What are you looking at?

Adjusted expectations

When setting the tone for 2012, I decided that my word for the year would be leap. Abandon comfort zones. Propel myself into new terrain. Be nervous. All in an effort to prepare for the big changes I expected to set into motion.

Well, one of those adventures is officially on hold. Luke and I won't be putting our house on the market this spring.

It shouldn't have taken a preliminary analysis from our real estate agent to figure this out, but apparently I am that stupid. For instance: Did you know that homes these days are...selling less than what you paid for? By like, thousands of dollars? And there are no fairy godmothers to neatly make up the difference? Also, that you will possibly STILL be expected to do things like repair the roof and pony up closing costs? May I also inform you that the earth is round and revolves around the sun?

It's been an enlightening week for the Frema-Useless Clutter household.

Oh, Momma, but you are a fool! Let us join in a round of laughter at your expense.

All kidding aside, I am surprised I thought the concept of getting the house to market by April was more within our grasp than it actually was. We've known since tax time last year that our 2011 refund would be applied fully toward our credit card debt, our short-term savings is nil, and the dial on our mortgage (understandably) hasn't moved much since we bought this place a little more than three years ago. Of course we'll need to bring money to the table. I just never quantified the amount until Saturday.

Screw books and puzzles! No time like the present to learn DIY shingle.

Before leaving us yesterday, our agent promised to be in touch with more concrete numbers on what we can reasonably expect the house to sell for and how much we might be asked to pay out of pocket, but after comparing last year's list prices to sale prices for homes in our neighborhood, Luke and I already know that we can't afford to sell right now - maybe not even in this calendar year.

At first this was more than a little discouraging. We are so ready to move forward in other areas of our lives, but everything is contingent upon being free of this property (or at least will be made a million times easier). Renting is not an option, and we aren't interested in jumping through hoops for a short sale. Instead, we're choosing to view this setback as an opportunity. 

Really, we should have been planning to go into this process with as little debt as possible, so now we can make that happen. Our tax refund will be used to pay off our credit card balance, and that better equips us to take care of our remaining medical bills (still looking at you, Liam, while also waiting to receive the invoice for my follow-up ERCP). Once that's done, we can make updates to paint, fixtures, and other random eyesores a little at a time instead of all at once. We can investigate other ways to save money (refinancing, budget cuts, etc.). Meanwhile, our mortgage will only get lower, and there is still plenty we can do to get ready for the changes that lie ahead. We are deep in the tunnel, but we can still see the light.

And what if, in the middle of all these preparations, the adventure of a lifetime falls into my (our) lap? I (we) may chase after it, anyway, easy be damned. This year, when pitted against leap, easy is going to lose, every time.

Speaking up for gray

This week I came across a handful of blog posts that turned my blood cold. They were uncomfortable to read and left me squirming in my chair, upset, confused, embarrassed. No longer sure what to think of experiences I made peace with years ago.

Why I Talk About Rape

On being an object, and then not being an object

It should be said.

The rape article was the hardest to get through, but it was a line in Liz's post in her account of a sexual assault that brought me to the computer. A simple sentence, stripped of layers, absent of clever innuendo or metaphors, but it was powerful nonetheless.

I remember that at 17, the idea of waking parents seemed somehow worse than anything.

Let me be clear. I have never been raped. But as a young woman, GOD did that general sentiment ring true for me.

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When I was 17, I landed a job at a laid-back mom-and-pop video store in my neighborhood, a job I chased after for an entire year because I loved the idea of getting paid to watch movies, do my homework, and hang out with friends twelve hours a week. The owner put me off until I was a senior in high school because the store had a...shall we say...robust adult section, and I was underage. But I was an ambitious 17-year-old, and I had excellent references, so it was only a matter of time before I was collecting late fees from local enthusiasts for titles like Hein*feld and Wednesday is Hump Day. 

On one of my last nights there before leaving for college, I was closing with "Frank," a middle-aged guy with two kids and a day job as a paralegal. He was normally a pleasure to be around, very helpful and kind - he always gave me a ride when we closed, saving me a ten-minute walk home. On that night, we were talking and laughing as usual, but on this night Frank had a few beers on our shift. I don't know that this would have been discouraged by the owner, exactly, since he was known to have a can of something in plain sight of customers while he balanced the books, but it was a first for Frank, and you could tell he was buzzing. As the night went on, he became looser with his tongue, and he kept saying how nice and pretty I was; next thing I knew, he was approaching me from the back and wrapping his arms around me in a close hug.

I was taken off guard; what the hell did I know about inappropriate? It's not like he was grabbing at the waistband of my pants or even trying to kiss me. And it was over as quickly as it began, so I don't remember how I acted in the moment aside from making some lame joke while sliding out of his arms. He was such a nice guy, after all, and not himself from the beer, and he still had to drive me home. Because of course I let him drive me home.

I reflect on this now, and I'm angry. I'm angry that a grown man thought it was okay to throw a few back on the clock in the presence of a teenager who assumed she could get through a four-hour shift without having someone's hands on her hips. But I'm also so sad for the girl who felt that she had to act like it didn't happen, who felt obligated to get in the car with him, EVEN THOUGH HE'D BEEN DRINKING, because she didn't want to be rude, and who made light of the whole thing when he called to apologize the next day. (See? Such a nice guy.)

Sometimes, Breain, it's okay to be impolite.

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When I was 20, I had sex when I didn't want to. He was older, and I was intoxicated with the attention. In previous conversations, I'd told him I wanted to wait, but in the moment, I never said no. When it was over, I didn't know how to react except roll over and cry. All he could do was apologize for misinterpreting my body language. I could see that he meant it. I knew he felt terrible.

If I would have pushed him off me, said WAIT, STOP, I'M NOT READY YET, I know he would've done it. But we'd been fooling around night after night for almost two weeks, and I sure did like him a lot, and I didn't know how to switch gears. How do you talk through such an intense situation when you're physically trying to recover from it - literally catching your breath, pulling an arm through a shirt sleeve, waiting for your half-asleep eyes to adjust to the light? And that's the problem, I guess. I was more concerned with the awkwardness of the after, with the proverbial waking of the parents, than the hurt I would feel from the during.

He and I went on to date for almost a year, and nothing about our relationship was coersive or forced or any of the adjectives typically used to describe a violent situation. He is even someone I call a friend today. Looking at that one night, though, from the perspective of a grown woman with a daughter of her own, I wish I hadn't cared about the after. I wish I'd been strong enough to say no. 

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The posts I linked to at the start of this entry describe ecounters twenty times more heartbreaking and terrifying than mine. But I think that's what drew me to share. It's so easy to write off those experiences we believe to be less than someone else's. But not every incident is that black and white, and there is equal value in talking about the gray. I don't want the women in my life thinking they ever have to tolerate the less than. And I hope with all my heart Kara never gives a thought to waking me up.

Happy is as happy does

After posting two entries' worth of pep talks, I wanted to share some of the ways I'm trying to bring more joy and perspective to my day-to-day.

This is especially important right now because Luke and I are too busy paying down debt to account for anything grandiose - we've already scrapped our plan to upgrade the family car, for example. Anything we take on over the next year has to be free or non-commital (i.e., pay-per-use or of the "cancel at any time" variety). So, really, free. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Journaling

l adopted this habit over the summer, inspired by Gretchen Rubin's stab at a gratitude journal. Her original intent was to write daily, but after finding it to be more of a chore than a stress reliever, she switched to writing one sentence a day about those in-the-weeds moments that tug at your heart but are likely to fade over time. Learning from her experience, I started my own journal as a combination of these ideas  - I focus on what I'm thankful for, but I don't write every day, and I don't limit myself to any kind of subject matter. Sometimes I've got pages of bullet points, and sometimes just a few lines. Sometimes they're big picture, like having enough money to pay our bills, and or they're as simple as the name of Kara's imaginary dog Bingo Benjamin (Bingo from Ladybug Girl, Benjamin from Liam's middle name; isn't that something you'd want to remember?). I don't want to lose these moments any more than Rubin does, and I can think of no better way to frame them than through a lense of gratitude. Plus, the fewer parameters I set for myself, the better my chances of keeping this up.

I do, however, have one restiction: I'm not allowed to pat myself on the back for house cleaning. It's important to me to keep up on things as best I can, especially now that Liam is frog-hopping everywhere and crams whatever he can into his pie hole, but I don't want to delude myself into thinking the ninety minutes I spend scrubbing down bathrooms is equal to an afternoon playing Memory with the kids. That's not what I want to reflect on when I go through these books five years or even one month from now. Not every "good" thing needs to be documented.

Quotationing, Information Collecting

Rubin had another reason for starting a notebook that I found really appealing. She talked about her love for the physical act of note taking and how journaling provided an outlet for this. She also talked about writing for its own sake and forgetting about results. As in, it's okay to collect information and not know what to do with it. It's okay to jot down ideas just because it's fun.

I, too, love note taking, and anyone who's known me longer than five minutes knows I have a pen in my hand almost all the time, just waiting to desecrate a blank piece of paper with my scribbles. (Remember my yada yada yada banner?) So I started a second notebook to serve as a random repository of all things Frema. I've written down books I want to read, movies I want to see, plot points for a TLF part three (when I thought about tackling National Novel Writing Month in November), and quotations. Pages and pages of them, mainly because I get Rubin's "Moment of Happiness" daily quotation delivered to my e-mail and ninety-five percent of them are ones I don't want to forget. Here's a gem from last week:

Also, no, I'm not being compensated for my repeated references to The Happiness Project, why do you ask? I've only cited it eighty million times in this entry.

Reading

One of my goals this year is to read more. Pretty lofty, right? And yet, there it is. Books have always been a huge part of my life, but with all the new demands on my time these last few years, I've been lazy in making them a priority. Part of the problem is that I think I need more time to keep up with reading than I actually do - i.e., I don't have to set aside an hour before bed to wind down with the Dalai Lama. I can grab twenty minutes at lunch or five on the john. (TMI?) All of those minutes will eventually lead to one finished book.

I'm not aiming to hit a specific number of books because that seems overwhelming, but I know that I need some measure of accountability to help me stay on task. Thus, my bookroll was born. Here's to tearing that bad boy UP come December.

I'm also trying to limit the amount of guilty-pleasure reading I do - less Soaps in Depth, fewer sensationalist blog posts that were clearly written to drive traffic or stir controversy. Half these sites aren't any different from the grocery store mags that recycle headlines every 18 months. This is much harder to do, because junk reading requires such little effort, but I'm trying to remind myself these things don't bring me happiness in the long run. I'm ready for something new.

Blogging

In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying to return to a regular posting schedule - as in, posting at all, period. This is mainly because I've always enjoyed working through my thoughts and feelings online, and I've missed being an active member of this community. I won't lie, though; I'm also still trying to figure out if this space can pave the way for other freelancing opportunities. Whether it can or not remains to be seen, but even if it doesn't, I'm having a great time, and that's all that matters in the end.

Churching

After almost a year-long hiatus, Luke and I are back in the habit of attending church, and we are both so happy about it. When Kara was a baby, we were going to an Episcopal church we liked a whole lot, but then we bought our house and moved to a new part of town where the Anglican congregation was wonderfully kind and generous but essentially in preacher limbo, having gone without a full-time pastor for almost two years, and it showed. When a pastor did finally sign on, despite her being a lovely person, Luke and I weren't as happy with the sermons or the way Sunday worship was organized, so we decided to explore other options. Since Kara and Nathan were already attending preschool programs at the local Methodist church, which is known for being super active in our community, we went to a service late last fall and have kept going ever since.

This is the first time in my adult life I'm continually excited and inspired by going to church. As someone who grew up in a conservative Catholic family with extended relatives who weren't exactly tolerarant of other faiths, even Christian ones, it's been an eye-opening process to evolve from Guilt-Ridden Catholic to Nervous Catholic Light to Full-Blown Protestant. The nice thing is that all three traditions? PRAY TO THE SAME JESUS. It's true! Plus, I can let the most fulfilling parts of each experience inform my overall relationship with God and faith. I never could have predicted the spiritual journey in store for me back when I first started debating my religion, but I couldn't be more thankful for where it's led me and my family.

Less Yelling

I constantly tell people it's a good thing tLuke is the at-home parent in our marriage because my level of patience fluctuates wildly when it comes to the kids. I'm making an active effort to find other ways to handle these situations, because when I do, the results are worth their weight in gold. I just need to do it more.

Sleeping, Exercising

Actually, these are the only ones I'm NOT doing yet, but I want to be. I'm sold on the why when it comes to both; it's the how that holds me back. How can I go to bed when there are pages to read / journals to update / blog posts to write? On the flip side, how can I get up to Shred when I was up until two o'clock reading, journaling, and blogging? You see where this is going. In the end, I need to accept that I can't do eight things in a day, pick the two or three that need the most attention in that moment, and hop to it.

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I am trying so hard to focus on improving the "little" parts of my day, because really, isn't that the bulk of our lives? It's not often we're keeled over by outlandish moments of grandeur; I need to enjoy each day for what it is and explore happiness in my current set of conditions, instead of hitting the pause button until all obstacles have been overcome. I've made significant progress in this area in the last year and a half, but I can always do better.

How are you doing on your 2012 goals and resolutions? What are you doing to keep happiness at the forefront of your life? I would love to hear from you.

Thirty-two

Yesterday was my birthday. I know this because Kara charged into the bathroom while I was getting dressed and cried out, "Mom, it's your birthday! We got you presents! Come and check it out!" My Facebook wall exploded with posts of happy thoughts, well wishes, and proclamations of "The Year of Bree," and flowers and bagels welcomed me when I came into work. I am blessed to be another year older, surrounded by all this love. I am blessed to be thirty-two.

In a lot of ways, I feel thirty-two. Luke and I will have been together eleven years this year, married six in May, and we have far surpassed the honeymoon stage of our relationship, now challenged with keeping things fresh amidst regurgitated formula, clogged toilets, and stretch marks. I have kids who wear UNDERPANTS and make grand statements about going to KINDERGARTEN next year (hear that, Kara? NEXT YEAR) and who remind me not to talk with food in my mouth. I've spent late nights and long hours combing through finances at the dining room table to make room for insurance premiums, association fees, and preschool - and cried when I couldn't do it. On those nights I think about my own parents with tremendous respect and empathy for the decisions they had to make to raise five children. I never feel more adult than when I'm sitting at that table.

I've walked away from relationships, and I've been dumped. I've feared for my job and my health. I've lost faith in childhood heroes. I've taken the wrong side. I've eaten plenty of crow. 

And yet, at the same time, I'm still a bright-eyed, virgin fifteen, waiting earnestly to come into my own, wondering if I'll ever nail the part of a mature, sophisticated woman. Last month Luke and I took the kids to a Christmas program in town, and we bumped into the mom of one of Kara's friends from preschool. Her perfectly applied make-up and posh handbag put my clearance fleece from Target and ratty Sauconys to shame. How can we possibly have children the same age when clearly I'm late for P.E.?

Mistakes and petty hang-ups aside, my goal for thirty-two is to be more intentional in my thoughts and actions every day, because it's hitting me like a ton of bricks that this one life - this one day, really - is all I have. If I want memories I'm proud of, if I want change, if I want to make a tangible, meaningful impact on this world - it is up to me.

Thirty-two, bring it on.

In the gap between the two trapeze: 2011 recap

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Moved Kara and Nathan into the same room. Watched a royal wedding. Officially closed the door to more biological children. Delivered my third baby. Discontinued our landline service indefinitely. Took the kids to their first movie (Winnie-the-Pooh). Enrolled Kara into preschool and Nathan into Play 'n Share. Published my first sponsored blog entry. Rode in an ambulance, which leads into: Said good-bye to my gallbladder. 

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Inspired by Christina's recap for 2010, this year I replaced my usual list of resolutions with a single key word on which to focus my energy. My word for 2011 was prepare, and I think it worked well. Prepare gave me strength when I felt suffocated by debt, motivation to take care of myself after all my c-section troubles, and offered hope when even the idea of selling this house became unbearable. Prepare can mean big changes or baby steps, tangible results or quiet reflection. It's hard to fail at something when the guidelines for meeting it are so flexible.

That said, I didn't abandon my bullets entirely. Here are the "inevitables" I listed for 2011:

• Pay off credit card balance, which continues to serve as the proverbial/financial thorn in our side - HA HA HA. We had more than cut it in half by the time I returned to work, and I remember saying to Luke with pride, "We made it my whole maternity leave without using the Visa once!" So of course we were slapped with a surprise two grand in car repairs for the Cobalt in October. Because the universe is one crabby bitch.
• Paint the kitchen and the kids' bedrooms and bathroom - Aside from minor touch-ups to each of the kids' rooms, the only paint we opened this year was manufactured by Crayola. So, that would be no. 
• Revamp the backyard and frontyard landscape - Luke pulled some bushes out from alongside the house. I think. And he did a lot of mowing. Half-yes.
• Deliver a healthy baby - I may be a mess physically, but Liam is absolutely perfect. Resounding yes here.
• Enroll Kara into an official preschool class and Nathan into some sort of program this fall - Another check mark, thank goodness.
• Lose the baby weight gained from pregnancy number three - I'm actually underweight at the moment, thanks to my gallbladder drama. Um, thanks, gallbladder?

For my 2012 word, I think I'm going with leap. Welcoming a new baby almost every year for the past three years has led to coasting in certain areas of my life. It is time to shake things up a little.

In addition, here are some milestones I want to hit this year. Most of them are purposefully vague - no quantifiable measurables, more like reminders on how to best spend my time. I will flesh these out over the coming weeks:

• Eliminate our Visa bill once and for all
• Pay off medical bills related to Luke's physical therapy and Liam's delivery
• Put our house on the market
• Train for and complete the Mini
• Make time for hobbies
• Take trips
• Save
• Get involved - Luke, me, and the kids
• Read
• Be there

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Definitely. We're so close, in fact, it's almost like the baby came out of my own body.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

 We weren't close, but I lost my beloved auntie Maureen in late winter.

5. Which countries did you visit?

Uh. None. But I take solace in knowing that if this question were Which COUNTIES did you visit?, I could totally name at least three.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

MONEY, because I am sick of all this debt. Physical strength, because I am tired of feeling worn down. A paid-off mortgage because that will mean we'll have sold our house.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

June 29: Liam's birth

September 23: The final airing of All My Children on network television. I took the afternoon off to watch it at my boss's house. We sat in front of the TV and feasted on Portillo's. It was awesome.

December 1: Gallbladder removal

December 8: ERCP 

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

My beautiful baby boy.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Keeping my jealousy in check. There's a reason this is covered in the Ten Commandments; it's one of the ugliest emotions there is. When it feels like you're barely treading water, it's hard to watch others enjoy abundance, even when you know they aren't without troubles, either.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Besides my c-section and gallbladder surgeries, I injured my right knee (same as when I was training for the Mini-Marathon last year) a month into my post-partum couch-to-5K progam. I started physical therapy in October and it's still not completely healed. Again, more on that in another post.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Luke's sterilization. Kara's and Nathan's Christmas gifts - wooden dollhouse and train table set, respectively. We aren't often able to splurge on presents this extravagent, but we made it a priority and I'm so glad we did. They're at the perfect age for these things and should get plenty of mileage out of them. 

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My sister Ryan and brother-in-law Jason, who came back to the U.S. after spending three years with the Army in Germany. They're stationed in North Carolina now, and it's wonderful to be in the same time zone again, even if they're still hundreds of miles away. Just the fact that Jason returned from Afghanistan at all, let alone without injury, is cause for thanksgiving.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

I'd rather not say, but don't worry. Not yours.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Visa. Diapers. Medical bills. Gas. (And now you're jealous of ME!)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Having Liam. Welcoming a new coworker to our department. Ryan and Jason's move to NC.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

"Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall" by Coldplay because the beat is so trimphant. I needed that kind of kick this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) Happier or sadder? Happier.
b) Thinner or fatter? I still weigh less than I did at this time last year, but my belly is still puffier than I'd like, partly because of my diastasis, so let's call it a wash.
c) Richer or poorer? Financially poorer. In love, a million times richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Sleep. Physical therapy exercises. Keep in contact with family and friends. 

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Same as last year: Worry. Yell.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

Opening presents with Luke and the kids, playing with their new toys, and cleaning every room of the house.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Oh, yes. Luckily, Luke is okay with this.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Fringe, hands-down, though New Girl is a close second. Luke and I are ape about this show and Zooey Deschanel. We're also watching Once Upon a Time, but I'm not as enchanted by it (no pun intended) as I was in the beginning. Excited about the return of 30 Rock but was disappointed by the last season, so we're keeping expectations low.

On the kid front, Yo Gabba Gabba. I can't believe I once hated this show. The guest stars alone are comedy gold.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No.

24. What was the best book you read?

I only finished two grown-up books this year, but they were both great, so we'll call it a tie: The Happiness Project and Bossypants. Highly recommend both. 

In the area of children's literature, we as a family have embraced the Knuffle Bunny and How Do Dinosaurs...? series, Ladybug Girl, and Maisy the Mouse, among countless other characters we've grown to love as a result of our local library. Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books have been a staple in our house for years, but this year we discovered Owl at Home, Mouse Tales, and Mouse Soup. (Nathan: "I don't like the weasel.") Earlier this month I pulled out my big fat Beatrix Potter collection of stories, and while I think the writing is a little over their heads, Kara and Nathan love it. It's so wonderful to relive my childhood favorites with them.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Let's change this to rediscovery so I can say Tori Amos. She went on the road this year to promote Night of Hunters, and every time she travels I get caught up in her old stuff all over again.

If I have to name new music, let's go with Mumford and Sons and Adele.

26. What did you want and get?

A healthy baby.

27. What did you want and not get?

A zero balance on our credit card.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

I only saw one movie at the show - Winnie-the-Pooh, which was adorable. If we're talking rentals, Inception was mind-blowing.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

We did nothing because I was still having crazy bouts of morning sickness. I turned 31.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

An easier delivery. Less debt. Zero car repairs. Intact gallbladder.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

January through June: outdated maternity clothes. July through December: wash-and-wear from The Limited by day, yoga pants by night.

32. What kept you sane?

My husband. Comfort music and coffee on the drive to work.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Tiny Fey and her take on "making it" as a woman and in show business. Those were my favorite sections of Bossypants.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

Pass, mainly because I don't know.

35. Who did you miss?

Everyone. I'm not a big fan of talking on the phone like I was when I was single, and usually I'm too tired after the kids are in bed to make a call, but since most of my support group is up north and Luke and I have needed to stay close to home this year, that's the best way to stay in touch. I did a terrible job of maintaining relationships with friends and family (outside of my own little unit) in 2011. That said, between commuting and special projects, I worked a lot more, and missed that time with Luke and the kids at home.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

I'll give you three guesses.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

Don't wait for the perfect time to follow your dreams.The path you take will always be riddled with potholes. Screw perfect. NOW is the time.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Courtesy of Coldplay:

I turn the music up, I got my records on
I shut the world outside until the lights come on
Maybe the streets alight, maybe the trees are gone
But I feel my heart start beating to my favorite song

And all the kids they dance, all the kids all night
Until Monday morning feels another life
I turn the music up, I'm on a roll this time
And heaven is in sight

And it is. It's scary, but it's right in front of me.

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In case you're interested, quizzes and/or musings from previous years:

2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

* Because of all the new-mom drama I was going through after bringing Kara home, there is no recap for 2007. I know, I'm sad about it, too.

We get by with a little help

While riding the gallbladder rollercoaster, I had a "come to Jesus" moment about how much people need each other during times of crisis and how difficult it can be to offer and accept help.

When I first saw the OB on the last Monday of November, it was after six hours of intense pain that had me crying harder than Sally Field after Shelby's funeral in Steel Magnolias. And yet? I drove myself to the appointment. Later that night, after five hours of lying on a gurney half-asleep from narcotic medication in the E.R., I proceeded to drive myself home. The painkillers were out of my system by then, so it's not like I was driving under the influence, but I was struggling to concentrate on the road. On the expressway. In the rain. The minute I reached my driveway, I sent fervent prayers of thanks to God that I made it home in one piece.

It did not have to be this way.

First of all, I was surrounded by coworkers who are kind and caring and would have been more than willing to take me to the hospital. Second, once I was at the E.R., I was in constant contact with Luke and my boss the whole time, and both of them would have dropped everything to be with me and make sure I was okay. But in typical oldest-child people-pleaser fashion, I didn't want to bother anyone. In the moment, I couldn't justify asking Luke to pack up three children under the age of four at two hours before midnight and subject them to a ninety-minute screamfest "just" to bring me home. I should've gone with Plan B - crashing at my boss's house the next town over, just fifteen minutes from the hospital - but I didn't want to impose or come off as a drama queen, even though I knew her offer was genuine. I could walk, yes? I wasn't seeing double? So long as I was able to do those two things, I figured I should take care of myself.

I can see now this was wrong of me, especially since it wasn't true. I didn't have to take care of myself. When someone reaches out to lighten your burden, let them. Don't make the decision for them or overshadow their kindness with your own trivial hang-ups. Isabel wrote a great post about this last year that has stayed with me ever since. Even Jesus had help carrying the Cross.

As it turned out, there would be another opportunity to accept help graciously, sooner than I expected. Not twenty-four hours later, I could barely sit up in bed, let alone drive a car. Luke and I had to admit that our family couldn't handle this alone.

The grandest gesture came from Luke's parents, who stayed at our house three to four days at a time two weeks in a row to lend a hand with the kids. Words cannot express how grateful we are for their willingness to put their own lives on hold and place our needs first, without any advance notice, and for spinning it in such a way that you could almost trick yourself into thinking they had the better end of the deal. ("We enjoy spending so much time with our grandchildren!") We received an outpouring of love and concern from other friends and family through phone calls, texts, e-mails, and Facebook, but it was Grandma and Grandpa D who proactively came to the rescue in the area we needed it most, even when it couldn't have been convenient for them.

Their act of selflessness has reminded me that I've not been nearly as generous with my own time. It's easy to make abstract statements when life is all sunshine and rainbows; it's much harder to follow through when hard times present themselves and a loved one calls your bluff. When you learn on a random Monday that your mother's favorite aunt, your late grandmother's sister, has passed away and the viewing is on Thursday, for example.

My mother didn't ask me to attend the service; I think she told me NOT to come, actually, since I was in my second trimester with Liam, and sick all the time, and Luke had a cold himself, and the funeral home was four hours away, and we didn't have the money for gas. She knew all that and didn't want us over extending ourselves. But I felt drawn to be there for her just the same and told her on Tuesday we would make every effort to come.

After a lot - A LOT - of discussion, though, and proposing a million different scenarios, Luke and I decided that we just couldn't do it. We were too sick. We were too broke.

I remember calling my mom to tell her about the change in plans and feeling like an absolute tool for letting her down, even though she couldn't have been more understanding. I felt terrible for not making her pain more of a priority. I asked myself again and again if my short-term issues trumped the long-term gravity of the situation, and what I would think of my response five years down the road.

I don't hold this up as an example of a time where I should have made a different choice - right now I don't regret the decision we made - but it paints a very real picture of the factors people take into account when responding to requests for support (direct or perceived), and how easy it can be to fall short. I acknowledge this was a perfect storm of circumstances where I happened to be physically,mentally, and financially tapped out, and that in the last few years I have busted ass to be present for some life-changing events for family and friends. Births. Deaths. Miscarriages. Missing siblings. Weddings. Baptisms. Birthdays. 

But there are also plenty of instances where I wish I would've stopped fretting over some perceived obstacle that seemed monumental at the time but in reality was more of a discomfort and just been there.

I hope to be there a lot more in 2012.

A tale of one gallbladder

I know, I know, it's been awhile. Can I appease you, first, with a baby photo? Because let me tell you, this is one cute baby. And five months old to boot. (Eight days from six months, to be exact, but let's not split hairs because waaaah.) Can you believe that time passes even when you don't update your blog? The more you know...

Liam was surprised, too.

I don't have any exciting reason to explain the first month of my absence, but as the title of this post suggests, the second month has been quite the ride, leaving me sans one gallbladder and four new incisions (thankfully they are small and will practically disappear at some point), along with one stent. Zero partridges in a pear tree.

Let's review!

The night of Thanksgiving, I had excruciating pain in the upper right side of my stomach. Pain that woke me up in the middle of the night and left me crunched over the side of my bed in agony for two hours before it went away and I was able to fall back asleep. Same thing on Black Friday - same time of night, even. Luke and I were puzzled. What the hell was this? Random-pattern food poisoning? Really bad gas? I took a couple of Gas.X on Saturday and, when I didn't see any more pain the rest of the weekend, assumed I'd hit the nail on the head.

Then came Monday.

On Monday morning, I drove to work as usual. By eight o'clock, I was hurting again and called my OB's office to book an appointment, since their practice is a stone's throw from my office and I wasn't sure where else to turn. Sure thing, they said. See you at 3:10. Until then, just sit hunched over your computer typing random medical terms into Google and try not to alarm your coworkers with gutteral cries of pain. 

I managed in that state until one o'clock, at which point I burst into my boss's office sobbing that I couldn't take it any longer and needed to see a doctor.

In near hysterics, I drove straight to my OB, where they took one look at my blotchy red face and ushered me into a private room to wait until somebody could see me. I spent 15 minutes trying every position I could think of to relieve the pain - knees on floor; frame draped over back of chair; limbs curled in fetal position. Nothing. Kill me now.

My doctor wasn't on-call that day, but another physician within the practice as well as a nurse-practitioner examined me and quickly determined that the location of my pain (upper right side) pointed to an issue with my appendix or gallbladder. Since it was so late in the afternoon, they said my best bet was to get to the ER. So I drove myself to the emergency room near my work and prayed  I'd be seen quickly, and given lots of drugs. The pain was like the worst contraction imaginable, in transition, only instead of lasting thirty seconds, it was going on six hours.

I spent two hours in the waiting room. That was a fun time.

Once I could finally be seen, I was quickly given narcotic-grade pain relief through an IV, after which I decided once again that life was worth living. An ultrasound revealed a cluster of gallstones in my gallbladder, which apparently is quite common after pregnancy and also apparently leads to one course of action: remove cray-cray organ. Works for me.

There was a lot of discussion about fitting me into surgery the next day, but since "gallbladder disease" isn't a life-threatening condition, they couldn't guarantee that my wait wouldn't be for naught. My best hope was that they could squeeze me in between emergent cases and those already on the schedule. I declined but booked a consult with one of the staff surgeons the next day, hoping we could wrap this up before week's end.

Oh, no, she said. The quickest we can do this is next week. I am full.

Thursday, December 8, to be exact, said the scheduler.

For those not keeping track, my consult was on November 29. December 8 was nine days away. Meanwhile, I'd suffered another (albeit much shorter) attack right before my appointment that brought me to my knees. And not in a good way. 

I don't think I can wait until then, I said, each time this window was presented to me. These attacks have been coming at me almost every day since Thanksgiving, for hours at a time. 

Just take your pain meds, they crooned, and patted me on the head like a good little doggie. It will be okay.

I was given Vic.od.in in the ER, I replied, and it's not helping at all. I really don't think I can wait nine days and go to work and take care of my kids and function like a normal human being until then.

Good dog, atta girl, they said.

That night I had another attack that started right around the kids' bedtime. Four hours later, at twelve-thirty on Wednesday morning, I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance for the first time in my life, Luke watching me leave from the doorway because we had three small children snoozing away on the second floor and there was no way in Hell we were waking them up at half past midnight just to watch them go cray-cray (trademark Whitney, to which I credit my new favorite catch phrase) from sleep deprivation.

These angels? Never.

Can this story BE any longer? Geez. Go ahead and warm up that Joe.

So.... Once again I was half-intoxicated thanks to intravenous narcotics and left to nod off while the medical staff figured out what to do with me. At least I was being admitted to the hospital and would most likely not leave until I was minus one gallbladder. I was taken for an MRI that afternoon and eventually slated for surgery the following morning (Thursday, December 1). After the MRI, I called surgeon number one and gleefully cancelled my outpatient appointment for December 8. I came back to the ER again, I informed them joyously, triumphant that my original assessment was of course correct. In an ambulance! Possibly without a bra! You suck and I win!

During this time, Luke's parents drove down from northern Indiana to help manage the children and allow him to visit me unencumbered as often as needed - having just left us on Black Friday after celebrating Thanksgiving with us. I hated being away from my kids but tried to make the best it by approaching my hospital stay as a brief vacation from everyday life. Heck, my only to-dos were to sleep, fast, and bother my nurses for drugs. Plus, the hospital had cable, so I could watch all the TBS reuns I wanted.

Surgery took place on Thursday morning as scheduled. I was sedated for the first time ever, which was kind of cool. One minute you're talking to the OR nurse, and the next, BAM! You're in recovery.

When I woke up, I was hella disoriented and still in a lot of pain. I scared the crap out of Luke and my nurse when they took me back to my room and I started crying like a school girl from the post-opp slash gas pain combo I had going on. Why always with the gas pain? (Damn c-sections!)

I've heard many people have their gallbladders removed as an outpatient procedure and report feeling relatively back to normal upon leaving the hospital. I, on the other hand, stayed two nights and didn't go home until Saturday, having not seen my children since the previous Tuesday night, because my pain level was still close to a 10. Everyone heals differently, my surgeon said, but he was sympathetic to my plight and willing to prescribe me various drugs as a result.

I carried on that way until Tuesday, when I called his office after shuffling around the house for three days like an eighty-year-old on my death bed, fighting pain that was so intense I could barely leave the couch. A rare attempt at showering left me dizzy and nauseous.

The doctor would like to see you as soon as possible, they said. Hell yeah, he do.

My surgeon was visibly concerned and immediately ordered blood work and a CAT scan of my abdomen and pelvis to check for anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the scan wouldn't take place for another two days, so I was prescribed Perc.o.cet to better handle my pain until then. I can tell you honestly that Perc.o.cet did nothing for my pain, but it did give me my first high. Joshua Jackson may or may not have appeared to me in the form of a pony.

Liam thinks: Woman, you are redonk!

Luke's parents came back to Indy for the third time in three weeks to help us out, God bless them, and I somehow made it to Thursday's CAT scan. Not ten minutes after it was done, a radiologist was talking to Luke and me about excess fluid in my belly that indicated a biliary leak. An ERCP was scheduled for that afternoon to get a more detailed look at my abdomen and insert a stent to allow the duct to heal, if indeed a leak was the problem.

Four visits to three different hospitals in less than two weeks. Go me! Also, PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP I AM DYING OVER HERE.

The ride to hospital three was horrible. The wait before the ERCP, even worse. At one point I was writhing on the floor weeping, cringing at the slightest touch, and retching uncontrollably. I must have looked like an addict battling the early days of withdrawal. My nurses felt terrible but couldn't give me anything for the pain without approval from my specialist, and he was with another patient. I seriously expected to pass out. Tell the kids I love them, I pleaded to Luke with my eyes.

