Quick Takes Volume 18

~1~

I'm learning that blogging via iPad is not frustration free. But I'm not going to complain since it allows Katie to nap on my lap as I write this.

~2~

It's been two weeks since a desperate Bryan offered me an iPad if I would just give birth before the weekend was over. I thought the offer was a joke. Obviously I didn't realize how serious he was about ending the anxious wait for Katie's arrival.

~3~

I apparently am one of those mothers who are oblivious to her baby's cries in the middle of the night. The whimpering ones, not the I'm hungry ones. So while I'm slumbering for a four hour stretch Bryan is waking every 20 minutes or so to Katie's little sounds. He claims she's wide awake in the middle of the night. I think he's just wrapped around her little finger.

~4~

They're calling for really cold weather this weekend. I'm quite happy that I can use Katie as an excuse to stay home while the girls and Bryan head to the soccer fields.

~5~

Madeline managed to get in a fight with a chair at religious ed last night and lost. Poor kid has a bruise the size and shape of the bottom of a chair leg on her cheek.

~6~

It took me two trips to Target, but I finally remembered to buy the cereal we ran out of yesterday.

~7~

Halloween costumes are finally picked out. This year I will have a baby, a glittery pink princess and a skeleton. I let you try to guess which each child will be dressing up as. I'll give you a hint, Katie won't be dressing as a baby.

Product Review: Easy Canvas Prints

A couple of months ago I was provided with the opportunity to turn one of my photos in to a canvas print by EasyCanvasPrints.com.  I spent nearly two months procrastinating on ordering the print in hopes that I could get a nice picture of the new baby with Madeline and Ellie.  Katie, of course, had other plans and decided that she wasn't going to make her entrance until the day after I had to place my order.  That left me with the agonizing task of picking just the right picture for this canvas print.  Choosing what picture to use was certainly the most difficult part of the entire process.  When you have thousands of pictures to choose from, it's never an easy task.

After spending a couple hours in the wee hours of a Saturday morning I decided that the picture which was our Christmas card photo last year, would be the one I'd use for the canvas.  Once I had picked the photo ordering my canvas print was relatively easy.  To order a canvas you simply pick your size, upload your picture, choose how you want it laid out and how you'd like the wrapped edges to look and you're done.

I did have a slight issue with sizing my photo just right and choosing my wrapped edge.  I would have been spared a little bit of frustration if there was a button that allowed you to reset the photo.  That small issue was my only gripe about the entire ordering process.

My canvas had an estimated arrival date of November 2nd which would have put the processing and shipping time at around a 2 1/2 week wait.  I was pleasantly surprised when the canvas arrived on my doorstep in well under a week's time.  Having a newborn in the house made last week a bit of a blur and I had actually forgotten that I ordered a canvas print.  I was rather surprised to open my front door on Friday and find the canvas I ordered on October 15th sitting there.

I'm very pleased with the quality of the print.  The colors are exactly as they are on the 8X10 prints I had made last year.  I particularly like the wrap around edge since I can hang this canvas on a wall or display it on a shelf with out having to frame it.

EasyCanvasPrints.com provided me with the 8X10 canvas print you see pictured in this review free of charge in exchange for my honest review.  Having seen a sample of their canvas prints, I would certainly recommend giving them a try if you are looking to turn a photo into a canvas print.  I'm sure I'll be ordering a few more canvas prints in the future.

Minted Giveaway

Over at the blog Like Mother Like Daughter they're hosting a Minted giveaway.  I checked out Minted's website and they have a lot of beautiful cards for Christmas and other occasions.

Small Successes-October 27th

Celebrating the little things that add up.

1. Despite having a newborn in the house, I'm getting the best sleep I've had in months.  Katie is kind enough to go 3-4 hours between eating in the middle of the night.  That means I'm getting to sleep in 3-4 hour intervals.  This is awesome compared to the three to five hours of interrupted sleep I was getting per day during the last month and a half of my pregnancy.  Poor Bryan, who had been sleeping soundly through the night while I barely slept more than an hour at a stretch, is not feeling quite as well rested.

2. I'm on top of the laundry.  It's getting folded and put away.  Katie has graciously decided to wear the outfit I put her in all day long most days.  Occasionally she will erupt like a little geyser and require a new outfit, but that only happens once every couple of days.  With Madeline and Ellie changing their entire outfit was nearly an hourly occurrence.  While I'm happy to have a lot less laundry, this does make choosing an outfit a bit more difficult since whatever I put her in will likely remain on her for the rest of the day.

