, and we couldn't quite bring ourselves to just go home *too* early, so we stopped off at Kids Gig. At first Boyness was heavily whiny about wanting to go home (he's our homebody for sure), but he quickly got over himself, and everyone had a great time. The kids *gasp* didn't even fight. They even *double gasp* cooperated:



Home in time to get the kids ready for the Sunday excursion they had planned with Nana, into Seattle to see the PNW Ballet do Hansel and Gretel. And then to have dinner and a screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (another library acquisition). And off to bed "early," at 9:30.

Point Defiance

On Friday we took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and headed off to Point Defiance Zoo.

The kids were being complete fuckheads to each other again. They actually did fairly well once we got into the zoo, though, thank freaking goodness.

How very, well, like the girls...Girliness' preferred exhibit:


vs. BittyPrincess' preference:


BittyPrincess remains somewhat obsessed with the idea that she will, one day, own her very own baby walrus. Yes, a baby walrus. It will be bigger than her, of course. But still a baby. We caught the trainer talk for the walruses today and she is even MORE convinced. She's sure now that if she has enough fish she can teach her walrus to do all KINDS of cool things. If the walruses there can splash and whistle and roll over, her baby walrus will be able to do that stuff too, of course.

I think it is kind of funny that my fairies-pink-ballerina princess is obsessed (has been for at least two years) with owning her own baby walrus.

Anyhow, we also managed to be there when the interactive zone was open:



Boyness was interested in the crab molts:



After we left the zoo, we went to Tacoma Boys and got a whole lot of produce for a quite small amount of money. Aunty B also picked up ingredients for banana splits, which we happily consumed after dinner while watching the latest impulse grab from the library, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Aunty B! Tacoma!

On Thursday my sister (the kids' Aunty B) came into town on the ass-early (red-eye for her) flight. I went and got her and then we waited for the house to wake up.

It was the third Thursday of the month, which meant that the Art Museum, History Museum, and Glass Museum in Tacoma all had free hours. (Art Museum 10am-8pm, History Museum 2pm-8pm, Glass Museum 5pm-8pm.) So of course we decided that was what we had to do. Even though the kids were being punks and kept it up all day. Really, really, really being punks. To each other, to me, to the sidewalk, it didn't matter. Equal opportunity punkage.

We stayed home for long enough to have lunch, and then ventured into Tacoma. Since I'm cheap enough to be unwilling to pay parking rates in the downtown Tacoma lots, we parked at the Tacoma Dome Station (free) and used the Link Light Rail (free) to get into downtown.

A little side-adventure while walking to the light rail stop:


And no, I'm not trying to smuggle a basketball into Tacoma:


On to the Art Museum, where there were no pictures because I stashed my camera in the lockers and because areas of the museum that allow pictures aren't plentiful anyway. So...I have to say that I like art, of course, but in a visual way and not in an artist-makes-a-statement kind of way. And it appears that several of the volunteer I-have-no-idea-what-to-call-them walking around talking to visitors were of the "what's the message" persuasion, and wanted to tell us - including the kids - all about it. Mildly disturbing in the "The Secret Language of Animals" exhibit. The kids then went to the art lab, where they played with materials we already have at home. Stress levels were somewhat high in the art museum but the kids didn't actually step out of line in any institutional fashion. They just fucked with each other the whole time.

On to the History Museum. Again, lots of punkage from the kids. Whining complaining "this part isn't fun" punkage. Rarely two kids whining about hating the same part of the museum, so just a constant rotation of whineage our whole visit. Maybe the only time all three shut up at once was at the Bigfoot exhibit.

Obligatory picture of kids in the wagon (they posed themselves and everything):



BittyPrincess was highly mesmerized by an agriculture exhibit:


I think she might have fallen asleep there if we had left her to stare for too long.

We decided that perhaps part of the reason for the crankassness was hunger, even though the kids weren't whining at all about food (oh no, just elbowing each other and constantly trying to run in inappropriate places, or doing that not-quite-headbutting thing to my arms to express their displeasure at waiting for other people to finish looking at an exhibit they didn't like). So we hiked off to The Rock Pizza, and had an excellent salad and fairly good pizza family style, while the kids happily enjoyed in near-complete silence. So much so that we kind of creeped out our server.

