Cheer and Sleep

Benjamin had a hard time falling asleep last night. I fell asleep on the couch listening to him complain from his bed. He read books. He zoomed cars across his pillow. He kicked his wall. He threw all his stuffed toys and blankets out of his bed. He made annoying sounds with his mouth.

I woke up when he started screaming, "Mom! Mom! Mom!"

Moments before Andrew had been in there to show him that it was actually very, very dark.

"Me see sun! Outside mine windy—a sun! Time a wake up! Me see sun!" he'd been calling out. He hadn't been too happy when Daddy showed him just how very dark it could be...because it was night.

Andrew and I went to bed about half an hour after Benjamin fell asleep. I just couldn't stay awake any longer and with cheer on Saturday mornings and church at 9 AM we don't really have a good day for sleeping in anymore, which is fine. It just means we also don't have a night we can stay up irresponsibly late anymore, either. Our children are really going to miss having free access to the television those mornings.

This morning Benjamin woke up when the alarm went off but seemed to not want to get up, which was fine with me. He's got a croup-like cough again (yes, seriously; it's either again or still—I can't even tell because I swear he's been coughing since...October?) and he and I were up quite a bit between the hours of 2 and 6 AM. I didn't want to get out of bed either so I nudged Andrew until he got out of bed.

Benjamin got up and tried to follow him out of the bedroom.

"Not you," I growled from the bed. "You lie down and go back to sleep."

He ran back to his little mat/nest on the floor and cried, so I pulled him into bed with me and reminded him to close his eyes until they stopped opening and his breathing got heavy. Then I went ahead and fell asleep again, too. We didn't wake up until 9:30.

Andrew took the girls to cheer (only Miriam is in cheer but Rachel really wanted to see what it was like), but as it turned out the basketball teams they were supposed to cheer for didn't show up (either of them) so instead they just practiced for an hour. This was probably for the best because they'll be cheering for a Duke women's basketball game in a couple of weeks but have only had two practices this year. They needed some extra time to nail down their routines.

A twenty-minute project

This morning Andrew brought out a shelf we bought ages ago to put up beside Miriam's bed. Ever since she started reading her bed has been full of books and it kind of needs to stop, but we've been a little slow in getting it put up.

"Today's the day," Andrew announced. "Do you want to find a stud while I get the drill?"

Sure. Yeah. Sure, I'll just find a stud. Because finding studs is easy.

I started hitting the wall with my knuckle, listening closely for any change of sound. Nothing really stood out to me. We've measured walls before so we could guess where the studs were but this time Andrew said, "Why don't we just get a stud finder? How much can they cost—like $20?"

He started getting ready to go to the hardware store and I said, "Why don't you take some of our Christmas money and get a power washer, too? Because I was looking at rental prices and, frankly, we can buy a machine with the same money we'd spend renting one a couple of times."

Andrew agreed this was a good idea. We have so much gross build up on our play set that our children have been refusing to play on it and—let's face it—life is better when they're out playing on it. We also just...we live in the south. Lots of humidity, lots of pollen. Things get yucky, fast; our swing set isn't the only thing that needs a good power washing.

Soon Andrew was home with a power washer.

"We should set it up right now!" he said.

"Right now?" I asked. "I thought we were going to do Miriam's shelf. All the tools are on her bed and..."

Ice ice baby

Yesterday morning the schools were on two-hour delay because of some ice we got on Tuesday that melted on Wednesday but roads were still a little wet on Wednesday night so school was on two-hour delay on Thursday morning.

I understand that ice can be dangerous, but also I think southerners go a little crazy avoiding it because other things are dangerous, too. Icy roads are attributable to approximately 580 people, annually. Accidental gun deaths, meanwhile, claim around 600 people (and that's just accidental deaths), yet 41% of North Carolinians own guns.

It's like this quote by Dean Obeidallah, "That’s the same reason we don’t see many stories about how to reduce the 30 Americans killed each day by gun violence or the three women per day killed by domestic violence. But the media will have on expert after expert discussing how can we stop these scary brown Muslims from killing any more Americans despite the fact you actually have a better chance of being killed by a refrigerator falling on you.... I’m not saying to ignore the dangers posed by Islamic radicals. I’m just saying look out for those refrigerators."

And if that's too hyperbolic of an example, consider that 2876 people are killed in car crashes annually because of rain.

That's right. You're four times as likely to get in a car accident and die due to rain than you are due to icy road conditions. And yet there's no public outcry when school buses are zipping along during a torrential downpour (or worse just after a torrential downpour (because wet roads (and otherwise clear weather) are responsible for over 4000 deaths annually)). I'm just saying...

I understand that ice is dangerous (and I hate winter weather as much as the next person) but talk about straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.

Southerners think ice is terrible because the media explodes whenever there's a snowflake in the forecast. Rain, on the other hand (which—did I mention?—causes far more deaths on the road than ice) doesn't make people bat an eye.

Basically, don't accuse me of wishing all school children dead when I mention that I'm baffled that school was cancelled for a day and a half because of a thin glaze of ice. A thin glaze of ice, mind you, that melted before the first day was over (because even at 8:00 that night it was still above freezing).