3. I don't have strep throat.  On Thursday night my throat started hurting me and by Friday I was in a lot of pain so I had Bryan run me over to the Take Care Clinic at our Walgreens.  They sent out a culture of my throat to see if it was strep.  Fortunately it wasn't and I've since developed more cold like symptoms.  So I've been battling a rather unpleasant cold since last week, but I'm hanging in there.  No one else is sick.  That's always a good thing.

4. Ellie lost her first tooth (bottom right front tooth) on Sunday morning while we were looking at birthday cards in Target.  She informed me last night the the tooth next to that one is also loose.  At this rate the kid may not have any front teeth by Christmas.  She got all of her teeth pretty close together and it seems like she is going to lose them at the same interval.

5. While Bryan took Madeline and Ellie to their soccer games on Saturday I stayed home with the baby. I ordered the dresses the girls will wear for Christmas and the baby's baptism.  I also ordered Katie's Christmas stocking and a few other things.

6. We rather unsuccessfully gave Katie a sponge bath on Sunday.  We have a baby tub with a sling that will keep her out of the water which makes giving a sponge bath easy if the baby isn't Katie.  She instantly peed in the clean water I had beneath her and then once I drained that and started over she pooped in the sling forcing me to put her on a towel and wash her there.

7. On Tuesday Katie lost her umbilical cord stump.  I'm very happy that it's gone.  On Sunday I began to smell something very rotten every time I fed or held her and it took me until Monday evening to realize that it was the umbilical cord stump that was the guilty party.  By then it was not only foul smelling but also oozing brown goo. I took her to the pediatrician on Tuesday morning.  Minutes before we left for the appointment Bryan changed her diaper and the stump fell off.  Some of the skin under it was very raw so the doctor cauterized the area.  Katie will get her first real bath tonight.

8. I put together a craft for my religious ed class and Halloween goodie bags.  I had sort of forgotten about that until my friend who is covering for my class asked if I had a craft for them.  I didn't, but I do now!

9. I finally got around to blogging this week!

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

{pretty}

I love the chubby cheeks on this girl.  They're getting bigger everyday.

{happy}

The girls needed to see how they could all fit on Bryan's lap.  

{funny}

Katie has reacted this way more than a few times upon seeing my camera in her face.  Something tells me she's not a fan of the flash.

{real}

I'm still amazed that we're now a family of five.

Ellie is quite taken with her baby sister and I'm pretty sure Katie feels the same way.

Introducing Katherine Therese

After exactly 41 weeks of gestating Katherine Therese finally decided that it was time to make her appearance. She was born at 5:50PM on Sunday. Katherine, weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces and was 20 1/4 inches long.

Because the baby arrived before visiting hours at the hospital were over the girls and my parents got to come and meet her a little less than an hour after she was born.

 Ellie took a few days to warm up to being a big sister.  She liked the baby, but she wasn't interested in giving her a kiss the first two days.  Katie's first morning home was when Ellie finally decided that she really liked her baby sister.

 Madeline took to being a big sister again very well.  She couldn't wait to hold her and every day she gets off the bus and wants to hold her baby sister.

Bryan, despite the total lack of pictures proving that he was actually at the hospital, was there the entire time.  This blurry picture of him handing Katie to Madeline is the only picture we have of him and the baby at the hospital.  I have no idea how we didn't get a picture of him and the baby or of the three of us.   We're chalking it up to the fact that my labor went very fast and we just didn't think of these things.  I was actually beginning to push when I had to ask him to grab the video camera and the other camera so we'd have pictures.

In a few more days I hope to blog a bit more about Katie's birth and first week.  Things are going very well with the baby. She already has us wrapped around her finger and seems quite content with all of us doting on her.

Looking Forward to Sleep

Does it not sound insane that I'm looking forward to getting sleep of all things once the baby arrives?  I know babies don't sleep through the night right away, at least most don't.  I do know people who claim to have these mythical babies who have slept 8-10 hour stretches from day one, but I tend to think they're exaggerating tremendously a little.

I'm barely sleeping these days.  During the day things like naps simply don't happen.  The phone rings, the pain in the butt dog barks, and being the type of person who doesn't know how to relax I simply can't just slow down and try to rest.  Most nights I'm able to pass out on the couch for an hour or two before I go to bed.  Last night armed with my new iPhone that is making Bryan quite jealous I was too busy rearranging apps to rest.  I also spent a while folding and hanging all of the baby's new clothes since we got very good confirmation yesterday that we are certainly having another little girl.

