Can you pay my telephone bills? Do you pay my automo' bills?

"Ma'am, I hear you getting frustrated and I think what you're getting frustrated with here is yourself because you can't seem to understand that because you came to the hospital twice you have two different accounts with us."

No, I totally get that part. 

I think it's...ridiculous...but I understand it. 

I'm. Not. Dense. 

What I am frustrated about is that for whatever "reason" that account is still "pending" and so my co-pay (over $1000) is tied up in that account. Even though my insurance shows their portion of the payment has cleared and even though you're holding onto hundreds of dollars of mine...for some "reason" the account is still "pending." 

Technically, we can pay this surprise bill ($800 or so) without hardship. Technically. So why am I upset? 

Because I feel like I did everything right and still I managed to do everything wrong. 

So basically, I'm frustrated because Northside Hospital's billing department is a complete mess.

Some ramblings

We typically don't do schoolwork on Fridays—because Friday free day!—but this last Friday we did because we didn't do schoolwork on Monday—because we were too busy partying with Grandpa. Amidst the schoolwork, however, we also squeezed in a little visit to the library and to the playground.

Now that the kids are vaccinated (for the most part), we're starting to experiment with taking them out in public a little bit more so I actually let the kids come inside the library with me...well, three of the kids. Miriam, Benjamin, and Zoë came inside the library with me (I needed them to help me carry books, anyway) while Rachel sat in the van with Phoebe and Alexander (don't worry: the weather is perfect for sitting in the van and Rachel is 100% capable of unbuckling and removing the children from their car seats (and the vehicle) and walking them into the library, should the need arise).

Here's Benjamin putting the library books into alphabetical order for me so that we can cross-reference them with our library list to make sure we are returning everything we've borrowed. Zoë is sitting in the background holding Phoebe and fruitlessly trying to convince Benjamin that you just ignore the "the's" in titles and alphabetize by the next word (but he ignored her advice so had to re-alphabetize when he was finished) :

An off-colour tale

To say we're tired over here would merely be stating the obvious. We'd gotten used to a baby-free lifestyle—no diaper bags, no spit up, no middle-of-the-night feedings—and we'd grown soft. So while on the one hand it seems like Phoebe does nothing but sleep, on the other hand we are completely exhausted. 

Catering to someone's every whim, it turns out, is tiring. Especially when you have to guess at what the someone's whims are because they're not an especially great communicator (no offense, Phoebe, but you just cry about everything).

So, it's just about been one week (which is mind-blowing) and we're tired. 

And so much has happened!

Alexander pointed out at bedtime that Phoebe is "more of a sandy-tan" (which is how he likes to describe white people) than she was when she first came home all pink and new, which means her newness is already wearing off! 

Why do these baby stages go by so quickly?!

Anyway, last Sunday Andrew came to the hospital to spend the night since we didn't know what time we'd be discharged on Monday and traffic is unpredictable. He told me that on Saturday night, after having been up all day Friday and then most of the day on Saturday, he was finally getting ready to head to bed (at home) around 10:00 in the evening when he remembered that he needed to make a loaf of bread for the sacrament in the morning. So he went to the kitchen and carefully measured everything into the bread machine. He meant to delay the start time by a several hours so the bread would be ready first thing in the morning but he accidentally hit the "start now" button, a command the bread machine took quite literally by immediately whipping its little paddle around and giving everything a good little stir. 

Now, the secret of bread machines is that you create a little island of flour in your liquid base and right in the middle of the island you drop a scoop of yeast (like a bread volcano of sorts). As long as the yeast stays dry, you can delay the bread making process. But if the yeast gets wet...it activates and you become somewhat committed to seeing the process through to the end.

"So once that yeast hit the water, I had no choice but to let it run the whole cycle," Andrew said. 

"I understand that feeling on a very deep level," I said, with a meaningful glance at Phoebe. 

That gave us both a good laugh.

Only in my case (which was technically our case), we ended up with a beautiful baby, while all Andrew got was a soggy loaf of bread because it finished baking in the wee morning hours and he didn't bother waking up to check on it (and I don't blame him one bit) so a bunch of moisture condensed and dripped down onto the bread and...let's just say that Phoebe is a much prettier outcome.