And then, miracle of miracles, the specialist was available and I was revived from the brink of death. If a fourth child were biologically possible for Luke and me, I would name it Dem.er.ol. Boy or girl.

The specialist in charge of my ERCP was very kind. He explained the ins and outs of the procedure along with the risks to Luke and me while I was rolled onto my side, stickered with monitors, and prepped for sedation. One of the nurses placed a green mouthpiece between my teeth for inserting the scope, and then suddenly I was on my back in recovery. Now I know how Olivia and Walter felt during the start of this season's Fringe.

To wrap up this epic novel of a tale, there was a leak, a stent was placed, and I'm feeling much better now. I returned to work last Tuesday after two weeks out of the office, and I can once again do simple things like change bed sheets and pick up my baby. Aside from a follow-up ERCP in February to remove the stent, the only loose end is some random chest pain for which there isn't an obvious explanation. Luckily, a second CAT scan and additional blood work show that I'm on the right track to recovery. It may just be that I am a delicate flower who cannot tolerate wee straw-like substances residing in my body. I'm like the Princess and the Pea of gastrointestinal complications!

Nathan isn't pleased with my witty comparison to traditional folklore.

Coming at the close of the year after several months of difficult times, personally and professionally, and right on the heels of getting back to church, this cray-cray random medical ordeal has been quite sobering for me, encouraging me to keep perspective even when all seems lost. There is so much in store for my family in 2012, and at the same time, much work to do. We are facing more uncertainty than ever before. But I am strong, and I have faith, and a dedicated partner, and three little people who are counting on us to push ahead. Like the first surgeon said, we will be okay.

Stay tuned for everyone's favorite end-of-year meme that is so prevalent around Christmastime. I promise to post it before spring.

Wonderful, wonderful day

It's been 15 weeks and five days since Liam was born - well beyond the expiration date for posting the average birth story - so it shouldn't surprise me that I've already lost a number of details I was so determined to hang on to regarding that day. And yet, it does. The name of this medication, the reason for that test, Liam's Apgar score - oh, shit, did I even ask about Liam's Apgar score? Whether I knew it then or not, it's definitely gone now. So understand this won't be a suspensful or even entirely accurate play-by-play of his arrival. Besides, scheduled c-sections by their very nature lack the unpredictability factor required for a nail-biting read. I didn't experience false labor, my water didn't break in Target, I wasn't at risk for giving birth in the backseat of my car. That said, no matter how routine it was or how many holes there are in my story, on June 29, Liam was born, and it was one of the best days of my life. It deserves to be celebrated.

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Luke and I were late that morning, getting to the hospital. We woke up early enough to shower and finish packing - before five, I think, and we were due at St. Vincent's by 7:30 - but I couldn't get out the door. I kept finding things to do, all the while thinking, "This is the last time." Not that I wasn't going to rinse a dish or change a pull-up again, but you know what I mean. The last time.

We arrived on campus around 7:45. I spent most of the car ride e-mailing family and friends, including my boss and my CEO, whose own wife had given birth just three days earlier at the same hospital. When I shared that Luke and I were on our way to deliver Baby Brother, he joked, "I hope there'll be someone around to help you out!" After checking in at the front desk, I called Samantha, who was driving to Indy with my parents, to give her the latest update. Luke debated getting coffee but decided against it (silly man). I half-wondered if I'd be out of recovery in time to watch All My Children.

I remember waiting in triage with Luke, sending Tweets into Blogland. I used the bathroom twice, dreading the inevitable introduction of my catheter. The nurse inserted the hep lock for my IV and did a beautiful job. I saw my obstetrician. I tweeted some more.

I spoke to the anesthesiologist on call for my surgery, trying to figure out if he was present for Nathan's birth (he wasn't) and if there was something he could do to curb the crazy itching I would have in reaction to the morphine soon to be pumping through my veins (there was - administer less of it).

I turned off my phone, put on the fugly calf-length socks provided by the hospital, and a little after nine o'clock, walked myself into the O.R.

Luke couldn't join me until my spinal was in place. Had to keep busy somehow!

The first thing that struck me was the temperature of the room - cold, so very cold. There could have been icicles hanging from the ceiling and I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. I was helped onto the operating table and waited while my medical team prepared for surgery. Lisa, my nurse, stayed by my side and outlined the process for administering the spinal. Arch back. Relax muscles. Keep very, VERY still.

Now, as long-time readers know, Liam was not my first c-section; all three of my kids were delivered under the knife. I should know the drill by now, yes? I was certainly on my game when Nathan was born; cracking jokes, following directions, and just plain making everyone's job easier because I was so excited to meet my baby. But this time, despite my best efforts, my body wouldn't comply. I couldn't stop shaking, my shoulders wouldn't unclench, and then, suddenly, I was crying. Bawling, actually. It was almost embarrassing, the jaggedness of my breaths and intensity of my sobs.

Everyone in the room was so kind and did their best to help me calm down. "It's so cold," I kept telling Lisa, and, "I'm sorry."

Eventually, with some deep breathing, I was able to control myself long enough for the anesthesiologist to inject the medicine into my spine, and soon I was laying down on the table, arms extended Jesus-style, and feeling a warm sensation run through me as the anesthesia began to take effect. After performing the standard pin-prick to make sure I was completely numb, the anesthesiologist went on to explain that he gave me a little less Dura*morph (aka morphine) to combat the itching and paired it with another drug (Tora*dol, maybe?). He told me to let him know if I started feeling any pain or discomfort any where, any time.

I was fitted with a nasal oxygen mask as a precaution, and then Luke was at my side. By that time I was so anxious all I could do was cry again. "She's a little emotional," Lisa told him as he wiped my tears away. He was nervous, too.

We didn't talk much. Luke rubbed my head while I focused on my breathing. I was so tired.

Luckily, it wasn't long before those pulling and tugging sensations I was so familiar with from Kara and Nathan were happening, and at 9:48 a.m., the room exploded with the most beautiful sound of my life: my newborn baby's cry.

"He's okay, right? He's okay?" I asked, nearly choking on my tears.

He was okay. All nine pounds, eight ounces, and 22 inches of him. The medical staff was impressed.

Luke went over to the baby while they cleaned him up and the doctor continued on with her business. The anesthesiologist was checking on me constantly, which I was glad about, because this c-section was so different from my other two. More discomfort than I was used to, overall, in addition to taking longer. There was also a sharp pain in my right shoulder that the doctor said was normal. It was hard to take deep breaths sometimes.

My boy was brought to me once for a quick snuggle and kiss while my OB/GYN closed me up. "What's his name?" Lisa asked. I turned my head towards Luke. We'd been waffling over two choices for the last few weeks. The only thing we'd decided on were Baby Brother's initials - LBD, just like his daddy. This was the first time we didn't have a name immediately at the ready. "We're not sure yet," he said.

Before I left the O.R., my legs were wrapped in sequential compression devices (SCDs) to help avoid clotting after surgery, since it would be about a day before I attempted walking again. Once they were finished, the baby was nestled into the crook of my arm, and we were wheeled off to recovery.

Surprise! The happiest moments are not always the most photogenic.

Once in recovery, it was just Luke, me, the baby, and my nurse - my family was still en route to Indy, and Molly, the only other person I would have wanted in the room - was at home watching my other two kids (along with hers. God bless you, friend). It felt so good to have all that weight removed from my uterus, and so wonderful to hold him, that I didn't have a care in the world. My nurse was concerned, though, because my temperature had dropped, so I was covered with an air blanket for more than an hour to bring it back up.

It also took about that long to settle on a name. Our contenders were Linus Brendan and Liam Benjamin. We thought about Linus Benjamin, but people. We are only one year out from LOST. The world is not yet ready.

We loved the uniqueness of Linus but worried my Chicago Southsider parents would label it yuppy or too "out there." Plus, I have a weird thing about having at least one "a" in my kids' first names. We loved the simplicity of Liam, and it had actually been on our short list for Nathan, but.... But....

"Honestly, I could go either way," Luke said, each time I asked his opinion. "He can be whatever you want."

Eventually, we ran out of butts.

"He looks like a Liam," I finally decided. "Liam feels good."

Welcome to the world, baby Liam.

It was around one o'clock that Luke, Liam, and I were brought to our room (and yes, I did catch a little AMC). Samantha, my parents, Molly, and all the kids showed up around three-thirty.

Kara and Nathan showed a lot of interest in Liam when they first arrived, but after the first ten minutes or so they were distracted by all the other people in the room. They would make their way over to me a lot, though, when Liam wasn't with me. I don't think the visit lasted longer than an hour, which was fine by me because I was still so tired, and crying on and off, too.

There is a special place in Heaven for this woman, who stayed with my children and hers starting Tuesday night and lasting until Friday afternoon.

Samantha's made it to the hospital on the day of every one of my children's births, despite her hectic life and the long drive. She and Molly, who is equally busy, are the only people who can say that. Amazing.

This was the first time my parents were there. When I found out we were pregnant again, it was one of the first requests I made of them, to come see us in Indy and meet the baby and not wait until we made the trip to Chicago. I'm so happy they did. Luke's parents would have been there as well, like they were for Kara and Nathan, except they were in Wales on a trip that had been planned long before we learned about Liam. Thank goodness for Facebook.

Then, soon, it was just us again.

Our pospartum time in the hospital was the best of all three experiences. I was using the bathroom and walking the day after surgery, Liam nursed well, and I was getting more sleep than I expected. We had lots of visitors, but usually they didn't stay that long, which fed my conflicting needs for company and solitude nicely. With the introduction of the SCDs, I felt like I had more "stuff" constraining me this time around, but my IV hep lock was removed more quickly this time than with Kara or Nathan, and my pain med cocktail was working well, though I did have a lot of gastrointestinal issues. Weeks later I was still having pain in my abdomen, a lingering byproduct of all that gas.

As much as I enjoyed the "free" hospital food and chance to rest up, though, I missed my babies and was eager to get on with the regular course of life. I made sure my OB, nurses, and pediatrician knew of my goal to be discharged after two days instead of three and worked hard to meet all of the standard milestones. Luckily, Liam was healthy and I was progressing well, though my ped was (appropriately) concerned that I might be overdoing it. He knew I was experiencing more pain with this c-section. But I wanted to be home. So on Friday, July 1, we dressed Liam in his going-home onesie, and home we went.

In the three and a half months that Liam's been with us, to say that Luke and I have been overwhelmed at times is an understatement. There just aren't enough hands to get everything done that needs to be done. My bathrooms have never gone this long between cleans; getting a decent night's sleep has never felt more primal. And with a longer work commute and increased responsibilities (and costs!) of raising toddlers who are fast growing into full-fledged children, sometimes all I can do at the end of a day is stick my hand in the cookie jar and collapse in front of the TV. Not exactly how I want to spend my time long-term.

But still.

We couldn't be happier.

Happiness with a spot of Tea (review, giveaway) (we have a winner!)

To see the winner, scroll to the bottom.

This is an interesting time to choose to write. This past Thursday was originally supposed to be my first day back from maternity leave, but the reality is I've been working in a part-time capacity for the last two weeks, taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off so we could ease back into the timesuck that is the Real World. And of course, there have been challenges. Learning to be away from my kids again, for one. Waking up with Liam and then getting up for the day at 5:30, for another - though we now have three consecutive nights of sleeping through the night under our belts, so maybe that problem is behind us (for now). Meanwhile, Luke's been managing drop-off and pick-up for Kara's and Nathan's school shenanigans two days out of the week, three starting next, and overseeing dinner while I'm navigating an hour-long drive home from my employer's new headquarters. Plus, we are once again maintaining a delicate balance on the budget tightrope, waiting patiently to receive my first full paycheck and build up our savings once again.

That last bit is partly why I agreed to take on my first sponsored post for a clothing boutique called Tea Collection. Fall wardrobes don't pay for themselves, you know.

Here you see Kara donning a lovely floral top/ribbed tee combo. She is so wearing this for preschool pictures next month.

Nathan, meanwhile, scored a long-sleeved hoodie, perfect for the rapidly changing weather.

Pros for Tea: Beautiful colors, incredibly soft fabric, items true to size. The company has a fun story - designing collections inspired by the different cultures they encounter while traveling around the world (their fall line is "Modern Mexico"). Plus, they're involved with a charity called The Global Fund for Children; according to the "Our Values" section of their site, they donate all proceeds from their Little Citizens line to this fund. That's one of the reasons I was drawn to Nathan's hoodie.

Cons: Price. In our current situation, Luke and I couldn't justify buying more than one or two Tea pieces for the kids once or twice a year. Tea granted me a $100 gift certificate in exchange for a review, and it was just enough for the three shirts/tops pictured here. I do, however, love the idea of occasionally splurging on Tea presents for nieces, nephews, and the other special children in our lives. Especially things from Little Citizens, with its philanthropic ties.

Another reason I agreed to the review is that the good people at Tea are allowing me to raffle off a $100 gift certificate to one of my blog readers! And because they also have a women's line, all the ladies can join in the fun.

Here's how this will go down:

Each day, I inch ever closer to finishing The Happiness Project, and one of the concepts from the book that's most resonated with me is Gretchen Rubin's attempt to follow her twelve Personal Commandments (find them here), to the point that I've started a list of my own affirmations to maintain perspective and hold onto my Zen in challenging situations. Some I've stolen from people I admire (Gretchen included), some are universal cliches that are especially meaningful to me, and others are just plain old common sense. I'm not always good at minding them, but hey, it's a place to start.

Bree's Affirmations (so far)

Just for today.
Put down the (smart)phone.
Quality, not quantity.
Be the bigger person.
Make the time.
Cleaning doesn't count.
Let it go.
Don't make it my problem.
It's not about me.
View everyone as a "10."
Go to sleep.
Act the way I want to feel.
Focus.
Say yes.
Consider the spirit.
Know when to follow and when to lead.
Speak less, listen more.
Other people's choices are not a judgement on me.

I realize some of these are vague upon first read, so if you want explanations on any of them, just let me know.

Why you care: To enter the giveaway, share one of your own affirmations or feel-good type sayings in the comments by Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST. That night, I'll jot down all your names and have Luke draw one from a hat, the same way I distributed my Kevin Smith goodies a few years ago. I'll update this entry with the winner and let you know via Twitter and Facebook once it's been posted.

So! There you have it. My first sponsored giveaway. I didn't even have to use my A-K!

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Updated 9/27/11: Wow, you guys. I had no idea that Tea was so well-known in the blogosphere. Or that my readers had such a vast amount of wisdom. I loved reading all your affirmations; I'm even going to add a a few of them to my own running list. But you don't care about that, do you? Alright, alright, here we go.

In total, there were 38 entries submitted for the Tea giveaway. Paper slips were made, names were written, and one husband was used to draw a winner. And that winner is:

Congratulations, Maddie! I'll e-mail you with more details. And THANK YOU to everyone who participated. I was really nervous about doing this, but you made it so much fun.

Disclosure: In case it wasn't supremely obvious, I received a $100 gift certificate from Tea Collection to buy the clothing mentioned in this entry and to share that glorious tidbit with you. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

I'm so glad we had this time together

Indianapolis started school almost a month ago, but for the Frema-Useless Clutter household, we are just now closing our chapter on the season that is summer.

Nathan started his parents' day out program yesterday. He was so excited about it that he ran into the classroom ("Terrific Twos!") before Luke and I could hug him good-bye. As it should be, even if it did stab my heart a little.

Kara would have started along with him in the Thriving Threes and Fours group as was planned earlier in the spring except that Luke and I decided to mix things up at the last minute in light of my recent pay increase and upgraded her registration to preschool. Compared to others, her classroom time seems relatively light at just two afternoons a week, but for us it is the perfect amount of exposure to new concepts and reinforcement of what she's already mastered at home. She's even completed her first homework assignment, doled out at last Thursday's open house, if you call cutting up magazines for an "All About Me" poster homework, which I totally do, because hello, the girl's only three. Her first session was today.

Meanwhile, the newest addition to our family turned 10 weeks old this morning. He continues to delight everyone in the house with his smiles, coos, and poops. He isn't sleeping through the night yet, but he does pull some seriously long stretches from mid-evening to early morning. Now if only his stupid parents would use this time to sleep instead of watching Friends reruns and loading the dishwasher.

As for me? Well, today was my last day of maternity leave.

What to say about these last ten weeks? It's been amazing, relishing in newbornhood one more time, and spending days upon days clocking hours of snuggle time in our glider, building robots out of Legos, playing catch up with Pixar, and overall just enjoying my babies. They are all such funny little people, so smart and charming, and Kara and Nathan were so patient with me during my pregnancy with Liam. They deserved this time to bond with me, too, to get caught in the rain with me at the zoo, to have me drive them to and from tumbling class, to share a blueberry muffin with me at Starbucks after a random trip to Target. I was introduced to Mater and Ladybug Girl and Yo Gabba Gabba!, and they were reminded that their mother is capable of doing more than visiting the doctor and sleeping on the couch. It's hard for them sometimes, watching me with Liam when they'd rather have me for themselves, but these growing pains will become easier to handle as he gets older, and they pale in comparison to how much fun we have when we're all together.

I think everything is ready for tomorrow: outfit ironed, lunch packed, professional shots of Liam ready to be added to my desk. I've got a fresh hair cut, new purse, and filed nails. I'll certainly look ready to be back at work, even if the pit in my stomach indicates otherwise. 

Having pushed through this hurdle twice now, I know in the end it'll be okay. I work with wonderful people who will help me transition back to office life, and the kids couldn't be in better hands with Luke. Good things are ahead of us. I just wish time could've stopped a little bit longer.

A year ago, and a lifetime

Liam turned seven weeks old a few days ago, and when I compare where we are now to where we were at this point with Kara and Nathan, I almost can't believe it.

For one thing, of my three maternity leaves, this one has definitely been the most active. I've brought the baby to work and met coworkers for coffee and lunch twice; scheduled several playdates with friends; went with the entire family to our local Children's Museum (and finally secured our membership); took the toddlers to a splash park and numerous trips to Target; and saw the doctor (OB/GYN, dentist, and pediatrician) more times than I care to count. We drove to Chicago and northwest Indiana last weekend to attend my nephew's third birthday party and spent two nights away from home, Liam just six weeks old - the earliest we've ever traveled with a newborn.

Walking with Grandpa

Cuddling with Auntie Samantha

Mugging with Uncle Geo

Another first: exercise. I didn't work out at all after Kara, and Nathan was five or six months old when I welcomed The 30-Day Shred into my life, but this time around, I started exercising in the same week I was cleared to do so. Two Jillian Michaels DVDs and a couple of easy runs totaling about a mile each. There were times during each of the videos where I found myself flopping around like a fish, and I think a snail passed me on the trail yesterday, but still. For my physical health and mental sanity, I am making fitness a priority, and DAMN, does it feel good.

It helps that Liam is such an easy-going baby, save for some recent episodes of evening-time grumpiness. He is cooing and smiling and most often content so long as he is snuggled in your arms, which I am happy to oblige, even though my floors need mopping and phone calls need returning and hey, the checkbook isn't going to balance itself. I start back at the office the Wednesday after Labor Day (on a somewhat reduced schedule, thank goodness), and that familiar Oh my God, I'm going back to work dread has already started creeping in, reminding me how important it is to savor this time while I still can.

Last August, I felt trapped in my own life. I loved my husband and children beyond measure, but our future was blurred, seemingly without direction, and I had no idea how to best move us forward. I missed my extended family something fierce and cursed the miles between us. My writing goals were drastically changing shape but equally undefined. I struggled to make peace with not having any more babies, and Luke and I were in the worst financial shape of our marriage, having first fallen into the trap of paying everything by credit card, then depending on quarterly bonuses to catch up on bills, and fnally spending more each month than we brought in.

I became insanely jealous of those who seemed to have it all figured out, and I couldn't stop comparing our situation to others with similar demographics. I found myself asking, "Is this all there is for us? Is this the best that life can be?"

Thankfully, the answer was a resounding NO. 

I still don't have all the answers, and our path isn't completely clear, but for the first time in years, I can finally see its shape.

What a difference a year makes.

Tuck it in, tuck it in *(belly, not baby)

Six weeks and six days ago, I had a baby. Here he is.

The Beach Boys and hottie John Stamos aren't the only ones who want to go to Kokomo.

At six weeks and six days, Liam:

• Has been diagnosed with and declared healed from umbilical granuloma
• Indulges in self-torture by way of pulling his own hair
• Screams after said hair pulling but requires Momma to free him from his iron grip
• Smiles when you plant puckery kisses on his mouth
• Is drawn to light, especially when it's shining through half-closed blinds
• Cannot maintain a dry diaper for longer than eight seconds
• Is settling into a feeding pattern of four ounces every three hours and is already showing signs that he's ready to ditch his middle-of-the-night feeding
• Spent a half-hour awake and smiling in his cradle swing today. THIS IS HUGE.
• Has perfected several facial expressions, including Zoolander's Blue Steel
• Is already losing his hair. Maybe, son, it's because YOU'RE PULLING IT OUT BY THE ROOTS
• Will probably grow up answering to Luke's and my primary nickname of choice: Nathan

Harbored behind those bright blue eyes and chipmunk cheeks is an ocean of wisdom.

Meanwhile, this is me.

At six weeks and six days postpartum, I:

• Drink a lot of coffee, as evidenced by ninety percent of my Facebook posts
• Call milk and cookies my evening poison
• Sit almost five pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight, despite my brand loyalty to all things Oreo
• Lay claim to one (1) infection-free c-section scar
• Have hosted a lengthy visit from the nefarious Aunt Flo
• Heard the phrases "tummy tuck" and "plastic surgeon" uttered by my OB/GYN during last Thursday's postpartum follow-up
• Feel super awesome about this!

Let me explain.

Early on in my second trimester, I was diagnosed with having diastasis recti - the separation of your abdominal muscles into left and right halves. It felt like a pretty big deal at the time, as I cried out in pain whenever someone so much as brushed against my stomach, but by my third trimester, the discomfort was gone and I assumed I was out of the woods. Prior to my c-section, though, my OB/GYN promised to be mindful of my abdominal area and do what she could to tighten things up during surgery, if such tightening were necessary.

The first few weeks after Liam was born, I was in such hell from my c-section and then so focused on recovering that I didn't think much about the diastasis recti, until a fellow Hoosier blogger posted about her own dance with the condition. I wasn't feeling any of the pain Casey talked about, but my stomach protruded in a similar fashion, albeit saddled with eight extra tons of Frema flab. Now, I've never rocked a six-pack, or even a one-pack for that matter, but maybe at least some of the flab could be attributed to this? I decided to ask my doctor about it at my six-week check-up.

The exam itself went great. Incision healed, vitals normal, birth control taken care of (thanks again, honey), physical activity approved.... All good news. Then I brought up the diastasis recti and waited to hear the recommended course of treatment. Ab splint? Physical therapy? Whatever it is, I said, I would do it. Bring it on.

My OB/GYN was silent as she rested her hand slightly below my breasts.

(Get your mind out of the gutter, you.)

"There's still a slight separation I can feel right here," she explained, her hand still in place, "but most of what we're dealing with is stretched out skin."

Hmm. Not exactly the verdict I was hoping for. "Since I'm cleared for exercise, would that do anything for me?" 

She tilted her head as she considered the question. "It could help some, but typically excess skin, once it's there, doesn't go away without surgery."

Enter abdominoplasty/tummy tuck conversation here.

Before you start railing on my doctor, please note that she did not in any way, shape, or form suggest that I need to have this done. If you had been a fly on the wall for my entire check-up, it would have been obvious to you that the thought of carrying around this amount of skin for the rest of my life made me more than a little uncomfortable. She also went on to say that during my c-section, she added some extra stitches to tighten things up around my abdomen and pointed out that internally I am not completely healed. "It's too soon to make any decisions right now. See what you can do with diet and exercise, and after some time, if it still bothers you, I can give you a referral for a plastic surgeon, and you can schedule a consult to get more information."

So, there you have it. One more bullet point to add to my list of "Things I Used to Scoff At Before I Became a Mother."

Seriously, though, I'm not sure what to think. On one hand, even before having kids, I've always had a bit of a belly overhang that kept me from effortlessly shopping for clothes, being naked in front of other people, and having sex without feeling at least a little self-conscious. After Kara, that bit of overhang turned into a tire gut, and after Nathan, graduated to the dreaded "mother's apron" (a term I just today learned from Shape of a Mother, thank you very much), and now? Well, let's just say even the worst "Before" pictures on Wikipedia's abdominoplasty page don't do my midsection justice. Yet, all this time, I've never before entertained the idea of having it surgically removed. Girl power, love yourself and all that jazz. And now as a parent, in particular a mom to a daughter, I worry about the kind of message I would be sending about self-love and acceptance by submitting myself to unnecessary plastic surgery. How can I encourage Kara to embrace who she is, AS she is, if I'm having my own imperfections hacked off with a scalpel?

On the other hand, it's not as if I'm in danger of becoming the next Heidi Montag. Overall I quite like my body and thank God for all it's been able to do, including but not limited to carrying three healthy babies and running a half-marathon. I have no problems walking out of the house sans make-up, even to work, and I can take or leave coloring my hair. Getting a tummy tuck would be a specific answer to a specific problem that's frustrated me for years. And unless I changed my zero-tolerance policy on bikinis and tube tops, the only person besides me who would even notice the end result is Luke. Which is fine by me, since I would only be doing it for me.

As for Kara and the boys? Well, I may be relatively new to parenting, but even I know enough to appreciate that this one choice wouldn't negate years of consistent teaching and role modeling when it comes to loving yourself as you are. Plus, while I believe in the importance of self-acceptance, I also support making your own happiness and not closing a door out of fear for what others might think. 

On the other OTHER hand, cosmetic surgery is not something to be taken lightly, and after three c-sections, going under the knife a fourth time to basically improve my self-esteem hardly sounds appealing. Also, I'm nowhere near convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks when I've barely scratched the surface when it comes to improving my commitment to physical fitness. I may never eliminate my gut entirely that way, but who knows? I might come close, all on my own, and that may be enough.

Also, dudes. Tummy tucks? Not cheap.  Even if I was resigned to having it done, we couldn't afford it until Luke was back at work, which could be another five years away, and even then I'd have a hard time justifying the cost when the money could be deposited into one of our retirement accounts. 

Maybe one day Liam would take pity on me and HE'D pay for the surgery. We could call it the Mother's Day gift that keeps on giving. You think?

Luckily, this is not a decision I have to make (or can afford to make!) tomorrow. What I can do is run over to Wal-Mart, pick up a new Jillian Michaels video, and draw inspiration from one Marty McFly: "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

Now for what YOU can do: Ripped in 30 or 6-Week Six-Pack?

* ETA because I didn't even think about the title indicating that this might be a sleep entry.

One day you might see this on our minivan

Since Liam was born, several of you have jokingly pointed out my need for an updated blog banner. Well, I submitted a request to Luke, Artist Slash Illustrator Extraordinaire, and despite being somewhat preoccupied with coparenting a newborn and two toddlers, he still took the time to hook me up with something awesome, yo.

And also, finally, one husband. Much obliged, dear.

Are you following my fan page on Facebook? If not, here's a friendly reminder that I update that page each time I post a new blog entry, so that you don't have to refresh my URL twenty times a day, waiting with baited breath for the latest 411 on all things Frema. You're welcome! Plus, one time I asked for advice on which kind of nursing cover to buy and received some great feedback, so who knows? I may call upon your collective wisdom once again. Surely you don't want to miss out on all the sharing.

You can also subscribe via e-mail, if you are still barbaric enough to maintain such a thing.

Actual content-based entry coming soon. 

This is what four weeks postpartum looks like

Four weeks ago yesterday, at 9:48 a.m., the last child I will ever carry (that is, unless Luke is fatally injured, I meet Joshua Jackson, and he requires biological offspring in lieu of a marriage prenup) was strategically evicted from my uterus. Only it doesn't feel like four weeks ago, more like an eternity, because it's already that difficult to imagine what life was like without Liam.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the biggest hurdle to overcome thus far has been my own physical recovery. There's some persistent fluid build-up causing tenderness in my abdominal area, tenderness that until a few days ago inspired mild nausea whenever anyone came into contact with my stomach, and my tire gut contributed to bacterial and fungal infections around my incision that interfered with the normal healing process. Apparently, all that extra skin (sexy!) worked against me when it came to keeping the scar dry, turning the whole area into a red, blotchy mess. I've been to my ob/gyn's office twice since coming home from the hospital, with another follow-up slated for today. 

Luckily, an elaborate ritual involving cotton balls, hydrogen peroxide, MY FRIGGING BLOW DRYER, anti-fungal powder, and hospital-grade gauze applied twice a day for the last week has resulted in me finally feeling like myself again, my personal best, even, since before the onset of my first trimester morning sickness. I'm feeling so good, in fact, that I also have two full days of meds-free living under my belt, with not so much as an over-the-counter pill in my system. Hooray for me, and also, IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME.

It's only because I'm doing so well I can admit that in those first few weeks, all that unresolved pain paired with the traditional complications from this type of surgery seriously impacted my ability to function. What I said about mornings being a cherished part of my routine in my last post was true, but it's also true that they were the hardest part of my day. I posted a lot of jokes on Facebook about my A.M. coffee intake, but truly, I was no good to anyone until half-way to lunch, even though Luke and I shared night duty for Liam, and even though Luke continued to get up with Kara and Nathan just as he does when I'm working so that I could go back to bed for another couple of hours while Liam dozed after his first morning bottle.

For so long I was embarrassed about this, would apologize to my husband for having to pick up my slack, and felt like less of a mother because I couldn't push through my own issues to be fully present for ALL the members of my family. It wasn't like I was completely detached from daily living, but oftentimes even simple tasks such as giving a bath or unloading the dishwasher put too much strain on my body, so that I couldn't do more than a couple of things like that in a 24-hour time span. Now that my infections are just about healed and my overall pain has been downgraded to annoying at best, all I can do is recognize that I'm not Wonder Woman, acknowledge that I needed help - a lot of help - to get back on my feet, and thank my lucky stars Luke was around to give it to me. His being the at-home parent in our relationship allowed Kara and Nathan to get the care and attention they needed and enabled me to focus on bonding with Liam and getting better. I'm not proud of how often I fell short, but I can forgive myself for it and move on.

And yet, even in those early weeks when I would cry over not being the wife and mother I wanted to be, I was still in much better shape mentally then I was after having Kara, as I learned how to integrate the role of mother into my life, and after Nathan, born not fourteen months after his sister, who was still just a baby herself. This time around, there was no veil of self-doubt, no wavering in making decisions that were best for my family. I was still able to embrace each day for the gift it was, laugh through the building of Lego towers with my toddlers, and appreciate every hour of snuggle time with my new baby.

I keep comparing this maternity leave to Kara's and Nathan's, and each time, I realize how far I've come since then. This is the first time I've been able to bring home a child and hold onto the best, most confident parts of myself. I am so grateful for that. This focus and sense of peace I've discovered since Liam was born, it's such a blessing.

Speaking of Liam, he continues to knock our socks off. He's finally "woken up," so to speak, and joined the world of the living in that he isn't sleeping twenty hours a day anymore; he has fussy periods in the morning and evening hours, but they are not unbearable or even a surprise, given his age. At last Friday's weight check, he clocked in at a whopping 10 pounds and 3 ounces. Two days later, he rolled over for the first time. He enchants us all with gassy smiles, wide eyes, and pursed lips. Poor thing still has traces of Kara's and Nathan's cold, and it appears that we are dealing with a clogged tear duct in his right eye, but again, nothing unbearable. I can't believe how lucky we are to have him, or that I owe his existence to a bottle of red from Walmart. Miracles, though, aren't picky.

As for me, I am good, so very, very good, if not a little stir-crazy from mostly hanging out indoors, partly due to the above-mentioned ailments and partly from the Midwest's record-breaking humidity. I've generated a few unexpected bills since my leave began (damn crown, breaking off two days after coming home from the hospital!), and since we had to deplete a lot of our savings before Liam's birth for a variety of reasons, I have decided to return to work two weeks early so we can avoid financial strain. This puts me back in the office the week of Labor Day instead of late September. 

In the past, the very thought of this scenario would have reduced me to a weepy puddle of WAAAH, but I'm okay with this decision, too. I'm not wishing my time away with my family by any means, but there is a piece of me that's eager to embrace our new normal, and that new normal includes me going back to work. Plus, there is so much for us to do now that Liam is here; prepare to put our house on the market, for one. Pay off our credit card debt (and new array of medical bills) once and for all. Start tending to my professional network again. In other words, make our dreams come true. 

I am so ready.

Filled to the brim

These days, mornings are a cherished part of my routine. For one thing, there is coffee, something I didn't miss much during my pregnancy but has quickly become an invaluable commodity since Liam's birth. Second, I'm fresh from at least a few consecutive hours of sleep. And finally, there are all the positive feelings associated with the promise of a new day.

I'm very aware that I could jinx our good fortune by speaking this out loud, but Liam continues to be the most easy-going newborn Luke and I have parented. Despite all the pictures we have of his bright baby blues, the boy sleeps ALL. THE. TIME., usually only waking to eat or poop or make funny faces at his brother and sister. He is especially fond of sleeping on my chest, so that's how I spend a lot of my day. It is exactly what I wanted for this maternity leave, this unfettered snuggle time with him.

Everything else is okay. C-section recovery is still slow; I run out of happy pills today, and I have to figure out if I want to call my OB for more or figure out a lesser way to handle my pain. I never came to this point with Kara or Nathan - possibly needing more drugs than originally prescribed - so I can only assume opening up a twice-healed abdominal scar one last time would of course produce some unanticipated physical effects.

It doesn't help that I've been on my feet more this time around, but with two toddlers craving activity and attention from a mother who is now home 24/7, sometimes there isn't a choice. I'm so excited for us to start having our adventures, and it already feels like time is flying by so fast, but Luke keeps reminding me there are many good days ahead of us and that I'm not doing myself any favors by taking shortcuts around my recovery. Sound advice, but hard to follow nonetheless.

Here is my last belly shot with Liam from June 28, at the start of week 39, twenty-four hours before Baby Day. Already, it feels like this shot was taken forever ago, and that Liam's been with us for so much longer than one day shy of two weeks. Luke and I were talking last night about how we each feel differently, now being parents to three children, but it's hard to articulate why. For me, there is a feeling of completeness I've never known before, a confidence that I am on the right path, and a sense of peace in knowing that all the right puzzle pieces are finally in place. Liam's arrival has also increased my capacity to love all the members of my sweet little family, as well as my desire to do right by them, and myself.

I don't know what the future holds for us, but I'm eager to take it all on. Nothing feels impossible.