I think I got 45 minutes to an hour of sleep on the couch last night before waking up at 1:30 to go to bed.  Once I move upstairs it takes me a little while to actually fall back to sleep.  Since I was annoyed that Bryan left the clean clothes in the laundry room, it took me longer than usual to go back to sleep since I couldn't help yelling at the sleepy guy.  Once I finally fell asleep I woke up about three hours later starving.  Nothing like needing breakfast at 5am.  I spent about 30 minutes trying in vain to ignore that my stomach was gnawing on itself in hopes of me falling back to sleep before I gave up and got out of bed.  So here I am now sitting in my dark dining room trying to quietly occupy myself while the rest of the house sleeps.  Fun!

I'm pretty sure that once the baby arrives I'll be getting a lot more sleep than I do now.  I imagine I'll be able to get several 2-4 hour blocks of sleep throughout the night.   Since I'll be exhausted from taking care of a newborn, falling back to sleep should be easy.  And if I'm wrong, at least I'll have Bryan to commiserate with me over the lack of sleep.  Oh, and I'd rather be sleep deprived with a baby in my arms than overly pregnant and sleep deprived.

Quick Takes Volume 17

~1~

I'm still continually surprised that I'm still pregnant.  I was so certain that I'd deliver by 38 weeks and here I am at 40 weeks 5 days and I'm beginning to think I'm going to remain pregnant until at least this Wednesday when I have my next appointment with the midwife.

~2~

I went for the non stress test over at the hospital today.  The baby was very cooperative and thrashed about so they got to see what she's like when she's active.  They also did an ultrasound to measure the level of amniotic fluid.  From what I understand everything looks good with the baby but they were concerned about my blood pressure.  I'm usually around 120/80 and today I was 136/88 when I was what I thought was perfectly relaxed and calm.  The maternal fetal medicine tech/nurse was very concerned about it.  I'll be repeating the non stress test and ultrasound again on Tuesday morning if I haven't had the baby by then.

~3~

I got confirmation that we are having a girl during the ultrasound this morning.  The images that I saw were clear and defined enough that I have no worries about cutting all the tags off the new clothes and washing them now.  

~4~

I received a phone call from the middle school principal today and am very happy that she addressed the issue from Wednesday's bus incident.  The boy who cut Madeline with the umbrella and bent her glasses will thankfully no longer be sitting next to her.  Now I just need to get Madeline's glasses fixed.

~5~

I'm still fretting about Madeline's midterm F in her world languages class (This grade is based on one and only one pop quiz).  For some odd reason her class, which meets twice a week, never met at all this week.  So she wasn't able to ask the teacher what she could do to help raise her grade.  I'm rather annoyed that the teacher also has not responded to Bryan's email regarding this situation.

~6~

One of my "little" cousins is getting married today and sadly I can't go to the wedding.  The wedding is about an hour away from here at 4pm in a location that would find us fighting about 2 hours of rush hour traffic to head home if I were to go into labor a the wedding.  Bryan and several other people think that it's too risky for me to chance going, so I'll be staying home.  I've been looking forward to going to this wedding since I got the save the date card about a week before I discovered we were expecting.  I never dreamed that I wouldn't make it to the wedding.  I've known since February that I wouldn't be going to the reception, but I had assumed all along that I'd make it to the wedding and would just bring the kids with us.  Clearly all of my planning ahead amounted to nothing.

~7~

For the second year in a row our pumpkins have spoiled before Halloween even arrived.  We went to the pumpkin patch almost two weeks ago and two of the pumpkins are now covered in mold.  Last year I figured it happened because we had a lot of crazy weather where it would be super hot one day and very chilly the next.  We also had the pumpkins sitting on the front porch.  This year I decided to store the pumpkins in the garage and the same thing wound up happening to them.  So now I'll have to go out and buy some new pumpkins.  Maybe I should get the artificial ones that you can carve or paint.  At least those won't spoil and they'll probably cost about the same amount if I can get them on sale.

Speaking of Halloween.  Did you know that it's nearly impossible to get a newborn sized costume two and a half weeks before Halloween?

The Case for Future Baldness

I'm pretty sure that me going bald sometime in the near future is a real possibility.  If this happens it will most certainly be the result of me ripping my hair out by the handful.

I blogged about how Madeline was hit with an umbrella on the school bus yesterday which resulted in her getting a cut near her eye and a pair of badly bent glasses that are pretty new.  I spoke with the principal about this last night and I was happy to hear that she was not only concerned but was going to address the situation today during school.  It turns out her idea of addressing the issue was to ignore it.  Not the brightest thing she could do when the mom of the injured child is overdue.  I called and left her a message this afternoon and have yet to hear back from her.  She clearly has no idea who she is dealing with.  Perhaps she'll move on this issue if I call the superintendent of the school district.