Phoebe's Birth: Initial Reflections

For the past several weeks our ongoing motto has been "don't have a baby." Every night Andrew would say to me, "Don't have a baby!" Every time he left the house he would say to me, "Don't have a baby!"'

Last night he said—rather seriously—"Don't have a baby!"

We had both stayed up late working. I was finishing up a final project. He had a book to lay out, some urgent revisions to make on a paper, and a number of other projects. 

"So really don't go into labour tonight," he said. "My Saturday is packed!"

It was 1:30 in the morning. I was not in labour. I hadn't even had very many contractions that evening.

So I said reassuringly, "I don't think this baby is coming for a while."

We stayed up until around 2:00 making plans for the next day. We needed to finish tidying the house to get ready for Grandpa to come. We needed to pick Grandpa up. We needed to finished all the multiple projects we listed previously. We needed to...we needed to...we needed to...

Andrew let me do my verbal nesting (although I had been nesting...and making the children nest along with me (they were great helpers!) all day long) and then we decided that it was late (it was) and we should do no more talking because we really needed to go to sleep (we did) and we turned out the lights.

Then at around 3:00 I awoke to a pop and a gush. So I reached over and...

Did I mention that I got my COVID booster yesterday? I did. My arm was incredibly sore.

37 weeks

Well, I did it. Or we did! 

We made it to 37 weeks, which is considered a term pregnancy, which means I am no longer at risk for preterm labour. 

And we did it all on our own (i.e. without manufactured hormones)!

It's nice to have the constraints surrounding those pregnancy complications disappear, but now I'm left to wonder when this baby will make an appearance because I'd really rather not be induced because I prefer as few interventions as possible. But also the notion of a firm deadline is rather appealing, like, for sure I won't be pregnant after Thanksgiving. 

But I kind of wish she'd come on her own before then because I'm so tired of being pregnant.

But also I know that when she's inside, she's quiet and cared for. 

But on the outside there are so many other people who can hold her.

But we'll be trying to recover from the mess that childbirth is.

And I still have a few final projects to do. 

So maybe she should stay in for a while longer. 

But also I really just want to eat a big, fat muffin. 

A Baby...Monsoon

You've heard of baby showers, I'm sure—a little party to welcome a new life into the world and equip new parents with all the stuff a baby requires (or that society thinks a baby requires). Well, by the time you're expecting your sixth baby people tend to assume you have all that baby stuff, which I'm sure is often the case...

Unless you happened to have moved across the country and the child you thought was your caboose is well past babyhood. Then you've been offloading baby stuff for years, so when you find out you're expecting again you kind of panic realizing you've got...nothing (or, at least, very little).

Lucky for me—and parents everywhere—there are usually other parents who are offloading baby stuff when they think they've reached the end of their baby-rearing years. 

And that's how you get a baby monsoon. 

My cousin Dylan came by this afternoon with her car overflowing with baby paraphernalia!

So many doctor appointments

Today it felt like going to the doctor was my full-time job, which I really shouldn't complain about because with Zoë and Alexander I had to go to the doctor once a week for the last half of my pregnancies and I've only just started going every week this week (the last month) of this pregnancy. But today I had an appointment in the morning that ran longer than I was expecting and then I had to take Miriam and Benjamin to their well-child visits this afternoon (and that appointment ran a little longer than we were expecting as well). 

My appointment went fine. I simply didn't realize I had to do another non-stress test, so that was a surprise. The test is easy—as I mentioned before, I literally just lie there—but it does take time. The baby seems to be doing fine, but the doctor noticed that I had quite a few contractions while I was lying there. 

In which I'm thankful for gestational diabetes...

 It's Baby Month!

I mean, technically next month is baby month, but my doctor's pretty sure this baby will come prior to then, and if she doesn't she'll be kicked out anyway because...diabetes.