Outnumbered, overjoyed, undermedicated

 

A week ago yesterday, I gave birth to Liam. And in this past week, I have dealt with two sick toddlers, 48 hours worth of c-section recovery without the aid of narcotics, and nursing difficulties that once again rocked me to my core.

On the surface, it all sounds pretty craptastic. Yet, that isn't the case at all (mostly - Kara and Nathan's colds weren't fun for anyone).

I've given myself 20 minutes to post, so most of the bloggy goodness will be shared over time, but here is what I feel compelled to share at this particular moment about having three children - or, more directly, three c-sections.

RATION THY NARCOTICS.

In the hospital, I was taking two capsules of my OB/GYN's drug of choice every four hours; as a result, I was feeling well enough to shower, meander through my corridor, receive visitors with a smile (if not  without bloated ankles and droopy eyes), and leave within two days of surgery, which become a primary goal the minute Liam was out and we were both deemed healthy. Because I was afraid of losing my post-partum high, I continued this regimen once I returned home, which meant by Monday morning, I was out of meds. No worries, I thought. I have one refill. I'll just refill it! So imagine my surprise when, after Luke called in the prescription, the pharmacy's auto robot denied my request because it was too soon to have depleted my supply.

(Are you imagining that scene from Wayne's World where Mike Myers walks into the guitar store and sees the "No Stairway" sign over his favorite piece? If you weren't, you totally are now, aren't you?)

The bottle said I could take one to two pills every four to six hours, so I didn't see anything wrong with following the bare minimum of directions. Apparently, though, the on-call OB/GYN who released me did. Which meant that entire Monday all I could depend on for relief was Al*eve and Ty*lenol.

Tuesday came, but I was afraid to call in again because what if the pharmacy's auto robot was keeping track of this and thought my profile matched that of a bonafide street addict?

Monday and Tuesday were not good days.

Luckily, then came Wednesday, and I was brave enough to call again, and the gods were smiling upon me, because I received another dose of happy pills. Of which I am now taking one, every six hours, and am no worse for the wear.

If they don't want you to take two pills every four hours, they really should just make that clear on the damn bottle.

I'm very sorry for wasting so much of your time with my pill-popping story, but this is an issue that quickly became very important to me, so I would like to spare all of you similar pain if I can. You are welcome.

Okay, okay, more pictures.

 

Kara is in love with Liam and constantly refers to him as "my baby." She can't help herself from kissing his hands, feet, cheeks, head, etc. Luckily, her fever/cold is just about gone, so  I should be able to allow her to make contact with his sweet little face again.

 

Nathan, poor thing, took the brunt of the summer cold this time around, but is thankfully now on the mend. He loves his baby brother just as much as Kara does, and they are equally concerned for his general welfare. Whenever he wakes up or cries or does anything even remotely resembling an awake human being, they immediately start shouting, "Mommy! Daddy! The baby NEEDS you!" until Luke or I stop what we are doing and tend to whatever the issue is requiring attention.

They've said some pretty funny things about Liam, too. I wish I could remember them all, but here's a sample.

Kara: (after staring at him intensely) Is Liam creepy?

Nathan: (after waking up and finding the two of us on the couch) Oh, Mommy! The baby is still here!

I have passed my 20 minutes, but there is one more thing I wanted to share before signing off. Mainly because I don't plan on talking about it in-depth and prefer that it not turn into an "Is she or isn't she?" lingering kind of issue.

I am no longer nursing.

I did it while I was in the hospital, and I'm glad I did, and continued a bit when I got home, but that first night was extremely difficult, and I quickly realized what I personally would need to do to make it work for my entire family. In the end, I decided it was not my path. So Liam is now formula fed, and I am at peace with it. So, if anybody would like a half-used box of Mother's Milk tea and a completely new bottle of fenugreek for their upcoming breastfeeding needs, just let me know.

Alright, fine, one more picture.

 

I am seriously over my time limit here, but how can I let you go without telling you how amazing this baby is? Because he is. Everything about Liam is wonderful, from his Danny DeVito hairline to his piano-player fingers, from his bright blue eyes to his ruby-red lips. Right now we are in the honeymoon phase that is the first week, during which they sleep almost ninety percent of the time and therefore trick you into thinking they are absolute angels and that their agreeableness is the result of your mad parenting skillz, and then somewhere between weeks two and three they wake up for longer than 90 minutes at a time and trick you into thinking you don't know anything at all. So I very well could be pulling my hair out seven days from now over the latest development of his personality. But right now I am grateful that he eats, pees, and poops well and is content to sleep almost anywhere and takes all the poking and proding from his older siblings in stride. Also, that he is a happy, snuggly baby, a miracle baby that I am so, so grateful for.

The five of us, we are going to be unstoppable.

Party of Five

 

Liam Benjamin

born at 9:48 a.m.

9 pounds 8 ounces

22 inches

Welcome to the world, sweet boy!

39 weeks = I'm having a baby tomorrow = so of course I am experiencing social media issues

As I begin to write this, it's 11 p.m. Luke and I need to leave the house by 6:45 tomorrow morning to make our 7:30 hospital check-in. Which means I will need to be awake long before 6:45. And yet, I can't go to sleep without blogging. You people (and my archives) mean that much to me.

Everything that needs to be done is now done, along with an even longer list of things that DIDN'T need doing but were because hello, crazy nesting pregnant lady here. Two Saturdays ago, I drove to Walmart in a frenzy because I suddenly needed a new wash basin, dish drain, utensil drawer, and a toothbrush holder. Yesterday, I cleaned underneath my kitchen sink and almost went into labor vacuuming every nook and cranny of our upstairs. We never did touch up the paint, though, and the garage still needs sweeping out, so crossing my fingers that the medical staff will overlook these obviously significant details and deem us fit to leave the premises with a newborn.

At least his room is done. My intent was to post pictures, but Typepad is crapping out on me tonight when it comes to uploading pictures and formatting paragraphs, and at 11:40 p.m. I just have to say SCREW THIS, I'M TIRED and move on. I'll try again in the morning, if there's time.)

Today was a wonderful last hurrah of sorts before we turn our lives upside down with our last go at babyhood. Three hours at the zoo in the sweltering heat, and multiple stares as people watched me canvass the grounds, Nathan on my hip for almost half that time because he (and Kara, too) didn't want to leave my side. They were extra cuddly, and especially generous with hugs and kisses and "I love yous." Coloring at home afterwards, Kara couldn't keep herself from smooching my hair, face, arm, hand, any body part of mine within her reach was fair game. And tonight, after a few hours of hardcore Lost A Sock family bonding time, I crawled into bed next to her and held her tight until she fell asleep, Nathan across the room, who went out like a light in minutes, the result of an active, exciting day.

Aside from the already-mentioned photo issue, which I will try to remedy tomorrow, let's tie up some loose ends that may or may not be keeping you up at night:

Baby Updates
That is still up for grabs. When it comes to posting pictures and tidbits on Twitter, I am all set. Facebook is a different story, seeing as I can't figure out how to post from my fan page through my phone. As for the blog, Molly is at the ready to post for me, but I may try to do it myself from the hospital. If I go that route, I will be doing so from my work laptop and will therefore be able to update Facebook accordingly. So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you want quick and dirty posting in real time, Twitter's where it's at. If you are content waiting for news until sometime in the evening, than Facebook or just popping in here will satisfy your needs just fine.

Hospital Bag
Ninety-nine percent packed. I did pack extra lip balm, thanks to your suggestions. I'm even bringing my Boppy support pillow, which I mistakenly assumed had been donated to Goodwill shortly after Nathan's birth but was actually being held hostage by my sister, who casually mentioned that it was in her possession. I don't think I needed it during my second hospital stay, but seriously, I lamented over not having that pillow so many times throughout this pregnancy that I am bringing it soley to make up for lost time.

Big Brother/Big Sister Gifts
Luke and I didn't do this when Nathan was born because Kara was so little and didn't really understand what was going on, but this time around, we thought it might be nice to get something for the kids that would help occupy them in those early days once the baby is in our possession. However, instead of presenting them at the hospital, we've decided to wait until I get home since they will be living it up in the interim with Auntie Molly and her crew.

There is so much more I could say about related to this having-your-last-baby business, but it is now 12:16 a.m., and Typepad really is acting like a douche, and I can't tell you how many times I've tried to fix the paragraph breaks in the source code and have it all undone the minute I hit "Save," so I am turning in for what is likely to be my last five-hour block of uninterrupted sleep for the rest of the summer. See you on the flip side! (Unless I really can fix all of these errors in the morning. We'll consider it my last nesting urge!)

* Speaking of Facebook: I have become increasingly more protective when it comes to friending people on my personal page, for many reasons, so please don't be offended if you no longer have access. I promise you, I'm very boring and only post sporadically, so you are not missing anything. If it weren't for the face that my fan page is tied to my personal account, I would seriously consider deleting that account altogether.

The answer is yes, yes we are. Full-term, baby! And you can stick a fork in me, because physically, I am so Done.

What to say about 37 weeks? I'm still averaging a 15-pound weight gain, which is mind-boggling to me, seeing as my nightly routine now consists of devouring as many chocolate cookies as possible while working through my collection of Friends DVDs (we just finished season 5). Over the weekend, it was Oreos. Monday? Chips Ahoy. Also puzzling is the fact that I can eat cookies, ice cream, candy, and other junk foods without trouble, but Raisin Bran, sugary kids' cereals, and any sort of fruit juice throw my system completely out of whack after just a couple of bites/drinks. What's up with that?

Speaking of food, I am ravenously hungry, so we can probably expect that weight gain to skyrocket come this time next week. Not "A Tale of Two Lunches" hungry like from my second trimester with Nathan, but on a lunch run a couple of days ago I did order one and a half roast beef sandwiches (and a bag of chips) (and a cookie) from my new favorite deli without batting an eye. I presume it will only get worse from here.

Also, I'm still generating inappropriate comments from society at large on my admittedly ginormous size. The mechanic who worked on my Cobalt last week said I looked ready to burst, and the after-hours janitor at my work, whom I had previously never met, was compelled while emptying my recycling to say that I was ready to pop AND ask if I was having twins, all in the same breath. Now that's multitasking!

Things are continuing to move along on the nesting front. Luke and I finally rearranged the toys that were wreaking havoc on our living room thanks to the spontaneous purchase of a shelving bin organizer over the weekend. Bathrooms have been sanitized, cars cleaned, pantries tidied, ceiling fixtures repaired, and nurseries finished. And tonight, we finally began packing our hospital bags. So far, all I have in there are some nursing tanks and bras, one pair of clean underwear, footies, a partially filled toiletry bag, and a breastfeeding book. We'll throw in a couple of going-home outfits for Baby Brother (one newborn, one 0-3 months, as per usual), and a beautiful crocheted blanket gifted from a coworker, but other than that, I am blanking. I know I'll need something for myself to wear upon leaving the place, but I'm not sure what that will be yet. I'll grab a notepad from work to document the entire life-changing experience, and I'm also considering picking up some Mother's Milk Tea, to "promote healthy lactation." It's a given that Luke will pack our camera, and I'll have my smartphone for sharing the big news and providing random updates (and pictures, too, once I figure out how to do that part). So if you aren't following me on Twitter or Facebook, you totally should, because I will be able to post more easily to those accounts than I will on my blog while I'm away. (Though I may attempt to bring my work laptop as well.)

Seriously, though, the hospital bag. For me, less is more when it comes to packing, especially since the majority of the time I'm just hanging out in retro-looking gowns and mesh undies and all of my food cravings will be appropriately satisfied by 24-hour room service. But am I missing anything?

Lastly, in between all the activity, Luke and I are trying really hard to make our last couple of weeks as a family of four as fun as possible. Last week I took a day off work so we could all attend Indianapolis's annual strawberry festival, and the weekend before that we drove almost an hour to participate in the city's annual "Outrun the Sun" family walk. Tumbling class started two Mondays ago, which Kara and Nathan seem to enjoy, and on Tuesday delighted in the company of Luke's parents while they paid us one last visit before their upcoming trip to Wales. Other activities include zoo trips, picnics, and an ice cream expedition to Cold Stone Creamery.

They seem to be getting the fact that the baby's almost here. Nathan has been more cuddly with me than usual, throwing his arms around my neck for minute-long hugs when he might normally dismiss me in favor of some truck or book or puzzle, and Kara has been more talkative about the whole process, stating that the doctor will "open up my belly" to take the baby out. Now, I can't remember if I introduced that phrase to her months ago or if she came up with it on her own, but either way, she's allowing the process to become more real in her mind.

She's also asked to come to the hospital when it's time to get the baby out. The kids will actually be with my dear friend Molly during that time, but Luke and I will bring them up to visit as soon as I feel ready. I remember functioning in a zombie-like state almost the entire day of Nathan's c-section, a product of drugs and euphoria and exhaustion (I literally fell asleep in mid-sentence), and I don't want them to see me like that. But we are so excited for them to meet their little brother, so we'll definitely get them up there as soon as we can.

I turn 37 weeks tomorrow, which has catapulted me into full-on nesting mode, attempting to tie up every loose end in the history of the universe before Baby Brother's June 29 delivery date. Last week we focused on car maintenance and child seating; the Cobalt needed about $360 worth of repairs (mad props, savings) and over the weekend Luke cleaned out both vehicles and experimented with car seat arrangements for the first time since February. At that time, we made the decision to transition Kara into a high-back booster (sans five-point harness) to make room for the baby's infant bucket.

Come Saturday, though, we just couldn't do it.

Despite my initial confidence over this set-up, I became increasingly more anxious about it since reading about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's updated guidelines for child restraints back in March. While Kara does meet the height and weight requirements for a booster, she is still only three years old and isn't even close to outgrowing her current Britax Marathon. But keeping her in the Marathon would require us to buy a new car, and despite having an excellent reason to justify such a significant purchase (SAFETY), we simply cannot afford to do that. In my Google research I learned about a slimmer seat with a five-point harness by Sunshine Radian that looked like it would fit and also received favorable reviews on several third-party sites, but the seat isn't sold at any stores in our vicinity, so we'd have to order it online, and what if it didn't fit, and man, these things aren't cheap. We looked into other options for Kara, but all seat specs were similar to the Marathon's. We looked into other infant seats, but the Baby Trend Flex-Loc handed down to us from my friend Jenn has the smallest dimensions we've seen. Nathan's Britax Roundabout wasn't worth messing with because it's already plenty slim and fits his measurements perfectly.

We may as well give the booster a try, Luke and I would say in the end, each time the topic came up, and it came up many times. We'll stay off the highway while we test it out. Our longest drive in town is less than ten minutes. It will be okay.

But again: we just couldn't do it.

Luke spent all of Saturday morning once again trying to get the Marathon in safely and securely, but again it was all in vain. Despite your best efforts, you just can't force a square peg into a round hole. When that didn't work, we pulled out the booster.

It wasn't in the car five seconds before a horrible knot began forming in the pit of my stomach and I was sobbing to Luke that we had to order the Radian.

The Marathon brushed against the door of the Outlander, but just barely. The Radian would save us a precious inch and a half of seat space; we shouldn't need any more than that to make it fit, I said. This is our daughter's safety we're talking about. Please, please order the seat and save me from having a heart attack already.

Luke just nodded. He didn't need any convincing. He was nervous for Kara, too.

The Radian should arrive before the end of the week.

Buying the seat doesn't change the fact that we'll need to buy a new car once the baby outgrows the infant bucket, but we'll be in much better shape financially by then. I'm getting a raise at the end of the month that should absorb most if not all of the anticipated budget increases incurred by Life With Three Children. Tax refunds arrive in late winter, and our credit card debt will be gone by spring, at which point I should be due for another raise. We can plan to make room in our budget for a car payment by then.

In this scenario, I can tell myself It will be okay and actually believe it.

-------

Of all the worries I've had over my three and a half years as a parent, I don't think any of those experiences came close to the level of intensity of this one. Not even nursing. When choosing formula, I felt guilty over denying them the optimal choice in baby food, but at least we could afford to pay for it. Luke and I hate that we can't take on a car payment to get the best ride for our family; that guilt coupled with visions of our child's body being torn to shreds in an accident? If we had gone with the booster and something would have happened.... Well, there are no words.

Parenting is so much harder than you think it will be when you're first starting out. Luckily, there are also no words to describe its joy.

 

Thirty-six weeks. One more until full-term. Though, judging by the size of Baby Brother's man-cave, you might assume that either it's going to be any day now! or I'm already overdue. As does half of Indianapolis.

 

When I was at this same point with Kara (picture here) (stats here), I had gained 27 pounds; with Nathan, I was around 26 pounds, and by my 37-week appointment I had registered a nine-pound gain and was being monitored by my ob/gyn for HELLP syndrome. This morning, I only weighed 15 pounds heavier than the day I took my positive pregnancy test in October. I'm sure before the baby is born that there will be additional junk on my trunk, but right now I'm in awe. For a while I was crediting this to eating better and being on my feet more because of the kids, but now I'm starting to think the real reason was a terribly difficult first trimester where I lost a ton of weight and a conversative second trimester, food wise, spent gaining that weight back. Will this have an impact on Baby Brother's size? Is my habit of delivering large newborns a thing of the past? Only time will tell.

I've been told by complete strangers with total confidence that the baby is sitting high AND that he's clearly dropped, in the same day even, so, opinions and @$$holes and all that, but I'm inclined to agree with the latter. I'm feeling increased pressure in my pelvis lately; that combined with frequent (yet random) contractions have me shuffling around at a snail's pace. Meanwhile, Baby Brother's movements are more violent than ever; sometimes it's cute, and his level of activity does keep me from worrying about anything being wrong with him, but mostly it's uncomfortable, even downright painful, and overall these last few weeks of pregnancy have reduced me to a tired, weepy, anxious mess. Luke is a saint for putting up with me, because in addition to voicing my various aches and pains, I also can't shut up about all the things we still need to do, even though it's clear that he will be the one doing most of them, but he takes everything in stride and does his best to accommodate my wishes. It's almost like he's done this before!

Kara and Nathan are starting to grasp that Baby Brother's arrival is near as we talk more about what things will be like once he comes home. On my last entry, Molly asked a great question about how we plan to explain my c-section, but because they are still so little, and because because Kara is easily frightened these days by what she doesn't understand, Luke and I are keeping things simple. So far, our talk track has been that Daddy will take Mommy to the hospital so the doctor can take the baby out of my belly, and that satisfies them just fine. At this point, we don't feel the need to mention the surgical aspect of it; me just having the baby is enough reason for them to be gentle around my abdominal area for a few weeks. We can provide more information as they get older and/or ask more questions.

Right now, though, Kara seems more preoccupied with when the baby is coming out. On Saturday, I ran some errands, and the minute I returned, she asked if the baby was still in my belly. Monday, I went to the dentist to repair a cracked tooth, and when I got home, same thing. It's fascinating to watch your children's minds at work as they attempt to make sense of the world around them.

Truly, though, I love answering their questions, even when those questions lead me down roads untraveled. Like on Monday, when Kara was playing with our toy kitchen and she talked about coffee coming out of her breasts. (!!!) I think I know what happened; at dinner we were talking about the different ways that babies eat, and how in the beginning Baby Brother won't need solid food, just special baby milk, and he'll get that milk by drinking it from Mommy's breasts or by Mommy and Daddy getting it from the store. Maybe she thought other kinds of drinks were also accessible through Thelma and Louise? I couldn't tell. In any event, it was a conversation for the baby books, that's for sure - that, and her referring to nipples as "bristles." Be still, my heart.

In my 31 years of life, I've completed almost three pregnancies, but it is yesterday's brief conversation with a grade-schooler that wins the award, hands down, for "Most Shocking Gestating Dialogue."

SCENE: Retail outlet store, where Luke and I were stocking up on summer clothes and baby onesies (our first time buying for three children at once, OMG). Kara and Nathan were occupying themselves by an activity table filled with toys, where a few other kids were also hanging out. Several of them were from the same family, including a little boy who was maybe five or six years old - seven, tops - and who I was already having issues with mainly but not completely because he kept grabbing things out of Nathan's hand.

BOY: (eyes me up and down) You're going to have a baby.

FREMA: That's right.

BOY: (To Kara) Your mom's going to have a baby.

KARA: (Enthusiastically, because she loves interacting with other kids) Yes!

BOY: (Back to me, matter-of-factly) They're going to cut you open!

FREMA: (In her brain) ...

FREMA: (Actual words) They don't have to.*

FREMA: (In her brain, a second time) ...

-------

Twenty-four hours later, and I'm still not sure what to make of this. I wasn't wearing my "C-sectioners Unite!" sandwich board, and layers of clothing combined with an impressive amount of belly flab ensured that my scar wasn't visible to the general public, so unless he had x-ray vision or possessed a Sixth Sense type of power that alerts him when a surgical patient is near, I can only assume that BOY's mother had gone under the knife herself and shared that tidbit with her son. Which, okay; I personally don't think I'd choose to give that young a child that much information, but then again, my oldest still wears a pull-up at night, so who knows? Really, I was most surprised that a) he apparently believes all babies are delivered this way and b) he chose to talk about it in such a manner with A COMPLETE STRANGER.

For those to whom this applies: What's the weirdest thing a child has said to you about your pregnancy?

* Actually, my doctor and I are in agreement that they pretty much DO have to cut me open, but hell no was I going to support that kid's logic. Seriously, I've seen infants share toys better.

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to include all those he he hees in the title, except that I am quite ready to be done with this gestating business, thank you very much, so if you read it in a whiny, slightly labored tone of voice, you'll have a pretty good grasp of where I am emotionally. You are welcome.

 

I don't have any shots of me at this point with Nathan, but I do with Kara. Click here to check them out.

(Sidenote: I will have you know that the maternity coat pictured in that entry has more than paid for itself. I've used it twice, Samantha's used it once, and I even lent it to a sister of my coworker's. Money well spent, for sure.)

Current stats: To date, I have put on approximately 15 pounds, making Baby Brother's the slowest weight gain of all three pregnancies. I credit some of this to doing a slightly better job of managing what I'm eating - less red meat, more salads, fruits, and vegetables (though my sugar intake is atrocious) - and some of this to being on my feet more as a mom to two little kids (though Luke continues to be wonderful by handling the laundry, cooking, and majority of post-dinner clean-up). When all is said and done, I doubt I'll hit 30 pounds by the time the baby is born. You wouldn't know it, though, because I feel so much heavier this time around, and much more aware of my size. It truly does feel like this child could fall out of me at any given moment. Others must agree: I can't tell you how many times people have widened their eyes or covered their mouths in shock after I tell them when I'm due.

"Do you really think you'll go that long?" (This is where I pull out my mom card and gleefully reply that, as a matter of fact, I do think I'll go that long, because I've done this twice before and this is just the way I carry.)

"But you're carrying so low!"

"Your feet and your shoulders look okay, no swelling." (Thank you, doctor, for your thorough exam and expert wisdom.)

"You look like you're going to have that baby any day!"

"We'll need to get you something for your desk, huh?" (You know - because of my gargantuan belly.)

"Will your belly go back to normal?" (Okay, that one was from Kara and therefore not offensive at all, but I couldn't resist.)

"Honey, you look miserable."

That last one was said to me by a complete stranger last weekend while waiting for a quarter pound of roast beef at the deli. All I could do was smile thinly and say, "I'm not," before turning away. I don't care if you have lady parts or if you've delivered children, if that's the way you choose to start a conversation, we are not in this together.

See? Not miserable at all!

I'm operating on some level of fatigue almost all the time. Baby Brother is super active almost all the time. And now that we're in the final stretch, I'm starting to panic over all of our to-dos almost all the time. 

The cars need to be cleaned out. The infant base needs to be installed. The paint still needs touching up. Nathan's baby book still isn't done. We haven't cleared out kitchen space for baby bottles. The baby gear needs a steam clean.

Oh. And we need a name.

The front-runner we've been carrying around all this time, a name I love and would still be happy to use in the first name slot, will likely be delegated to middle name status to fit into our new naming strategy.

I go back and forth on nursing almost every day - sometimes eager to give it another go, other times determined to crack open the formula on Day One. And almost every time, I reject any concrete decision I've reached and instead encourage myself to adopt a "Just For Today" type attitude and not look any further than that. It's been working really well so far! (end sarcasm)

I have also started getting more anxious about handling those initial weeks and months of babyhood, as crystal-clear details of Nathan's newborn period have been coming back to me with a vengeance. Nodding off during a three a.m. feeding when the sky is dark and everyone else is asleep. Bouncing him to sleep an hour later, eyes barely open, with one hand in a bag of Donettes because eating something is the only thing keeping me from passing out, feeling utterly alone. Struggling to manage the stairs after my c-section. Crying over clothes that still didn't fit.

I'm sure this is true for most women, but I am completely out of my element in the newborn period.

(Edited to add: It wasn't until reading Eva's comment below that I realized I completely glazed over Kara's period. Aside from nursing difficulties, she was actually a dream baby - sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, content so long as she was snuggled, etc. But still, she was my first baby, and just learning how to be a mom was overwhelming enough. So, while I am open to having an easier experience this time, I'm trying to be realistic and just accept that I don't handle infancy well.)

Before I get too panicked, though, I try to remember the good things. Snuggling on the couch. The grasp of a baby hand around your finger. Watching siblings fall in love. The knowledge that each day brings you one step away from the most difficult period of that first year and one step closer to a wonderfully new version of normal.

It has also helped to think of upcoming seasonal milestones and benchmarking where we should be at that point. This has been particularly encouraging to do with a summer baby. For example:

• By Halloween, the baby will be four months old and sleeping in longer patches at night, if not all the way through. I will definitely have adjusted to being back at work by then. And won't it be fun for the five of us to go trick-or-treating together?
• By Thanksgiving, the baby will be almost five months old. Nathan did so well in the baby carrier at that age, so we should be out and about as much as we want. (Not that I plan to wait that long to use it, of course.) The fall weather will be perfect for hikes at the park. Also, I should be in much better shape physically than I've ever been at this point, so long as I'm consistent with running and my Jillian Michaels videos. (I'm already physched to try her newest one, Ripped in 30. Yes, please!)
• By Christmas, the baby will be six months old, experimenting with solids and crawling. What a fun December it will be.
• By Luke's and my sixth wedding anniversary next May, the baby will be almost a year old and most likely walking. Walking! Surely all three kids should be easy enough for someone else to care for them overnight, so Mommy and Daddy can sneak in a getaway.
• Speaking of May, the Mini is in May. I so want to run the Mini next year! Training would be another way to keep my fitness level on track.
• By next June, the baby will be one year and on the way to ditching bottles, formula (if we choose to go that route), and purees. We should also be free of our credit card debt by then. The perfect ingredients for an active, amazing summer.

Each baby is different, so I of course can't bank on all those milestones coming to fruition, but generally speaking, these are the stages where I remember things becoming significantly easier to manage with both Kara and Nathan, so I'm allowing myself to be hopeful. Plus, even if it doesn't, it's really the overall message I'm clinging to: that every day does get easier. I know this from personal experience now. It really does get easier.

The last day of Kara's parents' day out program was last Friday, and since families were invited, I took the day off work to attend the annual end-of-year carnival with Luke and the kids. There were game stations and dollar-store prizes, a bounce house that neither child took to very well, a fire engine tour they both adored, and a creepy old-man magician that had Luke and I rolling our eyes every five minutes. Overall, though, it was a neat way to pass the time.

 

This picture has nothing to do with the carnival, but man, is my family gorgeous or what?

The closer we get to bringing this baby home (five weeks from tomorrow, not that anyone's counting), sometimes it's hard to remember that the two kids we have now actually started out as newborns. Babies are lovely for sniffing and snuggling, but the older Kara and Nathan get, the more fun we all have together -- even planning for the future has become more interesting, as we imagine what lies ahead for our party of five.

Precisely because they aren't babies anymore, and also because one of my biggest stressors is making sure the kids have a fun summer despite the initial turmoil that is sure to result from welcoming a new baby, Luke and I are working hard with the money we have at our disposal (thank you, savings) to sign them up for a couple of things that force us to get them out of the house. They'll both take a nine-week tumbling class at our town's rec center starting in two weeks, and Kara is signed up for a week-long nature camp sponsored by a local park for late July. We also learned of a week-long vacation Bible study class offered through the same church that runs our parents' day out program, for the low, low price of FIVE DOLLARS, so we'll register Kara for that as well. I wish there was more for Nathan to do, but those last two require the kids to be fully potty-trained, so he'll just have to wait until next year. Really, though, just getting him in the tumbling class is a big deal, since he's never done anything like that before. It should be a nice transition into his starting "school" in the fall.

We researched a number of activities in the Indy metro area for ideas of things to do, but the nearest YMCA doesn't have anything for the toddler age range, and the closest Gymboree is 45 minutes away. Also, frankly, our bank account can't handle many more unplanned expenses without putting our maternity leave savings at risk. Still, though, I'm excited about what we do have planned, and we recently renewed our zoo membership, and we're already frequent visitors of our local library, and there are several neighborhood playgrounds in our zip code, which means there are plenty of opportunities for additional fun. Once Baby Brother is here and we know he's healthy, Luke and I have already talked about using more of our savings to buy additional memberships to the city's Children's Museum and the rec center where tumbling is being held, as it has fantastic indoor and outdoor swimming facilities AND a gym AND exercise classes AND is within walking distance from our house. There's even been talk of going to the beach again, like we did last year.

I've been trying not to get so hung up on our summer plans, but it's hard. There were actually a couple more classes at the rec center that we could've enrolled the kids into (dance and music), and I would have done it without a second thought until Luke wisely talked me down, reminding me about the zoo and the library and the parks and also of our commitment to keeping them active even while I'm recovering from my (last!!!) c-section. That's been the kicker for me, I think: knowing it will take me the majority of the first six weeks to feel anything like myself again and how unavailable I will be during that time to do things like hike, swim, or even take long walks on the trail.

Fortunately, Luke and I have already talked at length about this, and we agree that it will be important for him to be out and about with them just like he is when I'm at work so that I recuperate from surgery without feeling guilty. After that, though, I hope to be more on my feet so that we can make the best of the second six weeks we have left. This summer will definitely have its challenges, but I still want to make it the best one we've had yet.

What are you doing this summer?

I heard Janet Jackson's "Miss You Much" on the way to Subway today, and it reminded me of all things I miss about my pre-pregnancy life. At 33 weeks, the list includes:

• The shape of my face (aka non-puffy)
• Eating any type of spaghetti sauce I want without fear of indigestion
• Being able to get in and out of bed without grunting in pain
• Sleeping without a pillow cushioned against my belly
• Walking in heels without resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa (Don't worry, I switched to flats months ago)
• Running
• Sitting the children on my lap instead of barely fitting them onto my knee
• Wearing pants with buttons instead of elastic waistbands
• Not worrying that my shirt is going to creep up and expose what must be the largest uterus on Planet Earth
• Overall energy level, zest for life

And... the photographic evidence:

 

This was taken last week; originally I intended to post a more current photo with this entry, but after reviewing the results of this morning's shoot I found that the lighting on my face is all wrong and part of my hair is sticking up and really, it would be better for everyone to gaze upon a version of my visage from happier days.

Fatigue continues to plague me constantly, whether I get eight hours of sleep or five. There is occasional swelling in my feet after a long day, but it's easily cured by putting them up the minute I get home. Two things that did worry me this past weekend were intermittent pains in my stomach and some light vomiting after taking my vitamin cocktail, so I called my OB/GYN's office on Monday and was seen that day to check my blood pressure, urine levels, and the baby's heartbeat. Luckily, everything is looking good; as for the vomiting, my doctor and I think it was the result of switching from the premium-grade vitamin samples I was using back to the generic ones I had been taking all along. They didn't make me throw up before, but that was before I was prescribed the iron supplement. I now have almost a month's worth of samples in my possession, which should see me through almost to the end of the pregnancy, and by that point, I may just pay the piper to avoid making out with the porcelain throne again.

Quite a lot has happened since the last time we pow-wowed, the biggest being Luke's follow-through with the snip at the end of April (the timing with the royal wedding was purely coincidental, I swear). He is just now beginning to feel like himself again, so I feel okay to talk about it.

The planner in me is so relieved to have this taken care of and cross such a huge thing off our post-partum to-do list, and for the first time in my life, I am absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent certain that I do not want to be pregnant ever again. Still, though, on the morning of, there was a huge rock in my stomach that stayed with me for the first half of the day, wondering if we were doing the right thing. Was I being selfish asking Luke to do this when I could just as easily get on the pill, despite my misgivings? Were we being fiscally irresponsible by spending precious hospital dollars to have this done, knowing that my insurance deductible would be met after Baby Brother's arrival and we could score a tubal for free? Was I really comfortable with the idea of the two of us never making a baby together again?

I always knew I would be sad when the time came to do something permanent with our reproductive parts; I just didn't know how sad.

Luke and I talked it out, and while we were both nervous, we also knew logically it was the best long-term choice for our family, and one we both could handle without regret. And so it was done, and now I have come full circle, because seriously. Giving birth is a miracle, and I will always be grateful for being a part of it, but I NEVER WANT TO BE PREGNANT AGAIN. Thanks, honey, for taking one for the team.

The urologist did ask Luke if we wanted to postpone the procedure until after Baby Brother was born, "just in case," but as devastated as we'd be over anything happening to this little guy, it wouldn't change the fact that we are just not up for another pregnancy.

Morbid "what-if" conversations with your spouse: yet another perk of the whole marriage and family planning package!

The second big thing is that we finally made a dent in Baby Brother's bedroom. We stuck with our decision to keep the paint and wall art as is, but we did rearrange the furniture so that it actually feels like it was set up for a brand new person. It's not picture-ready yet, as there is a pile of laundry that appears to be mating with itself next to the crib, but it finally feels like progress is being made.

 

The kids are doing great. Kara's last official day of "school" was last week, but this week they're throwing a last-hurrah carnival for all the kids and their families, so I will be taking the day off work so the four of us can attend together. One of the best decisions we made was to send Kara to this program, even if we could only swing one day a week; she has so enjoyed the Fridays where she gets to play with her friends and interact with her teachers and make "heart projects" (her original pronounciation of "art projects") to bring home.

I wish our finances and our family situation allowed us to send her to the church's preschool program in the fall, because Luke and I both know she would thrive in one, but with a tight budget and a newborn on the way, it just isn't feasible for us this year. But she's only three, and she will still have her one day a week, as will Nathan, and we can pay for those things without losing sleep, so it will have to be enough for now.

 

Inspired by Emily's recent post on summer strategizing, I fully intended to talk about Kara and Nathan's plans here, but this entry is already long enough, and with my sporadic posting schedule, it's probably best that I not place all of my blogging eggs into this one basket - er, post. Until next time, then!

You can count Kara and me as being among the bazillion people to check out the royal wedding on April 29.

