24 hours in my life

Yesterday was a really busy day. I had my carpool responsibilities which basically is two 45 minute - 1 hour round trips when I pick up and drop off boys at home and school. First thing in the morning I realised that it was our turn to take the snack for Nathan's class so we had to go to Target before the day had even really begun. Nathan has lunch about 10.45am on car pool day as we leave the house by 11.10am. By the time I was on the road I hadn't done a whole lot I guess but I hadn't stood still either. During the two hours before I'm back on the road again, I have to get things done. I have been trying to nap but not yeasterday. I was doing a pot roast for dinner. Not hard or anything but it requires plenty of time standing in the kitchen. While I was getting that in the crock pot I noticed that I had several bananas not really good for eating straight anymore so I had to make banana brownies and banana bread because I hate to throw them away. I was back on the road by 2pm and home by three. I continued baking until Leia and Spencer came home at 3.45pm. I was then loading and unloading the dishwasher between getting stuff out of the oven and helping with homework.
After dinner I felt exhausted. At the end of the day my body just sort of feels wrong, there's no other way to describe it. When not incubating another person I can relax fairly easily but right now the tension just seems to remain until I wake up the next morning. Even laying down in bed at night it's hard for me to get comfy and my legs are restless. I let the last round of dishes from dinner sit in the sink (planning to hit them later) and just collapsed on the sofa.
Gary is always very good at bedtime. I can rely on him to bathe the kids, make sure reading goals are met and have everyone quiet/asleep usually by 8pm at the latest. As I was sitting there I recalled that today is school picture day and Leia's hair hadn't been washed in a couple of days. I said to Gary and I quote "Please can you make sure Leia washes her hair because it's picture day tomorrow". "Sure", he says. About half an hour later all the kids emerged in pajamas and wet hair and so nothing seemed amiss. I had checked to see if the shirt I wanted Leia to wear was clean. It was folded in her drawer so I assumed it was clean. I have no worries with Spencer as he persistently wears the same thing over and over so I knew he had loads of clean clothes in his drawers.
The kids were in bed by 7pm and I stayed on the couch all evening. Gary even did the last load of dishes and I was thinking what a stand up guy he is. Until this morning.
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My plan on laying down to sleep was to get up half an hour early and that would give me time to straighten Leia's hair and maybe do something else to it. I could also make sure the kids didn't miss any spots on their teeth and were wearing the clothes I wanted them to wear. I dragged myself out of bed at the appointed time and plugged in the flat iron. I retrieved Leia and brought her into my bathroom. I brushed through her hair and noticed it wasn't looking the way I had expected it to. I separated it a bit and began to straighten it. It was really oily looking at the scalp and very limp and lifeless. In fact it looked a lot like mine would if I decided not to wash it for a whole week and I'm a 30 year old hormonal woman. Leia swore up and down that last night in the shower she had washed her hair. And of course Daddy was supposed to have been supervising the operation. I asked her to get me the bottle of shampoo she had used. She brought me a bottle of conditioner. I asked her to read the bottle. She said "oh". Yes, "OH CRAP" was more like it as 15 minutes of my cushion had gone and there was no way she was going to school with hair like that.
I had to stick her over the tub and give her hair a good wash. Of course at this point it got a little frantic. The water was too hot, her neck hurt, the hairdryer was burning her ears. I had to tell the boys to pour their own cereal and so even though I didn't have to do that, I had to pick cheerios up from off the kitchen floor. Gone were the grand ideas of putting her hair up, I just had to be content with having it clean shiny and blown dry with a few minutes of the flat iron for good measure. Then we went to her room to put on the shirt that I assumed was clean since it was in her drawer and not in the dirty clothes.
I'm sure at this point you can guess what's coming next. These are the times when I literally want to scream. I provide two baskets in the laundry room for colors and whites. Gary assures me that every night he makes sure that the kids look at their clothes and put the dirty ones in the appropriate baskets or else they get folded up and put away in their drawers. More often than not, I realise that I haven't washed anything belonging to Spencer in a couple of weeks and I find he's putting all his dirties back in his drawers night after night. Or I go into the laundry room and all the clothes are laying on the floor inches from the two baskets.
Leia's shirt was not filthy but it should have been washed. I wearily went to the bathroom to try and sponge off the more noticeable bits. Fortunately I know the format of the school pictures - head and shoulder shots so I knew even if the spots were still there they wouldn't be in the picture. Still it's the principle. It doesn't take much for Gary to really supervise these things. I think that he often can't be bothered and justifies it by saying they need to learn to do these things themselves which I agree with although I need him there in the background making sure of it.
Well they are both clean, tidy, and safely at school now. I can take a breath. The thought of cooking today is hideous but I'm not going to be able to get out of it. Or of cleaning. One look at the kids bathroom downstairs this morning as I was sponging Leia's shirt makes me think once a week might not be enough. Looks like a toothpaste bomb went off down there. And it's laundry time again. Of course this time I perhaps won't trust just what's in the laundry baskets. Looks like I'm going to have to go through three chests of drawers as well! I'm tired already.
And thinking ahead to Jan/Feb. I'm not quite sure how I could have squeezed anything else into my day over the past 24 hours. What on earth am I going to do when I also have a hungry screaming baby to also take care of. I thought I was fairly organized but it looks like I am going to have to seriously raise my game.

A peek at the new resident of Crazy Town.