Now, I have done more than my fair share of complaining about having gestational diabetes, that's true, but to quote from dear Marti again, "When you have no food in your belly, chewing on a complaint or two can bring a little comfort" (Leavitt, 2014, p. 43). As I've mentioned, it's hard to hear other pregnant women complain about their cravings when in my overall experience of pregnancy cravings are entirely irrelevant. 

For example, "I wanted a mint chocolate milkshake but they were out so instead I had to get cookie dough." *pout*

(Cry me a river).

Or, "I live in a foreign country and can't find any of the things I'm craving so instead I've tried this, this, and this, which just don't quite hit the spot. But then I tried this and it's incredible and I ate an entire box!"

Puh-leeze. I'm over here, like, chewing on spinach.

Still Pregnant

So now that Andrew's trip is over and done with, I can tell you that he flew out to Utah this week to give a research talk. We didn't tell many people he was heading out there because (a) we knew his schedule would be packed and (b) we didn't want certain people to have to worry for longer than they should. If you're a worrier (Hi, Mom!), I probably mean you!

But no worries! 

Before he left Andrew told me not to have the baby while he was gone and in an act of solidarity, Alexander ran up to me, gave my belly a couple of pushes and said, "Shove! Shove!"

He was all about doing his part to keep the baby inside.

We also had our cul-de-sac on "high alert" and my cousin Dylan even postponed her surgery so that she would be available to help out at the last minute, if needed (technically she postponed her surgery so she could have fun with her kids on Halloween, but she also let me know that she had postponed it so that if I needed anything I shouldn't hesitate to let her know and she'd drop everything to come be with the kids).

It's here that I'll admit we had a little bit of a scare a few weeks ago (on Alexander's birthday, of all days, but long after he'd been put to bed) and we ended up here:

The hospital

We're so very thankful that...

What I really need to do is hop on the exercise bike (because it's cold and rainy and no one wants to go for a walk today)—and I'll do that—but first, I'm going to share a quick story. 

I'm 35 weeks today! I had an appointment this morning, including another BPP (biophysical profile) ultrasound. Evidently I get to have a lot of those because I'm (a) geriatric and (b) have gestational diabetes. Some good news to come out of this was irrefutable evidence that the baby has flipped and is now presenting vertex (head down), as she should. We're rather excited about that over here.

A slightly funny part is that she's so very head down that the ultrasound technician had a little bit of trouble getting a decent head measurement, so while the rest of Phoebe is measuring in, like, the 30th percentile for growth, her head came in at, like, the 80th percentile for growth. The technician must have seen my eyes grow large as I tried to digest the numbers I was seeing on the screen (so many centimeters) because she said, "That head measurement is not accurate at all! She's just squished so far down there I can't get any closer to her to get a better measurement. I'm sure her head isn't that big because her head has always been proportional to her body and her body is measuring fine." 

Also, measurements get more and more inaccurate the farther along you are. We're not so worried about measurements at this point as we are about making sure she's getting the blood flow she needs, etc. 

Anyway, the kids were all excited that she had turned, even though there were no cute profile pictures to share with them (I mean, the technician kindly sent along a few pictures from today's scan but they were definite what-the-heck-is-that pictures and not that's-definitely-a-baby pictures). 

Alexander offered our dinner prayer. He's been pretty good at being thoughtful during his prayers lately, rather than praying his sweet little vain repetitions. This is both adorable and...unpredictable.

"We're thankful for this wonderful day that we could have today," he began (with a vain repetition). "And we're so very thankful that Phoebe..."

Here he paused and we all waited for him to say "flipped around" or something (even though he had been so very opposed to praying for such a weird thing a month ago). His pause was long. Pregnant even. 

Matchy-matchy

Way back when I first found out I was pregnant and was experiencing All The Emotions, I decided that if I really was doing this again (which evidently we were), then I at least could be cute and comfortable: I was going to buy maternity clothes.

This was a great plan for me...except that I'm frugal to a fault...and spending money is really hard for me. So I was lucky that my neighbour gifted me a bag of maternity clothes because I still couldn't quite bring myself to buy very much, especially because we're really at our caboose now. For real. 

