Sitting on 2 pillows

Why am I sitting on 2 pillows you might ask?

Because I'm 39 weeks, 3 days pregnant and my tailbone hurts.

Why am I posting this at 1:44 am?

Because Mirren is teething and woke up crying.

I stayed with her in her bed, trying to give her comfort until her Tylenol kicked in.

After an hour, I gave it up and left her on her own.

That girl has weird waking up in the middle of the night

and not going back to sleep for a while issues.

I think I'm just gonna let that be her problem tonight.

As you might imagine, I'm so done with being pregnant.

This boy is done growing.

He's great, he's fine. He'd thrive outside but to heck with that.

He's staying in, in spite of repeated efforts that my body has tried to eject him.

2 trips to the hospital already.

(1 more than I've had with any other pregnancy and I haven't even had him yet.)

Contractions stop or turn out to not be the real thing and painfully, slowly wither away.

Is he just holding out for September?

He doesn't like August?

Couldn't tell you.

I liked August, but now I'm growing bitter as I've watched the long hours of

the past week slowly drift by with no signs of our boy emerging. 

Did I tell you I had a gut feeling he was going to come early? Around 38 weeks even!?!

Yeah, never trusting my gut again.

This boy will come, but the excitement of an "early" arrival is down the tubes and now

I just want him out. 

Tuesday, August 18th

Aftyn had her orientation for kindergarten this morning.

We walked to her school and back again. It might have been a mile roundtrip.

I'm exhausted. 37 weeks 4-5 days pregnant. Oy.

Since we got back, she is driving me crazy. Or maybe I'm just tired.

Couldn't tell ya.

I'm hating my pregnancy heartburn.

I just want it to go away.

We finally got our van registered yesterday so we're all legal and stuff to drive.

No pictures yet to document it.

Because that requires energy, something I'm lacking at the moment.

Official school pictures will be taken on Thursday on Aftyn's first whole day of school.

You'll get to see what she looks like in new clothes, a clean and shiny face, new glasses,

and just looking her best in general.

Instead of looking like her normal clean-ish self.

Clumsiness

Pregnancy clumsiness is nothing to scoff at. For me, it's a real thing.

This morning it began in epic proportions.

 I accidentally knocked over Aftyn's full bowl
of cereal and milk with the gallon of milk I was attempting to lift up from the table.

She started to cry. I wanted to as well.

After apologizing profusely, I attempted to clean up the table but the floor was equally covered
in cereal and milk.

  I'll get that later. Hopefully. Why don't we have a dog??

 I dropped my spoon while getting my own bowl and spoon for my breakfast.

This is one of those mornings where I just know I better be careful because clearly my reflexes
stink and my reaction time is null.

Probably a good idea to just stay home. Good thing I don't have a vehicle to drive today. 

Imagine the damage I could do!

A Good Pregnancy Post

 Gotta have at least 1 pregnancy post as I approach the end this time around.

Today I am officially 9 months pregnant.

And I am totally feeling it.

Feeling it in the way that I can't drink too much water without feeling like I am WAY too full.

Feeling it in the way that my already dropped baby belly feels like I'm moving a too wide load much like a pallet truck would move a too full pallet.

Feeling it every time I lean down to help Mirren do anything on her level.

I am at the "I'm tired and this baby is zapping ALL my energy" stage.

And my often out of town husband isn't helping things because he's not here to make up for those moments when I am "just too tired".

That excuse has "no place in this dojo does it".  "No sensei."  (Name that movie)

Gotta pick up and carry on with dishes, laundry, dinners, lunches, breakfasts, trips to the
store, school registration, etc. no matter my energy level because I've got 3 kiddos who need me
to be doing my thing so they can do theirs.

*Sigh*.

Hard things make us stronger.

It's true.

And I will come out of this pregnancy with different strengths than I've had to develop in
other pregnancies.

And every pregnancy after this one will continue to help me develop new and awesome strengths
that I will continue to use.

There's your pep talk for the day.

Now go and conquer what feels impossible for you today.

Because you can do it too.

And you're probably doing it without being 9 months pregnant!

See, you got this!!

Ah Pictures

 Mirren loves to help the girls do their dishwasher jobs. She's a great helper, undies on or off. Ha!!

 We had 2 weeks of swim lessons for the girls. This was their last day. I guess the excitement was wearing off. They both did great and have improved so much from last year!

Daddy and the girls took a dip in our backyard pool. They had a blast!  Mirren hates the pool, which is why she's not pictured. Cold water is not her favorite.