Of course when we left the sibling-poking and running towards roadways resumed with extraordinary promptness.

We decided to go to the Glass Museum anyway, with the understanding that all we'd be doing was watching the glass workers in the Hot Shop. Which worked out fairly well despite Boyness deciding he was bored with it all about 20 minutes before anyone else was ready to leave. The pieces being made were going to be fairly boring finished products, but the whole process was really cool, it was well narrated, and two teams were working at once; there was a lot to look at.

We arrived back home well after 8, me murderously ready to, well, murder the children, and the children ready for round 57 of bothering-each-other. I can't seem to get them to understand that if they're little frigging pains in the ass when people visit, people aren't going to want to visit. Nobody LIKES watching them fight, even though yes, it does get them attention; but the people visiting WANT to pay attention to them, ferfucksake, and would be happy to pay attention without the complete fucktardedness that they display when we have visitors. Crossing my fingers that they pull out of their collective funk.

Morning Musings

I am not a morning person. Back when I had to get up for clinic early-early-early in the mornings, I used to put off getting out of bed until the last second, about 15 minutes before I needed to leave the house; I'd then stumble down the stairs, put on some coffee, shower, dress, retrieve the coffee into a travel mug, and try to wake up and drive simultaneously (no pedestrians, other cars, or wildlife were harmed in this endeavor).

Anyway, there are times when I really hate waking up in the morning. Like when the squirrels that live in the tree right above my bedroom decide to do their morning pinecone-bombing of my roof. I have still not figured out why some mornings at the crack of dawn the squirrels are motivated to throw pinecones at my roof. Most mornings they don't do it. There is no sleeping through it when they get going, though.

Or when I wake up to the melodious sounds of arguing children. Luckily I have two not-morning children who like to sleep in even more than I do. UNluckily I have one morning child who wakes up ready to TAKE ON THE WORLD, usually before anyone else. He likes to lurk in the hallways waiting for any sign of awakeness from anybody else. Again, unluckily, this means that when DD rolls over and rearranges her bedding she's usually confronted with BOYCHILD RIGHT IN HER LINE OF SIGHT waiting for her to show signs she's ready to wake up. And then the "go away" "but don't you want to come have breakfast with me" irritation begins.

Let's not forget those mornings when I wake up sore and still-tired from the pregnant-woman semi-sleep fiasco.

But then there are mornings that are just lovely. This morning it is bright and clear outside. Because my sister is visiting and sleeping in one of the cooler areas of the house, the heat was already turned up. The up-too-early Boyness put off doing dishes last night and is industriously washing away in the kitchen. The coffee is good, the rest of the house is asleep, and I get to hole up in the den and act like it's me, the coffee, and the sunshine. For at least an hour. This is sanity, people.

Yes It's Still Winter (Bonus ants, flowers, sheet music, and a chiropractic visit)

I vacuumed up ants today. They had apparently decided that they liked my subwoofer, despite the fact that we never eat anywhere near the thing, there's no water nearby, we have no ants anywhere else in the house (that I know about), and I can't see anything the least bit attractive about it. I vacuumed them up and then went and took a shower to stop the crawlies, but now I might have to shower again...it's almost as bad as when you start thinking about headlice and get all itchy (glad I could do that for you).

The weather continues to lie to me. Not quite as convincingly as it was a few weeks ago, but still. There are FLOWERS. Not the over-optimistic ones that you plant as bulbs only to watch die a short while later. Ones that usually don't bother until spring.

This has led to garden-bed-preparing on the kids' part:



No matter how many times I tell them it is still too early to plant anything, the girls don't seem to believe me. Girliness is just disdainful of my opinion (happily, or maybe semi-happily, since it means I will have to buy some later, I have none of the soil additives she needed to prepare her beds properly, so she was left with a "when it's TIME we'll get some" answer and half-prepared beds). BittyPrincess was moved to tears by my unwillingness to help her plant flowers.