Still, I convinced myself to buy a couple pairs of maternity leggings, which was important for me even early on because I think I was the absolute sickest with this pregnancy that I've ever been—throwing up and fainting (which I haven't really ever done during pregnancy before)—and feeling elastic around my waist was just unbearable. So I wouldn't have made it through the first several months of this pregnancy in my regular leggings, even though that's mostly what I wore when I was expecting Alexander and Zoë. But maternity leggings really are more comfortable than non-maternity leggings; that's just a fact (that I know now).

Anyway, I also got a couple of tunics to go with the leggings. They aren't technically maternity shirts, but I have this thing against buying clothes I'm only going to wear for a few months (which is why I haven't ever bought a lot of maternity clothes). Tunics are something I can wear after Baby is here as well. When I was looking at tunics, a lovely fall-striped one caught my eye but I was going to be pregnant mostly through the summer, so getting a long-sleeved tunic sounded like a bad idea. I chose a short-sleeved one instead and I think I've worn it once a week since it arrived. It's very comfortable.

Things have been cooling off recently, however, and I've found myself still thinking about that fall-striped tunic. So I went ahead and ordered it. Because if you've wanted something from April to October, maybe you should just go ahead and get it.

It arrived today and I tried it on and when Alexander saw me his mouth fell open.

"We match!" he managed to squeak out in spite of his excitement, and he ran to give me the biggest hug.

I hadn't planned on wearing the shirt the whole evening, but...I couldn't take it off now!

Alexander rifled through his toy box until he found his sunglasses (so he could match me even further because I have glasses) and insisted that we both wear flip-flops on our walk (because then our shoes would match). He held my hand the whole way (he's only recently given up the stroller—completely cold-turkey, as is his way (one day he was too little to walk the full mile, but the next day he was plenty big, thank you very much)) and whenever a car drove by he would squish up against me and robotically announce, "CONNECT! Nobody can see me. We are camouflaged. CONNECT!"

He's a goofball.

Here he is saying hello to Phoebe, who has made it past the 34-week mark (by one day). Every day we count our lucky stars that she's still baking away. Even though I'm so over being pregnant, I know that she's better off on the inside.

Verbal nesting

Andrew has pointed out that whenever I open my mouth lately, 99% of the time it's to announce something that I need to do. Or that we need to do. Both of which roughly translate into things I often wish he would do (but I say "we" or "I" out of politeness).

I need to organize these baby clothes.

We need to get the front yard landscaped.

We need to plan Christmas presents.

I need to return books to the library.

I need to go through those boxes.

We need to finish painting the back deck.

We need to trim the ivy off the trees.

I need to... We need to... I need to... We need to...

This list of mine is especially active in the evenings when I'm too tired to actually do anything.

"Calm down," he tells me. "You need to calm down. None of that stuff needs to happen immediately."

"I can't help it!" I told him. "I'm verbally nesting! I don't have the time or the energy to actually nest so I'm just expressing my desire to nest in words."

Wake me up when September ends

It seems like I'm doing well if I can manage to post twice during the week! 

Today I had another prenatal appointment. The nurse that I like was working and asked if I wanted my Tdap booster today or at my next visit (in two weeks...because we're into the single digits now...of weeks left) and since the nurse that I don't like is usually the one working when I come in I said, "Today, please!" to getting the shot because the other nurse had to draw my blood once and she, like, exploded my vein or something (it bled for almost an hour and took forever to heal, with plenty of bruising, pain, and a friendly scar that has yet to leave). 

The shot was fine, but my arm is a little sore. 

Not very sore. Just sore enough that when I move it I think to myself, "Huh...I wonder why my arm is...oh, yeah."

I'm trying not to be forgetful these days but there's just so much to remember.

I've been putting together The Hancock Hummer this evening and Andrew, knowing I was in project mode, came upstairs at 10:00 and sweetly reminded me that it was time for my evening snack. 

I've gotten so used to ignoring my hunger cues and cravings—eating strictly by the clock and calorie/carb count—that if I'm not keeping track of the time then I just forget to eat at all. It's fine (in case you haven't gathered: I kind of dislike gestational diabetes). So technically Andrew came up at 10:10 to remind me that it was time for my snack when he hadn't heard me come downstairs on my own. 