Typically, I don't follow the happenings of the British monarchy, but my boss, bless her heart, took a vacation day to be able to watch all the coverage in real time, and her excitement and the buzz among my coworkers was contagious, so I set my alarm for 6:10 a.m. and snuck downstairs to catch some of the marital pomp and circumstance.

Luke and Nathan were asleep, but Kara had crawled into bed with us sometime before six. She was quiet when I left the room, but fifteen minutes later, I heard her call out from upstairs, "I want to watch with you, Mommy!" (Luke had explained to her what I was doing, and he knew I wanted to let her join in the festivities if she woke up in time.)

So, for about twenty minutes, until I absolutely had to turn off the TV and hop in the shower for work, Kara and I cuddled together on the living room couch and took in the wedding. I told her she was watching a real prince and princess get married, and that they were getting married in a church just like where we go on Sundays. She thought about that for a minute, then said, "That's a church like our church, with a playroom!"

I laughed. "No, honey, this church definitely does NOT have a playroom."

I held her close and massaged my fingers over her scalp as she rested her head alongside my belly, every once and a while turning her face to me to show a big smile. Baby Brother was in rare form, and she was able to experience some of his most impressive acrobatics to date. "Mommy, I felt the baby pop!" she said.

At one point, I grew misty-eyed thinking that, at almost three and a half, it's very possible that Kara will remember sharing this moment with me, even if her memory of it is fuzzy and incomplete.

It was such a small part of our day, but Kara talked about that wedding on and off all weekend. "Mommy, I really liked watching your wedding with you," she said at first.

"Honey, that wasn't my wedding, that was the royal wedding."

"I mean, I really liked watching the royal wedding with you."

Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too. 

Folks, we have officially entered single-digit territory - no more than nine weeks until we bring Baby Brother home. My word.

 

I will shoot daggers at anyone who might dare utter this to me, but at 30 weeks, even I have to admit that I'm looking large and in charge (and also in need of a haircut; THAT I hope to remedy next week). Sitting both children on my lap for storytime is damn near impossible, and several items of maternity clothing are no longer fit for public display, especially button-up shirts, which mistakenly give the impression that this child is going to burst through my uterus Incredible Hulk style. Thankfully, I have some things to tide me over courtesy of my book club friends until my sister delivers an entire bin of looser-fitting summer clothes late next month, because the goal is still to spend as little money in this area as possible. (To Katy: I get compliments on this top everytime I wear it, and your patterned black skirt, too.)

Despite the iron supplement I'm taking to address my anemia, I wear out so easily these days, and if there is ever an opportunity to nap on the weekends, I jump on it immediately. Unfortunately, now that we're inching into the final weeks, those opportunities are few and far between. Last weekend was all about The Great Bedroom Merge, and the weekend before that I FINALLY started on Nathan's baby book. Our current goals are to focus on preparing Baby Brother's room and addressing minor touch-ups and eyesores throughout the rest of the house. I've also been busy at work, training my coworkers to handle various projects and to-dos while I'm on maternity leave for 12 weeks.

The closer we get to the big day, the more apprehensive I feel about making it through those early months with a new baby. As a mother of toddlers, I have no doubts about their attachment to me or their understanding of my love for them. This knowledge has allowed me to grant myself permission to strike a manageable balance between my roles as mother, wife, working professional, and individual who continues to exist alongside (and sometimes independently of) all of those identities. In my day-to-day, that balance looks something like this:

I do not bring work home. I will arrive at the office early, or I will stay late, but aside from regularly checking e-mail on my smartphone, work stuff stays at work. It is much easier to stay put until the job is done than it is to stop my train of thought, pack up my laptop, get through dinner, clean-up, and bedtime, and THEN try to pick up where I left off. Not only am I easily distracted at home and get little accomplished whether the kids are awake or not, I also feel cheated out of quality time with Luke. So if coming home late for dinner once in a while helps me to be a more attentive wife (and really, a better employee), than that is what I will do.

Dinner clean-up is done after dinner, not after bedtime. I fought this for such a long time in the beginning, because I felt like those precious minutes before the bedtime routine begins should be spent on the living room floor playing with my kids, not at the kitchen sink washing dishes. So I used to let everything sit until after they were asleep; however, Kara and Nathan were not made from the early-to-bed cloth, so often I wouldn't be arriving downstairs until well after nine o'clock, which meant it could get as late as ten before my "real" evening officially began. This made for a crabby Frema and, once again, a neglected husband, who by this point was in dire need of adult interaction. Finally, I realized that it wasn't the end of the world to listen to the kids laugh and rough around with their father while I puttered around in the kitchen. There are some exceptions to this; on those days where I do come home late, for example, Luke is usually quick to shoo me into the living room while he takes on kitchen detail, and lately he's been making things even easier by wiping out the pre-dinner dishes before he starts cooking. Especially because of this last thing, I am often able to do both.

(Have I told you lately how wonderful my husband is? Because truly, he is so wonderful.)

I do not miss bedtime. This isn't an absolute, of course; sometimes there are evening work functions (though none during this pregnancy so far), Luke and I have splurged on date nights if we are in the vicinity of grandparents or can afford to hire our sitter, and for a few months in the fall I attended a monthly book club gathering on the other side of the city, but overall my general rule is to be present for Kara and Nathan's bedtime. Sometimes it's frustrating if the kids are acting up, and sometimes it's inconvenient, like last summer when I was constantly late for my weekly run with Jenn, but overall it's worth it to consistently be there for bathtime, lights out, and everything in between. I revel in holding them close and sniffing their freshly shampooed heads while reading them stories. It means a lot to me to be able to kiss their cheeks and tuck them in. So I make it a priority.

I do not volunteer. This one I'm not proud of, and it's another reality I fought for a long time, but in the end, it is what it is. I was a member of my college's alumni association for about five years, and I loved doing it, but the distance between Indianapolis and Rensselaer made traveling for quarterly meetings and participating in campus events highly undesirable, especially when I already spend enough time away from home. So in 2009, I sadly turned in my resignation. My employer is great about allowing time off during the work week to participate in volunteer activities, and on and off for a couple of years I was involved in a grade-school reading program for an hour a week, but once I had kids, even that one hour away from my desk was enough to throw off my entire day, so at the end of the 2010 school year, I told the program director that I wouldn't be signing up again. Last fall, my desire to reach beyond myself grew again, and I looked into donating my time at a local women's and children's shelter, possibly on the weekends. Then I got pregnant again, and then I got sick, and now the recommendation letters I solicited are collecting dust in my mail basket, and I'm at the point where I have to admit that now is not the time to throw myself into extracurricular activities that take me away from my family, no matter how worthy the cause. That said, Luke and I recently began going to church again, a church right here in town, and we sometimes talk about looking into their soup kitchen or Bible study classes or something to that effect. So it's not like I'm swearing off do-gooding or charitable works completely, but I have realized my limits, and I have to respect them.

All of that to say - almost three and a half years into this parenthood thing, and I have finally figured out what works for me and my family. And we're about to turn all of that on its head.

Because for me, as a working mother, when I have a baby and then reach the point where I have to go back to work, I'm NOT as secure in our attachment like I am when they're older, so everything feels like it's up for grabs. You can talk to a toddler about things like having to miss dinner and they understand. That is not the case with a baby. So my big-picture focus changes from maintaining balance to simply being there as much as I can.

What this translates into on a micro level: It's hard enough being away for an average work day when they're so little that the last thing I want to do is sit at my desk even one minute after five, even if the alternative is nodding off at my laptop at ten. And when I'm dividing my attention among three children, why would I concern myself with dishes when I could be doling out hugs and kisses? On top of all that, Luke and I have not wavered on our plans to put the house on the market next year, and whether it takes a month or a year to sell, preparing for the next stage of our lives will require me to start using and building on my professional network, and part of that will entail opening myself up to extracurricular programs and events, whether it's the right time or not.

I think about all of this, toss in a few random worries about nursing (yes, I have decided to try again), and my brain threatens to explode.

Then I remind myself to breathe and not get so caught up in the future. I remember that fortunately, another reality is that Luke and I are not brand spanking new parents anymore, and we HAVE figured out a system that works for us; and while there will be an initial period of deviation from that, eventually the dust will settle, and we'll embrace a familiar version of normal once again, even if it's not identical to what we had before. Until then, I will have to grant myself permission to take it one day at a time.

So, to sum up: I am 30 weeks pregnant. I am a tad worried about managing life with a third baby. But I'm also more seasoned now than I was with the first two. Plus, my husband rocks. It will be okay.

This past weekend, Luke and I took the first tangible step in preparing our house for a new baby by moving Kara and Nathan into the same bedroom. The Big Kids Bedroom. A bedroom that now contains a twin bed, a toddler bed, and two children under the age of four.

 

A view of Nathan's big boy bed. You'll notice we nixed the idea of themed wall art and instead went with that famous line known as "Cheap Pictures We Liked From Target."

We've been talking about this merge ever since we found out about Baby Brother, and we've been discussing it with the kids for almost as long, but it wasn't until last week when I was reading stories to Nathan in his glider that it hit me: Oh my gosh, my baby is losing his room. And his crib, and his dresser, and all those other baby things that we picked out just for him.

I thought about how he might not be ready, and how, as one of two boys, he may never have his own room again, and how adorable, kissably soft, and baby-like his cheeks are, even though his favorite statement of late is "No, I want to do it by myself," and I ended up crying myself to sleep. Oh, the tangled emotions involved in making room for another child, and forcing watching the children you already have grow up in the process.

But JC Penney wasn't aware of my misgivings, so Kara's twin bed arrived on Saturday as planned, and Luke and I spent that afternoon washing bedding, rearranging furniture, and transferring Nathan's things into Kara's closet and dresser. Between the two of them, Nathan actually had the largest set of drawers, but I wanted to keep all the matching furniture together, partly for the baby and partly for (eventual) showing purposes; in the end, we made it work by designating the closet for all shirts and pants and the dresser for socks, underclothes, and pajamas.

 

A close-up of Nathan's big boy bed, which looks perfect against the yellow paint, in my frugal lazy humble opinion.

Fortunately, ironing out the logistics of The Great Bedroom Merge turned out to be a lot of fun; while I'm no Martha Stewart when it comes to decorating, I rise to the tasks of organizing, removing extraneous clutter, and finding a proper place for belongings that make the cut. It also helped that Nathan LOVED the idea of sleeping in the toddler bed; pair that with his fondness for his quilt from godmother Auntie Molly, and you get a charged-up little boy who was more than ready to roll around in the covers and play with his animals the minute his set-up was complete. The car pillow was a new purchse and proved to be a hit with both kids. 

 

A view of Kara's newest big girl bed. Is it wrong to kind of want it for myself?

Because it took all day to get things settled, both kids missed their naps (not that Kara takes them very often, anyway), so it was a challenge to get them settled down come bedtime. They didn't want to read stories in the rocking chair as is our usual way, opting instead to camp out in their respective beds, and their attention span was extremely short; plus, Nathan typically goes down about 30 minutes before Kara, and Kara doesn't fall asleep as quickly as he does, so we weren't sure how difficult it would be for each of them to fall asleep in the presence of the other. The cherry on top was following through with our decision to attempt to wean Nathan from his pacifier; I was so sure he would call us on this and put up a fight. 

At 8:06, we showered them with kisses, left the room, and braced ourselves for a long night ahead.

By 9:02, they were out like a light, with Nathan pacifier free.

That is not to imply the fifty-six minutes in between were perfect -- several times they tumbled out of bed, and Nathan did mention his pacifier once while being tucked in. But overall our son took his new role as a big boy very seriously, and big boys stay in their beds, so he did, and pacifiers are meant for babies, so subconsiously I think he deemed it inappropriate to push the issue. Also, his stay-put example definitely inspired Kara to follow suit, as she's never had any problems abandoning her big girl status to visit Mommy and Daddy more frequently than TV shows air commercials. She actually fell asleep earlier with Nathan across the room than she typically does on her own. SCORE AND SCORE.

Luke and I were not as enthused when Kara jumped into our bed at five o'clock the next morning and Nathan sobbed for his pacifier at six (insert stab to the heart here).

We held firm on the latter, though, and Luke eventually tried to appease Nathan by bringing him into bed with us, but four people + a queen-sized mattress does not = restful sleep for anyone. It was a long Easter, let me tell you. And Nathan hasn't fully processed the permanence of the arrangement yet, because occasionally he still asks to read stories in "his room." But at two and a half nights in, we have a consistent pattern of both children falling asleep before 9:30, which has NOT been our experience in the past, so at this point I am inclined to declare the Great Merge a smashing success.

 

Here is our boy, all tucked in and ready for Dreamland. He was delighted with his big boy pillows and adamant about laying his head on the stack of them, which I think is one of the reasons it took him so long to fall asleep that first night. It was clear he was uncomfortable having his head elevated so high. "You don't have to use both of them if you don't want to - you can cuddle the car pillow like a stuffed animal or even move it to the other side of the bed. Whatever you want," I told him, but he wouldn't hear of it.

He must have considered the suggestion on some level, though, because eventually we found him like this:

 

Luke wanted a better-looking photo than that for our albums, though, so he took some artistic liberties to achieve this:

 

How is he not on the cover of a Golden Book? Those cheeks!

Meanwhile, Kara adjusted to her own upgrade pretty well and was especially taken with her new quilt. This shot is only slightly staged:

 

It took a lot of self-restraint not to crawl in there with her, for a mother-daughter cuddle.

At this point last week, I was so sad about Nathan shedding another layer of his babyhood, but now I am so happy for him, and proud that he was able to handle these big, important steps so easily. My favorite part? I can give those baby-toddler cheeks another kiss good-night once he's fast asleep, just like I do with Kara, now that we're no longer separated by crib slats.

 

We are getting so close to Baby Day, and there is still so much to do, but this merge? It was a good thing, and a step in the right direction.

I don't think I'm a very good homeowner.

To be clear: I like owning a home. I enjoy not having to answer to a higher authority if I want to paint a wall or replace a faucet or handle some other type of administrative task. What I despise is actually doing those things that would make my house a nicer place to live in.

Since we found out about Baby Brother 2.0 back in October, Luke and I have been talking about various projects we intended to tackle before his arrival. At first the list seemed pretty ambitious: repaint the entire kitchen (plus cabinets) and adjoining half-bathroom; paint both kids' rooms and the bathroom at their end of the hall; winterize the backyard and FINALLY lay down some seed to repair the dead patches of grass we inherited from the previous owners (courtesy of their four dogs). Replace the ripped-up screens on the second floor. Revamp the landscaping in the front of the house.

We're not talking major renovations like knocking out a wall or updating our shower, just a little sprucing up here and there that would be easier to do before the baby comes rather than after.

Let me tell you what we have accomplished so far:

• Replaced the screens (as of Wednesday, with help from Luke's parents)
• Mowed the lawn and scattered seed (as of yesterday)
• That is all

Part of it is money; paint isn't expensive, necessarily, but it's also not cheap, and buying gallons of new color to throw on our walls when we are so focused on paying down debt just isn't a top priority. However, if I'm being honest, the bigger issue is the fact that even thinking about taping off edges and laying down plastic and keeping two toddlers away from rooms of wet paint feels like more trouble than it's worth.

Which is a shame, too, because mentally I can also see the outcome of these projects and how they would improve our feelings about living in this house. When I was in Rensselaer and working at Saint Joe, I took two weeks off from work to paint all the rooms in my new little apartment, and I was so proud of my work when I was done.

Then again, I was twenty-five years old with no children and no major expenses to cover, and I could come and go from the project as I pleased without worrying about stopping to manage potty time or fix lunch or give anyone a bath.

Anyway.

It's also lamentable because in my opinion, our house is in need of some serious TLC. Despite hiring painters to do the whole house before our October 2008 move-in, several rooms are already in desperate need of touching up: marks on the walls, scratched-up baseboards and hand rails, spackled areas that are still white as a bride on her wedding day, etc. Apparently, the everyday life of a young, growing family isn't compatible with pretty real estate.

We have leftover paint in the garage, so this type of work could be done without spending a dime, but again, just thinking about the prep involved makes me want to take a nap.

Has anyone else ever felt this blah about their house and eventually gone on to take a more vested interest in home improvement and decorating once their kids grew older? Lazy Inquiring minds want to know.

Howdy, third trimester! Allow me to welcome you with a washed-out, shiny, deer-in-headlights expression:

 

I think I've grown since last week - check out the below picture and judge for yourself.

 

Here I am at 26 weeks and some change with Kara, who wanted to join in on the photo-snapping fun, and here is photographic evidence of being pregnant with both Kara and Nathan at this same point. Man, is my body predictable when it comes to gestation.

Things are going fine, incubator-wise. I continue to have an appetite that cannot be satisfied; I've only gained about eight new pounds with this pregnancy so far, but half of that was put on in the last two weeks. My diastasis recti is easing up, thankfully, but it's being replaced with an easily-triggered fatigue that I assume is the result of hauling around another ginormous baby, if Baby Brother 2.0 stays the path carved out by his older siblings; at 27 weeks, the boy is already measuring at 28 centimeters, according to my OB/GYN. My latest appointment was three days ago, which involved throwing back a fruit-punch-flavored glucose drink for my gestational diabetes test. The results of the bloodwork showed that my sugar levels are fine but that I'm slightly anemic (which would also account for some of that fatigue). This same thing happened with Kara, so I will just take my prescribed iron supplement and carry on as normal.

The most exciting thing about my visit was getting my c-section on the books at the hospital - Wednesday, June 29, 9:30 a.m. Mark your calendars!

Finally, I have now reached the point where I need to visit my OB every two weeks. Things are really starting to move along - and not just with the child occupying my uterus. Kara and Nathan are in for some changes soon, too.

 

Kara spreading her own PB&J. In case that wasn't supremely obvious already.

Grandma and Grandpa Dunscombe were in town this week to help us out with some spring-cleaning type projects and also to order parts for Kara's "new big girl bed" - also known as The Extra Bed We Desperately Need To Free Up The Crib For The Baby. Kara will occupy the new twin (to arrive in about two weeks), Nathan will inherit Kara's toddler bed, and the baby will get all of the furniture in Nathan's room. Luke and I have been talking to the kids ad nauseum over the past month about how they'll be sharing a room soon and the big kids will all be together and Won't that be so much fun? Kara's taking it all in stride, but Nathan hasn't readily embraced the concept yet.

Monday night while getting ready for bed, after having talked about the move for the eighty-seven-millionth time:

Frema: Hey Nathan, are you a baby?

Nathan: (smiles) No.

Frema: That's right, you're a big boy. And do big boys sleep in cribs?

Nathan: No. No, they don't!

Frema: That's right, they sleep in big boy beds! So pretty soon, you're going to sleep in a big boy bed! And you can bring all your blankets and all your stuffed animals - the only thing that's changing is that you'll be in a big boy bed!

Nathan: (pauses, then reaches out to touch his crib) I want to sleep in this big bed.

Frema: No, honey, that bed isn't for big boys, it's for babies.

Nathan: I like this bed.

And to think we want to take away his beloved pacifier at the same time! (Because only babies who sleep in cribs use pacifiers! Not big boys!) We're prepared to be flexible, but still, this transition should be super-duper fun.

Money-wise, things are going well. After a grueling six-week wait, we finally received our federal tax return on April Fool's Day, which allowed us to cut our credit card debt almost in half and set aside the out-of-pocket cash we'll need during my maternity leave. We continue to funnel money into savings and cut corners in our budget to make all of this happen, and it feels like it's finally paying off. We sailed through all the major bills of spring - car insurance premiums, school registration, vehicle registration renewals - without using our Visa; in fact, we haven't touched it at all this year, AND we've been making steady progress in lowering our balance even before receiving our tax check. We buckled down when it counted the most, and we are seeing the rewards, and it feels awesome.

To celebrate our financial success, we drove 40 minutes to our local creamery and blew nine dollars on organic ice cream. Hey, all work and no play, right?

 

I'm not sure what the kids are staring at. Certainly not the camera.

After spending so much of the winter cooped up indoors, it felt great to venture beyond our zip code and blow a few bucks on something as indulgent as dessert. We weren't there that long, but Luke and I had such a good time, and the kids, too.

 

Of course, can you have a bad time when ice cream's involved?

 

The cows were in the barn and mooing something fierce when we arrived, so Kara and Nathan wouldn't venture much farther than the doorway.

And...that is my blog update! I hope you all are just swell.

On Tuesday, I turned 25 weeks. Just two more until the third trimester!

 

(For comparison purposes, here's a link to a blog entry showing me at the same point with Kara.)

As I rapidly approach these last few months of pregnancy, I am overcome with the urge to kick it up a notch when it comes to preparing for Baby Brother's arrival, especially since all we've done so far is accept hand-me-downs from generous family and friends. Now it's time for tangible deliverables. I've decided that I want to redo the kids' bedrooms before Easter, get Luke's urologist consult on the calendar, and buy a frickin' onesie, already. Our period of inaction is over. Bring on the nesting!

Speaking of bedrooms, a few decisions have been made in regards to the whole bedroom-redecorating project I mentioned last month, the biggest one being to forgo the painting step altogether. We have been so good at saving our money that at first I thought it would be worth the splurge, but as I evaluate what we have left to save for hospital bills and maternity leave, I'm sadly reminded that every penny still counts. Plus, Kara and Nathan have been really into Winnie-the-Pooh lately, and that theme would totally mesh with a yellow bedroom without completely reeking of girl, so there you go. We'll still budget for some wall hangings and possibly new shelving, but overall those costs will be minimal. As for the baby, well, he certainly won't notice that he's inheriting a completely recycled nursery set-up, so we aren't buying anything new for his room at all. At first I felt guilty about this, until I remembered that my siblings and I never even had our own rooms growing up, let alone a custom nursey, and somehow we all turned out just fine. Also, talk about a middle-class problem if I ever heard one. Perspective, yes?

On the baby names front, while I am still completely satisfied with our front-runner, Luke is feeling a little meh about it these days, so we've been combing through our old copy of The Baby Name Wizard for additional inspiration, just in case. At first I was sad about possibly starting from scratch again, but then I remembered that I initially felt the same way about Kara's name while I was pregnant with her, even though I'm the one who suggested it in the first place. Of course, on the day she was born, it turned out to be the perfect fit, and to this day I'm still over the moon about it, so hopefully it will play out the same way for Luke, too.

As for me? Tired is the name of my game. Last weekend I drove up to Katy's neck of the woods with the kids for a playdate (no locking anyone in the car this time, thank goodness), and two hours of toddler-friendly activity wiped me out for the rest of the afternoon. I am still feeling my size but still do not appreciate having it pointed out to me by others, like on Monday when someone I know through work (who l like very much, by the way) told me that I'm "pooching out" with a wild-eyed stare WHILE ALSO accosting me with an unsolicted belly rub. I saw her again this morning, and she greeted me with a "I swear you've gotten bigger since the last time I saw you! You just keep on growing!" Happy day to you, too!

This pregnancy is progressing so quickly - in a couple of weeks I'll take my gestational diabetes test, can you believe it? - and yet I constantly find myself willing the time to pass even faster. I think about materntiy leave a lot, and spending the summer at home with Luke and our brood of three, and hitting the trail again, and beginning our search for a real estate agent to sell our house, and I'm impatient. On the other hand, I know that this time right now is precious, and I want to soak up every inch of my husband and kids and give them as much attention as I can. I want us to go to the zoo, swing at the park, walk on the trail, and in general just enjoy each other's company right up until the moment our lives are turned upside down with our newest family member. After all, it's the end of an era!

Confession: I am a terrible book club member.

I fully embrace the concept of reading materials that fall outside my radar and that I would otherwise never be exposed to. Even more than that, I love getting together with folks who are reading these same books in order to generate thoughts and ideas about characters, plot, and overall meaning.

What is NOT working out for me, however, is actually reading the damn things.

While part of this can be attributed to pregnancy fatigue and its accompanying short attention span, I think the bigger issue is that it's difficult for me to push through books I personally wouldn't have selected for no other reason than to meet a deadline. The gals in my club are highly educated and have extremely smart taste (waves to Katy), and I'm sure I would enjoy these books if I could get over the inital reader's block that goes along with picking up a new title. Unfortunately, these days my ability to just hang in there is already at capacity. And because at this point I can only focus on one book at a time, what ends up happening is that I put off reading things I'm sincerely interested in in favor of fulfilling my "obligations," but because meeting those obligations feels like a chore, I find myself not reading anything at all.

For someone who's always described herself as an avid reader, this is unacceptable. Also, since I've taken a leave from the club to conserve budget dollars, anyway, there's no reason to continue this self-imposed form of restriction.

So this weekend, I returned last month's selection to the library and immediately dove into The Happiness Project, a book I've been chomping at the bit to read since I first heard about it last year. I even shelled out precious actual dollars to buy it when it was released in paperback earlier this month, because inherently I knew it would be the sort of book that required underlining, note-taking, and eventually, re-reading.

Funny, isn't it? In order to read The Happiness Project, first I had to grant myself permission to be happy.

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In the middle of last year, at a point where I felt stagnant and uninspired, I started giving serious thought as to why I felt unsatisfied and what it would take to make me happier. It involved owning up to my shortcomings and limitations, defining my long-term goals, and re-evaluating my priorities. It required sharing those insights with Luke and the two of us formulating a plan for changing the direction of our lives. Thankfully, we were in agreement as to what should come next, and while we're experiencing a brief delay in regards to its implemention, this plan is constantly at the forefront of our minds; it drives our savings habits, influences our short-term decisions, and keeps us hopeful about the future. I also find it easier to accencuate the positive in the day-to-day I have now, appreciate my blessings, and gain perspective.

But again, in order to reach these conclusions, Luke and I had to admit that all the great things we have in our lives right now aren't enough to bring us long-term joy. We also realized that we can't improve our situation by hoping to magically inherit traits and desires that aren't in sync with who we are.

Our plan will take some time to accomplish--many months, I'm sure, possibly even years. There are a lot of moving parts that can't be achieved in tandem. But I would rather spend the next few years in slow, baby-steps transition than an indefinite amount of time trying to settle for what society says should make me happy.

It should not be shocking to anyone that life changes drastically once you have kids, so much of my reality as a mother to young children is not that daunting to me. I'm okay changing or nixing evening plans to be present for Kara's and Nathan's bedtime (as a working mom who misses the bulk of daytime hours, this is insanely important to me). At our house, 6:30 a.m. wake-ups are to be expected, so I try not to gripe about it too much (though when my sister Ryan complained on Facebook over the weekend that her dogs wouldn't let her sleep past nine, I admit to dying a little inside). And Luke and I have accepted that with little family nearby and no discretionary money in our budget to hire a baby-sitter, date nights must be few and far between. We know many of these issues will iron themselves out over the next few years and that we just have to be patient until then.

One of the biggest parts of my pre-parenthood life that I DO miss, though? Vacationing.

A few weeks ago I was dusting some picture frames and came across a photo taken during a whitewater rafting trip back in 2003, and I realized that the majority of Luke's and my travels took place before I started blogging. Which means they are not documented here. Which means I spent more than two hours one night in late February sorting through photo albums and scanning low-res images onto my computer in the hopes that one day I would tell you all about them. And today is that day! Aren't you lucky?

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WHITEWATER RAFTING, HICO, WEST VIRGINIA (2002-2004)

Growing up, vacations were not a priority for my family, mainly because there wasn't enough money but also because my parents have never been comfortable sleeping away from home. So once I was on my own and able to make more strategic decisions as to how to spend my paycheck, I learned that I wanted to make travelling a bigger part of my life. My first trip came about in 2002 during my first year working for Saint Joe, when I was able to attend a whitewater rafting trip hosted by our alumni association so that I could cover it for the college's quarterly magazine. Since my expenses were paid for by Saint Joe, I was technically on the clock, and thus one could argue that this trip doesn't count as a vacation, but prior to this my only experience with whitewater was the clear stuff drizzling out of my shower nozzle, so, dudes. It totally counts.

We left for Hico, West Virginia, on the Friday before Labor Day and reached our hotel by dinnertime. Early the next day, we were bound for the New River, where the waves ranged in classification from 2 through 5 (2 being tame, 5 being more challenging). We spent a day and a half on the river total and were home late on Sunday.

And IT WAS AWESOME.

I'm not a strong swimmer, and I've never had fantasies about snorkeling or scuba-diving or any other activity that requires carting around a tank of oxygen to enjoy, but man, did I love rafting. This river was relatively calm, so it was a great introduction to the sport, and there were plenty of peaceful moments where I remember leaning back, holding onto my paddle, and thinking, I could sit like this forever. I got along great with all the alumni who attended, and we bonded over lunches of hot dogs and hamburgers grilled along the river's edge, and I never cared that my hair looked like crap. Again, AWESOME.

 

Here I am with my raftmates "surfing" a righteous pocket of whitewater on the New River. Clearly, I had not yet joined Weight Watchers.

I had so much fun that the following year, when our alumni director planned a second whitewater trip for Labor Day weekend, I couldn't say no. I paid my own way this time, though my boss chipped in a hundred bucks from her own pocket since she knew I would write another piece for the magazine, and I even sprung for my sister Samantha, a senior there at the time, to come with me. Luke has always been an outdoorsman at heart, and it didn't take any convincing to get him to join us.

We went back to West Virginia and used the same adventure company as before, but this time we spent our time wrestling the Lower Gauley. As you can see in the below picture (which was obviously taken by the rafting company), it was a little more challenging than the New River.

 

When rafting, the guides stress the importance of everyone doing their fair share of paddling if you want to stay afloat when hitting the more aggressive waves. This was the biggest wave we encountered on our entire trip, yet Samantha completely ignored the rules in favor of diving to the middle of the raft to keep from falling out. This picture hangs in my stairway and it is one of my favorites to this day.

With all that fun, though, it was such a rough Saturday that we skipped the half-day allotted for rafting on Sunday and stayed behind to walk the grounds of the drop-off site.

 

My sister was preparing to graduate, so I loved being able to have this time with her.

 

Meanwhile, after two years of dating, Luke and I had settled into a pretty nice rhythm. By this point we had gone on several overnights to various state parks in the area, but this was our first time doing anything Big. The whole time we were there, we couldn't stop ourselves from talking about coming back.

 

Last but not least, I was enjoying a healthier, lighter me, thanks to losing 17 pounds through Weight Watchers.

 

The Three Whitewater Musketeers.

Luke and I did go rafting one last time in 2004, again with Saint Joe, again on the Lower Gauley, again taking a pass on Sunday rafting to recover from the day before, our "recovery" involving a pretty steep hike round-trip to access a spot on the Gauley where most rafters and canoers get into trouble (aka flip over). Coincidentally, that was also the last year Saint Joe sponsored the trip, but in 2005 I had moved to Indianapolis, so I wouldn't have had the time or money to attend, anyway. Luke and I still talk about when we can go rafting again. What an amazing time.

LUKE'S 30TH BIRTHDAY SURPRISE, ANGOLA, INDIANA (2004)

I haven't been part of many surprise events, but the one I did orchestrate turned out to be one of the best vacations I've ever had. I was a new 24 with a steady paycheck and willingness to do something extra special for Luke's thirtieth birthday which, as many of you know, falls on Valentine's Day, so advance planning was critical to making the day a success.

His birthday fell on a Saturday that year, so on Friday morning I had a single rose in a vase delivered to his work, with instructions to go home, pack a bag filled with warm clothes and at least one nice outfit, and be outside his apartment by 10:30 a.m. Of course, weeks prior I had cleared this with his boss so that he wouldn't be surprised by Luke's cutting the day short.

We drove about three and a half hours from Rensselaer to Angola, Indiana, eventually parking in front of the Tulip Tree Inn.

 

Forgive the shit-poor film quality, as this picture was taken with a (gasp!) manual camera, and the prints didn't come out all that great to begin with, so scanning them in makes them look even worse.

Our room was adorable, so quaint and pretty, and while we had to share a bathroom with another couple down the hall, it was so, so worth it for the atmosphere.

 

That night we grabbed pizza in town and prepared for our big Saturday, which involved enjoying the toboggan run at Pokagon State Park. I had been tobogganing once as a kid and loved it, and Luke and I had talked about doing something like that several times in the past. The line was insanely long, so we only took a single run, but man, was it fun.

 

Afterwards, we had lunch at the park's inn and spent the afternoon hiking the trails.

The recent snowfall made for some tricky moments on stairs, but overall it was a wonderful few hours spent walking, talking, and indulging our playful side.

I included these photos in a do-it-yourself snowglobe as part of my Christmas present to Luke that year, but now it sits on my dresser among stacks of paperwork and unmated socks. Again, these are two of my favorite pictures ever, because of the memories they invoke.

After our hike, we drove back into town and walked some more of the downtown area, and eventually stopped for a break of hot chocolate (me) and coffee (him).

Another hour of talking and laughing. Our whole day was a conversation that I didn't want to end.

That night, we had dinner at The Hatchery, which was described by the owner of the Tulip Tree Inn as the nicest restaurant in town. My planning foresight involved making reservations on the same day I booked our room, more than a month before, and still we waited over an hour for a table, but again, so worth it. I don't remember what I had - probably steak and some form of potato - but Luke still raves about the bolognese sauce he had with his pasta dish. Our waiter was kind enough to snap our picture with my crappy camera.

After dinner we went back to our room and enjoyed some red wine. The following day, we drove to his parents' house in Merrillville, where his mom, dad, and brother were expecting us, and sang a hearty round of "Happy Birthday" around a cake made by Luke's mom while the birthday boy blew out his candles.

It was an absolutely perfect weekend, and another trip that gets talked about all the time.

I can't believe that was SEVEN YEARS AGO. What babies we were in our relationship, with so much ahead of us to navigate, and even more to learn about each other. And yet still, perfect.

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There are a couple more trips I have in mind to address in a future part two, but that involves digging through even more photo albums, so that may take awhile. If you want to read about some of our more recent adventures, though, check out:

Niagara Falls Honeymoon 2006 (couple of actual pictures here)
Indiana Dunes Camping Trip 2006
Mackinac Island Babymoon 2007
New Buffalo, Michigan Anniversary Weekend 2009

On Tuesday I hit the 23-week mark. My, but time flies when you have a mini-gymnast pummeling you from the inside! (That's what she said! - BA DUM BUM HA HA I BEAT YOU TO IT)

For comparison purposes, here's an entry featuring a shot of me pregnant with Kara at the same point in time. And here's one with Nathan.

 

Can you tell how good I feel about myself in this picture? The warm and fuzzies are the combined product of a long-overdue haircut from my regular salon to clean up my layers (many thanks, state refund check) and being the recipient of a batch of maternity clothes from Katy and another member of our book club (faded shirt is mine; stylish cargo pants, unfortunately, are not). For so much of this pregnancy I've been looking worn out and frumpy, and it feels so good to regain a little bit of my former, pre-gestating self.