Ellie came home sick from school again today.  She was fine all day yesterday and this morning so we sent her to school today.  At 11:30 I got a call from the school nurse telling me that Ellie threw up at school again.  I seriously can't catch a break here.  So since she was signed out before 1:20 today she's considered absent.  She also can't go to school tomorrow because she vomited during school today.  So she's managed to log three absences in one 3 1/2 day school week.  Awesome.

I walked around the neighborhood for an hour today trying to get contractions going.  As long as I was walking things were picking up, but as soon as I sat down everything stopped.  I was really hoping to have something going by this afternoon so I could head to the hospital tonight.  The midwife who is on call tonight is totally willing to break my water and make sure I have this baby provided I can show  up at the hospital already having contractions.  Obviously this is easier said than done.

I'm on edge right now.  I'm tired of being pregnant and I'm fed up with all the school BS that I have to deal with right now.  It's all very frustrating.  I'm fairly certain that if we had gone forward with homeschooling that I wouldn't be dealing with a sick kid and I certainly wouldn't be having the issue that we have with the bus incident.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be a better day.  At the very least it would be nice if it were a little less stressful.

Small Successes-October 13th

Celebrating the little things in life that add up.

1. I organized the coloring book bin that we have in the pantry yesterday.  It's really not anything special to write about, but the papers that had been hanging out of it for quite some time were driving me crazy.  So I pulled it out, weeded out all the old school work and drawings and neatly replaced the items that belong in the bin.  That part of the pantry looks a lot nicer now and I don't have to cringe anymore.

2. A few days ago I swept and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors.  It's so nice to have clean floors.

3. I've been very good about staying on top of the laundry.  I have pretty much no backlog to speak of at the moment.  I'm trying to keep it that way so I don't come home from the hospital and find a mountain of laundry.  Of course, if this baby never decides to come this won't be an issue.

4. Obviously my fail of the week was going into labor.  How I'm 40 1/2 weeks pregnant is beyond me.  I was successful in not having a baby on my brother in law's birthday (something my husband did not want to have happen) so there was a success to be had after all.  My hunch is that this baby may come on the 14th.  My reasoning is simply that Madeline was born on the 12th, Ellie was the 13th, so why shouldn't this little one keep up the day of the month sequence and be born on the 14th?  Makes perfect sense, right? (Don't judge the overly pregnant lady for her incredibly odd logic.  Just smile and nod.  You can talk about me later, ok?)

5. I almost forgot.  I wrote up two book reviews for the blog and a product review on Amazon Vine.  I even reviewed the plumber who came out and did some work on our house yesterday.  Look at that, four reviews in one day and I did it all with my big meaty claws very swollen hands.

6. I did a very good job of not freaking out on the phone with the middle school principal over an incident on the bus yesterday that involved a kid carelessly but accidentally whacking Madeline in the face with an umbrella that he was swinging around.  She wound up with a small cut about 1/4 of an inch from her eye and very bent glasses.  I'm very happy that the metal didn't go into her eye.  We're hoping the administration will move this child to a different seat on the bus.  The other child who sits next to him (it's a three seat bench) has had issues with this kid doing things and they weren't willing to do anything. I got the impression from talking with the principal that this child will likely be moved to a new location because of this incident.

7. It's not really my success, unless you count nagging my husband to call the plumber, but our shower is now operational.  Turns out that a couple years ago when the second shower stall went in to replace the first leaky one, my father-in-law installed a cracked drain pipe that was the wrong type of piping for what he was connecting it to, and it was put in crooked.  So that's why both replacement showers that we have installed have resulted in a leak.  So our nice new shower is now leak free.  The plumber complimented Bryan on his good installation job of the shower floor and walls, and he also let us know that the shower we picked out is a very good one that shouldn't give us any problems like the last one did--you know cracking under the weight of a person who's 130lbs.  I'm happy that my research in the area of the shower resulted in a good pick.

Book Review: Weightless

A few weeks ago I picked up Kate Wicker's Weightless and had a hard time putting it down.  The focus of this book is that of helping women to find peace with their bodies.  In her book Kate shares her own personal struggles with her body image and how she overcame those struggles to appreciate her body and not obsess over things that the media would have you believe are flaws.