It's a team effort. 

This cake is not about you

One of the best things that I've learned about life, which I'm probably still learning, is that the world isn't about me. Life isn't about me. 

People who do things typically aren't doing them to me. 

Most people in the world haven't considered me at all. 

And...that's okay. 

Considering others and how your actions influence them is important. But at the same time...everyone is just out there living their life and no one is living their life "at" you. No one is living their life "at" me. 

I'm good at some things and those things that I'm good at? I don't do those things "at" anybody else. I typically do them because they bring me joy and fulfillment. I don't think I should have to not do those things—or talk about those things—because other people feel threatened by them. 

29 weeks-ish

I'm a little exhausted today. Part of me is trying to figure out why I can hardly keep my eyes open (and why I couldn't remember where I left my glasses after I took them off to do some hip-opening exercises...which will be explained later). The other part of me knows that (1) I've been fretting about my sweet sister-in-law all day today (and all day yesterday, honestly...which may also be explained later), and (2) we had an unusually busy day today. 

Unlike Sleeping Beauty, who falls asleep because she pricks her finger...I wake up in order to prick my finger at the same time...every day. So I got up at my very usual time and had my very usual breakfast and then started in on our very usual homeschool routine before leaving the kids with a list of things to accomplish while I went to my weekly zoom meeting for work (10 am). 

Then I bustled downstairs to knock out some math with the little ones, who still need a bit of direct instruction before getting started on that subject (the older girls seem to do fine on their own and I'm fine with them being fine because that's largely how I got through math—reading a textbook and working through problems until I understood it (only I didn't have Khan Academy or YouTube or a father who was a statistician to fall back on when I got stuck (though I did have a mathematician uncle (but only after we moved to Utah)))). 

Then I quickly made myself my usual lunch (never deviating from meals means no surprise blood sugar numbers, but also that I wish I could eat everything else under the sun, which is ironic because I know that after the baby's born, you know what I'll crave when I'm hungry? My "usual" meals, of course, no matter how sick of them I become before she gets here). Oh, I switch up vegetables and things...but the carbs and proteins remain the same. 

Anyway, scarfed that, asked the older girls to help the younger kids get their lunches ready and then zipped out the door to my doctor's appointment (12:30).

It was supposed to be on Thursday, with an ultrasound for a growth check (because gestational diabetes requires it) but the ultrasound technician was going to be out that day, so my appointment was moved to today at the last minute. 

Baby's doing great; they guess she's about 2 lbs. Everything's developing normally, I have a lovely amount of amniotic fluid. But...she's breech...silly kid. She had been vertex (head down) at my last scan, but she's adorably transverse, so I'm doing a number of exercises to encourage her to flip around again and drop into a more presentable position (thus the reason I took off my glasses this evening and then...like...where did I put them?! (but don't worry; I found them)).

These exercises are in addition to my post-prandial thanks-for-eating-this-life-sustaining-energy-source-now-quick-burn-it-all-off-before-it-kills-you exercises.

Good thing there's a baby at the end of this. Look at her being all adorable:

Pool days

The weather is getting cooler, which means our pool days are rapidly coming to a close. Today I asked the kids if they wanted to go to the pool but it was only in the 70s so they opted not to. It's an understandable decision but it does make me long for just a few more summer days (which I think we'll get next week, if we're lucky). 

I was especially grateful for the pool yesterday when I was in such intense pain that I could hardly walk. My lower back and my hips and my pelvis were all so sore! Being in the pool took all the weight off my poor joints and I was able to walk around a bit. I was worried that this was just what the third trimester of a geriatric pregnancy was going to feel like, but I think what really happened was that I just overdid things on the exercise bike Wednesday evening. 

My one synchronous (but still online) class meets Wednesdays at 5:30, but I have to eat dinner by 5:00, but then I also have to exercise, so in an effort to cram in enough exercise I put the tension on the exercise bike a little higher than I usually do and...I think that was a bad idea.