Baby Brother continues to be on the move for much of the day and night, and it's been a lot of fun to get an unexpected kick in the middle of a meeting or during an episode of Law and Order: SVU. You'd think my body was reaping the benefits of all that calorie-burning because I find myself ravenous for food practically 'round the clock, to the point that last night I dreamt I was at my parents' house enjoying a GRIDDLE'S WORTH OF BACON. As of today I've only gained about two pounds of baby weight, but once you start dreaming about greasy pork products, I suspect it's all downhill from there.

Speaking of weight, the weight of my belly is finally starting to wear on me, and its size is making simple activities like going to the bathroom a monumental accomplishment. I find myself rolling around like a cue ball on a pool table, desperately trying to find that one right angle that will allow me to empty my bladder completely instead of in stages. Getting in and out of bed? Motherfucker, that hurts. If only I could just take this thing off for a while to give myself a rest, but apparently that is not how this process works.

Despite continuing to be plagued with pain from my diastasis recti, I've still been too cheap to buy a maternity belt; however, in my defense, the waist band on my borrowed jeans today is certainly tight enough to hold those muscles in place until I can prop my feet up again. Luke and I are pretty decided on Baby Brother's name, and in spare moments throughout my day I find myself writing it over and over, along with Kara's and Nathan's, and then mine and Luke's, and good Lord, sometimes I still can't believe we are going to be a family of five. I'm getting so excited to see him and hold him and welcome him into our lives. For all the worries I had at the beginning of this pregnancy, I am equally joyous right now, knowing with every fiber of my being that this baby was meant to be with us.

It's also about now that The Comments start to fly.

Every pregnant women deals with them, and by now you would think I could let these types of remarks roll off my back and take them for the well-intentioned conversation-starters they (sometimes) are, but I can't. I am more apt to hold people accountable for their words and for adhering to basic human etiquette, even if sometimes it's only in my head.

That said, may I present to you:

WHAT NOT TO SAY TO SOMEONE WHO'S EXPECTING: A BRIEF GUIDE

Regarding size

"Wow, look at you. Have you grown? Because you look so much bigger than the last time I saw you."

[immediately followed by]

"Seriously, in just the last week your belly has gotten so much bigger!"

"Are the kids asking a lot of questions? You know, since you're so big now."

"Are you okay? You just look really...tired. I can see it in your face." (Which: I know I did people, but if you think knowing that makes it easier to hear, newsflash! It doesn't.)

Regarding three

"Was it planned?"

"So you have two kids already. Wow, two. And you're going to have a third! Oh my gosh!"

"My husband and I would love it if we had more, but I don't think we could do it to ourselves on purpose."

"Were you trying?"

"Luke is going to have his hands full with three kids at home! Does he ever just need to get away for a while once you get home?" (Bonus points for including this in the same conversation with the first two statements on size)

For those of you in the I've Been Pregnant Camp, which comments drove you up the wall? Do share.

It was all so perfect in my head.

During one of my first prenatal appointments for this pregnancy, I discussed with my ob/gyn the possibility of getting my tubes tied shortly after delivering baby number three. I already knew that the hospital where I had Kara and Nathan wouldn't allow this procedure during the c-section, being a Catholic institution and all, and I was okay with that because I loved both of my stays there and how I was treated by the staff. Plus, Luke has always been willing to man up and get The Snip, so there was no reason to give it any more thought.

Until recently, when I gave it some more thought.

The idea came up again during talks with a coworker who is expecting her first child in May; I learned that she was delivering her little guy at a neighboring hospital, and it reminded me that when I first signed up with my practice some four years ago, right before I became pregnant with Kara, my doctor told me she had privileges at that very facility, in addition to the one I eventually chose. Let's call my current hospital Scrubs A and this second one Scrubs B.

Scrubs B has no religious affiliation but maintains an equally stellar reputation.

The wheels in my head started turning.

Originally, I didn't even want to think about switching to another hospital because my experiences with Scrubs A up to this point have been wonderful, and I had no desire to throw unnecessary wild cards into the mix with this last baby. However, Luke and I have been doing an awful lot of talking about the whole getting fixed issue lately, and since my personal deductible will be all paid up as a result of the charges associated with this pregnancy, any procedures that are covered by insurance would be free of charge for me. You never want money to play a factor in determining which spouse gets sterilized, but when you are already pinching pennies and you are searching for a permanent resolution to ending the reproductive chapter of your life, it is what it is.

So I changed my tune. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to switch things up a little, especially since Scrubs B is so well known for its maternity services and especially since, to the best of my recollection, my doctor could just as easily deliver there as she could at Scrubs A. Then I could kill two birds with one stone - one baby, one tubal, one surgery for the win!

"Let me just make sure the practice still delivers at this hospital," I told Luke a couple of weeks ago. "My next appointment is soon. I can't imagine they wouldn't deliver there anymore."

That appointment was today, and guess what? They don't deliver there anymore.

Well, that's not exactly true. As it turns out, privileges are maintained by physicians on an individual basis, and of the now eight ob/gyns currently with my practice, only two might possibly still retain privileges. This is largely due to the practice's close proximity to Scrubs A - we're talking right-across-the-street close - and of course, as fate would have it, my own doctor is not one of those two. She explained that she stayed affiliated with Scrubs B for quite a while but that her patients always chose to deliver at Scrubs A, so she finally decided there was no need to maintain her ties with Scrubs B. MINUS ONE FOR FREMA.

On the up side, though, the two doctors she mentioned are ones I really like, so while I didn't particularly enjoy the idea of having someone other than my primary physician perform the c-section, that's exactly what happened with Kara and everything went swimmingly, so the switch was still on the table, until she reminded me that if a complication accelerated my delivery and one of those two doctors weren't on call, I'd end up having Baby Brother at Scrubs A, anyway. And as long-time readers may recall, I did have a complication with Nathan that caused me to deliver earlier than planned, so even though my scheduled c-section removes a good chunk of the guesswork from the actual birth, the pregnancy itself is still very much up for grabs, and the last thing I want is to spend my remaining gestating months fretting over how this will all play out.

All of that to say: no two-in-one for me.

Still desperately wanting to take advantage of having a paid-in-full deductible, I talked to my doc about having a tubal after the fact and learned I could schedule it within a week or two of my six-week postnatal follow-up, if I wanted. Which at first I did, because hello with still trying to kill two birds with one stone. Two surgeries within the same recovery period can still be considered a win, right?

My findings: It's a standard outpatient procedure, my ob/gyn can do it, I'd have to be sedated, and someone would have to drive me home afterwards, but recovery time is short at roughly one to two weeks. However, during that time, I would be prohibited from any strenuous exercise: no running, no 30-Day Shred, etc. You know, all the things I planned to do to get into shape before returning to work. Of my anticipated 12-week leave, I would be able to maybe use three of those to actively lose any baby weight.

I went back to work after eight weeks with Nathan, and I looked and felt terrible. I do not care to repeat that experience with baby number three, when the length of time off is one of the benefits I now have at my disposal.

So, all of THAT to say: no tubal during maternity leave for me.

After my appointment, Luke and I did some more talking, and  we came up with a plan. We decided that he would reschedule the urologist consult he cancelled back in October to get more information about The Snip and to find out how much of it would be covered by insurance. If our portion is minimal - as in, a few hundred dollars or less - then Luke will take care of things before I deliver, and we'll write off the bill as money well spent. If the cost outweighs the benefits for us at this particular moment in time, I will schedule a tubal for myself around the holidays, at which point I'll have been back at work long enough to use up some vacation time. Either way, somebody in the Frema-Useless Clutter household is getting sterilized in 2011.

I smell a new reality show for next season. We can call it The Amazing Race: Tubes versus Testes!

Seeing as I am now 22 weeks pregnant and therefore no longer in any shape to be running downhill with two toddlers and a laptop on my person, it was time to spruce up the ole blog banner. Fortunately, once again, Luke happily came to my rescue. Having free design services under your very own roof is nothing to sneeze at, people.

For those of you following via feed reader, here is the latest look:

 

I keep telling my husband to add his mugface somewhere so that I don't appear to be an unwed mother with poor access to birth control, but my pleas fall on deaf ears. One day I may have no choice but to Photoshop in a picture of Joshua Jackson, just to appear respectable.

The sacrifices I am willing to make for my children, I swear.

Anyway, as if this news weren't exciting enough, I have finally created a Facebook fan page for this website! It was my big project for the week, and it took me two tries to get it right, because the first time around I done got myself confused by all the options Facebook offered when it came to categorizing pages, so I went with "Writer/People," because hello! I am a writer. Am also person! That's two for two right there. And immediately I was so pleased with myself that I shot off invites to anyone on my Friends list that I thought would give a damn, and it was only when I attempted to finetune my profile that I realized maybe I had made the wrong choice. But for some reason unbeknownst to me, Facebook doesn't allow you to recategorize a page; you either resign yourself to being inappropriately labeled or delete the page and start over. With two days in and only nine likes, I figured it was safe to scrap my early effort and start fresh.

Mission accomplished.

I'm not really sure what I'll do with this page yet; I will definitely add links to my posts as they're published here, so if you are on Facebook a lot and don't like having to jump around to access content you like, this is a pretty sweet deal for you, isn't it? I may also post random thoughts and questions as they come to me just to spice things up. At this point, I'm also open to suggestions, so if you have any, fire away.

Next big project: deciding on an ad network. Right now I only know of a couple: BlogHer and Google. So if you have experiences with or opinions on either one, let me know that, too.

Luke and I went through with The Great Carseat Experiment this weekend, and we were able to come up with an arrangement that will suit our needs well enough to bring Baby Brother home in the Outlander.

We first tried using the three existing seats presently in our possession - Kara's Britax Marathon, Nathan's Britax Roundabout, and the Baby Trend infant bucket and base from Jenn - but the Marathon kept bumping into the passenger door upon closing, so on Saturday afternoon we made a trip to Target to invest in a highback booster seat, which bought us the couple of inches we needed to avoid a budget-blowing vehicle upgrade. We are lucky in that Kara meets both the height and weight requirements for a booster, and we went with a highback so our girl could enjoy the benefits of side impact protection a while longer. Though we have the seat in our possession now, we will continue to use the Marathon for Kara until right before the baby's arrival, when the bucket seat will be permanently installed.

We don't know for sure how long we can get by with our current car; at some point Nathan's Roundabout will need an upgrade, and I don't know how three convertible/booster seats will fit back there, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, we are just grateful to retain our status as a car-payment-free family, however long that lasts.

Kneeling on the front passenger cushion to look back at all those child seats nestled together, I realized this was the first time I had a tangible representation of what life will look like with three children. And honestly, it was a little overwhelming. I assume that was only the first of numerous similar-type moments to come.

ABOUT THE STROLLER

Luke and I have given the whole stroller situation some more thought and decided against buying anything for now. For one, Luke reminded me we have a perfectly good umbrella stroller collecting dust in the garage. Also, we have a several baby carriers at our disposal - an infant-sized Baby Bjorn hand-me-down, the Maclaren I received while writing for Parents.com that worked splendidly with Nathan, and an Ergo that will see us into toddlerhood. With all of those things, we own more than enough gear to transport this baby on errands, zoo trips, etc. My main concern was having something for Luke to use when getting Kara and Nathan to and from school, but he has already assured me he would rather use the carrier instead of a stroller to keep both hands free.

Also, about the double stroller: I appreciated all the suggetions, but Luke and I have a double stroller. With two kids 13 months apart, it was sort of a necessity, at least in the early months when Nathan was brand-new and Kara was still a baby herself. Nowadays, though, it doesn't get much use since we received a wagon as a generous present from my in-laws and Kara and Nathan much prefer that to being strapped in to individual seats. Plus, even with the wagon, they actually walk most of the time, so Luke and I anticipate needing only one stroller (if any, what with all the aforementioned carrier options) to contain the baby.

Does your brain hurt? I know mine does. Another recurring symptom of Life With Three Children, I suspect.

This past Sunday, I spent a glorious three hours cleaning out Kara's closet and sorting her outgrown clothes into Tupperware bins for other fashionistas to enjoy. Now that we know the baby's sex and ESPECIALLY since Luke and I will be taking steps to nail shut close the door on the reproductive phase of our lives, I'm eager to let go of that which no longer represents the family we are now and make room for the next round of material fanfare. (Though I did hold on to some unique iron-on onesies made by a special Internet auntie.) For us, that chapter involves turning two toddlers into roommates by situating them in a gender-neutral space absent of floral wall art and yellow paint and preparing a nursery for our newest little guy. 

When it comes to feeling ready for this baby, I haven't yet experienced that paralyzing Oh, Shit Moment Amalah described in a recent post, but at this point it's only a matter of days, as I have already shared with Luke my strong desire to conduct The Great Carseat Experiment this weekend to finally determine how we will fit three children in the second row of the Outlander. Luckily, we have two different infant buckets at our disposal - the Chicco KeyFit 30 originally purchased for Kara, which we love but anticipate being too bulky to position between two toddler seats, and a slimmer Baby Trends hand-me-down from my friend Jenn that may just do the trick. It also helps that Kara is now the appropriate height and weight for a booster seat (40 pounds and 40 inches, as of last week's well-child visit), so that should buy us a little more room.

Anyway, just imagining those carseats all smashed together lined up in a perfectly safe arrangement is working me into a mini-frenzy. Actually watching this image come to life is guaranteed to secure my one-way ticket to Crazy Pregnant Lady Town.

As I've stated before, we truly are blessed to have so many of Baby Brother's "necessities" already in our possession, the result of having two young children and generous family and friends. Bassinet, crib, changing table, swing, car seat, bouncy seats, nursing pillows, bottle warmers, infant AND toddler carriers, mobile... We haven't spent a dime on him yet, and that includes my maternity wardrobe, which so far has accommodated my current size nicely (though come summer I may be singing a different tune). We do know, though, that there are a couple of things we'll want to pick up, the biggest item being a stroller. Once I'm feeling up to it, Luke and I want to be out and about as much as possible with all three kids this summer, and while baby carriers are wonderful, it would be nice to NOT have the baby strapped to my person every waking moment of the day if I so desire. Of course, our choice of stroller will be heavily influenced by the infant car seat we end up using - another reason The Great Carseat Experiment must take place as soon as possible - and after doing some price-checking online, I'm wondering if it would make more sense financially to drop some dough on a moderately priced travel system than spend almost the same amount on a single stroller.

A jogging stroller would also be grand, but unless we win the lottery, Luke and I will be staggering our alone time on the trail accordingly. Which is not terrible in theory, since I'm sure we'll each welcome a short break from the zoo that will be our household.

One area where I do want to spend some money is on decorating the kids' rooms. Kara and Nathan's room would benefit from a fresh coat of paint, spunky wall art, and some new bedding if we can swing it right away. As for the baby's room, it's technically all ready to go for a boy, but I hate the thought of bringing him home to a space that was custom-designed for his big brother. Plus, nurseries are so much damn FUN to decorate, and I want to experience doing that one last time.

Luke and I also once talked about painting the kitchen, half bath, and the kids' bathroom, but these action items may be placed on hold until fall, when we will hopefully have more moolah at our disposal. Not to mention it might make more sense to paint those areas closer to sell time, in case our color palettes are deemed All Wrong by our real estate agent. (Feel free to agree with me here -- or not -- in the comments.)

It feels like we've been talking about these various projects for simply ages now, but pretty soon it'll be time to spring into action, because Oh, shit, a baby is coming! (hey, there it is!), and babies do not factor your laundry to-do list into their date of arrival.

Ingrates!

I am 21 weeks pregnant today, and according to the plethora of baby books in existence, I should be at my prenatal peak: visibly showing but not enormous, increased energy levels, and only occasional bouts of round ligament pain. Go on and run that 5K! Hike your ass off! Enjoy these precious weeks of gestating freedom while you still can!

All of that may be the case for a first-timer or a gal who hasn't birthed 11- and 9-pound newborns, but these are not my truths.

After complaining of tenderness in my belly at my 15-week appointment, a quick exam from my ob/gyn revealed that I have a condition called diastasis recti, meaning that my rectus abdominal muscle has separated into two vertical halves. It's common among women who have endured multiple pregnancies and who have delivered larger-sized babies -- CHECK and CHECK -- and it's not anything I need to be concerned about in the long run (so I've been told, at least), but the doctor did say that the tenderness would remain present throughout the pregnancy and most likely increase in intensity. And oh shit, was she ever right.

I usually begin my day feeling perfectly normal, and if I were the sadistic type I could lightly pummel my stomach without suffering even the slightest twinge of pain. But by the end of the work day, the soreness has emerged from its bat cave, and come dinnertime the skin over my belly button is protruding something fierce, to the point that if it even lightly brushes up against another object of any kind, I am clutching my sides and sucking in my breath as if I've been kicked with a steel-toed boot. Even simple acts like sitting on the floor or repositioning myself on the couch have become seriously fucking unpleasant, and poor Luke has taken over the bulk of evening kitchen clean-up once again.

At my last two appointments, each doctor has recommended using a maternity belt to relieve some of the pressure, but I don't wear belts when I'm NOT pregnant because I hate the idea of having something so constricting touching my skin. However, the pain has gotten worse over the last several days, and even Luke is pushing me to look into this. Have any of you dealt with this condition before? If so, did a belt work for you? Any feedback on this would be much appreciated.

 

It doesn't even look like a typical pregnant belly, does it--all triangular and cliff-like? Plus, my hairstyle is making history by introducing what can only be described as the first front-facing mullet for women! to the modern American public. Clearly, the epitome of sexiness all around!

The saving grace throughout all of this has been Baby Brother's activity, which has been strong enough for weeks to feel at various points throughout the day, and oftentimes it is a welcome distraction from focusing on how uncomfortable I am. I'm already daydreaming about what he looks like, what he'll feel like, and what our lives will be like after we bring him home. Kara and Nathan have started incorporating mentions of Baby Brother in our daily conversations, so I think it's becoming a little more real for them, too.

Kara: Does Mommy and Daddy love you? (She revels in asking this question and poses it frequently throughout the day)
Frema: Yes, honey, Mommy and Daddy love you and Nathan very much.
Kara: And the new baby?
Frema: Yes, honey, and the new baby.

 And we do. We really, really do. 

Turns out we won't be able to pay off our credit card debt before Baby Brother 2.0's arrival.

I discovered this on Valentine's Day after Luke filed our taxes and I created budgets for every paycheck through June. We were so close, dammit--just a few hundred dollars away--but alas, Visa is not the only entity that needs our money. We are furiously pumping dollars into our HSA for my ob/gyn and hospital bills and into short-term savings to cover unexpected expenses during my maternity leave and transition back to work. Our goal to get out of credit card debt is going to take longer than we planned--probably into the beginning of the New Year, unfortunately--but at least the end is in sight.

All of this got me thinking about ways to bring in more money.

I've mentioned several times here my eagerness to explore launching a freelance business I could manage in my "spare time," but right now, it's not going to happen. For one thing, building a client base will be more difficult than I first thought. My original plan was to reach out to some of the advertising, design, and printing vendors I know through work, but I recently learned this type of relationship is regarded as a "conflict of interest" by my employer, so good-bye to that idea. Now, I could still go after like-minded companies to land similar types of projects, but when in my day am I supposed to network, set up introductions, attend client meetings, and just plain be available for questions or immediate needs? My work is flexible, but not THAT flexible, you know? Also, I doubt one lunch hour per week day would be enough to manage those things, and most people are not up for conducting business face-to-face after 5 p.m.

I'm sure some more efficient ways to iron out these details details would present themselves with a litle bit of pre-planning, but at this point in my life, I'm not willing to explore them. It would be easier to apply for a nights-and-weekends job at the Gap and be done with it, but right now the whole point is to increase our income while maximizing our time together as a family.

So I've got a different plan. As the great Monica Gellar once proclaimed in the second season of Friends when she invested her last few unemployment dollars into MGE stock, "I'm going to bet on me!"

In my particular scenario, "me" equals this blog.

Before I had kids, I was able to pay a lot more attention to this here little site, and the unintended (but very welcome) result was a two-year stint at Parents.com. What a wonderful opportunity as a writer to be paid for sharing my thoughts and experiences with pregnancy and motherhood. It's also how I came to know some pretty awesome people.

On the flip side, Mom-101 spends a lot of time talking about appreciating your value as a blogger and not underestimating your worth, and I think that was my biggest failure with Parents.com. Not in the sense that any additional efforts on my part would have kept the community from shutting down, but in hindsight I see that my fear of being labeled a "sell-out" for taking that gig kept me from publicizing my content and making it more accessible to long-time readers. I didn't Tweet links or start a Facebook page because Some People don't like that. But you know what? Some People do, and that includes me. I think it's helpful when the bloggers I follow on Twitter share their newest post, I'm among the first to "like" a Facebook fan page for a blog I love, and I don't think twice when somebody decides to implement advertising on their site. I have preferences on how those things are done, but I don't object to the acts themselves. So why have I always been so much harder on myself than the Internet trailblazers I so admire? Hell, I couldn't bring myself to keep a list of Parents entries in my own damn sidebar. God forbid I give the impression that I believe my writing is actually worth READING.

What it comes down to, I think, at least for me, is that for the longest time the majority of online content was published purely for recreation, without any thought given to financial gain or career opportunities. You blogged because it was fun and didn't assign any value to it beyond random shits and giggles. These days you can host ads, write sponsored posts, receive corporate sponsorship to attend a conference, freelance for other sites, and optimize your posts for keywords that apply to your "desired market." You can manage your personal brand just like the big wigs do over at Best Buy, Amazon, and Apple.

I work in marketing and communications, so I'm pretty familiar with the concept of branding. I've just never really done it for myself.

Thankfully, marketing can be done tastefully and with respect for the end user, but compared to established creative industries like music and book publishing, blogging is relatively new to the concept of for-profit strategy, and the community is still mulling over that proverbial line in the sand when it comes to deciding how far is too far. And opinions vary drastically. To some, blog links on Twitter are tacky. For others, partial feeds to increase site click-throughs are grounds for cancelling a newsfeed subscription. Then there are those who simply ignore any bells and whistles that don't appeal to them and keep on doing their blog-reading thang.

My problem is I've been operating all these years on two potentially faulty assumptions:

• That any reader in the history of the universe who encounters my blog is against any form of self-promotion, and
• That that those opinions should heavily influence how I manage my blog.

Obviously, neither has to be true.

As is the case with so many areas in my life, I need to stop worrying about what other people think and start trusting my own gut when it comes to making decisions, whether they pertain to my boobs or my blog or whatever.

A long time ago, Molly and I talked about trying to launch a mom-centric website of sorts, but neither of us had a concrete idea to pursue, and currently I don't have the mindset to commit to starting something brand-new from scratch. However, this blog has always been important to me, and I never regret the time I spend updating. I certainly don't need another reason to spend more time here, but if there is even a small chance I can take something so personally fulfilling and turn it into a financial opportunity, well, why not at least try?

I have no idea where this will go. I am open to incorporating ads, though I have no idea which network to use, and I could earn twenty bucks a month or nothing at all. I'd love to land another freelance gig but have no idea how to go after that, as Parents was handed to me on a silver platter. I don't feel comfortable writing sponsored posts at this time, and there aren't any resources available in the Frema-Useless Clutter household for blogging conferences or other networking events.

I can...start a Facebook fan page, though, right? That's easy. That's free.

So, all of THAT to say this: I'm going to start a Facebook fan page!  You're trembling in your boots with excitement, aren't you? I can totally tell.

One of my biggest, all-consuming fears about having baby number three is breastfeeding.

Part of me feels ridiculous admitting that to anyone. After all, I've gone through this twice already! Shouldn't I be a pro by now? Or, at the very least, accept that breastfeeding is not my fight and write it off altogether? After all, to say I've been unsuccessful at nursing would be a vast understatement. To say I'm excited to try it again? That would be a lie.

It's funny; the content of this post has been on my mind for weeks, but now that I'm writing it, I'm not sure what to say.

When I found out I was pregnant again, I resolved to do everything in my power to make breastfeeding a reality for my family. I have read The Books, and the blogs, and the comments to those blogs, so the health and bonding benefits of breastmilk (and, consequently, the drawbacks of formula) are not lost on me. Plus, it's no secret that we are living on a pretty tight budget, so the cost savings aren't anything to laugh at, either. More than anything, though, was this feeling of wanting to overcome a hurdle that has previously appeared insurmountable.

I'm not blaming low supply because honestly, I'm not convinced that was the problem. With Kara, I couldn't keep her on the breast for more than a couple of minutes before she was crying and pushing me away. The lactation consultants at the hospital checked her latch several times, and it seemed fine to them, but who knows? It's not like I had any idea what I was doing, despite reading all those books, so it's very possible my technique was off or Kara's positioning wasn't right or any number of things related to my management of the situation. I never got more than a couple ounces from the pump in a session, whether I pumped every two hours or four, but again, what the hell did I know? Maybe my volume would have increased over time. Maybe I should have just been happy with the amount I was producing and made peace with supplementing the rest of the time.

I didn't try nipple shields, and I didn't attend any support group meetings (though I did call about the one offered through our hospital, and sorry, that once-a-month get-together slated for next Thursday isn't going to help me RIGHT NOW). It's not like I kept at it until my boobs had nothing left to give. It truly was my decision.

So for those who think I didn't try hard enough, well. I suppose they are right. But during those initial weeks of breastfeeding, my mind went to some very dark places. I felt terrible about myself as a mother, which in theory should have been enough to make me go the distance for as long as I could, but even more than that, I hated the idea of doing all those things and STILL most likely failing. Aside from the first couple of days of her life, feeding Kara was a source of stress, self-doubt, and guilt. At some point before the six-week mark I decided that suffering through those feelings for even one more day was more than I could bear. The reality of motherhood, I quickly learned, is that sometimes, when there's a conflict of interest between what you could ideally accomplish as a parent and what you can realistically handle, your own mental sanity has to win out. Second best just has to be enough.

... And THAT was breastfeeding with Kara.

With Nathan, things felt like they were getting off to a better start. I had still had trouble perfecting my latch, but he didn't fight my efforts and ate as often as I would let him, so I was hopeful that this time, please, this time, things would be different. However, at his two-week appointment with the pediatrician, my stomach dropped after the nurse checked his weight and announced a paltry two-ounce gain. TWO OUNCES. My God, did I feel like shit then, and my mind immediately went back to my experience with Kara, and how I fucked that up, and by the time we saw the doctor, any shred of confidence I had about nursing was gone. I continued to pump for another couple of weeks, but I don't think I ever put him on the breast again.

And now, I get to do it all over again with baby number three.

Like I stated above, when I first learned we were having another baby, I was set on doing everything within my power to make breastfeeding work this time around, and hey, third time's a charm, right? I talked about it with Katy, who nursed both of her boys into toddlerhood; borrowed more books; researched lactation consultants; and gave myself numerous pep talks that this time, things would be different.

But now? I honestly don't know. I hate that my first months at home with Kara and Nathan are tainted with such strong feelings of failure. As a working mother, that time to bond means more to me than almost anything else in that first year, and Luke and I are doing everything we can to stock our bank account accordingly so that I can take all twelve of those precious, job-protected weeks off without suffering serious financial repurcussions. I cherish that time to connect with my babies, to snuggle them in the rocking chair and take naps with them on my chest and cover their hands and cheeks and toes with kisses and overall just get to know who they are. It would be so much easier to say, This is not for me, and release myself from ever having to think about this again.

Then again, this time, things might be different. Baby Brother 2.0 could prove to be a fantastic nurser and all my worries could be for nothing. (Kind of like all those "Should we have a third baby?" conversations!) And I do appreciate the benefits, and I do really want those cost savings. Just not at the cost of my self-esteem.

One of the most popular retorts I've heard spoken by the more judgemental nursing mothers and that has most enraged me about the entire breast-or-bottle discussion is the whole "Well, if you aren't willing to make sacrifices for your children, why did you bother to have them?" It makes my fists clench and blood boil and and smoke shoot out of my ears, because really, when did how you feed a baby in the first year of life become the sole measuring stick for quality parenting? And who is anyone to say that I don't make sacrifices for my kids? Luke and I bust our tail to live on one income so they can enjoy all the benefits that go along with that. We painstakingly chose our house because we wanted to make sure they could go to one of the best public school systems in the city. We pack their meals with fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and they have yet to even try soda. We have slashed our household budget more times than I care to count in order to enroll both of them into Kara's day-out program this fall. I can't tell you the last time we bought clothes or shoes or even a magazine for ourselves, but Kara and Nathan get everything they need and then some. 

I did not become a mother because I wanted to breastfeed. I became a mother because I wanted to experience the joy of raising children and because I thought I could do a good job. I did not promise to make every right choice. I did not promise to always put myself last. But I do strive to give my family the best that I have as often as I can. I am proud of the home Luke and I have made for our kids and the life we are able to give them. And when I don't have it in me to reach the ideal, I will forgive myself (eventually) and try to move on.

This all sounds so good in black and white, doesn't it? Let's see how well my heart can embrace it, come June.

Today marks 20 weeks of pregnancy with Baby Brother 2.0, as well as the blessed more-than-halfway! milestone, since my c-section will be scheduled sometime prior to the 40-week point. As of 6:30 this morning, I'm still clocking in about two pounds lighter compared to when I first got knocked up, mainly because I could barely tolerate anything except fruit, yogurt, and the occasional bite of chicken for almost the entire first trimester and some change. Things are back to normal now, for the most part, so in the grand scheme of things what felt like Hell on Earth wasn't completely unbearable, and I know lots of pregnant women experience a far more severe case of morning sickness than I do, but dudes. For serious, I was so damn sick, and useless to my family, and overall just a big blob of miserable.

The blog title, it makes sense now, yes?

I had such high hopes for maintaining an active pregnancy right from the get-go. The week I found out, I was running along the Chicago lakeshore, and at around six weeks I finished a local 5K with only a handful of walking breaks. Running is the only form of exercise I have ever truly loved, and I fully intended to stick with it for as long as I was feeling able. Then, suddenly, BAM! Everything upset my stomach, I was nodding off by 8 p.m., and I was plagued with constant headaches. I couldn't gather the energy to wash dishes at the sink, let alone throw on my gym shoes and log three miles on the trail. And now, at the more-than-halfway! point, sporting a belly that has pretty much collapsed into gestational position and experiencing sciatic nerve episodes, abdominal tenderness, and semi-frequent aches and pains ("You talk like an 80-year-old grandma!" Samantha laughed during a recent phone conversation), I am pretty much thinking that running is off the table until after I deliver. I plan to start walking and hiking outside once the weather gets nicer, and my friend Jen shared with me a prenatal video that I want to try, but I'm still bummed I didn't feel up to doing more when my bodily functions weren't being compared to members of the geriatric population. Back in the fall, I read an article highlighting female athletes who continued running during their pregnancies, and my favorite of the bunch talked about how running eased a lot of the inital discomfort she dealt with in those first few months. I am so impressed with women who manage to do this; it's one thing to push through predictable motivational issues that apply to both sexes, but forcing your body to perform when you physically feel like ass thanks to a HUMAN LIFE feeding on you like a parasite? That is mind-boggling to me.

Not mind-boggling: why I will never be described as an elite anything when it comes to athletics.

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While my prenatal fitness thus far has been nothing to write home about, I'm super optimistic about what I can accomplish during the last six weeks of maternity leave. Delivering in late June means I should be cleared for exercise in early to mid-August; it'll be sweltering, for sure, and last year I learned that my body can't handle long distances in that kind of heat, but I'm already fantasizing about updating my iPod playlist and hitting the trail again, if only for two or three miles at a time. I also remember my initial success with The Shred after having Nathan (I'll take another ten pounds in 30 days, thankyouverymuch) and wonder if it's unreasonable to think I could achieve my third pre-pregnancy weight before returning to work in the fall.

It is not lost on me that at this time last year I was visiting the gym several days a week to train for the Mini, and mentally I'm salivating over capturing that spirit again, of feeling invincible and capable and strong. I watch Luke train for that same half-marathon and hate that I can't show up this year to improve my time. Patience, I tell myself, patience; pregnancy is an endurance race in and of itself, to be approached with the same level of respect to process and self. Once I cross this finish line, only then I can set my sights on another.

Last week, I was all set to sacrifice a proper salon experience for the sake of my family's budget. It would be an adventure! I told myself optimistically in an effort to calm my fears. And good blog fodder to boot! I OWE IT TO THE INTERNET AND ALSO THE COMEDIC GENRE TO GO TO GREAT CLIPS. This was happening.

Then I talked to Gina, my girlfriend since kindergarten who back in high school introduced me to Brenda, My Favorite Hair Stylist Ever, and who appreciates the ability to do good hair even more than I do. When I explained to her my financial dilemma and adventurous plan over a two-hour chat Saturday night, I could practically hear her shaking her head on the other end of the line. "Breain, you can't go to Great Clips. You just can't," she said, and eventually convinced me to call my regular salon and ask about a bang trim, since they were the primary frustration reason I had for scheduling an appointment anywhere. And you know what? It was SIX DOLLARS. So I booked a visit for yesterday after work, and ten minutes later I walked away eight dollars poorer but also two free samples richer AND mentally a million dollars happier. Apparently, friends don't let friends go to Great Clips. Thanks again, friend.

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Another happiness boost: today is payday, and this morning I realized with a start that it marks the third payday of not having to dip into our savings account OR having to charge anything to our Visa. Step by painful step, our plan to live within our means, pay off our credit card debt, and save for the future is working. It works partly because I am no longer fighting the word "no" -- no, you can't run to Chipotle with the girls; no, you don't need eight subs AND pizza for Kara and Nathan's party, even if you do feel like a cheapskate for serving cold cuts. I know that I wear the same handful of clothes to work every day, eat the same kind of lunch every day, and it doesn't bother me like it did before. Luke has to run in below-freezing temperatures to train for the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon because we can't afford a treadmill or even a monthly gym membership, and he is doing it without complaint. Gifts to nieces and nephews have been drastically scaled down for occasions like Christmas, birthdays, and baptisms, but we do it and just remain grateful we can afford to buy them anything at all.

However, this new reality only works because Luke and I have undergone a huge shift in mindset and a willingness to ask, "What are we really working for? What is the priority here?" while embracing the amount of money we have to work with right now, instead of looking to the future for some magical solution. For example, I mentioned in an earlier post how I thought that our situation would resolve itself after receiving our tax refund check and my annual merit increase, which is typically issued at the same time every year. Well, recent events have made it clear to me that the type of increase I was expecting to get isn't something I can take for granted (the economy is affecting everyone, it seems!). And the tax check will be good, but it won't eliminate our Visa balance, so every paycheck prior to Baby Brother's arrival will continue to be carefully orchestrated to make sure we can axe off this debt, pay my OB bill, and maintain a small nest egg to compensate for what paid maternity leave and short-term disability benefits won't cover. Now more than ever, I reflect on Suze Orman's long-ago-uttered mantra, "I have more money than I will ever need," and strive (along with Luke, of course) to make this true for my family. 