Semi-dramatic subject shift: I can't tell you how happy I am to see music like this on the piano:



Even if it is a bit of a stretch for Girliness, and even if this particular piece is more than a tad played-out, I love that she's getting more and more capable at the piano. MIL still does the teaching and in my opinion her reluctance to push the kids at ALL past their comfort zone is making for a REALLY SLOW learning experience, but they ARE still learning.

That all still fell into the "lies" category because Girliness is for the most part still playing much simpler music, with this as her more extended work piece. Most of her sheet music isn't nearly so pretty. Yet.

Relevant to previous posts but not at all to this one, I saw a chiropractor yesterday (Wednesday) to highly pleasing effect. Fran made the appointment for me; I suppose he'd heard enough whining? Anyhow, I can put on pants again (whohooo for small victories!) without falling over, wincing in pain, or doing a three-step seated-then-standing operation. Oh, and it hurts WAY less.

Unsprung

It is dramatically not spring yet today.

After so much nice weather, I was really starting to get adjusted to warmer days and higher light levels, and not wallowing so much. Today it is 33 degrees and it has been snowing. The sudden shift leaves my brain confused and unhappy.

I did, however, sleep better last night after pulling our old memory foam topper from where it was stored (memory foam does have a lifespan, and that topper was well past it - we'd taken it off the bed and put it aside in case we wanted to cut it up for camping pads) and cutting it so that I could sleep on the not-so-used-up middle portion. I twice managed to sleep for 2 consecutive hours.

Prenatal sleep deprivation may indeed be an evolutionary advantage because if we are already sleep deprived when we actually give birth, we are less likely to suddenly slip into complete insanity when our babies wake us every 1-2 hours and resort to infanticide so that we can just.fucking.sleep. While we're pregnant, there's not really anyone to take it out on as our waking intervals come closer and closer together and it becomes harder and harder to get physically comfortable. I couldn't kill my husband and get a blissful uninterrupted nights' sleep. My kids have long since transitioned into their own sleep patterns that for the most part don't have anything to do with mine. It's all me and those lovely (not) pregnancy hormones.

Just another excuse for pregnancy space-cadet syndrome.

Continued Doings of Dubious Importance

But first, a little whining (I do that frequently don't I?)...I hate my mattress. This is bleary day #3 after waking up with hip pain at 3am that I just couldn't find a sleep position comfortable enough to alleviate. This despite the small pillow armada now inhabiting the bed with me, and the third-trimester rotisserie process (hourly turning) that I've been doing for quite a while now. I want a new mattress but can't justify it given that in another month it will probably no longer actually be hurting me, and given that even if we had enough money for a new mattress it would be better used paying down our credit cards. It does suck though (it is dipped/compressed into ruts where we sleep most often). /whining

Girliness' ear is much improved. No further high drama necessary, although greater than usual attention/cleaning/treatment continues.

Boyness continues to be a PITA and has had frequent outbursts this week. I think he's cycling. Hormonally, I mean. Like 'rhoid rage or something. Totally punting this to Fran, who says he was the same way as a kid and what I've been doing is not helping. The two of them can sit down and make a behavior/consequence plan and fill me in after. Of course, now that we're on the tail end of a week of this behavior, he'll probably be perfect for the remainder of the month (I really do think he's cycling, everybody has a hormonal cycle, some of us are just more affected than others).

I organized (well, the kids and I organized) our mess of swimming stuff (=stuff shoved under the bottom shelf of the hall closet that in some way relates to swimming). It was one of those 20 minute jobs that I'd put off for a year. Ridiculous.

Baby continues to wriggle about vigorously here on the shy side of 34 weeks. Head down all the time now, though.

I am newly enamored of a pair of shorts that Fran got as a Christmas present from his brother. Yes, I am stealing my husband's shorts. He'll live. It's a testament to how much weight Fran has lost that he and I can wear the same clothing (I wear it under the belly, not over), 'cause we never hit this point last time around (and I'm not bigger or heavier than I was at this point with BittyPrincess). I got a bleach stain on one of the three shirts that still make it all the way around my belly. Damnit.

We have still not decided on a name for this baby, although here in my blog it will probably be Newbie.