I'm feeling much better today, with just the regular discomforts of pregnancy rather than hardly being able to move. I was wondering how I'd even survive the next couple of months without the pool, but as it turns out, I think I'll manage. Still, I'm a little sad to say goodbye to the pool.

Anyway, here are the kids resting on the side of the pool:

This is their "bat pose"; they will sink their torsos so their backs rest against the wall of the pool (and they're completely upside down). All except Alexander, who simply thinks he does this.

Books and Babies

Early this afternoon we stopped by Barnes and Noble so that Zoë, Benjamin, and Miriam could get their summer reading books on our way to the pool. This was the first time the kids have been to any sort of store in ages, but we missed out on the summer reading program last year and I figured we'd be pretty safe running into a nearly empty bookstore in the middle of the day.

Here are my double-masked children with their spoils:

Saturday chores

Today the kids helped me go through all their dressers; we swapped out things that are too small (passing things down, saving things for later, and generating a big bag of cast-offs). Our drawers are a lot happier now and everyone's sizing makes a lot more sense. It's been so long since we've gone through their drawers that Benjamin still had cut-off shorts that are size 4 and a bunch of t-shirts from kindergarten hanging out in his drawers.

Clearly these things are much better suited for Alexander by now since he's almost four. But Benjamin was only in grade two when we moved here so  it still made sense for him to cling to a few of his favourite kindergarten shirts. Now that he's in grade four it make much less sense for him to be squeezing into things from kindergarten. 

All this was so that we could clear out a little set of drawers in Zoë and Alexander's room so that Phoebe can have a place for her things.

We also got out the baby clothes to see what we still had left. I remembered being pretty brutal in my last thinning of our stored baby clothes, but somehow had convinced myself I had two bins of baby girl clothes.

I do not. 

99 days

It's strange for me to see all my friends posting back to school pictures when today was our 51st day of school. 

It's even stranger for me to see all my friends posting about being "empty nesters" during the school day, having sent their entire brood off to school. This is not only because we're rather entrenched homeschoolers now, and it's not only because I can't personally imagine sending my kids off to school in the middle of a pandemic, but because we're suddenly "starting over."

Alexander would be eligible for preschool this year (if preschool were a thing I was enthusiastic about (I wasn't ever entirely enthusiastic about it even when we weren't homeschooling)), so my house could have also been empty. Instead it's full of children all day, every day...

...and I'm busy counting down the days until we completely rewind the clock of independence. 

I don't mind having the kids around—I like 'em—but I have to admit it would be nice to have a break from the chaos every once in a while.

Yesterday I took them off to the pool again—which isn't a break from the cyclone of chaos that they are, mind you; it's simply moving the cyclone of chaos to another location—and when we came home they were still, you know, being their wonderful chaotic selves...in spite of having spent enough time in the water and sun to have worn anybody out. 

(As Grandpa keeps reminding me, I should lower my expectations; there's really no magical exchange that takes place at the park or the pool. The kids run around acting wild and then they just...stay that way. There's no such thing as wearing kids out. Not really.)

Blood Sugar

It's interesting to me when people mention they have no memories of being very small because I...have so many. My memory really begins in earnest around age three (though I do have a few earlier hazy memories). One of three-year-old memories is my mom testing her blood sugar levels. Oddly enough, I don't remember her being pregnant, per se (I don't think three-year-olds care about their mothers' girths enough to notice things like that), but I do remember her having to monitor her blood sugar levels. They didn't have handheld glucometers back then, so it was a big boxy thing that sat on the table. 

The poking part, however, is pretty much the same.

And I'm so pleased (haha...) to be giving my children the same early childhood memories. 

Alexander was already fascinated by blood. He talks about blood all the time, about how it runs through his veins, about his white blood cells and red blood cells, and what all the different parts of blood do. 

We were watching an episode of The Mysterious Benedict Society a couple of evenings ago and Mr. Benedict (who was out hiking) made a passing remark about needing to stay hydrated. Alexander started rambling about hydration.

"Why is it important to stay hydrated? Can you only stay hydrated with water? You need to stay hydrated when you exercise. But you don't always have to stay hydrated with water. Vampires stay hydrated with bllllloooood!"