Also, the very same weather conditions (freezing rain or, as was the case on Tuesday, "light freezing drizzle mist") can happen pretty much anywhere. It's not a southern phenomenon. Trust me—click here to read about this one time we had the exact same weather in Utah. It's a funny story. I promise.

That tangent aside, Thursday morning found me scrambling to iron out the brand new kinks in my schedule so that I could get to the doctor's office.

A couple of stories I forgot to mention

We pulled up to the sidewalk in front of my parents' house on Christmas day, parked, and unbuckled the kids from the car. Benjamin bounded out, took a few running steps toward the lawn, slipped, and fell flat on his face in the snow.

Fortunately he landed in the snow, rather than on the sidewalk (which had been shoveled).

Unfortunately he was not impressed by the cold, fluffy stuff that cushioned his fall. Since he'd just come out of his carseat he didn't have his coat on (just a sweater), so he was all sprawled out, facedown in the snow, without a coat. The snow was at least six inches deep, so he left quite the impression with his little body.

I quickly pulled him up to his feet and Andrew carried that poor screaming child up to the house where everyone had a good laugh because they'd all been watching through the window (or from the porch) and as sad as it was it was also quite hilarious.

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It was quite cold and windy the day we flew into RDU and I don't know if it's related to how bumpy our landing was but, uh, our landing was really bumpy—so bumpy that the overhead bins started popping open.

Our overhead bin didn't pop open, thank goodness, but a guy two rows ahead of us took the landing with his arm held up over his head, trying to keep the door closed to prevent the suitcases from flying out. And that wasn't the only bin to pop, either!

So when the flight attendant got on to give their congratulations-we-landed-and-are-alive speech and got to the part where he said, "Use caution when opening overhead bins as the contents may have shifted..." the whole plane pretty much burst out laughing because obviously the contents had shifted quite a bit!

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And now I think I'm really officially caught up from our trip. Unless, of course, I think of anything else I forgot to write down...

Whose bed is it anyway?

The whole time we were in Utah Benjamin didn't climb into bed with us once. It was amazing.

Of course, he slept in a makeshift bed on the floor right beside our bed the entire time, but still...we thought he was cured!

When we came home he slept in his own bed for two nights, so we really thought he was cured...but there's this saying about not counting chickens before they're hatched and, uh, let's just say that only lasted two nights before he started waking up and climbing into bed with us again.

I wouldn't mind so much if he would sleep between us with his feet where feet are supposed to go and his head where heads are supposed to go, but he won't. His preferred sleeping position is the H position—the one where baby sleeps perpendicular between the parents—and he's getting a tad too big for such shenanigans.

On the positive side of things, this is irrefutable evidence that he's growing because the H position used to be tolerable.

On the negative side of things, I've been spending most of my nights trying to keep him from head-butting me in his sleep while Andrew's been dealing with constant kicking.

It doesn't matter how many times we walk him back to his own bed or how many times we reposition him in our bed. He always finds a way to reclaim his favourite sleeping spot.

Before we left to Utah I set up a makeshift bed beside our bed and started making Benjamin sleep there when he'd come padding into our room in the middle of the night, but Andrew cleaned that up when he did his grand sweep of the house after we were gone. I set it back up last night and when, quite predictably, I woke up with his face staring into my face, I told him exactly where he could park it for the night.

The Great Task

I didn't go to primary today, and I won't for a while. We met with the bishop before we left and explained our situation: that I'm pregnant, that it's a high risk pregnancy, that I'm not supposed to lift anything, and that I get weekly injections in my hip that feel less than lovely.

He said I'd probably be released, so we left thinking he'd resolve things.

But then I got an email from the primary presidency informing me that I'd been assigned to teach...Sunbeams?

The Sunbeams are the in-coming primary children. They've turned three within the past year and are leaving nursery to join the big kids. They're adorable, but the transition isn't always smooth (I've taught Sunbeams a few times before so I say this with confidence) and they require a lot of attention the first couple months while they're getting into the groove of primary. They get upset and miss their mommies and want to be held. They need lots of help in the bathroom—they're all too short to wash their hands. They're also too short for the drinking fountain and want a boost up. Sometimes they escape the classroom and race through the hallways.

And they all weigh more than 20 lbs. so I can't do much to help with all that...

I thought the presidency knew I was expecting and that it was complicated, and I thought the bishop was planning on talking to them about releasing me, but...I guess that they didn't and that that didn't happen. So I emailed the presidency and told them what was going on. I even offered to stay in primary (as long as they moved me to senior primary which requires less babysitting and more plain ordinary teaching), but the president called me and said to not worry about a thing—except myself and my baby—and she'd find someone else for my class.

So I'm not in primary anymore, which is kind of weird because I've been in primary forever. And I felt kind of silly being like, "I can't work in primary because I'm pregnant..." because I know that you can work in primary while pregnant (or with a brand new baby or with a screaming toddler). Because I've done it.

It's a...

I had the ultrasound first thing in the morning yesterday. Everything looks good so far: all body parts were accounted for and are functioning and baby is much more active than I can feel, which I'm grateful for at this point.