A little foot. Long like Daddy's.


I love how they always have their hands by their faces. Those first few weeks you are always fighting to prevent them scratching their faces.


A closer up of the profile and arm.


His little face. Of course on a regular ultrasound it's a little skeletal looking. But I can already see he has the Asp face shape!

Well the baby might look a little like........

or maybe a little like.......



That's right, Leia and I are soon to be outnumbered two to one!

I went to my ultrasound appointment this morning and it was so exciting. I'm only allowed one ultrasound during pregnancies so I hadn't even gotten to see a peanut yet. It's strange going all the way to 20 weeks before you get a peek. But the 20 week peek is so wonderful. You can pretty much see everything really well. The little heart got magnified and I could see all the four chambers and see it pumping away. Everything was measured from the brain to the femur. For the sex he wasn't being co-operative for a long time but she finally tracked down the evidence and said she was 100% sure. Can you be 100% from ultrasound? I have always taken it that way and bought gender specific things which is what I did after my appointment was over.
All the measurements were as expected, the placenta looks healthy, as does my fluid level. The doctor even said that since I have had three previous negative tests for gestational diabetes and I have no risk factors then we can go ahead and skip it this time around. SCORE! So we are on for February 4. It looks as though we are going to schedule an induction around a visit from my Mum. This will hopefully be the first time in four pregnancies that she can be around for the birth. I'm very happy about that. The kids won't have to stay with friends. (not that there's anything wrong with that but there's no one like Grandma!)

On a side note, my thumb didn't appear to be getting any better and it's been 6 days. It's been painful and irritated and I just felt that there was something not right. Originally I had decided to go without the antibiotics but after looking at it on Sunday I went to get them because it was not looking good. I decided to ask my OB about it. He said that it was not infected but that the stitches were so tight they were kind of sinking into the wound and preventing it from healing. He said they needed to come out straight away and did it right there for me to avoid another trip to Urgent Care. He's so great! Now they're out the relief is significant but I am a little annoyed as the scar is going to be quite big as a result. It hasn't knitted together at all well. But people are human and my skin was hard to sew. It's very thick!

Gary still has all the pictures from the scan so I'll post them separately later.

The quest for good literature!

Wow I just feel drained. Leia had to be at school this morning at 7.30am for choir practise, I had to go to Walmart for a few things, and then I had my carpool responsibilities for Nathan and his two little friends. By the time I had finished all that it was about 3pm and I was about to relax. It was my birthday yesterday and a package had arrived in the mail containing a present from Gary. It's a novel that has long been out of print and so I've really been looking forward to getting it. I suppose I wasn't really thinking and just grabbed a knife from my block to slice open the tape on the box. It slipped and I cut my thumb in an awkward spot. I stopped the bleeding as best I could but I couldn't bend my thumb without the skin pulling open.
Of course you don't always think of these things as blessings at the time but Gary literally walked through the door at the moment when I was scratching my head about how to deal with it. We had a friend who agreed to meet the kids off the school bus and we headed to urgent care with Nathan in tow.
So here I am, three stitches, one tetanus shot and a thumb splint thing later. I feel nauseous. I have had cold sweats and been sitting by the toilet but no throwing up yet thank goodness. I think the fact that on my car pool day I have to eat lunch at 10.45am has contributed to this feeling. Since I couldn't cook dinner, we ordered pizza and it's still not here at 7.30 after being ordered an hour ago. 7 and a half hours without eating doesn't generally agree with me even when I'm not pregnant but the feeling that sent me to sit by the toilet bowl seemed a little different.
I looked up side effects of the tetanus shot online and it seems to fit. Hopefully after eating (if that ever happens) I will be able to rest and maybe have a look at that book. It's called Wyllard's Weird by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Kind of a gothic Jekyll and Hyde type of mystery.
But I'm REALLY tired. Will I be able to keep my eyes open?

Letter to teacher

More and more I find myself asking the question, "Why do my husband's genes seem to trump my own both in looks and personality of all our children?"
I'm not saying this to brag and you can call my Mum to confirm this. I was a VERY conscientious student all throughout school. I wouldn't have dreamed of having a conversation with my neighbor while the teacher was talking or when I was supposed to be doing something. I recently looked back in my very first journal that I wrote when I was about 7 or 8 or something and my handwriting was very neat. Not a very interesting journal certainly but neatly written.
In 3rd Grade at Leia's school, one of the discipline techniques is for the offending student to write a letter to the teacher explaining their behavior. When this happens, the parent gets a copy of it. When I read Leia's letter I had to suppress a smile. She has such a big personality. No wilting violets here!

Dear Mrs. E

I was talking because I sneezed and told Virginia. I am a chatter box. Please forgive me. I am totally sorry. Can I make it up to you?

YOUR BEST STUDENT EVER
Leia

I also had a chance to speak to her teacher and she told me that it's not a big problem at this point but she does spend a lot of time talking. If she doesn't have a neighbor to talk to she will simply talk to herself. She also does everything in a hurry, ready to move on to the next thing.
Sometimes I have a hard time understanding the bright, vivacious, beautiful little girl I have the privilege of calling mine. I admit I don't really know what to do to help her focus at school and talk less. But I do know that she's probably more fun to hang out with than I ever was at her age. And she has been writing a journal lately. Since I peeked into the one I wrote when I was about her age and almost fell asleep I am glad she is who she is. Her journal is a laugh a minute!