But not everything is a wash. This month is fall registration time at Kara's school, and Luke and I are committed to sending both Kara and Nathan for one day a week this year. Technically, Kara is old enough for preschool, which meets for two and a half hours twice a week, but not only was it slightly more expensive, it also required Luke to finagle three small children -- including one newborn -- out of the house multiple days a week. By keeping Kara in the same type of program she's in now, she and Nathan can be out on the same day for the same number of hours, making drop-off and pick-up logistics infinitely easier on Luke. It wasn't an easy decision, knowing that Kara is capable of (and would enjoy) participating in a more education-based curriculum, but there's always next year, and we do plenty at home, and again, we're just grateful she can continue an activity she loves and that we can offer the same opportunity to Nathan. After all, THEY are what we're working for. THEY are our priority. We would gladly give up a lifetime of gym memberships and a million fast-food tacos for them.

Nathan's second birthday was a picture-perfect day.

Our January 31st started bright and early with breakfast followed by PRESENTS!

 

He and Kara adore jigsaw puzzles, but Nathan is especially smitten, so Luke and I stocked up on a few of those (the 24- and 48-piece Melissa and Doug ones are my favorite) and thew in some books for good measure. Man, am I grateful for how easy it is to please toddlers when it comes to gifts.

The day continued with a prohibited picnic lunch at an Indy-area park.

 

In my defense, I had called the facility ahead of time like a good little park enthusiast to ask about a suitable place to eat our food and was easily directed to the nature center; however, we were hit in the face with "No food and drink allowed" signs immediately upon entering the building. So Luke and I felt a bit like rebels here. I was stuffing plasticware into our picnic basket as fast as we could empty it. Totally worth it, though. The kids were captivated by the view.

 

After lunch, we spent a considerable portion of the afternoon camped out in the children's activity center, which featured small animals in tanks, toys, books, games, and puppets. And since it was a Monday, we had the whole place to ourselves.

 

Look, a toad! Their knowledge of toads is limited to the aptly named character in one of Kara's favorite series, but they were pretty taken with this one.

 

The insect bucket was also a huge hit.

 

HUGE. As was the owl puppet Nathan is clutching here.

 

LOOK MOM A PUZZLE CAN YOU BELIEVE IT.

 

Nathan would not enter this cave. Would. not. do it, and in fact felt the need to confirm this decision on multiple occasions for the duration of our time: "You don't have to go in the cave if you don't want to, riiight?"

 

Kara, meanwhile, had no such reservations. That's my girl.

 

We wrapped up the day with snickerdoodles and a wagon ride through the park, which lasted all of ten minutes because Nathan didn't like his cookie and didn't want to stay in the wagon but didn't want to walk and he was too wiggly for me to carry and he was fighting Luke tooth and nail. Clearly he was suffering from an unfortunate yet common toddler condition known as Dude, where's my nap? itis. We promptly left the park to oblige.

 

The day could end no other way, of course, except with cake. Nathan doesn't actually care much for cake and typically only takes a few obligatory bites when it's placed in front of him -- it's like he knows he should go batshit crazy over this delectable combination of carbs and sugar and doesn't want to disappoint his peers. However, he adores the idea of cake, and it was all he asked about in the days leading up to his big day.

"You can have cake on your birthday, riiight?"

"It can have candles?"

"You can have letters on it, riiight?"

Luke, the maker and baker of all edible goods in our household, did not disappoint.

 

Like I said, picture-perfect day.

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One weekday morning last week, Luke and I were still in bed when I heard the sound of rustling through the baby monitor we still keep in Nathan's room. Then, a few minutes later:

"Daaaaddy.... Daaaaddy...."

Silence, then:

"Daddy, I pooped my pants."

[pause]

"It was a big poop."

Luke got up to investigate, but there was no number two in sight. Probable culprit? Flatulence. Honest mistake. Could've happened to anyone.

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He loves to count but often forgets the number five. He's an easy-going eater but rarely drinks all of his milk. He often asks to sit on the potty before bedtime and has even gone once. His current favorite book is an I Spy compilation Kara received for Christmas, and he is insanely good at identifying all the objects, sometimes more quickly than Kara. He loves to help and is quick to throw out a "Sure!" whenever I ask him to put away his trucks or help Mommy pick up blocks. He loves trucks and trains and dinosaurs and his Build-A-Bear panda. He is more articulate than a lot of toddlers his age I've seen but still has adorable pronounciations that mark his still-visible babyhood, like "meelt" for milk and "bannas" for "bananas," and "Kara" often sounds like "Tara," with a bit of an East coast accent. He's a demanding child when he's got his eye on something, and it's not uncommon to hear him shout out commands like "I want my meelt!" or "I want ranch, Mommy!" He's also very loving and is generous with thank-yous for even the simplest of tasks.

He soaks up his time with Kara and constants seeks out her feedback and companionship. "Hey, Kara, come play trucks with me!" "Let's play with the doctor set, Kaaara!" His favorite songs to sing are "A Bushel and a Peck" and "You Are My Sunshine." He loves to dance to "the Energy song, Mommy!" and will shout "Be! Be! Energy!" as he skips in circles during the chorus. He STILL hates having his diaper changed and is not a fan of brushing his teeth. He enjoys finger painting and coloring and playing the new Goodnight, Moon game received at his and Kara's joint birthday party last month. His cheeks are so soft it's impossible not to shower them with kisses. He's a daddy's boy in many respects but thankfully still likes to cuddle with Mommy. Though cuddling is for daytime hours only; he has yet to want to sleep in bed with Luke and me. Good thing, too, seeing as it's crowded enough what with HIS OLDER SISTER thrashing about a handful of nights per week.

How many ways can I say it? He is amazing; amazing! It blows my mind to think that soon he'll play big brother to another little guy just like him. Except that nobody will ever be quite like Nathan.

 

Happy birthday, buddy. We love you.

Video courtesy of Luke and the outdated Photoshop Elements program on our computer.

That was our front-runner name for a girl. Cecilia Mae because we liked it or Cecilia Maureen in honor of my late Nana, whose actual name was Gloria Darlene, but we were going with Maureen because it's the name of my grandmother's sister, so it was still using a name from her side of the family without burdening the child with a fuddy-duddy throwback like Gloria. Though I actually did like Gloria and would have seriously considered it for a first name except that Luke was not. on. board. Darlene was, well, never an option.

Anyway, it's a moot point now. We're having a boy.

 

And not a shy one, apparently. I could tell before the ultrasound tech finished typing the first word what our little guy was sporting down there.

 

Kara and Nathan weren't much impressed by the news, but Luke and I both had tears in our eyes, and I couldn't stop smiling. I can see our future so clearly now -- birthday parties, graduations, treks through the Grand Canyon, room-sharing arrangements, tossing out casual phrases like "The boys are in the yard" -- all of it. This tiny new person, my youngest son, our new Baby Brother, feels so right for our family, and for the first time since learning I was pregnant, I sincerely CANNOT WAIT for him to get here. We love him so much, already.

To read my pre-appointment ramblings from last night, click here.

To be sung to the tune of the classic George Michael song or uttered like a blood-thirsty vampire. It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure for blog titles!

On Tuesday, I will be nineteen weeks pregnant. Tomorrow, Luke, Kara, and Nathan will accompany me to this month's ob/gyn appointment, also known as The Big Day. Private Parts Day. ULTRASOUND DAY!

[Include grand proclamation-type trumpet sound here]

"You know, we're not guaranteed to find out the baby's sex," Luke informed me, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Until then, this baby's giving up the goods, y'all.

I have mixed feelings about this. Not about finding out, but what I'm hoping for.

When I was expecting Kara, I wanted a girl. After all, I'm a girl. I know what girls are like and how they think. I had dreams of sharing my childhood interests with a girl while she was young and sharing my vast perspective as a wife/mother/daughter/career woman as she grew older. Of watching her take that information and use it to shape her own path. Plus, girls' names are more fun to play around with. When I was a kid, I kept a notebook of potential character names, and my list of girls' names was more than double my list for boys.

Anyway, we all know how that turned out. My baby was a girl! Hooray for me.

When Luke and I found out we were expecting Nathan, most people assumed we'd be gunning for a boy, playing into the whole "one of each" mentality that seems so ingrained into the picture-perfect middle class family. But once again, I hoped for a girl. I am one of four daughters and am extremely close to two of my sisters; so close that I watched one of them GIVE BIRTH. You can't predict the quality of relationship your children will have with each other as they grow up, but nonetheless, I wished for this same type of connection for them.

Of course, we didn't have a girl, and of course, I have no regrets. Nathan is amazing and has brought more happiness to our lives than I ever could have imagined. I never longed for a son the way I did a daughter, but I couldn't be more in love with my thoughtful, quirky, joyful little boy.

Upon learning about our latest bundle of joy, true to form, my default reaction was to wish for a girl. I still love the idea of being a mother to sisters and watching them bond, and again with the more interesting pool of girls' names to choose from. (To date, Luke and I agree on one boy's name. ONE.) I also like the idea of Nathan being known as our boy and not the middle child. Then again, I think about how much fun it would be to have two little boys running around and to watch that relationship grow. And if Kara were to be our girl, well, that could only bode well for her in the long run. Though maybe not her boyfriends.

In the end, I guess what I'm saying is no matter which type of parts present themselves tomorrow, I will be delighted either way. Be sure to check in for the news!

"I swear I didn't pull it that hard" was the opening I received upon taking in the broken car door handle in Luke's hand, severed from the Cobalt on Tuesday during his ninety-minute quest to free my car from several layers of ice.

"The door handle begs to differ," I said.

 

It's hard to be mad about it when he was doing such a kind thing for me, braving freezing temperatures to spare his eighteen-weeks-pregnant wife from all that time outside. Plus, it was the passenger-side door, and since normally only one person is in the Cobalt at a time, it's not a big deal in the long run. Luke is hopeful that he can superglue the handle back on once the weather is warmer; meanwhile, I worry we are one step away from using engine hoods from different vehicle models and garbage bags from under the kitchen sink as substitutes for legimate car repairs. At least superglue is budget-friendly!

This was just one of several winter-weather troubles experienced by my husband during Indy's two-day, house-bound Iceapalooza.

 

RIP, ice scraper number one.

 

...And to your cheap, good-for-nothing brother, ice scraper number two.

He also took a decent fall yesterday while completing his training run for the Mini-Marathon, attempting to hike the slope leading from our trail to our backyard, which he is still paying for today by way of cuts on his nose and lip and various aches and pains. He nearly scared the bejeezus out of me when he came back into the house.

 

Thankfully, Monday's weather was uneventful, so the four of us were able to enjoy a lovely afternoon at a nearby park to celebrate Nathan's birthday. More on that (plus his video!) soon.

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In our on-going effort to live within our means, pay off our credit card, AND have something leftover for savings, Luke and I are constantly reassesing our priorities and searching for less expensive ways to accommodate the non-negotiables. One such item that I have been consistently moving over to the next pay period for myself is a haircut. The salon I usually go to is affiliated with Aveda and charges $29 for a wash and cut. For someone who spent the better part of her teens and early twenties fighting with stylists from walk-in places like Fantastic Sam's over the best way to hack my curls, this price has never phased me because the service is top-notch and I am usually satisfied with the results. Plus, even when I was in Chicago getting the best cuts of my life (I still miss you, Brenda), the most I paid for a cut was $35. Again, so worth it to me for the service and expertise.

Unfortunately, our current budget disagrees. Either I can keep putting it off until I can afford my regular place, every day growing one step closer to resembling the cavemen in those Geico commercials, or resign myself to searching for cheaper, possibly less-experienced pastures. As evidenced by the photo below, I think it's obvious there's really just one option.

 

Look! With the proper backdrop and everything!

Action must be taken, and soon. Therefore, sometime between now and next weekend, which is when we'll travel north to attend baby Rosemary's baptism, I will cross my fingers, say a prayer, and brave the chair at Great Clips. I will be sure to keep the cut simple; right now, my hair is actually a little too "fringe-y" for my taste, and the layers are out of wack from postponing all these weeks, so a clean-up is definitely in order. The long-term goal is to grow it out to shoulder-length by summer; before that, though, I need a cut that will be more conducive to less upkeep. My hope is to replicate a style I had in 2006 during my pre-engagement/newlywed period, as pictured here:

 

Not drastically different from how I wear it now, just a little fuller at the top without the tails framing my face. That shouldn't be hard for even a new stylist to handle, right? I wouldn't think so. But then, I also thought all stylists knew how to do a blow-out with a round brush. Apparently, that is not the case.

Wish me luck, friends.

(Also: SOB, I miss that outfit. And my hair color! And the money and the basically care-free existence we had back then! Naive fools, both of you!) 

As is two and a half, and two and seven months, and two and eleven months. Life, it is like a river, what with all the ebbs and flows and and rapid changes, and while the water is often delightful, there are many times throughout each day where I feel like HOLY CRAP, THIS RIVER IS KILLING ME.

This entry has been so difficult to write (hence, why it is also more than a month late) because Kara is not a baby anymore, and my interactions with her feel more intensely personal than when my primary concerns as a mother were breast or bottle, stroller or baby carrier, and cry-it-out or rock-it-out. We have in-depth conversations now about her friends Jack and Mary and Phil and Gertrude and how they like to go on picnics and ice skate in the dining room and Mommy, they are very nice, and oh yes, their parents are nice, too. We sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at bedtime, and when I come home from work she likes to come upstairs with me while I change into my sweat pants, and once I hit the closet, she cries out, "Hooray! You get to see your mommy again!" and runs to throw her arms around my legs. Last month, while reading one of our Christmas books and talking about Mary and Joseph being Jesus' parents, Kara said, "Mommy? Do I have parents?" Also, "Can I have a Christmas Day?"

Her ability to rationalize and think through a situation never ceases to amaze me. She is so smart, so thoughtful. I love her just as much as I did when she was a baby, but I appreciate her more as I discover more about the person she is and imagine who she will become, with all her contradictions, complexities, and surprises.

However, she has also reached an age where she can be held accountable for some of her actions and can more directly impact the dynamics of our relationship - intentional or otherwise. Meanwhile, I have reached the stage as a parent where my cognitive skills and foresight have become critical to all of us having a good day. 

Before we hit this stage, Luke and I talked a lot about how we would handle issues from a discipline standpoint, and we both agreed that for our family, spanking/hitting is not a resource we care to add to our parenting toolbox. However, as a kid, I was hit all the time, for all kinds of reasons - meaning I have no personal experience with time-outs or anything resembling non-violence until I was too old for that sort of thing, and even then, there was still lots of yelling and little to none of that sit-down-at-the-kitchen-table-for-a-loving-but-firm-conversation-about-your-actions ala Full House or Family Ties.

In other words, I am totally winging this, relying on nothing but my own instincts, my ability to effectively communicate with my husband, knowledge and tips gleaned from numerous mommy blogs, and random episodes of Super Nanny.

Case in point: On the day of Kara's actual birthday, Luke and I planned to celebrate by taking her to Build-A-Bear. We had it all planned out: pick her up from school, drive the 45 minutes to the overcrowded mall where the store resided, let her pick out any animal she wanted (along with a few accessories), have a treat in the food court, and drive home for dinner and cake. Easy peasy, and heartwarming memories. Double score!

Actual turn of events: Pick her up from school. Drive the 45 minutes to Build-A-Bear. Spend TWO HOURS in the store as Kara bounced from area to area, touching all the unstuffed animal shells, claiming to want everything from the brown bunny to the blue bear to the gray owl but then promptly melting down when we tried to guide her to the stuffing machine. She wanted everything, and wanted nothing. It was an incurable bout of Indecision, with no cure in sight; if anything, they become more frequent as time goes on.

Anyway, the pivotal moment came when, after Luke and I suggested we visit another store to pick out something different, Kara threw herself down on the floor kicking and screaming and I had to carry her outside of the store. Together we sat to the side of the entrance, me holding her on my lap and repeating, "It's okay, it's okay," while she wiggled and cried and passersby looked down on us with wide eyes and that disapproving expression of, "Does that mother not know how to control her own child?" One woman actually came up to me to suggest ADDITIONAL WAYS to restrain my child. That was especially appreciated.

Eventually, though, Kara did calm down and settle on an animal to take home. The winner? Hello Effing Kitty. Surrounded by adorable furry creatures of all types and colors and she goes after the most commercial of the bunch. And it's not like she even knew who Hello Kitty was; apparently, it was love at  seventy-millionth first sight.

And because our little Nathan was such a champ during the entire ordeal, we let him get something, too. He selected the black-and-white panda bear you see in the picture below and couldn't have been sweeter about it.

 

"Honey, are you SURE you don't want to reconsider? Maybe select a doll that doesn't make your mother's toes curl with disdain?"

 

She was sure.

Afterwards, because we left the mall so much later than planned and because we had no energy left to prepare anything at home, Luke and I took the kids to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner.

 

Wearing a happy face once again (both of them).

 

That night a surprise visitor made a special appearance, which delighted the children to no end. He, Mrs. Claus, and several elves were seated at a table directly across the room from us, and Kara and Nathan could not keep their eyes off them. And that's actually how they preferred him - at arm's length, as evidenced by this picture.

 

Ending the day on a brighter note.

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Kara's birthday didn't go at all how we planned, and it certainly wasn't fun to work through a tantrum in front of a crowd of strangers, but as we move through the Year of Three, I hope that more often than not I will be able to draw strength from that experience and remember how much of the outcome depended on my willingness to stay in control and not give in to the frustration that was building up inside of me. I'm not proud of the scene she caused, but I'm not embarrassed by how I handled it, either, and for me, that is the most important thing in the end. When all is said and done, the setbacks experienced in any given day become less important than my living, breathing response to them. I can't control my children's actions, but I can control my own, and commit to doing better when I fail.

Happy belated birthday, sweeheart.

(As always, mad props to Luke for the birthday video.)

It's so easy to let money troubles define who you are by measuring your life against that which you cannot do. At least, that's how it feels to me sometimes. My monthly book club dinners are out. Luke can't join a gym to support his training for this year's Mini (!!). Kara can't take dance lessons, and Nathan can't start (pre-pre)school by his birthday like we once planned. Granted, these can'ts will resolve themselves in a few months, so they're not hindering us long term, but how do you get by in the interim? How can you turn your day-to-day into something meaningful using only what you already have? And during the coldest, darkest time of year?

Those were the questions Luke and I were asking ourselves at the beginning of the month, after evaluating our money situation for the remainder of winter and coming up with a game plan to get us through. It's easy to fall into a "Why me?" sort of attitude and feel sorry for yourself. But clearly, asking pointless questions and indulging useless emotions won't get you anywhere. So here are some of the ways in which we are accentuating the positive:

Cleaning house: Luke and I love to play the "What if?" game when it comes to remembering all the other houses we could have purchased instead of this one, but when she's wearing her Sunday best, it's easier to appreciate all the positives we gained with this place: open space, natural light, optimal number of bedrooms, and plenty of toilets to accommodate large family get-togethers. I am working hard to stop clutter from piling up in hot spots like the microwave top, the mail stand, and my dresser top. I make the bed every morning before I leave for work, and I've stopped using our CD rack as my own personal storage unit. We won't be implementing any major renovations this year, but we do plan to paint the kids' bathrooms and our kitchen before the baby comes, and a new splash of color can do wonders to improve the overall mood of a room. (Right, Molly?)

Being creative: Last week I received a gift certificate from my employer acknowledging my five-plus years of service. The certificate was for an undesignated amount of money for a site that very much reminded me of those catalogs from grade school - you know, the ones that told you what you could score for selling five to twenty candy bars (sparkly pen, bangle bracelets), fifty to seventy-five (NKOTB tribute band CD, piggy bank), etc. I could have redeemed it for a sassy new hobo bag, but Luke and I chose boring cookware instead, because our current set was scratched up something fierce and there was no room in our budget for replacing it. It wasn't a fun choice, but we saw an opportunity and jumped on it.

Taking stock: It's also been helpful to remind ourselves of all the things we do have that make this rough patch more manageable. The maternity clothes I once planned to unload to Goodwill, for one - I'll need more clothes when the weather gets warmer and my belly rivals the size of a world globe, but for now I can stretch out live off my regular work pants and the oodles of three-quarter-sleeved shirts I found at Kohl's near the end of my pregnancy with Nathan.

Thankfully, we need very little baby gear for Number Three. Nathan's room is still set up to accommodate a baby with a matching crib, changing table, and dresser set, courtesy of my 2008 Christmas bonus, and his and Kara's closets are jam-packed with items Luke and I weren't sure what to do with but didn't want to get rid of: crib mobile, swing, baby carriers, activity table, random infant toys, and so on, and our bassinet will come back to us from Samantha and Dan the next time they come to visit. And ninety-five percent of what we don't have is either being handed down to us from family and friends. We'll need a new single stroller, and we'd LOVE to get our hands on a jogging stroller, but ultimately we won't be missing anything necessary to bring the baby home.

We are also feeling better about our car situation. The plan was always to try and fit our current Chicco infant seat into the Outlander along with Kara's and Nathan's Britax convertibles, but thanks to some of the comments on my last post, we are now considering investing in smaller seats if that's what it will take to cram fit all three kids in there. Plus, there's a good chance that Kara can move into a booster seat by summer, and that will save us some room, so we're exploring that option, too. Not fretting over taking on a $300-plus car payment does wonders for a mother's piece of mind. Imagine that!

Finally, thanks to the size and layout of our house, we'll only need a smidge of rearranging to make room for Number Three. So far the plan is for the two older ones to share Kara's bedroom, which is the larger of the two rooms by about the double the square footage; they are so young right now that the gender issue doesn't come into play, and it just makes sense for the kids who share a bedtime routine to also share their sleeping quarters. We'll transition Kara into a twin-sized bed and Nathan into her toddler bed sometime this spring and leave his room pretty much as is for the baby (though we do plan to paint). All of this will require some creative thinking on our parts in regards to organization, but creative thinking is free, and paint is cheap. This is good.

And on the leisure and recreation front, Luke and I realized we still have plenty of ways to keep busy. We finally made space for his drawing table - which had been sadly collecting dust in our garage for almost as long as we've lived in this house - in the little nook in our bedroom, and we've been alternating between the library and our current book collection for new reading material. We have rediscovered the old Nintendo games saved on our Wii, and my brother- and sister-in-law passed along a TV antenna last week, so two nights ago, for the first time since August, we were able to view network television. LIVE. On our actual TV instead of a laptop. If I weren't pregnant and, you know, vehemently against smoking, it would've been the perfect moment to light a cigarette, post-coital style.

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It's easier to think positively when your stomach isn't hurting almost twenty-four hours a day. I'm in the middle of my sixteenth week, and over the few days or so, I've seen an increase in my energy level and a slightly higher tolerance for a wider menu of grocery items (though for some reason almost every tomato sauce I've had tastes terribly sweet and overall not right to me. What's up with that?), so when it comes to feeling like complete and utter crap, I think I'm finally, FINALLY, out of the woods. (I've even taken to washing dinner dishes again, hooray for Luke!) I'm still getting headaches, but they're not as frequent, and sleeping is still relatively uneventful, save for the three-year-old who has a habit of climbing into her parents' bed almost every night. However, while this pregnancy saw the quickest recovery of first(ish)-trimester symptoms, they definitely hit me the hardest this time. So...I win? Sort of?

My next doctor's appointment is February 7, at which time we'll get to see Number Three's privates and consequently start focusing on only one set of baby names. Time is flying by this go-around, it seems, so I'm not impatient with waiting, only excited. And for what it's worth, I'm not even as nervous about affording this baby, now that we (assuming) have the car thing under control. Hopefully that means my future posts will read more like this one and not my last.

Thank you, as always, for letting me be honest.

Today I welcomed my fifteenth week of pregnancy by vomiting for the first time since I peed on that fateful stick back in October. For future reference, prenatal vitamin + leftover Raisin Bran milk = blaaaaaaaaah.

In other, less disgusting news, I had my monthly ob appointment yesterday, and Number Three is doing well; very active, according to the doctor, and the heartbeat sounded strong at 150 bpm. There are a few aches and pains going on that are typical of this stage - the acting of up my sciatic nerve, for one, and a tenderness in my abdomen that was diagnosed by the doctor as being diastasis recti. I also found my first pregnancy-related skin tag ever near my collarbone, a couple of nights ago. Way to go, baby, for keeping things interesting!

Here I am in all my gestational glory:

 

Why do I look whiter than the Pillsbury Doughboy? And is it just me, or is that picture frame crooked? Oh, well, at least I can still fit into my regular-sized dress slacks. So long as they are cotton and sport elastic waistbands.

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At the start of the New Year I outlined our household budget through the remaining winter months, and I know these issues are only temporary, but things feel bleak, friends. Luke and I are working hard to pay off our credit card balance before the baby comes in June, which means almost every bit of cash from now until March is needed to cover our car insurance premiums, homeowner's association fees, and necessary grocery and household items as well as pay down our Visa bill. Luke and I did not exchange Christmas presents, only token stocking stuffers, and there are no travel plans slated for anytime soon, save my niece's baptism in Chicago next month.

Sometimes I feel like a complete and utter failure for not being able to manage our finances more efficiently, and then I remind myself that some things were simply out of our control: a $164 increase in our mortgage last fall thanks to a negative balance in our escrow account was the most jarring, and the random but major car repairs totaling almost two grand in September were definitely not on our radar. Luckily, there is light at the end of the tunnel: tax refunds in February and my annual raise in April should put us on more secure footing, though we have decided there is no way in hell we have any business taking on a car payment to buy a vehicle that can accommodate three car seats anytime soon. This means we'll be hauling two cars if we need to go anywhere local as a family and renting a van if we find ourselves needing/wanting to travel north. But hey, at least we have two cars that we own outright, and we can still pay our bills and put food on the table, and we don't have to talk about Luke going back to work (as if we could afford three kids in daycare, anyway), and really, this money glitch is so temporary in the grand scheme of things. Nothing on our plate is unmanageable, just really hard to get through sometimes on a day-to-day basis.

How's that for keeping it real?

This is just one more reason I have been considering launching a part-time freelancing business sometime this year. I'm not looking to replace my full-time income, just supplement it with some meaty writing projects from time to time.

Have any of you had any luck starting your own business? How did you get started? Are there any books you would recommend?

37 weeks and are we there yet?

The answer is yes, yes we are. Full-term, baby! And you can stick a fork in me, because physically, I am so Done.

What to say about 37 weeks? I'm still averaging a 15-pound weight gain, which is mind-boggling to me, seeing as my nightly routine now consists of devouring as many chocolate cookies as possible while working through my collection of Friends DVDs (we just finished season 5). Over the weekend, it was Oreos. Monday? Chips Ahoy. Also puzzling is the fact that I can eat cookies, ice cream, candy, and other junk foods without trouble, but Raisin Bran, sugary kids' cereals, and any sort of fruit juice throw my system completely out of whack after just a couple of bites/drinks. What's up with that?

Speaking of food, I am ravenously hungry, so we can probably expect that weight gain to skyrocket come this time next week. Not "A Tale of Two Lunches" hungry like from my second trimester with Nathan, but on a lunch run a couple of days ago I did order one and a half roast beef sandwiches (and a bag of chips) (and a cookie) from my new favorite deli without batting an eye. I presume it will only get worse from here.

Also, I'm still generating inappropriate comments from society at large on my admittedly ginormous size. The mechanic who worked on my Cobalt last week said I looked ready to burst, and the after-hours janitor at my work, whom I had previously never met, was compelled while emptying my recycling to say that I was ready to pop AND ask if I was having twins, all in the same breath. Now that's multitasking!

Things are continuing to move along on the nesting front. Luke and I finally rearranged the toys that were wreaking havoc on our living room thanks to the spontaneous purchase of a shelving bin organizer over the weekend. Bathrooms have been sanitized, cars cleaned, pantries tidied, ceiling fixtures repaired, and nurseries finished. And tonight, we finally began packing our hospital bags. So far, all I have in there are some nursing tanks and bras, one pair of clean underwear, footies, a partially filled toiletry bag, and a breastfeeding book. We'll throw in a couple of going-home outfits for Baby Brother (one newborn, one 0-3 months, as per usual), and a beautiful crocheted blanket gifted from a coworker, but other than that, I am blanking. I know I'll need something for myself to wear upon leaving the place, but I'm not sure what that will be yet. I'll grab a notepad from work to document the entire life-changing experience, and I'm also considering picking up some Mother's Milk Tea, to "promote healthy lactation." It's a given that Luke will pack our camera, and I'll have my smartphone for sharing the big news and providing random updates (and pictures, too, once I figure out how to do that part). So if you aren't following me on Twitter or Facebook, you totally should, because I will be able to post more easily to those accounts than I will on my blog while I'm away. (Though I may attempt to bring my work laptop as well.)

Seriously, though, the hospital bag. For me, less is more when it comes to packing, especially since the majority of the time I'm just hanging out in retro-looking gowns and mesh undies and all of my food cravings will be appropriately satisfied by 24-hour room service. But am I missing anything?

Lastly, in between all the activity, Luke and I are trying really hard to make our last couple of weeks as a family of four as fun as possible. Last week I took a day off work so we could all attend Indianapolis's annual strawberry festival, and the weekend before that we drove almost an hour to participate in the city's annual "Outrun the Sun" family walk. Tumbling class started two Mondays ago, which Kara and Nathan seem to enjoy, and on Tuesday delighted in the company of Luke's parents while they paid us one last visit before their upcoming trip to Wales. Other activities include zoo trips, picnics, and an ice cream expedition to Cold Stone Creamery.

They seem to be getting the fact that the baby's almost here. Nathan has been more cuddly with me than usual, throwing his arms around my neck for minute-long hugs when he might normally dismiss me in favor of some truck or book or puzzle, and Kara has been more talkative about the whole process, stating that the doctor will "open up my belly" to take the baby out. Now, I can't remember if I introduced that phrase to her months ago or if she came up with it on her own, but either way, she's allowing the process to become more real in her mind.

She's also asked to come to the hospital when it's time to get the baby out. The kids will actually be with my dear friend Molly during that time, but Luke and I will bring them up to visit as soon as I feel ready. I remember functioning in a zombie-like state almost the entire day of Nathan's c-section, a product of drugs and euphoria and exhaustion (I literally fell asleep in mid-sentence), and I don't want them to see me like that. But we are so excited for them to meet their little brother, so we'll definitely get them up there as soon as we can.

The Great Carseat Experiment: Updated

I turn 37 weeks tomorrow, which has catapulted me into full-on nesting mode, attempting to tie up every loose end in the history of the universe before Baby Brother's June 29 delivery date. Last week we focused on car maintenance and child seating; the Cobalt needed about $360 worth of repairs (mad props, savings) and over the weekend Luke cleaned out both vehicles and experimented with car seat arrangements for the first time since February. At that time, we made the decision to transition Kara into a high-back booster (sans five-point harness) to make room for the baby's infant bucket.

Come Saturday, though, we just couldn't do it.

Despite my initial confidence over this set-up, I became increasingly more anxious about it since reading about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's updated guidelines for child restraints back in March. While Kara does meet the height and weight requirements for a booster, she is still only three years old and isn't even close to outgrowing her current Britax Marathon. But keeping her in the Marathon would require us to buy a new car, and despite having an excellent reason to justify such a significant purchase (SAFETY), we simply cannot afford to do that. In my Google research I learned about a slimmer seat with a five-point harness by Sunshine Radian that looked like it would fit and also received favorable reviews on several third-party sites, but the seat isn't sold at any stores in our vicinity, so we'd have to order it online, and what if it didn't fit, and man, these things aren't cheap. We looked into other options for Kara, but all seat specs were similar to the Marathon's. We looked into other infant seats, but the Baby Trend Flex-Loc handed down to us from my friend Jenn has the smallest dimensions we've seen. Nathan's Britax Roundabout wasn't worth messing with because it's already plenty slim and fits his measurements perfectly.

We may as well give the booster a try, Luke and I would say in the end, each time the topic came up, and it came up many times. We'll stay off the highway while we test it out. Our longest drive in town is less than ten minutes. It will be okay.

But again: we just couldn't do it.

Luke spent all of Saturday morning once again trying to get the Marathon in safely and securely, but again it was all in vain. Despite your best efforts, you just can't force a square peg into a round hole. When that didn't work, we pulled out the booster.

It wasn't in the car five seconds before a horrible knot began forming in the pit of my stomach and I was sobbing to Luke that we had to order the Radian.

The Marathon brushed against the door of the Outlander, but just barely. The Radian would save us a precious inch and a half of seat space; we shouldn't need any more than that to make it fit, I said. This is our daughter's safety we're talking about. Please, please order the seat and save me from having a heart attack already.

Luke just nodded. He didn't need any convincing. He was nervous for Kara, too.

The Radian should arrive before the end of the week.

Buying the seat doesn't change the fact that we'll need to buy a new car once the baby outgrows the infant bucket, but we'll be in much better shape financially by then. I'm getting a raise at the end of the month that should absorb most if not all of the anticipated budget increases incurred by Life With Three Children. Tax refunds arrive in late winter, and our credit card debt will be gone by spring, at which point I should be due for another raise. We can plan to make room in our budget for a car payment by then.

In this scenario, I can tell myself It will be okay and actually believe it.

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Of all the worries I've had over my three and a half years as a parent, I don't think any of those experiences came close to the level of intensity of this one. Not even nursing. When choosing formula, I felt guilty over denying them the optimal choice in baby food, but at least we could afford to pay for it. Luke and I hate that we can't take on a car payment to get the best ride for our family; that guilt coupled with visions of our child's body being torn to shreds in an accident? If we had gone with the booster and something would have happened.... Well, there are no words.

Parenting is so much harder than you think it will be when you're first starting out. Luckily, there are also no words to describe its joy.

 

36 weeks and coffee talk

Thirty-six weeks. One more until full-term. Though, judging by the size of Baby Brother's man-cave, you might assume that either it's going to be any day now! or I'm already overdue. As does half of Indianapolis.

 

When I was at this same point with Kara (picture here) (stats here), I had gained 27 pounds; with Nathan, I was around 26 pounds, and by my 37-week appointment I had registered a nine-pound gain and was being monitored by my ob/gyn for HELLP syndrome. This morning, I only weighed 15 pounds heavier than the day I took my positive pregnancy test in October. I'm sure before the baby is born that there will be additional junk on my trunk, but right now I'm in awe. For a while I was crediting this to eating better and being on my feet more because of the kids, but now I'm starting to think the real reason was a terribly difficult first trimester where I lost a ton of weight and a conversative second trimester, food wise, spent gaining that weight back. Will this have an impact on Baby Brother's size? Is my habit of delivering large newborns a thing of the past? Only time will tell.