Each chapter of this book has a combination of stories and scripture as well as a meditation and reflection questions/points.  When I picked up this book I doubted whether or not much in it would pertain to me, but even I was able to find many pearls of wisdom which resonated with me.

I'd recommend this book to any woman who struggles or has struggled with her body image.  Whether you're obsessing over a few extra pounds, or bony ankles, there's something in this book that will help you to see past that and look at what's really important.  I also think mothers of girls need to read this book.  Whether your daughter is an infant or a teenager, there's something in this book to help you help your daughter to be comfortable in her own skin and not get hung up on pursuing an unrealistic ideal set by the media.

I was provided with a complimentary review copy of this book by the publisher, Servant Books, in exchange for my honest review. You can take a peek inside this book at Amazon.

Book Review: Patron Saints

I recently had the opportunity to read Thomas J. Craughwell's Patron Saints.  This book is a collection of patron saints for a variety of situations, family members and so on.  The book is divided into eleven chapters so you can easily pinpoint the type of patron saint for the situation at hand.

I enjoyed the easy to use format of this book.  Each saint falls under a subtitle within the chapters so finding a patron saint for say a teenager is a snap.  For each saint highlighted in this book you will get a short explanation of why he or she is the patron saint for that cause and when his or her feast day falls on the calendar.

Overall I found the book to be both informative and amusing.  The book is certainly light reading and one could either read it cover to cover or use the index or table of contents to find specific saints.  It's sort of a fun reference book.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company.  Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Patron Saints.  They are also a great source for a Catechism of the Catholic Church or a Catholic Bible.

Never Ending Pregnancy Update

I just got back from my appointment with the midwife a little bit ago.  Just as I had suspected, I haven't progressed any more.  So I'm still at 4cm.

The midwife let me know that if I haven't had the baby by next week's appointment that we would have to talk about doing an induction.  I'm hopeful that I will go into labor before my appointment on Wednesday.

Because I'm past my due date, I'll be heading to the hospital on Friday for a a non stress test and a amniotic fluid level check.  I did some searching on Google and I gather that the fluid levels will be checked via ultrasound.  If that's the case then I'm hopeful that I'll get to see the baby and possibly have the technician confirm that I am, in fact, having a girl.  I've been waiting over 20 weeks now to find out if the ultra sound I had in May is right.

I found out which midwives are on call for which days this week which makes me feel better.  It really doesn't matter who delivers the baby, but I like knowing who I should expect to see at the hospital.

Oh, I did find that at this point there are no more membranes to strip.  After having them stripped at the last three appointments there was nothing for her to strip this time around.

I keep referring to this baby as my 10lb baby since she won't come out, but the midwife feels confident that she can't be more than 7lbs 5oz right now.  That's how big Ellie was so we'll just have to wait and see.  I'm betting she'll be a little closer to 8lbs.

40 Weeks 2 Days

If you didn't guess it after reading the title, I'm still pregnant.  I'm actually rather shocked that I have now gone past my due date.  How did this happen?

I'm doing my best to keep busy and trying to stay sane.  Keeping busy is easy enough, but staying sane is the hard part.  For one, I have Madeline driving me crazy.  I received her mid-term grades in my email this morning and went from being incredibly happy to feeling sick.  She currently has all As and an F.  Seriously, an F.  Apparently she bombed a pop quiz in her World Languages class and that is the only recorded grade this teacher has posted on the district's power school site.  If there was a class participation grade or some other quizzes or assignments up there I'm sure she'd have a D or a C, but all we have to go on is one pop quiz and it's an F.  I seriously want to rip out my hair.  Madeline doesn't seem phased by the fact that she's failing the class.  She was more upset that Bryan and I asked her to ask the teacher if there was some sort of extra credit assignment she could do to help raise her grade. (The teachers at the middle school are very big on giving extra credit to help you boost your grades.)  She's scared of the teacher and thinks he's mean so she's very rattled that we told her she needs to ask him how she can pull that F up to an acceptable grade.

I also have a neighbor who thinks nothing of calling my house every 10-15 minutes like a psychotic girlfriend when I don't answer the phone.   She almost never leaves a message.  I assume that most normal people would call once, leave a message if it's important and wait for me to call back.  This person, however, thinks that calling me excessively is the way to go.  I went shopping this morning and when I got home Bryan said she had already called 3 or 4 times.  Then she called another 3 times after I got home.  Calling me excessively makes me not want to answer the phone at all.  I'm tired and quite frankly I don't want to have to field loads of phone calls and IMs these days.