 Had to take this picture because sometimes you have to enjoy a good book, clothes on or not. Mirren has been LOVING books lately, especially animal books!

 Bronwyn shares a room with Mirren. This particular night, Mirren was having a hard time going to sleep, as you can see below. So Bronwyn just plugged her ears and fell asleep. :)  Glad she's learning to just sleep through noise!  Ha ha!!

                            The culprit making all the noise, looking very sad.
   (I had just checked on her when I took this photo, which is why she was
              reunited with her binky but still feeling sad for some unknown reason.)

Recent Pictures - Hallelujah!!

Holy eyelashes - new camera

Real smile! - new camera

She wanted her own picture - new camera

Emily

May birthdays! - old camera

Camping! - old camera

She fell right into the water, luckily Dad was there to save her - old camera

Zeke and Emily - new camera

For some reason, my captions under my pictures aren't showing up.  There's a mix here of old camera pictures and new camera pictures. Can you tell the difference because I sure as heck can! The bottom picture is Zeke and Emily. Emily is the orange, Zeke is the black.

It's July 20th?!?

Well things have been settling right down around here.
Probably because I'm just getting tired and more and more pregnant.
33.5 weeks! Go me!

We've slowly been adjusting into our home, finding ways to tweak it to suit our needs better.
We just got a tv mount that frees up a whole corner of our front room.
LOVE!

Things we've been up to:
*a family reunion,
*helping with a garage sale for my sister,
*painted my kids dress-ups box,
*started swimming lessons,
*got a new awesome camera,
*finally bought a lens for it (you know, so I could actually take pictures),
*finding potty training nirvana (she isn't having accidents people! woot!)
*running my 1 mile at the track a few times a week (possibly hilarious to watch. I'll never know)
*got a new calling at church with Reed (16 year old Sunday School teachers, new adventure!)
*starting to pack my hospital bag (this whole "having a baby thing" is getting pretty real)
*finally starting the marble system back up this past week (HALLELUJAH! we've missed it)
*getting ready and excited for Aftyn to start kindergarten  :)

That seems a pretty complete list. I might have missed a few little things but on the whole, this
is pretty much what we've been up to.

The most recent thing we've been up to is kittens. This past Friday while getting our little swimming pool ready for my kids to play in in our backyard, I found a cute little orange kitten by our fence.
It looked up at me through super goopy gross eyes and just looked pathetic. I took it inside, tried to make it comfortable, and made a run for the store for some kitten milk, a litter box and litter and some canned cat food and treats.
   The kitten seemed to be gradually improving and then yesterday while I was outside picking up our backyard from our Saturday adventures out there, I found ANOTHER kitten! This one was black. I couldn't just leave it outside, because it too looked up at me rather pathetically and didn't even try to run. Sadly, within hours of bringing it inside, it was clear this cat was REALLY sick.
       It started flopping over and then just laying there, almost as if it were fainting. 9 hours after bringing it inside, it died while sleeping in the little bed I had made it. We named him Zeke, although we have no idea if it was a boy or girl. Poor Zeke. He thankfully went very quickly and didn't suffer much. :(   Now we're afraid that Emily, our orange cat who we also have no idea of its sex, is also sick with the same thing, I think it's FIP. I'll be taking it to the vet today so she won't have to suffer the way Zeke did if she does have it.
       Having these kittens has been rather eye opening for us. Our kids have enjoyed having a kitten. Mirren is surprisingly gentle in her pets. Aftyn and Bronwyn loved having a pet to love on. The timing was just off though with us having a baby in only a few short weeks. We're grateful to have had the time we've had to love these kittens when they needed us. I sure hope this is the end of sick kittens being dropped off in my backyard. I don't want to go out there one day to find another one that I'd missed and it be dead.  It's hard enough to know them while they were alive and then have them die. :(

UPDATE:  Well, we don't know if this cat has FIP,  but it does have an upper respiratory infection that we're giving it medicine for and hoping that maybe everything will go back to normal for it. It has started eating solid foods (!) and the medicine seems to be helping and it seems to have loads more energy just in the few hours since so as of right now, we're settling into the idea that Emily might stay with us a while longer. Maybe an entire lifetime! :)

Post Update: Oh the optimism. This afternoon, Emily died. We're glad she can finally feel better and we're glad that we were able to love her for the last few days. We will definitely miss her but we know her little spirit is in heaven and running and jumping like she should be. Bye Emily.