I've been told by complete strangers with total confidence that the baby is sitting high AND that he's clearly dropped, in the same day even, so, opinions and @$$holes and all that, but I'm inclined to agree with the latter. I'm feeling increased pressure in my pelvis lately; that combined with frequent (yet random) contractions have me shuffling around at a snail's pace. Meanwhile, Baby Brother's movements are more violent than ever; sometimes it's cute, and his level of activity does keep me from worrying about anything being wrong with him, but mostly it's uncomfortable, even downright painful, and overall these last few weeks of pregnancy have reduced me to a tired, weepy, anxious mess. Luke is a saint for putting up with me, because in addition to voicing my various aches and pains, I also can't shut up about all the things we still need to do, even though it's clear that he will be the one doing most of them, but he takes everything in stride and does his best to accommodate my wishes. It's almost like he's done this before!

Kara and Nathan are starting to grasp that Baby Brother's arrival is near as we talk more about what things will be like once he comes home. On my last entry, Molly asked a great question about how we plan to explain my c-section, but because they are still so little, and because because Kara is easily frightened these days by what she doesn't understand, Luke and I are keeping things simple. So far, our talk track has been that Daddy will take Mommy to the hospital so the doctor can take the baby out of my belly, and that satisfies them just fine. At this point, we don't feel the need to mention the surgical aspect of it; me just having the baby is enough reason for them to be gentle around my abdominal area for a few weeks. We can provide more information as they get older and/or ask more questions.

Right now, though, Kara seems more preoccupied with when the baby is coming out. On Saturday, I ran some errands, and the minute I returned, she asked if the baby was still in my belly. Monday, I went to the dentist to repair a cracked tooth, and when I got home, same thing. It's fascinating to watch your children's minds at work as they attempt to make sense of the world around them.

Truly, though, I love answering their questions, even when those questions lead me down roads untraveled. Like on Monday, when Kara was playing with our toy kitchen and she talked about coffee coming out of her breasts. (!!!) I think I know what happened; at dinner we were talking about the different ways that babies eat, and how in the beginning Baby Brother won't need solid food, just special baby milk, and he'll get that milk by drinking it from Mommy's breasts or by Mommy and Daddy getting it from the store. Maybe she thought other kinds of drinks were also accessible through Thelma and Louise? I couldn't tell. In any event, it was a conversation for the baby books, that's for sure - that, and her referring to nipples as "bristles." Be still, my heart.

My own Doogie Howser, M.D.

In my 31 years of life, I've completed almost three pregnancies, but it is yesterday's brief conversation with a grade-schooler that wins the award, hands down, for "Most Shocking Gestating Dialogue."

SCENE: Retail outlet store, where Luke and I were stocking up on summer clothes and baby onesies (our first time buying for three children at once, OMG). Kara and Nathan were occupying themselves by an activity table filled with toys, where a few other kids were also hanging out. Several of them were from the same family, including a little boy who was maybe five or six years old - seven, tops - and who I was already having issues with mainly but not completely because he kept grabbing things out of Nathan's hand.

BOY: (eyes me up and down) You're going to have a baby.

FREMA: That's right.

BOY: (To Kara) Your mom's going to have a baby.

KARA: (Enthusiastically, because she loves interacting with other kids) Yes!

BOY: (Back to me, matter-of-factly) They're going to cut you open!

FREMA: (In her brain) ...

FREMA: (Actual words) They don't have to.*

FREMA: (In her brain, a second time) ...

-------

Twenty-four hours later, and I'm still not sure what to make of this. I wasn't wearing my "C-sectioners Unite!" sandwich board, and layers of clothing combined with an impressive amount of belly flab ensured that my scar wasn't visible to the general public, so unless he had x-ray vision or possessed a Sixth Sense type of power that alerts him when a surgical patient is near, I can only assume that BOY's mother had gone under the knife herself and shared that tidbit with her son. Which, okay; I personally don't think I'd choose to give that young a child that much information, but then again, my oldest still wears a pull-up at night, so who knows? Really, I was most surprised that a) he apparently believes all babies are delivered this way and b) he chose to talk about it in such a manner with A COMPLETE STRANGER.

For those to whom this applies: What's the weirdest thing a child has said to you about your pregnancy?

* Actually, my doctor and I are in agreement that they pretty much DO have to cut me open, but hell no was I going to support that kid's logic. Seriously, I've seen infants share toys better.

34 weeheeheeheeks

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to include all those he he hees in the title, except that I am quite ready to be done with this gestating business, thank you very much, so if you read it in a whiny, slightly labored tone of voice, you'll have a pretty good grasp of where I am emotionally. You are welcome.

 

I don't have any shots of me at this point with Nathan, but I do with Kara. Click here to check them out.

(Sidenote: I will have you know that the maternity coat pictured in that entry has more than paid for itself. I've used it twice, Samantha's used it once, and I even lent it to a sister of my coworker's. Money well spent, for sure.)

Current stats: To date, I have put on approximately 15 pounds, making Baby Brother's the slowest weight gain of all three pregnancies. I credit some of this to doing a slightly better job of managing what I'm eating - less red meat, more salads, fruits, and vegetables (though my sugar intake is atrocious) - and some of this to being on my feet more as a mom to two little kids (though Luke continues to be wonderful by handling the laundry, cooking, and majority of post-dinner clean-up). When all is said and done, I doubt I'll hit 30 pounds by the time the baby is born. You wouldn't know it, though, because I feel so much heavier this time around, and much more aware of my size. It truly does feel like this child could fall out of me at any given moment. Others must agree: I can't tell you how many times people have widened their eyes or covered their mouths in shock after I tell them when I'm due.

"Do you really think you'll go that long?" (This is where I pull out my mom card and gleefully reply that, as a matter of fact, I do think I'll go that long, because I've done this twice before and this is just the way I carry.)

"But you're carrying so low!"

"Your feet and your shoulders look okay, no swelling." (Thank you, doctor, for your thorough exam and expert wisdom.)

"You look like you're going to have that baby any day!"

"We'll need to get you something for your desk, huh?" (You know - because of my gargantuan belly.)

"Will your belly go back to normal?" (Okay, that one was from Kara and therefore not offensive at all, but I couldn't resist.)

"Honey, you look miserable."

That last one was said to me by a complete stranger last weekend while waiting for a quarter pound of roast beef at the deli. All I could do was smile thinly and say, "I'm not," before turning away. I don't care if you have lady parts or if you've delivered children, if that's the way you choose to start a conversation, we are not in this together.

See? Not miserable at all!

I'm operating on some level of fatigue almost all the time. Baby Brother is super active almost all the time. And now that we're in the final stretch, I'm starting to panic over all of our to-dos almost all the time. 

The cars need to be cleaned out. The infant base needs to be installed. The paint still needs touching up. Nathan's baby book still isn't done. We haven't cleared out kitchen space for baby bottles. The baby gear needs a steam clean.

Oh. And we need a name.

The front-runner we've been carrying around all this time, a name I love and would still be happy to use in the first name slot, will likely be delegated to middle name status to fit into our new naming strategy.

I go back and forth on nursing almost every day - sometimes eager to give it another go, other times determined to crack open the formula on Day One. And almost every time, I reject any concrete decision I've reached and instead encourage myself to adopt a "Just For Today" type attitude and not look any further than that. It's been working really well so far! (end sarcasm)

I have also started getting more anxious about handling those initial weeks and months of babyhood, as crystal-clear details of Nathan's newborn period have been coming back to me with a vengeance. Nodding off during a three a.m. feeding when the sky is dark and everyone else is asleep. Bouncing him to sleep an hour later, eyes barely open, with one hand in a bag of Donettes because eating something is the only thing keeping me from passing out, feeling utterly alone. Struggling to manage the stairs after my c-section. Crying over clothes that still didn't fit.

I'm sure this is true for most women, but I am completely out of my element in the newborn period.

(Edited to add: It wasn't until reading Eva's comment below that I realized I completely glazed over Kara's period. Aside from nursing difficulties, she was actually a dream baby - sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, content so long as she was snuggled, etc. But still, she was my first baby, and just learning how to be a mom was overwhelming enough. So, while I am open to having an easier experience this time, I'm trying to be realistic and just accept that I don't handle infancy well.)

Before I get too panicked, though, I try to remember the good things. Snuggling on the couch. The grasp of a baby hand around your finger. Watching siblings fall in love. The knowledge that each day brings you one step away from the most difficult period of that first year and one step closer to a wonderfully new version of normal.

It has also helped to think of upcoming seasonal milestones and benchmarking where we should be at that point. This has been particularly encouraging to do with a summer baby. For example:

• By Halloween, the baby will be four months old and sleeping in longer patches at night, if not all the way through. I will definitely have adjusted to being back at work by then. And won't it be fun for the five of us to go trick-or-treating together?
• By Thanksgiving, the baby will be almost five months old. Nathan did so well in the baby carrier at that age, so we should be out and about as much as we want. (Not that I plan to wait that long to use it, of course.) The fall weather will be perfect for hikes at the park. Also, I should be in much better shape physically than I've ever been at this point, so long as I'm consistent with running and my Jillian Michaels videos. (I'm already physched to try her newest one, Ripped in 30. Yes, please!)
• By Christmas, the baby will be six months old, experimenting with solids and crawling. What a fun December it will be.
• By Luke's and my sixth wedding anniversary next May, the baby will be almost a year old and most likely walking. Walking! Surely all three kids should be easy enough for someone else to care for them overnight, so Mommy and Daddy can sneak in a getaway.
• Speaking of May, the Mini is in May. I so want to run the Mini next year! Training would be another way to keep my fitness level on track.
• By next June, the baby will be one year and on the way to ditching bottles, formula (if we choose to go that route), and purees. We should also be free of our credit card debt by then. The perfect ingredients for an active, amazing summer.

Each baby is different, so I of course can't bank on all those milestones coming to fruition, but generally speaking, these are the stages where I remember things becoming significantly easier to manage with both Kara and Nathan, so I'm allowing myself to be hopeful. Plus, even if it doesn't, it's really the overall message I'm clinging to: that every day does get easier. I know this from personal experience now. It really does get easier.

The Toddler Days of Summer

The last day of Kara's parents' day out program was last Friday, and since families were invited, I took the day off work to attend the annual end-of-year carnival with Luke and the kids. There were game stations and dollar-store prizes, a bounce house that neither child took to very well, a fire engine tour they both adored, and a creepy old-man magician that had Luke and I rolling our eyes every five minutes. Overall, though, it was a neat way to pass the time.

 

This picture has nothing to do with the carnival, but man, is my family gorgeous or what?

The closer we get to bringing this baby home (five weeks from tomorrow, not that anyone's counting), sometimes it's hard to remember that the two kids we have now actually started out as newborns. Babies are lovely for sniffing and snuggling, but the older Kara and Nathan get, the more fun we all have together -- even planning for the future has become more interesting, as we imagine what lies ahead for our party of five.

Precisely because they aren't babies anymore, and also because one of my biggest stressors is making sure the kids have a fun summer despite the initial turmoil that is sure to result from welcoming a new baby, Luke and I are working hard with the money we have at our disposal (thank you, savings) to sign them up for a couple of things that force us to get them out of the house. They'll both take a nine-week tumbling class at our town's rec center starting in two weeks, and Kara is signed up for a week-long nature camp sponsored by a local park for late July. We also learned of a week-long vacation Bible study class offered through the same church that runs our parents' day out program, for the low, low price of FIVE DOLLARS, so we'll register Kara for that as well. I wish there was more for Nathan to do, but those last two require the kids to be fully potty-trained, so he'll just have to wait until next year. Really, though, just getting him in the tumbling class is a big deal, since he's never done anything like that before. It should be a nice transition into his starting "school" in the fall.

We researched a number of activities in the Indy metro area for ideas of things to do, but the nearest YMCA doesn't have anything for the toddler age range, and the closest Gymboree is 45 minutes away. Also, frankly, our bank account can't handle many more unplanned expenses without putting our maternity leave savings at risk. Still, though, I'm excited about what we do have planned, and we recently renewed our zoo membership, and we're already frequent visitors of our local library, and there are several neighborhood playgrounds in our zip code, which means there are plenty of opportunities for additional fun. Once Baby Brother is here and we know he's healthy, Luke and I have already talked about using more of our savings to buy additional memberships to the city's Children's Museum and the rec center where tumbling is being held, as it has fantastic indoor and outdoor swimming facilities AND a gym AND exercise classes AND is within walking distance from our house. There's even been talk of going to the beach again, like we did last year.

I've been trying not to get so hung up on our summer plans, but it's hard. There were actually a couple more classes at the rec center that we could've enrolled the kids into (dance and music), and I would have done it without a second thought until Luke wisely talked me down, reminding me about the zoo and the library and the parks and also of our commitment to keeping them active even while I'm recovering from my (last!!!) c-section. That's been the kicker for me, I think: knowing it will take me the majority of the first six weeks to feel anything like myself again and how unavailable I will be during that time to do things like hike, swim, or even take long walks on the trail.

Fortunately, Luke and I have already talked at length about this, and we agree that it will be important for him to be out and about with them just like he is when I'm at work so that I recuperate from surgery without feeling guilty. After that, though, I hope to be more on my feet so that we can make the best of the second six weeks we have left. This summer will definitely have its challenges, but I still want to make it the best one we've had yet.

What are you doing this summer?

33 weeks

I heard Janet Jackson's "Miss You Much" on the way to Subway today, and it reminded me of all things I miss about my pre-pregnancy life. At 33 weeks, the list includes:

• The shape of my face (aka non-puffy)
• Eating any type of spaghetti sauce I want without fear of indigestion
• Being able to get in and out of bed without grunting in pain
• Sleeping without a pillow cushioned against my belly
• Walking in heels without resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa (Don't worry, I switched to flats months ago)
• Running
• Sitting the children on my lap instead of barely fitting them onto my knee
• Wearing pants with buttons instead of elastic waistbands
• Not worrying that my shirt is going to creep up and expose what must be the largest uterus on Planet Earth
• Overall energy level, zest for life

And... the photographic evidence:

 

This was taken last week; originally I intended to post a more current photo with this entry, but after reviewing the results of this morning's shoot I found that the lighting on my face is all wrong and part of my hair is sticking up and really, it would be better for everyone to gaze upon a version of my visage from happier days.

Fatigue continues to plague me constantly, whether I get eight hours of sleep or five. There is occasional swelling in my feet after a long day, but it's easily cured by putting them up the minute I get home. Two things that did worry me this past weekend were intermittent pains in my stomach and some light vomiting after taking my vitamin cocktail, so I called my OB/GYN's office on Monday and was seen that day to check my blood pressure, urine levels, and the baby's heartbeat. Luckily, everything is looking good; as for the vomiting, my doctor and I think it was the result of switching from the premium-grade vitamin samples I was using back to the generic ones I had been taking all along. They didn't make me throw up before, but that was before I was prescribed the iron supplement. I now have almost a month's worth of samples in my possession, which should see me through almost to the end of the pregnancy, and by that point, I may just pay the piper to avoid making out with the porcelain throne again.

Quite a lot has happened since the last time we pow-wowed, the biggest being Luke's follow-through with the snip at the end of April (the timing with the royal wedding was purely coincidental, I swear). He is just now beginning to feel like himself again, so I feel okay to talk about it.

The planner in me is so relieved to have this taken care of and cross such a huge thing off our post-partum to-do list, and for the first time in my life, I am absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent certain that I do not want to be pregnant ever again. Still, though, on the morning of, there was a huge rock in my stomach that stayed with me for the first half of the day, wondering if we were doing the right thing. Was I being selfish asking Luke to do this when I could just as easily get on the pill, despite my misgivings? Were we being fiscally irresponsible by spending precious hospital dollars to have this done, knowing that my insurance deductible would be met after Baby Brother's arrival and we could score a tubal for free? Was I really comfortable with the idea of the two of us never making a baby together again?

I always knew I would be sad when the time came to do something permanent with our reproductive parts; I just didn't know how sad.

Luke and I talked it out, and while we were both nervous, we also knew logically it was the best long-term choice for our family, and one we both could handle without regret. And so it was done, and now I have come full circle, because seriously. Giving birth is a miracle, and I will always be grateful for being a part of it, but I NEVER WANT TO BE PREGNANT AGAIN. Thanks, honey, for taking one for the team.

The urologist did ask Luke if we wanted to postpone the procedure until after Baby Brother was born, "just in case," but as devastated as we'd be over anything happening to this little guy, it wouldn't change the fact that we are just not up for another pregnancy.

Morbid "what-if" conversations with your spouse: yet another perk of the whole marriage and family planning package!

The second big thing is that we finally made a dent in Baby Brother's bedroom. We stuck with our decision to keep the paint and wall art as is, but we did rearrange the furniture so that it actually feels like it was set up for a brand new person. It's not picture-ready yet, as there is a pile of laundry that appears to be mating with itself next to the crib, but it finally feels like progress is being made.

 

The kids are doing great. Kara's last official day of "school" was last week, but this week they're throwing a last-hurrah carnival for all the kids and their families, so I will be taking the day off work so the four of us can attend together. One of the best decisions we made was to send Kara to this program, even if we could only swing one day a week; she has so enjoyed the Fridays where she gets to play with her friends and interact with her teachers and make "heart projects" (her original pronounciation of "art projects") to bring home.

I wish our finances and our family situation allowed us to send her to the church's preschool program in the fall, because Luke and I both know she would thrive in one, but with a tight budget and a newborn on the way, it just isn't feasible for us this year. But she's only three, and she will still have her one day a week, as will Nathan, and we can pay for those things without losing sleep, so it will have to be enough for now.

 

Inspired by Emily's recent post on summer strategizing, I fully intended to talk about Kara and Nathan's plans here, but this entry is already long enough, and with my sporadic posting schedule, it's probably best that I not place all of my blogging eggs into this one basket - er, post. Until next time, then!

Mother-daughter moment

You can count Kara and me as being among the bazillion people to check out the royal wedding on April 29.

Typically, I don't follow the happenings of the British monarchy, but my boss, bless her heart, took a vacation day to be able to watch all the coverage in real time, and her excitement and the buzz among my coworkers was contagious, so I set my alarm for 6:10 a.m. and snuck downstairs to catch some of the marital pomp and circumstance.

Luke and Nathan were asleep, but Kara had crawled into bed with us sometime before six. She was quiet when I left the room, but fifteen minutes later, I heard her call out from upstairs, "I want to watch with you, Mommy!" (Luke had explained to her what I was doing, and he knew I wanted to let her join in the festivities if she woke up in time.)

So, for about twenty minutes, until I absolutely had to turn off the TV and hop in the shower for work, Kara and I cuddled together on the living room couch and took in the wedding. I told her she was watching a real prince and princess get married, and that they were getting married in a church just like where we go on Sundays. She thought about that for a minute, then said, "That's a church like our church, with a playroom!"

I laughed. "No, honey, this church definitely does NOT have a playroom."

I held her close and massaged my fingers over her scalp as she rested her head alongside my belly, every once and a while turning her face to me to show a big smile. Baby Brother was in rare form, and she was able to experience some of his most impressive acrobatics to date. "Mommy, I felt the baby pop!" she said.

At one point, I grew misty-eyed thinking that, at almost three and a half, it's very possible that Kara will remember sharing this moment with me, even if her memory of it is fuzzy and incomplete.

It was such a small part of our day, but Kara talked about that wedding on and off all weekend. "Mommy, I really liked watching your wedding with you," she said at first.

"Honey, that wasn't my wedding, that was the royal wedding."

"I mean, I really liked watching the royal wedding with you."

Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too. 

The big 3-0 and musings on the working mother balance

Folks, we have officially entered single-digit territory - no more than nine weeks until we bring Baby Brother home. My word.

 

I will shoot daggers at anyone who might dare utter this to me, but at 30 weeks, even I have to admit that I'm looking large and in charge (and also in need of a haircut; THAT I hope to remedy next week). Sitting both children on my lap for storytime is damn near impossible, and several items of maternity clothing are no longer fit for public display, especially button-up shirts, which mistakenly give the impression that this child is going to burst through my uterus Incredible Hulk style. Thankfully, I have some things to tide me over courtesy of my book club friends until my sister delivers an entire bin of looser-fitting summer clothes late next month, because the goal is still to spend as little money in this area as possible. (To Katy: I get compliments on this top everytime I wear it, and your patterned black skirt, too.)

Despite the iron supplement I'm taking to address my anemia, I wear out so easily these days, and if there is ever an opportunity to nap on the weekends, I jump on it immediately. Unfortunately, now that we're inching into the final weeks, those opportunities are few and far between. Last weekend was all about The Great Bedroom Merge, and the weekend before that I FINALLY started on Nathan's baby book. Our current goals are to focus on preparing Baby Brother's room and addressing minor touch-ups and eyesores throughout the rest of the house. I've also been busy at work, training my coworkers to handle various projects and to-dos while I'm on maternity leave for 12 weeks.

The closer we get to the big day, the more apprehensive I feel about making it through those early months with a new baby. As a mother of toddlers, I have no doubts about their attachment to me or their understanding of my love for them. This knowledge has allowed me to grant myself permission to strike a manageable balance between my roles as mother, wife, working professional, and individual who continues to exist alongside (and sometimes independently of) all of those identities. In my day-to-day, that balance looks something like this:

I do not bring work home. I will arrive at the office early, or I will stay late, but aside from regularly checking e-mail on my smartphone, work stuff stays at work. It is much easier to stay put until the job is done than it is to stop my train of thought, pack up my laptop, get through dinner, clean-up, and bedtime, and THEN try to pick up where I left off. Not only am I easily distracted at home and get little accomplished whether the kids are awake or not, I also feel cheated out of quality time with Luke. So if coming home late for dinner once in a while helps me to be a more attentive wife (and really, a better employee), than that is what I will do.

Dinner clean-up is done after dinner, not after bedtime. I fought this for such a long time in the beginning, because I felt like those precious minutes before the bedtime routine begins should be spent on the living room floor playing with my kids, not at the kitchen sink washing dishes. So I used to let everything sit until after they were asleep; however, Kara and Nathan were not made from the early-to-bed cloth, so often I wouldn't be arriving downstairs until well after nine o'clock, which meant it could get as late as ten before my "real" evening officially began. This made for a crabby Frema and, once again, a neglected husband, who by this point was in dire need of adult interaction. Finally, I realized that it wasn't the end of the world to listen to the kids laugh and rough around with their father while I puttered around in the kitchen. There are some exceptions to this; on those days where I do come home late, for example, Luke is usually quick to shoo me into the living room while he takes on kitchen detail, and lately he's been making things even easier by wiping out the pre-dinner dishes before he starts cooking. Especially because of this last thing, I am often able to do both.

(Have I told you lately how wonderful my husband is? Because truly, he is so wonderful.)

I do not miss bedtime. This isn't an absolute, of course; sometimes there are evening work functions (though none during this pregnancy so far), Luke and I have splurged on date nights if we are in the vicinity of grandparents or can afford to hire our sitter, and for a few months in the fall I attended a monthly book club gathering on the other side of the city, but overall my general rule is to be present for Kara and Nathan's bedtime. Sometimes it's frustrating if the kids are acting up, and sometimes it's inconvenient, like last summer when I was constantly late for my weekly run with Jenn, but overall it's worth it to consistently be there for bathtime, lights out, and everything in between. I revel in holding them close and sniffing their freshly shampooed heads while reading them stories. It means a lot to me to be able to kiss their cheeks and tuck them in. So I make it a priority.

I do not volunteer. This one I'm not proud of, and it's another reality I fought for a long time, but in the end, it is what it is. I was a member of my college's alumni association for about five years, and I loved doing it, but the distance between Indianapolis and Rensselaer made traveling for quarterly meetings and participating in campus events highly undesirable, especially when I already spend enough time away from home. So in 2009, I sadly turned in my resignation. My employer is great about allowing time off during the work week to participate in volunteer activities, and on and off for a couple of years I was involved in a grade-school reading program for an hour a week, but once I had kids, even that one hour away from my desk was enough to throw off my entire day, so at the end of the 2010 school year, I told the program director that I wouldn't be signing up again. Last fall, my desire to reach beyond myself grew again, and I looked into donating my time at a local women's and children's shelter, possibly on the weekends. Then I got pregnant again, and then I got sick, and now the recommendation letters I solicited are collecting dust in my mail basket, and I'm at the point where I have to admit that now is not the time to throw myself into extracurricular activities that take me away from my family, no matter how worthy the cause. That said, Luke and I recently began going to church again, a church right here in town, and we sometimes talk about looking into their soup kitchen or Bible study classes or something to that effect. So it's not like I'm swearing off do-gooding or charitable works completely, but I have realized my limits, and I have to respect them.

All of that to say - almost three and a half years into this parenthood thing, and I have finally figured out what works for me and my family. And we're about to turn all of that on its head.

Because for me, as a working mother, when I have a baby and then reach the point where I have to go back to work, I'm NOT as secure in our attachment like I am when they're older, so everything feels like it's up for grabs. You can talk to a toddler about things like having to miss dinner and they understand. That is not the case with a baby. So my big-picture focus changes from maintaining balance to simply being there as much as I can.

What this translates into on a micro level: It's hard enough being away for an average work day when they're so little that the last thing I want to do is sit at my desk even one minute after five, even if the alternative is nodding off at my laptop at ten. And when I'm dividing my attention among three children, why would I concern myself with dishes when I could be doling out hugs and kisses? On top of all that, Luke and I have not wavered on our plans to put the house on the market next year, and whether it takes a month or a year to sell, preparing for the next stage of our lives will require me to start using and building on my professional network, and part of that will entail opening myself up to extracurricular programs and events, whether it's the right time or not.

I think about all of this, toss in a few random worries about nursing (yes, I have decided to try again), and my brain threatens to explode.

Then I remind myself to breathe and not get so caught up in the future. I remember that fortunately, another reality is that Luke and I are not brand spanking new parents anymore, and we HAVE figured out a system that works for us; and while there will be an initial period of deviation from that, eventually the dust will settle, and we'll embrace a familiar version of normal once again, even if it's not identical to what we had before. Until then, I will have to grant myself permission to take it one day at a time.

So, to sum up: I am 30 weeks pregnant. I am a tad worried about managing life with a third baby. But I'm also more seasoned now than I was with the first two. Plus, my husband rocks. It will be okay.

I'm a big kid now (times two)

This past weekend, Luke and I took the first tangible step in preparing our house for a new baby by moving Kara and Nathan into the same bedroom. The Big Kids Bedroom. A bedroom that now contains a twin bed, a toddler bed, and two children under the age of four.

 

A view of Nathan's big boy bed. You'll notice we nixed the idea of themed wall art and instead went with that famous line known as "Cheap Pictures We Liked From Target."

We've been talking about this merge ever since we found out about Baby Brother, and we've been discussing it with the kids for almost as long, but it wasn't until last week when I was reading stories to Nathan in his glider that it hit me: Oh my gosh, my baby is losing his room. And his crib, and his dresser, and all those other baby things that we picked out just for him.

I thought about how he might not be ready, and how, as one of two boys, he may never have his own room again, and how adorable, kissably soft, and baby-like his cheeks are, even though his favorite statement of late is "No, I want to do it by myself," and I ended up crying myself to sleep. Oh, the tangled emotions involved in making room for another child, and forcing watching the children you already have grow up in the process.

But JC Penney wasn't aware of my misgivings, so Kara's twin bed arrived on Saturday as planned, and Luke and I spent that afternoon washing bedding, rearranging furniture, and transferring Nathan's things into Kara's closet and dresser. Between the two of them, Nathan actually had the largest set of drawers, but I wanted to keep all the matching furniture together, partly for the baby and partly for (eventual) showing purposes; in the end, we made it work by designating the closet for all shirts and pants and the dresser for socks, underclothes, and pajamas.

 

A close-up of Nathan's big boy bed, which looks perfect against the yellow paint, in my frugal lazy humble opinion.

Fortunately, ironing out the logistics of The Great Bedroom Merge turned out to be a lot of fun; while I'm no Martha Stewart when it comes to decorating, I rise to the tasks of organizing, removing extraneous clutter, and finding a proper place for belongings that make the cut. It also helped that Nathan LOVED the idea of sleeping in the toddler bed; pair that with his fondness for his quilt from godmother Auntie Molly, and you get a charged-up little boy who was more than ready to roll around in the covers and play with his animals the minute his set-up was complete. The car pillow was a new purchse and proved to be a hit with both kids. 

 

A view of Kara's newest big girl bed. Is it wrong to kind of want it for myself?

Because it took all day to get things settled, both kids missed their naps (not that Kara takes them very often, anyway), so it was a challenge to get them settled down come bedtime. They didn't want to read stories in the rocking chair as is our usual way, opting instead to camp out in their respective beds, and their attention span was extremely short; plus, Nathan typically goes down about 30 minutes before Kara, and Kara doesn't fall asleep as quickly as he does, so we weren't sure how difficult it would be for each of them to fall asleep in the presence of the other. The cherry on top was following through with our decision to attempt to wean Nathan from his pacifier; I was so sure he would call us on this and put up a fight. 

At 8:06, we showered them with kisses, left the room, and braced ourselves for a long night ahead.

By 9:02, they were out like a light, with Nathan pacifier free.

That is not to imply the fifty-six minutes in between were perfect -- several times they tumbled out of bed, and Nathan did mention his pacifier once while being tucked in. But overall our son took his new role as a big boy very seriously, and big boys stay in their beds, so he did, and pacifiers are meant for babies, so subconsiously I think he deemed it inappropriate to push the issue. Also, his stay-put example definitely inspired Kara to follow suit, as she's never had any problems abandoning her big girl status to visit Mommy and Daddy more frequently than TV shows air commercials. She actually fell asleep earlier with Nathan across the room than she typically does on her own. SCORE AND SCORE.

Luke and I were not as enthused when Kara jumped into our bed at five o'clock the next morning and Nathan sobbed for his pacifier at six (insert stab to the heart here).

We held firm on the latter, though, and Luke eventually tried to appease Nathan by bringing him into bed with us, but four people + a queen-sized mattress does not = restful sleep for anyone. It was a long Easter, let me tell you. And Nathan hasn't fully processed the permanence of the arrangement yet, because occasionally he still asks to read stories in "his room." But at two and a half nights in, we have a consistent pattern of both children falling asleep before 9:30, which has NOT been our experience in the past, so at this point I am inclined to declare the Great Merge a smashing success.

 

Here is our boy, all tucked in and ready for Dreamland. He was delighted with his big boy pillows and adamant about laying his head on the stack of them, which I think is one of the reasons it took him so long to fall asleep that first night. It was clear he was uncomfortable having his head elevated so high. "You don't have to use both of them if you don't want to - you can cuddle the car pillow like a stuffed animal or even move it to the other side of the bed. Whatever you want," I told him, but he wouldn't hear of it.

He must have considered the suggestion on some level, though, because eventually we found him like this:

 

Luke wanted a better-looking photo than that for our albums, though, so he took some artistic liberties to achieve this:

 

How is he not on the cover of a Golden Book? Those cheeks!

Meanwhile, Kara adjusted to her own upgrade pretty well and was especially taken with her new quilt. This shot is only slightly staged:

 

It took a lot of self-restraint not to crawl in there with her, for a mother-daughter cuddle.

At this point last week, I was so sad about Nathan shedding another layer of his babyhood, but now I am so happy for him, and proud that he was able to handle these big, important steps so easily. My favorite part? I can give those baby-toddler cheeks another kiss good-night once he's fast asleep, just like I do with Kara, now that we're no longer separated by crib slats.

 

We are getting so close to Baby Day, and there is still so much to do, but this merge? It was a good thing, and a step in the right direction.

Home improvement

I don't think I'm a very good homeowner.

To be clear: I like owning a home. I enjoy not having to answer to a higher authority if I want to paint a wall or replace a faucet or handle some other type of administrative task. What I despise is actually doing those things that would make my house a nicer place to live in.

Since we found out about Baby Brother 2.0 back in October, Luke and I have been talking about various projects we intended to tackle before his arrival. At first the list seemed pretty ambitious: repaint the entire kitchen (plus cabinets) and adjoining half-bathroom; paint both kids' rooms and the bathroom at their end of the hall; winterize the backyard and FINALLY lay down some seed to repair the dead patches of grass we inherited from the previous owners (courtesy of their four dogs). Replace the ripped-up screens on the second floor. Revamp the landscaping in the front of the house.

We're not talking major renovations like knocking out a wall or updating our shower, just a little sprucing up here and there that would be easier to do before the baby comes rather than after.

Let me tell you what we have accomplished so far:

• Replaced the screens (as of Wednesday, with help from Luke's parents)
• Mowed the lawn and scattered seed (as of yesterday)
• That is all

Part of it is money; paint isn't expensive, necessarily, but it's also not cheap, and buying gallons of new color to throw on our walls when we are so focused on paying down debt just isn't a top priority. However, if I'm being honest, the bigger issue is the fact that even thinking about taping off edges and laying down plastic and keeping two toddlers away from rooms of wet paint feels like more trouble than it's worth.

Which is a shame, too, because mentally I can also see the outcome of these projects and how they would improve our feelings about living in this house. When I was in Rensselaer and working at Saint Joe, I took two weeks off from work to paint all the rooms in my new little apartment, and I was so proud of my work when I was done.

Then again, I was twenty-five years old with no children and no major expenses to cover, and I could come and go from the project as I pleased without worrying about stopping to manage potty time or fix lunch or give anyone a bath.

Anyway.

It's also lamentable because in my opinion, our house is in need of some serious TLC. Despite hiring painters to do the whole house before our October 2008 move-in, several rooms are already in desperate need of touching up: marks on the walls, scratched-up baseboards and hand rails, spackled areas that are still white as a bride on her wedding day, etc. Apparently, the everyday life of a young, growing family isn't compatible with pretty real estate.

We have leftover paint in the garage, so this type of work could be done without spending a dime, but again, just thinking about the prep involved makes me want to take a nap.

Has anyone else ever felt this blah about their house and eventually gone on to take a more vested interest in home improvement and decorating once their kids grew older? Lazy Inquiring minds want to know.

26-27 weeks, big boy beds, and number three's ETA

Howdy, third trimester! Allow me to welcome you with a washed-out, shiny, deer-in-headlights expression:

 

I think I've grown since last week - check out the below picture and judge for yourself.

 

Here I am at 26 weeks and some change with Kara, who wanted to join in on the photo-snapping fun, and here is photographic evidence of being pregnant with both Kara and Nathan at this same point. Man, is my body predictable when it comes to gestation.