After nearly a month of constant calls, texts and IMs asking me if I've had the baby I really don't feel like communicating with anyone.  Really, would you want to have the same conversation 15 times in a day?  No, the baby's still not here.  No, I really don't know what's taking her so long.  I really have no clue when or if she will be born anytime this month.  And yes, I'm sure my dates aren't off.  Do I really need to tell you why I know I'm not off?  Perhaps you'd like me to fax you a copy of my NFP chart from January.  Oh, and by my calculations, you'll notice that the baby really should have been due on the 8th, not the 9th, thereby making me even more pregnant at this present time.

I have another appointment with the midwife I like the best at this practice this afternoon.  Bryan would like me to ask about being induced, but I'm really not interested.  I'd prefer to get through this labor with no IVs hooked up to me and I'd very much like to avoid those horrid fetal monitors as much as possible. I doubt I'd get to do either of those things while on a pitocin drip.  Last week the midwife mentioned that if I wanted to just be induced they would get it all set up for me, but she cautioned me that I'd have a harder time going without any pain meds.  I'm determined to go completely natural again so I'd like very much to avoid being induced.  Who knows, maybe having my membranes stripped for the fourth time will put me into labor.

I do think it's safe to say that I'm a little grumpy.  I feel like I'm in a holding pattern at the moment.  I have prepared multiple times for the arrival of the baby only to have to repeat the process.  I'm tired of cleaning the house thinking that it will be nice and clean for me when I get home from the hospital only to find it a mess three days later.  Every day I'm washing all of the laundry and putting it away so I can avoid a massive backlog when I get home from the hospital.  Foods I have made for myself because I was craving them are now gone (let's just say I had a lot of help with the pumpkin cheesecake) and I have no motivation to make more only to have others gobble it.  Oh, and I've come to the conclusion that the baby is not going to come when it would be convenient for the rest of us.  We've had several weeks pass by where her arrival would have been perfect timing.  This weekend is a prime example.  It was a weekend with not obligations and the midwife I like was even on call.  It couldn't have been timed better save for the fact that the baby wasn't feeling it.

Completed Nursery

I posted pictures a while back of the nursery, but the room was missing the finishing touches.  Since I had the camera out, I decided to snap a few pictures of the completed room.  All it's missing is the baby.  I hope  we'll have one we can put in there very soon.

The Belly

I've been asked a few times to share a picture of my ever expanding belly and haven't gotten around to it.  Over the past few months there have been a few pictures here and there of me where you can sort of see the bump my stubborn little one currently calls home.  I've never really had many pictures taken of me while I'm pregnant.  It's not that I avoid the camera, but rather that I'm usually the one behind the camera, so I don't get into very many pictures.

Here's a picture Bryan took of me at 37 weeks 4 days:

Here's a picture of me today at 39 weeks 6 days:

Sixteen days certainly make a big difference, wouldn't you agree?  While my shirts are now barely fitting me, my regular pre-pregnancy jeans still fit.  The button is simply held closed with a nice strong elastic hair tie (and has been for months, I should add).  I never would have guessed that I'd be pregnant this long or that my regular pants would fit me the entire pregnancy.  How crazy is that?  The maternity pants I do own are still too loose to stay up.

Quick Takes Volume 16

~1~

I'm sort of in shock that the baby is due in two days and she still isn't here.  How did that happen?

~2~

I'm doing well accepting the fact that the baby missed the October 1st school cut off date.  I've had a few people tell me about how they or someone they know has circumvented the system so I suppose it's something we'll be able to do if we need to.

~3~

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about the prospect of delivering a real full term baby.  I mean, how big is this baby going to be?  Yeah, I'm freaking out a little.  Oh and the midwife told me when I go into labor she expects things will move very fast.  That's nice to hear, but I hope things don't move so quickly that I wind up being a headline for delivering my baby in the Target parking lot or something like that.

~4~

I went out yesterday and today and once again stocked up on food and other household items.  It's not fun to do this task more than once in anticipation of having the baby.  I pretty much had to repeat the process I completed nearly three weeks ago.

~5~

Once again I need to get the house nice and clean.  If I can find the motivation and energy, I'd like to clean the bathrooms and kitchen today.  I'm simply not feeling up to the task.

~6~

I've reached a point where I'm not really willing to do anything to try and put myself into labor.  I spent two exhausting weeks trying pretty much everything to have nothing work.  I'm sort of over it now.  My focus now has been on just getting the house in order and trying to get some rest here and there.  You could say that I pretty much lost all of my motivation.