The only potential problem is that my fluid is measuring "on the low end of normal," so I'm supposed to keep track of how much water I'm drinking. I'm pretty sure if my doctors had their way I'd just be eating and drinking ALL. THE. TIME.

I already feel like that's what I do but evidently my fluids are low and my weight gain is slow. So I'm supposed to eat more, drink more, and conserve energy. Doctor's orders. I was trying to do that before but apparently I'm not doing a good enough job. Whatever I manage to do will likely never be enough. But whatever.

After taking all the initial measurements we flipped over to the 4D ultrasound and snagged a few pictures of our baby's face. Regular 2D ultrasound pictures don't really bother me (though I know my mom thinks they're kind of strange to share) but the 4D ones kind of creep me out.

(4D is 3D + "real time" (regular 3D can be delayed, I guess, so what you see on the screen isn't necessarily what's happening right now).

I think it's because with the 2D image the baby is still mostly an idea. You have to kind of imagine what it looks like. When my sister was expecting Olivia and Sabrina, "the twins," my nephew Andrew looked at the ultrasound picture and said, "Oh, I know why they're taking so long to get here! God's still putting together all the pieces!"

It's really like a puzzle that you're trying to figure out. Like, sure, that's their head...and that might be an arm. But you really have no idea what they look like.

Enter the 4D ultrasound and all the mystery is stripped away.

That's definitely a head. And that head is definitely coming out in T minus 20 weeks. And won't that just be fun? But look at that cute little face!

Christmas at Home (January 8)

Thursday ended up being a much busier day than we'd intended. Our plan was to come home and relax for a few days before starting up real life. Instead, Miriam had preschool, I had an ultrasound, and Andrew started classes (he got into a class that he wanted to take but didn't think he'd get into).

Andrew volunteered to wake up and take Miriam to preschool and I was very grateful...until I woke up at 8:55 AM and he was still in bed beside me.

Miriam was a tad late for preschool but I made it to the doctor's office on time and had a good appointment (which I'll write about later). Andrew dropped me off, took Rachel and Benjamin home for a while, and then picked me up before picking Miriam up from preschool (we weren't sure who would finish first—me or Miriam—so Andrew took the van in case he had to pick up Miriam before I was finished with my appointment).

When we got home we opened the presents that were waiting under our tree. Benjamin didn't get anything fabulous, but he's two and was happy with everything. I did give him the baby book I made. Now I'm all caught up to the first year of my first three children. I've got this baby book thing down. Kind of.

Flying home (January 7)

When I checked in my flight I was relieved to see that my itinerary had been completely changed around. I'd be flying through Dallas-Fortworth rather than Chicago, for one thing. My total travel time would be one hour less than it was before. And the plane we'd be on had three seats on one side of the plane (the other one was two and two so I had booked two seats together for Benjamin and me and one across the aisle for Miriam). I was glad we'd all be sitting on the same row!

Grandma dropped us off at the airport and when we got to our gate it was a frenetic mess! A plane had broken down in the middle of the tarmac and hadn't been fixed yet, so all the people who were supposed to make the 8:00 flight to Dallas were still milling around when our 12:00 flight was called.

I'm so glad we weren't on that plane, even though the next leg of our flight was delayed by an hour at least we were at Dallas with their nice playground and good weather! And Grandma gave me some cash for food in case we needed it and I'm so glad she did because we didn't end up getting home until around midnight (instead of around ten). It was good to get something besides snacks into our tummies!

The kids were pretty good, although I wish that Benjamin had slept a little more.

He fell asleep as we were landing in Texas and then stayed awake until we were landing in Raleigh.

Why do kids always fall asleep as the plane is landing? That's the worst possible time to fall asleep because it means (a) that I don't get to sleep and (b) that if they won't wake up (as was the case when we landed in Raleigh—I was patting his cheeks and calling his name and shaking his shoulders but he was out) that I have to carry them and all our hud off the plane.

I was grateful for the flight attendant (or the "plane-mom" as Benjamin likes to say) who offered to carry the diaper bag so that I could waddle through the aisle with my 20-week belly, my 20-pound-boy, and a backpack on my back, while dragging along a tired five-year-old with a backpack of her own.

We were quite the frazzled sight!

The airport was absolutely quiet by the time we hobbled off the plane and by the time we went to the bathroom and got out to the meeting area it was quite easy for us to find Rachel and Andrew—they'd even grabbed our suitcase from the luggage carousel for us (we took so long getting off the plane, Andrew said, that he was afraid if he didn't find our suitcase the TSA would assume it was abandoned and would blow it up or something).

We didn't mean to take that long. It's just that after such a long day of traveling no one in our party was moving very fast.

It's so good to be home!

More Goodbyes (January 6)

Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent packing and playing at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We didn't do anything much at all—and after all the craziness of the past three weeks we were happy for a little reprieve!

On Tuesday evening, however, Uncle David (or Una Daze as Benjamin says) stopped by after work so he could say goodbye. He had a date that night so couldn't stay for dinner.