~7~

I've come to the conclusion that having a child who takes on lots of extracurricular activities is exhausting.  This becomes more so when the child doesn't want to be bothered with things like studying, homework and school projects.  I need Madeline to complete a math project that is due on 10/12.  I would love for her to finish it before I have the baby so I won't have to worry about it.

Custom Rosary Giveaway

Cam over at A Woman's Place is hosting a giveaway for a custom rosary made by her.  Click here to visit her blog and enter for a chance to win.

Small Successes-October 6th

Celebrating the little things in life that add up.

1. The laundry room had been looking like a craft store had bombed the room and it was driving me crazy. So over the past few days I have spent many hours reorganizing the mess.  The room went from having loads of clutter on the floor in front of the shelving where I store the craft items, to being nice and clear.  I still have a few areas in the laundry room to tackle, but I took care of the nagging areas.

2. Since June I have been craving pumpkin cheesecake.  The only reason I hadn't had it, was I was unwilling to make it for myself.  Yesterday while wandering aimlessly in Target trying to remember why I was there shopping at Target, I decided to pick up the necessary ingredients for my cheesecake.  I came home and made the cheesecake.  I'm not sure why I didn't make this for myself sooner.

3. Tuesday was a pretty productive day for me.  I ran off copies for my religious ed class for the next few weeks of class in anticipation of me not being there.  I've done this exercise a few times.  I'm pretty sure that next time my class meets that I won't be there.  If I am there, it means I'm a week past my due date. Once I got home I trimmed the hedges out front.  I was tired of looking at the overgrown plants.  Now the hedges look nicely trimmed.  I am ignoring all the cuttings that are now on the grass.  Trimming them was enough. I'll let Bryan handle the clean up portion of the job.

4. On Saturday we took the girls on a hayride to go pumpkin picking.  I'm convinced that the nice old man who was driving the tractor purposely avoided the bumps.  I suppose I should have asked him to hit all the bumps as hard as he could when I got on the wagon.  So the hayride didn't put me into labor, but we had a good time picking out pumpkins.  To add to the success factor of this activity, we managed to squeeze it in between two soccer games.

5. I didn't do anything for this last success, but the ceiling fan in the baby's room is now operational.  Bryan and my brother got everything up and running on Sunday.  I'm so happy that we have decent lighting and a fan in there now.

It's A Bit Like the Way I Dress a Baby

My biggest failing as a mom with a baby or child who cannot dress herself is properly putting on tops and dresses that go over the head.  No matter what I do, the poor child's head always winds up missing the hole and hitting fabric.  It's not because I have big headed children, but rather that I simply lack the knowhow to properly put a shirt on a little kid without making it an ordeal.  It's no wonder that prior to being able to dress themselves that the kids would happily toddle off to Bryan to have him dress them.

The baby is finding out early what this getting dressed by mom scenario will be like.  At present time her head is lower than my very posterior cervix.  The midwife described it as putting on a shirt and hitting the fabric instead of the neck hole of the shirt.  When we heard this Bryan and I couldn't help but laugh.  This poor baby is going to know very well what that's like!

This head lower than the cervix situation is the reason why every labor inducing thing we've tried has not worked.  That pretty much means that we simply need to wait until this little one is ready to make her grand entrance.  The midwife tells me that once I go into labor everything will move to where it needs to be.  She thinks that things will move very fast once I'm in labor.  Currently I'm 75% effaced and 3-4cm dilated (I've never gotten to 4cm on my own so I'm surprised and a bit excited about that.).  Oh, and I have a bulging bag of water.

I'm happy to hear that I have at least progressed.  I also feel a lot better knowing that the reason nothing we tried put me into labor is because of something we simply cannot control.

At present time the midwife thinks the baby is no bigger than 7 1/2 pounds.  I have been starting to worry that I'm going to deliver a 10lb baby since I've never been pregnant this long.  I feel a little better knowing that the midwife doesn't think she's anywhere near that big.

I'm simply biding my time now and wondering when the big day will arrive.  I just hope we're prepared and ready when it happens.  I've stocked up on necessities that we will need several times now and the whole exercise is beginning to seem futile.  Really, who am I kidding?  I know I'll have to trek out to the store for something a day or two after we come home from the hospital.  That's just the way life is around here.

Random Observations

Tomorrow I will be 39 weeks pregnant, if we go by the due date the midwives set.  Based on my chart, I'd say I hit that point today, but I'm not going to split hairs over the date.  No matter how you look at it, I'm a week more pregnant than I have ever been.  Who knows how long this will last.  I suspect that the baby isn't planning on budging anytime soon.  Being a person who does not like to be in cramped or close quarters, I can't fathom why this incredibly active baby does not want to seek an area with more space.  I bet she's going to be wondering why she didn't come out sooner once she's born and she can flail about as freely as she likes.

I'm amazed at how neighbors, friends, people whom I have never met face to face, and random strangers are more interested and excited about this baby than my in-laws.  It's something that totally baffles Bryan and I.  We simply don't get it.

Going on a hayride can be placed in the category of things that will not cause contractions.  It may, however, be an opportunity for random strangers to perform totally random and unexpected acts of kindness.  I was really surprised when it was time to pick pumpkins and the mom of a cute little baby boy handed her son off to another person in their party to extend her hand to help me get up.  Then when the hayride was over Bryan and her husband helped me up.  It was such a simple gesture that I really appreciated.

The hayride, despite not being bumpy enough, was pretty nice.  The girls enjoyed themselves and I managed to get a few pictures of them.  We picked four nice pumpkins which I hope to carve up when we get closer to Halloween.  You know, things to do with all my spare time.  I wonder how the pumpkins will look when they're carved by a sleep deprived me.  Let's hope I don't stupidly cut off one of my fingers.

Breathing gets harder as the baby gets larger.  If I'm not sitting just right, I find that I don't have very much lung capacity.  At some point I wonder if the baby will realize that she's smothering me from the inside.  I would think she'd really care about an important detail like that given that her life depends on me being able to breathe at the moment.

I'm finding it rather funny that maternity pants still won't stay up on me.  I'm still wearing my pre-pregnancy bottoms with a nifty hair tie holding the button shut.  So while I'm still in my regular bottoms, I'm on the verge of needing larger maternity tops.  Just how I've managed to require maternity tops for the past six months but have been unable to wear maternity bottoms continues to amaze me.  I keep joking with Bryan that I wonder if I'll fit in my jeans after I have the baby.

Equally funny is people who see me from behind keep coming up to peek at my stomach to see if I've had the baby.  I'm frequently being told that I don't look pregnant from behind.  I have no idea how I look from behind, but I'm surprised that so many people say they can usually tell if someone is pregnant from behind.  It's a mystery to me.  I just carry out in front.  Anatomically, I'm not sure that there's any other way.

I'm tiring very easily these days.  I guess that's to be expected, but I'd really like to have a bit more energy.  I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have the energy I need for labor.  I'm also beginning to freak out that I'm going to wind up delivering a huge baby.  Something tells me a 39+ week baby will be bigger than one born at 38 weeks.  I hope I don't have to blog about how I gave birth to a 10lb baby.

October and No Baby Yet

[SIGH] I honestly never thought I'd make it to October and still be pregnant.  I'm actually quite shocked that this little one has not sought a place with more leg room to call home.  At this point I'm really hoping that she will decide to be born very soon.

Personally, I think that today would be the perfect day for her to make her entrance.  For one, it's her godfather's birthday.  How neat would that be?  It's also the feast day of St. Therese who just happens to be a patron saint of this little one.  St. Therese, please pray that our little one who will bear your name as her middle name will be born today.  Ever since I got Bryan to agree to Therese as the baby's middle name I've  had this sneaking suspicion that she would be born on St. Therese's feast day.  Initially, I wasn't happy about this because I thought it was October 2nd (nothing like missing the NJ school cut off date by one day).  I was quite surprised when I realized earlier today that I had the dates for the Guardian angel and St. Therese feast days mixed up.

I'm past trying labor inducing remedies at this point.  None of them have worked.  My feet and hands are painfully swollen, even if they look like nothing compared to other pregnant women.  I honestly can't keep doing hour long walks.  I'm not about to try another remedy that requires me to consume something I otherwise would not.  I've simply moved onto hoping to exploit my lactose intolerance, which seems to vanish while I'm pregnant.  If a delicious milkshake or a coffee topped with whipped cream doesn't put me into labor then I guess nothing will.

After putting the girls to bed several hours ago I went into the baby's closet and removed all the outfits that were intended for very hot days.  I doubt Ellie's old sunsuits will be needed.  I left a few short sleeved dresses and outfits in the closet, but all the sleeveless items are out.  The realization that this baby will not be here for even a single day in September had finally sunk in.

Plans for today include going to two soccer games, possibly going for a hayride to pick pumpkins, and hopefully restocking all the food and household items I stocked up on three weeks ago in anticipation of the baby's arrival that are now gone or almost gone.