Things are going fine, incubator-wise. I continue to have an appetite that cannot be satisfied; I've only gained about eight new pounds with this pregnancy so far, but half of that was put on in the last two weeks. My diastasis recti is easing up, thankfully, but it's being replaced with an easily-triggered fatigue that I assume is the result of hauling around another ginormous baby, if Baby Brother 2.0 stays the path carved out by his older siblings; at 27 weeks, the boy is already measuring at 28 centimeters, according to my OB/GYN. My latest appointment was three days ago, which involved throwing back a fruit-punch-flavored glucose drink for my gestational diabetes test. The results of the bloodwork showed that my sugar levels are fine but that I'm slightly anemic (which would also account for some of that fatigue). This same thing happened with Kara, so I will just take my prescribed iron supplement and carry on as normal.

The most exciting thing about my visit was getting my c-section on the books at the hospital - Wednesday, June 29, 9:30 a.m. Mark your calendars!

Finally, I have now reached the point where I need to visit my OB every two weeks. Things are really starting to move along - and not just with the child occupying my uterus. Kara and Nathan are in for some changes soon, too.

 

Kara spreading her own PB&J. In case that wasn't supremely obvious already.

Grandma and Grandpa Dunscombe were in town this week to help us out with some spring-cleaning type projects and also to order parts for Kara's "new big girl bed" - also known as The Extra Bed We Desperately Need To Free Up The Crib For The Baby. Kara will occupy the new twin (to arrive in about two weeks), Nathan will inherit Kara's toddler bed, and the baby will get all of the furniture in Nathan's room. Luke and I have been talking to the kids ad nauseum over the past month about how they'll be sharing a room soon and the big kids will all be together and Won't that be so much fun? Kara's taking it all in stride, but Nathan hasn't readily embraced the concept yet.

Monday night while getting ready for bed, after having talked about the move for the eighty-seven-millionth time:

Frema: Hey Nathan, are you a baby?

Nathan: (smiles) No.

Frema: That's right, you're a big boy. And do big boys sleep in cribs?

Nathan: No. No, they don't!

Frema: That's right, they sleep in big boy beds! So pretty soon, you're going to sleep in a big boy bed! And you can bring all your blankets and all your stuffed animals - the only thing that's changing is that you'll be in a big boy bed!

Nathan: (pauses, then reaches out to touch his crib) I want to sleep in this big bed.

Frema: No, honey, that bed isn't for big boys, it's for babies.

Nathan: I like this bed.

And to think we want to take away his beloved pacifier at the same time! (Because only babies who sleep in cribs use pacifiers! Not big boys!) We're prepared to be flexible, but still, this transition should be super-duper fun.

Money-wise, things are going well. After a grueling six-week wait, we finally received our federal tax return on April Fool's Day, which allowed us to cut our credit card debt almost in half and set aside the out-of-pocket cash we'll need during my maternity leave. We continue to funnel money into savings and cut corners in our budget to make all of this happen, and it feels like it's finally paying off. We sailed through all the major bills of spring - car insurance premiums, school registration, vehicle registration renewals - without using our Visa; in fact, we haven't touched it at all this year, AND we've been making steady progress in lowering our balance even before receiving our tax check. We buckled down when it counted the most, and we are seeing the rewards, and it feels awesome.

To celebrate our financial success, we drove 40 minutes to our local creamery and blew nine dollars on organic ice cream. Hey, all work and no play, right?

 

I'm not sure what the kids are staring at. Certainly not the camera.

After spending so much of the winter cooped up indoors, it felt great to venture beyond our zip code and blow a few bucks on something as indulgent as dessert. We weren't there that long, but Luke and I had such a good time, and the kids, too.

 

Of course, can you have a bad time when ice cream's involved?

 

The cows were in the barn and mooing something fierce when we arrived, so Kara and Nathan wouldn't venture much farther than the doorway.

And...that is my blog update! I hope you all are just swell.

25 weeks

On Tuesday, I turned 25 weeks. Just two more until the third trimester!

 

(For comparison purposes, here's a link to a blog entry showing me at the same point with Kara.)

As I rapidly approach these last few months of pregnancy, I am overcome with the urge to kick it up a notch when it comes to preparing for Baby Brother's arrival, especially since all we've done so far is accept hand-me-downs from generous family and friends. Now it's time for tangible deliverables. I've decided that I want to redo the kids' bedrooms before Easter, get Luke's urologist consult on the calendar, and buy a frickin' onesie, already. Our period of inaction is over. Bring on the nesting!

Speaking of bedrooms, a few decisions have been made in regards to the whole bedroom-redecorating project I mentioned last month, the biggest one being to forgo the painting step altogether. We have been so good at saving our money that at first I thought it would be worth the splurge, but as I evaluate what we have left to save for hospital bills and maternity leave, I'm sadly reminded that every penny still counts. Plus, Kara and Nathan have been really into Winnie-the-Pooh lately, and that theme would totally mesh with a yellow bedroom without completely reeking of girl, so there you go. We'll still budget for some wall hangings and possibly new shelving, but overall those costs will be minimal. As for the baby, well, he certainly won't notice that he's inheriting a completely recycled nursery set-up, so we aren't buying anything new for his room at all. At first I felt guilty about this, until I remembered that my siblings and I never even had our own rooms growing up, let alone a custom nursey, and somehow we all turned out just fine. Also, talk about a middle-class problem if I ever heard one. Perspective, yes?

On the baby names front, while I am still completely satisfied with our front-runner, Luke is feeling a little meh about it these days, so we've been combing through our old copy of The Baby Name Wizard for additional inspiration, just in case. At first I was sad about possibly starting from scratch again, but then I remembered that I initially felt the same way about Kara's name while I was pregnant with her, even though I'm the one who suggested it in the first place. Of course, on the day she was born, it turned out to be the perfect fit, and to this day I'm still over the moon about it, so hopefully it will play out the same way for Luke, too.

As for me? Tired is the name of my game. Last weekend I drove up to Katy's neck of the woods with the kids for a playdate (no locking anyone in the car this time, thank goodness), and two hours of toddler-friendly activity wiped me out for the rest of the afternoon. I am still feeling my size but still do not appreciate having it pointed out to me by others, like on Monday when someone I know through work (who l like very much, by the way) told me that I'm "pooching out" with a wild-eyed stare WHILE ALSO accosting me with an unsolicted belly rub. I saw her again this morning, and she greeted me with a "I swear you've gotten bigger since the last time I saw you! You just keep on growing!" Happy day to you, too!

This pregnancy is progressing so quickly - in a couple of weeks I'll take my gestational diabetes test, can you believe it? - and yet I constantly find myself willing the time to pass even faster. I think about materntiy leave a lot, and spending the summer at home with Luke and our brood of three, and hitting the trail again, and beginning our search for a real estate agent to sell our house, and I'm impatient. On the other hand, I know that this time right now is precious, and I want to soak up every inch of my husband and kids and give them as much attention as I can. I want us to go to the zoo, swing at the park, walk on the trail, and in general just enjoy each other's company right up until the moment our lives are turned upside down with our newest family member. After all, it's the end of an era!

Be happy

Confession: I am a terrible book club member.

I fully embrace the concept of reading materials that fall outside my radar and that I would otherwise never be exposed to. Even more than that, I love getting together with folks who are reading these same books in order to generate thoughts and ideas about characters, plot, and overall meaning.

What is NOT working out for me, however, is actually reading the damn things.

While part of this can be attributed to pregnancy fatigue and its accompanying short attention span, I think the bigger issue is that it's difficult for me to push through books I personally wouldn't have selected for no other reason than to meet a deadline. The gals in my club are highly educated and have extremely smart taste (waves to Katy), and I'm sure I would enjoy these books if I could get over the inital reader's block that goes along with picking up a new title. Unfortunately, these days my ability to just hang in there is already at capacity. And because at this point I can only focus on one book at a time, what ends up happening is that I put off reading things I'm sincerely interested in in favor of fulfilling my "obligations," but because meeting those obligations feels like a chore, I find myself not reading anything at all.

For someone who's always described herself as an avid reader, this is unacceptable. Also, since I've taken a leave from the club to conserve budget dollars, anyway, there's no reason to continue this self-imposed form of restriction.

So this weekend, I returned last month's selection to the library and immediately dove into The Happiness Project, a book I've been chomping at the bit to read since I first heard about it last year. I even shelled out precious actual dollars to buy it when it was released in paperback earlier this month, because inherently I knew it would be the sort of book that required underlining, note-taking, and eventually, re-reading.

Funny, isn't it? In order to read The Happiness Project, first I had to grant myself permission to be happy.

-------

In the middle of last year, at a point where I felt stagnant and uninspired, I started giving serious thought as to why I felt unsatisfied and what it would take to make me happier. It involved owning up to my shortcomings and limitations, defining my long-term goals, and re-evaluating my priorities. It required sharing those insights with Luke and the two of us formulating a plan for changing the direction of our lives. Thankfully, we were in agreement as to what should come next, and while we're experiencing a brief delay in regards to its implemention, this plan is constantly at the forefront of our minds; it drives our savings habits, influences our short-term decisions, and keeps us hopeful about the future. I also find it easier to accencuate the positive in the day-to-day I have now, appreciate my blessings, and gain perspective.

But again, in order to reach these conclusions, Luke and I had to admit that all the great things we have in our lives right now aren't enough to bring us long-term joy. We also realized that we can't improve our situation by hoping to magically inherit traits and desires that aren't in sync with who we are.

Our plan will take some time to accomplish--many months, I'm sure, possibly even years. There are a lot of moving parts that can't be achieved in tandem. But I would rather spend the next few years in slow, baby-steps transition than an indefinite amount of time trying to settle for what society says should make me happy.

Ghost of Vacations Past: Part I

It should not be shocking to anyone that life changes drastically once you have kids, so much of my reality as a mother to young children is not that daunting to me. I'm okay changing or nixing evening plans to be present for Kara's and Nathan's bedtime (as a working mom who misses the bulk of daytime hours, this is insanely important to me). At our house, 6:30 a.m. wake-ups are to be expected, so I try not to gripe about it too much (though when my sister Ryan complained on Facebook over the weekend that her dogs wouldn't let her sleep past nine, I admit to dying a little inside). And Luke and I have accepted that with little family nearby and no discretionary money in our budget to hire a baby-sitter, date nights must be few and far between. We know many of these issues will iron themselves out over the next few years and that we just have to be patient until then.

One of the biggest parts of my pre-parenthood life that I DO miss, though? Vacationing.

A few weeks ago I was dusting some picture frames and came across a photo taken during a whitewater rafting trip back in 2003, and I realized that the majority of Luke's and my travels took place before I started blogging. Which means they are not documented here. Which means I spent more than two hours one night in late February sorting through photo albums and scanning low-res images onto my computer in the hopes that one day I would tell you all about them. And today is that day! Aren't you lucky?

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WHITEWATER RAFTING, HICO, WEST VIRGINIA (2002-2004)

Growing up, vacations were not a priority for my family, mainly because there wasn't enough money but also because my parents have never been comfortable sleeping away from home. So once I was on my own and able to make more strategic decisions as to how to spend my paycheck, I learned that I wanted to make travelling a bigger part of my life. My first trip came about in 2002 during my first year working for Saint Joe, when I was able to attend a whitewater rafting trip hosted by our alumni association so that I could cover it for the college's quarterly magazine. Since my expenses were paid for by Saint Joe, I was technically on the clock, and thus one could argue that this trip doesn't count as a vacation, but prior to this my only experience with whitewater was the clear stuff drizzling out of my shower nozzle, so, dudes. It totally counts.

We left for Hico, West Virginia, on the Friday before Labor Day and reached our hotel by dinnertime. Early the next day, we were bound for the New River, where the waves ranged in classification from 2 through 5 (2 being tame, 5 being more challenging). We spent a day and a half on the river total and were home late on Sunday.

And IT WAS AWESOME.

I'm not a strong swimmer, and I've never had fantasies about snorkeling or scuba-diving or any other activity that requires carting around a tank of oxygen to enjoy, but man, did I love rafting. This river was relatively calm, so it was a great introduction to the sport, and there were plenty of peaceful moments where I remember leaning back, holding onto my paddle, and thinking, I could sit like this forever. I got along great with all the alumni who attended, and we bonded over lunches of hot dogs and hamburgers grilled along the river's edge, and I never cared that my hair looked like crap. Again, AWESOME.

 

Here I am with my raftmates "surfing" a righteous pocket of whitewater on the New River. Clearly, I had not yet joined Weight Watchers.

I had so much fun that the following year, when our alumni director planned a second whitewater trip for Labor Day weekend, I couldn't say no. I paid my own way this time, though my boss chipped in a hundred bucks from her own pocket since she knew I would write another piece for the magazine, and I even sprung for my sister Samantha, a senior there at the time, to come with me. Luke has always been an outdoorsman at heart, and it didn't take any convincing to get him to join us.

We went back to West Virginia and used the same adventure company as before, but this time we spent our time wrestling the Lower Gauley. As you can see in the below picture (which was obviously taken by the rafting company), it was a little more challenging than the New River.

 

When rafting, the guides stress the importance of everyone doing their fair share of paddling if you want to stay afloat when hitting the more aggressive waves. This was the biggest wave we encountered on our entire trip, yet Samantha completely ignored the rules in favor of diving to the middle of the raft to keep from falling out. This picture hangs in my stairway and it is one of my favorites to this day.

With all that fun, though, it was such a rough Saturday that we skipped the half-day allotted for rafting on Sunday and stayed behind to walk the grounds of the drop-off site.

 

My sister was preparing to graduate, so I loved being able to have this time with her.

 

Meanwhile, after two years of dating, Luke and I had settled into a pretty nice rhythm. By this point we had gone on several overnights to various state parks in the area, but this was our first time doing anything Big. The whole time we were there, we couldn't stop ourselves from talking about coming back.

 

Last but not least, I was enjoying a healthier, lighter me, thanks to losing 17 pounds through Weight Watchers.

 

The Three Whitewater Musketeers.

Luke and I did go rafting one last time in 2004, again with Saint Joe, again on the Lower Gauley, again taking a pass on Sunday rafting to recover from the day before, our "recovery" involving a pretty steep hike round-trip to access a spot on the Gauley where most rafters and canoers get into trouble (aka flip over). Coincidentally, that was also the last year Saint Joe sponsored the trip, but in 2005 I had moved to Indianapolis, so I wouldn't have had the time or money to attend, anyway. Luke and I still talk about when we can go rafting again. What an amazing time.

LUKE'S 30TH BIRTHDAY SURPRISE, ANGOLA, INDIANA (2004)

I haven't been part of many surprise events, but the one I did orchestrate turned out to be one of the best vacations I've ever had. I was a new 24 with a steady paycheck and willingness to do something extra special for Luke's thirtieth birthday which, as many of you know, falls on Valentine's Day, so advance planning was critical to making the day a success.

His birthday fell on a Saturday that year, so on Friday morning I had a single rose in a vase delivered to his work, with instructions to go home, pack a bag filled with warm clothes and at least one nice outfit, and be outside his apartment by 10:30 a.m. Of course, weeks prior I had cleared this with his boss so that he wouldn't be surprised by Luke's cutting the day short.

We drove about three and a half hours from Rensselaer to Angola, Indiana, eventually parking in front of the Tulip Tree Inn.

 

Forgive the shit-poor film quality, as this picture was taken with a (gasp!) manual camera, and the prints didn't come out all that great to begin with, so scanning them in makes them look even worse.

Our room was adorable, so quaint and pretty, and while we had to share a bathroom with another couple down the hall, it was so, so worth it for the atmosphere.

 

That night we grabbed pizza in town and prepared for our big Saturday, which involved enjoying the toboggan run at Pokagon State Park. I had been tobogganing once as a kid and loved it, and Luke and I had talked about doing something like that several times in the past. The line was insanely long, so we only took a single run, but man, was it fun.

 

Afterwards, we had lunch at the park's inn and spent the afternoon hiking the trails.

The recent snowfall made for some tricky moments on stairs, but overall it was a wonderful few hours spent walking, talking, and indulging our playful side.

I included these photos in a do-it-yourself snowglobe as part of my Christmas present to Luke that year, but now it sits on my dresser among stacks of paperwork and unmated socks. Again, these are two of my favorite pictures ever, because of the memories they invoke.

After our hike, we drove back into town and walked some more of the downtown area, and eventually stopped for a break of hot chocolate (me) and coffee (him).

Another hour of talking and laughing. Our whole day was a conversation that I didn't want to end.

That night, we had dinner at The Hatchery, which was described by the owner of the Tulip Tree Inn as the nicest restaurant in town. My planning foresight involved making reservations on the same day I booked our room, more than a month before, and still we waited over an hour for a table, but again, so worth it. I don't remember what I had - probably steak and some form of potato - but Luke still raves about the bolognese sauce he had with his pasta dish. Our waiter was kind enough to snap our picture with my crappy camera.

After dinner we went back to our room and enjoyed some red wine. The following day, we drove to his parents' house in Merrillville, where his mom, dad, and brother were expecting us, and sang a hearty round of "Happy Birthday" around a cake made by Luke's mom while the birthday boy blew out his candles.

It was an absolutely perfect weekend, and another trip that gets talked about all the time.

I can't believe that was SEVEN YEARS AGO. What babies we were in our relationship, with so much ahead of us to navigate, and even more to learn about each other. And yet still, perfect.

-------

There are a couple more trips I have in mind to address in a future part two, but that involves digging through even more photo albums, so that may take awhile. If you want to read about some of our more recent adventures, though, check out:

Niagara Falls Honeymoon 2006 (couple of actual pictures here)
Indiana Dunes Camping Trip 2006
Mackinac Island Babymoon 2007
New Buffalo, Michigan Anniversary Weekend 2009

23 weeks

On Tuesday I hit the 23-week mark. My, but time flies when you have a mini-gymnast pummeling you from the inside! (That's what she said! - BA DUM BUM HA HA I BEAT YOU TO IT)

For comparison purposes, here's an entry featuring a shot of me pregnant with Kara at the same point in time. And here's one with Nathan.

 

Can you tell how good I feel about myself in this picture? The warm and fuzzies are the combined product of a long-overdue haircut from my regular salon to clean up my layers (many thanks, state refund check) and being the recipient of a batch of maternity clothes from Katy and another member of our book club (faded shirt is mine; stylish cargo pants, unfortunately, are not). For so much of this pregnancy I've been looking worn out and frumpy, and it feels so good to regain a little bit of my former, pre-gestating self.

Baby Brother continues to be on the move for much of the day and night, and it's been a lot of fun to get an unexpected kick in the middle of a meeting or during an episode of Law and Order: SVU. You'd think my body was reaping the benefits of all that calorie-burning because I find myself ravenous for food practically 'round the clock, to the point that last night I dreamt I was at my parents' house enjoying a GRIDDLE'S WORTH OF BACON. As of today I've only gained about two pounds of baby weight, but once you start dreaming about greasy pork products, I suspect it's all downhill from there.

Speaking of weight, the weight of my belly is finally starting to wear on me, and its size is making simple activities like going to the bathroom a monumental accomplishment. I find myself rolling around like a cue ball on a pool table, desperately trying to find that one right angle that will allow me to empty my bladder completely instead of in stages. Getting in and out of bed? Motherfucker, that hurts. If only I could just take this thing off for a while to give myself a rest, but apparently that is not how this process works.

Despite continuing to be plagued with pain from my diastasis recti, I've still been too cheap to buy a maternity belt; however, in my defense, the waist band on my borrowed jeans today is certainly tight enough to hold those muscles in place until I can prop my feet up again. Luke and I are pretty decided on Baby Brother's name, and in spare moments throughout my day I find myself writing it over and over, along with Kara's and Nathan's, and then mine and Luke's, and good Lord, sometimes I still can't believe we are going to be a family of five. I'm getting so excited to see him and hold him and welcome him into our lives. For all the worries I had at the beginning of this pregnancy, I am equally joyous right now, knowing with every fiber of my being that this baby was meant to be with us.

It's also about now that The Comments start to fly.

Every pregnant women deals with them, and by now you would think I could let these types of remarks roll off my back and take them for the well-intentioned conversation-starters they (sometimes) are, but I can't. I am more apt to hold people accountable for their words and for adhering to basic human etiquette, even if sometimes it's only in my head.

That said, may I present to you:

WHAT NOT TO SAY TO SOMEONE WHO'S EXPECTING: A BRIEF GUIDE

Regarding size

"Wow, look at you. Have you grown? Because you look so much bigger than the last time I saw you."

[immediately followed by]

"Seriously, in just the last week your belly has gotten so much bigger!"

"Are the kids asking a lot of questions? You know, since you're so big now."

"Are you okay? You just look really...tired. I can see it in your face." (Which: I know I did people, but if you think knowing that makes it easier to hear, newsflash! It doesn't.)

Regarding three

"Was it planned?"

"So you have two kids already. Wow, two. And you're going to have a third! Oh my gosh!"

"My husband and I would love it if we had more, but I don't think we could do it to ourselves on purpose."

"Were you trying?"

"Luke is going to have his hands full with three kids at home! Does he ever just need to get away for a while once you get home?" (Bonus points for including this in the same conversation with the first two statements on size)

For those of you in the I've Been Pregnant Camp, which comments drove you up the wall? Do share.

Adventures in Sterilizing

It was all so perfect in my head.

During one of my first prenatal appointments for this pregnancy, I discussed with my ob/gyn the possibility of getting my tubes tied shortly after delivering baby number three. I already knew that the hospital where I had Kara and Nathan wouldn't allow this procedure during the c-section, being a Catholic institution and all, and I was okay with that because I loved both of my stays there and how I was treated by the staff. Plus, Luke has always been willing to man up and get The Snip, so there was no reason to give it any more thought.

Until recently, when I gave it some more thought.

The idea came up again during talks with a coworker who is expecting her first child in May; I learned that she was delivering her little guy at a neighboring hospital, and it reminded me that when I first signed up with my practice some four years ago, right before I became pregnant with Kara, my doctor told me she had privileges at that very facility, in addition to the one I eventually chose. Let's call my current hospital Scrubs A and this second one Scrubs B.

Scrubs B has no religious affiliation but maintains an equally stellar reputation.

The wheels in my head started turning.

Originally, I didn't even want to think about switching to another hospital because my experiences with Scrubs A up to this point have been wonderful, and I had no desire to throw unnecessary wild cards into the mix with this last baby. However, Luke and I have been doing an awful lot of talking about the whole getting fixed issue lately, and since my personal deductible will be all paid up as a result of the charges associated with this pregnancy, any procedures that are covered by insurance would be free of charge for me. You never want money to play a factor in determining which spouse gets sterilized, but when you are already pinching pennies and you are searching for a permanent resolution to ending the reproductive chapter of your life, it is what it is.

So I changed my tune. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to switch things up a little, especially since Scrubs B is so well known for its maternity services and especially since, to the best of my recollection, my doctor could just as easily deliver there as she could at Scrubs A. Then I could kill two birds with one stone - one baby, one tubal, one surgery for the win!

"Let me just make sure the practice still delivers at this hospital," I told Luke a couple of weeks ago. "My next appointment is soon. I can't imagine they wouldn't deliver there anymore."

That appointment was today, and guess what? They don't deliver there anymore.

Well, that's not exactly true. As it turns out, privileges are maintained by physicians on an individual basis, and of the now eight ob/gyns currently with my practice, only two might possibly still retain privileges. This is largely due to the practice's close proximity to Scrubs A - we're talking right-across-the-street close - and of course, as fate would have it, my own doctor is not one of those two. She explained that she stayed affiliated with Scrubs B for quite a while but that her patients always chose to deliver at Scrubs A, so she finally decided there was no need to maintain her ties with Scrubs B. MINUS ONE FOR FREMA.

On the up side, though, the two doctors she mentioned are ones I really like, so while I didn't particularly enjoy the idea of having someone other than my primary physician perform the c-section, that's exactly what happened with Kara and everything went swimmingly, so the switch was still on the table, until she reminded me that if a complication accelerated my delivery and one of those two doctors weren't on call, I'd end up having Baby Brother at Scrubs A, anyway. And as long-time readers may recall, I did have a complication with Nathan that caused me to deliver earlier than planned, so even though my scheduled c-section removes a good chunk of the guesswork from the actual birth, the pregnancy itself is still very much up for grabs, and the last thing I want is to spend my remaining gestating months fretting over how this will all play out.

All of that to say: no two-in-one for me.

Still desperately wanting to take advantage of having a paid-in-full deductible, I talked to my doc about having a tubal after the fact and learned I could schedule it within a week or two of my six-week postnatal follow-up, if I wanted. Which at first I did, because hello with still trying to kill two birds with one stone. Two surgeries within the same recovery period can still be considered a win, right?

My findings: It's a standard outpatient procedure, my ob/gyn can do it, I'd have to be sedated, and someone would have to drive me home afterwards, but recovery time is short at roughly one to two weeks. However, during that time, I would be prohibited from any strenuous exercise: no running, no 30-Day Shred, etc. You know, all the things I planned to do to get into shape before returning to work. Of my anticipated 12-week leave, I would be able to maybe use three of those to actively lose any baby weight.

I went back to work after eight weeks with Nathan, and I looked and felt terrible. I do not care to repeat that experience with baby number three, when the length of time off is one of the benefits I now have at my disposal.

So, all of THAT to say: no tubal during maternity leave for me.

After my appointment, Luke and I did some more talking, and  we came up with a plan. We decided that he would reschedule the urologist consult he cancelled back in October to get more information about The Snip and to find out how much of it would be covered by insurance. If our portion is minimal - as in, a few hundred dollars or less - then Luke will take care of things before I deliver, and we'll write off the bill as money well spent. If the cost outweighs the benefits for us at this particular moment in time, I will schedule a tubal for myself around the holidays, at which point I'll have been back at work long enough to use up some vacation time. Either way, somebody in the Frema-Useless Clutter household is getting sterilized in 2011.

I smell a new reality show for next season. We can call it The Amazing Race: Tubes versus Testes!

Banner time!

Seeing as I am now 22 weeks pregnant and therefore no longer in any shape to be running downhill with two toddlers and a laptop on my person, it was time to spruce up the ole blog banner. Fortunately, once again, Luke happily came to my rescue. Having free design services under your very own roof is nothing to sneeze at, people.

For those of you following via feed reader, here is the latest look:

 

I keep telling my husband to add his mugface somewhere so that I don't appear to be an unwed mother with poor access to birth control, but my pleas fall on deaf ears. One day I may have no choice but to Photoshop in a picture of Joshua Jackson, just to appear respectable.

The sacrifices I am willing to make for my children, I swear.

Anyway, as if this news weren't exciting enough, I have finally created a Facebook fan page for this website! It was my big project for the week, and it took me two tries to get it right, because the first time around I done got myself confused by all the options Facebook offered when it came to categorizing pages, so I went with "Writer/People," because hello! I am a writer. Am also person! That's two for two right there. And immediately I was so pleased with myself that I shot off invites to anyone on my Friends list that I thought would give a damn, and it was only when I attempted to finetune my profile that I realized maybe I had made the wrong choice. But for some reason unbeknownst to me, Facebook doesn't allow you to recategorize a page; you either resign yourself to being inappropriately labeled or delete the page and start over. With two days in and only nine likes, I figured it was safe to scrap my early effort and start fresh.

Mission accomplished.

I'm not really sure what I'll do with this page yet; I will definitely add links to my posts as they're published here, so if you are on Facebook a lot and don't like having to jump around to access content you like, this is a pretty sweet deal for you, isn't it? I may also post random thoughts and questions as they come to me just to spice things up. At this point, I'm also open to suggestions, so if you have any, fire away.

Next big project: deciding on an ad network. Right now I only know of a couple: BlogHer and Google. So if you have experiences with or opinions on either one, let me know that, too.

The Great Carseat Experiment: Conducted!

Luke and I went through with The Great Carseat Experiment this weekend, and we were able to come up with an arrangement that will suit our needs well enough to bring Baby Brother home in the Outlander.

We first tried using the three existing seats presently in our possession - Kara's Britax Marathon, Nathan's Britax Roundabout, and the Baby Trend infant bucket and base from Jenn - but the Marathon kept bumping into the passenger door upon closing, so on Saturday afternoon we made a trip to Target to invest in a highback booster seat, which bought us the couple of inches we needed to avoid a budget-blowing vehicle upgrade. We are lucky in that Kara meets both the height and weight requirements for a booster, and we went with a highback so our girl could enjoy the benefits of side impact protection a while longer. Though we have the seat in our possession now, we will continue to use the Marathon for Kara until right before the baby's arrival, when the bucket seat will be permanently installed.

We don't know for sure how long we can get by with our current car; at some point Nathan's Roundabout will need an upgrade, and I don't know how three convertible/booster seats will fit back there, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, we are just grateful to retain our status as a car-payment-free family, however long that lasts.

Kneeling on the front passenger cushion to look back at all those child seats nestled together, I realized this was the first time I had a tangible representation of what life will look like with three children. And honestly, it was a little overwhelming. I assume that was only the first of numerous similar-type moments to come.

ABOUT THE STROLLER

Luke and I have given the whole stroller situation some more thought and decided against buying anything for now. For one, Luke reminded me we have a perfectly good umbrella stroller collecting dust in the garage. Also, we have a several baby carriers at our disposal - an infant-sized Baby Bjorn hand-me-down, the Maclaren I received while writing for Parents.com that worked splendidly with Nathan, and an Ergo that will see us into toddlerhood. With all of those things, we own more than enough gear to transport this baby on errands, zoo trips, etc. My main concern was having something for Luke to use when getting Kara and Nathan to and from school, but he has already assured me he would rather use the carrier instead of a stroller to keep both hands free.

Also, about the double stroller: I appreciated all the suggetions, but Luke and I have a double stroller. With two kids 13 months apart, it was sort of a necessity, at least in the early months when Nathan was brand-new and Kara was still a baby herself. Nowadays, though, it doesn't get much use since we received a wagon as a generous present from my in-laws and Kara and Nathan much prefer that to being strapped in to individual seats. Plus, even with the wagon, they actually walk most of the time, so Luke and I anticipate needing only one stroller (if any, what with all the aforementioned carrier options) to contain the baby.

Does your brain hurt? I know mine does. Another recurring symptom of Life With Three Children, I suspect.

Pre-nesting

This past Sunday, I spent a glorious three hours cleaning out Kara's closet and sorting her outgrown clothes into Tupperware bins for other fashionistas to enjoy. Now that we know the baby's sex and ESPECIALLY since Luke and I will be taking steps to nail shut close the door on the reproductive phase of our lives, I'm eager to let go of that which no longer represents the family we are now and make room for the next round of material fanfare. (Though I did hold on to some unique iron-on onesies made by a special Internet auntie.) For us, that chapter involves turning two toddlers into roommates by situating them in a gender-neutral space absent of floral wall art and yellow paint and preparing a nursery for our newest little guy. 

When it comes to feeling ready for this baby, I haven't yet experienced that paralyzing Oh, Shit Moment Amalah described in a recent post, but at this point it's only a matter of days, as I have already shared with Luke my strong desire to conduct The Great Carseat Experiment this weekend to finally determine how we will fit three children in the second row of the Outlander. Luckily, we have two different infant buckets at our disposal - the Chicco KeyFit 30 originally purchased for Kara, which we love but anticipate being too bulky to position between two toddler seats, and a slimmer Baby Trends hand-me-down from my friend Jenn that may just do the trick. It also helps that Kara is now the appropriate height and weight for a booster seat (40 pounds and 40 inches, as of last week's well-child visit), so that should buy us a little more room.

Anyway, just imagining those carseats all smashed together lined up in a perfectly safe arrangement is working me into a mini-frenzy. Actually watching this image come to life is guaranteed to secure my one-way ticket to Crazy Pregnant Lady Town.

As I've stated before, we truly are blessed to have so many of Baby Brother's "necessities" already in our possession, the result of having two young children and generous family and friends. Bassinet, crib, changing table, swing, car seat, bouncy seats, nursing pillows, bottle warmers, infant AND toddler carriers, mobile... We haven't spent a dime on him yet, and that includes my maternity wardrobe, which so far has accommodated my current size nicely (though come summer I may be singing a different tune). We do know, though, that there are a couple of things we'll want to pick up, the biggest item being a stroller. Once I'm feeling up to it, Luke and I want to be out and about as much as possible with all three kids this summer, and while baby carriers are wonderful, it would be nice to NOT have the baby strapped to my person every waking moment of the day if I so desire. Of course, our choice of stroller will be heavily influenced by the infant car seat we end up using - another reason The Great Carseat Experiment must take place as soon as possible - and after doing some price-checking online, I'm wondering if it would make more sense financially to drop some dough on a moderately priced travel system than spend almost the same amount on a single stroller.

A jogging stroller would also be grand, but unless we win the lottery, Luke and I will be staggering our alone time on the trail accordingly. Which is not terrible in theory, since I'm sure we'll each welcome a short break from the zoo that will be our household.

One area where I do want to spend some money is on decorating the kids' rooms. Kara and Nathan's room would benefit from a fresh coat of paint, spunky wall art, and some new bedding if we can swing it right away. As for the baby's room, it's technically all ready to go for a boy, but I hate the thought of bringing him home to a space that was custom-designed for his big brother. Plus, nurseries are so much damn FUN to decorate, and I want to experience doing that one last time.

Luke and I also once talked about painting the kitchen, half bath, and the kids' bathroom, but these action items may be placed on hold until fall, when we will hopefully have more moolah at our disposal. Not to mention it might make more sense to paint those areas closer to sell time, in case our color palettes are deemed All Wrong by our real estate agent. (Feel free to agree with me here -- or not -- in the comments.)

It feels like we've been talking about these various projects for simply ages now, but pretty soon it'll be time to spring into action, because Oh, shit, a baby is coming! (hey, there it is!), and babies do not factor your laundry to-do list into their date of arrival.

Ingrates!

21-week update

I am 21 weeks pregnant today, and according to the plethora of baby books in existence, I should be at my prenatal peak: visibly showing but not enormous, increased energy levels, and only occasional bouts of round ligament pain. Go on and run that 5K! Hike your ass off! Enjoy these precious weeks of gestating freedom while you still can!

All of that may be the case for a first-timer or a gal who hasn't birthed 11- and 9-pound newborns, but these are not my truths.

After complaining of tenderness in my belly at my 15-week appointment, a quick exam from my ob/gyn revealed that I have a condition called diastasis recti, meaning that my rectus abdominal muscle has separated into two vertical halves. It's common among women who have endured multiple pregnancies and who have delivered larger-sized babies -- CHECK and CHECK -- and it's not anything I need to be concerned about in the long run (so I've been told, at least), but the doctor did say that the tenderness would remain present throughout the pregnancy and most likely increase in intensity. And oh shit, was she ever right.

I usually begin my day feeling perfectly normal, and if I were the sadistic type I could lightly pummel my stomach without suffering even the slightest twinge of pain. But by the end of the work day, the soreness has emerged from its bat cave, and come dinnertime the skin over my belly button is protruding something fierce, to the point that if it even lightly brushes up against another object of any kind, I am clutching my sides and sucking in my breath as if I've been kicked with a steel-toed boot. Even simple acts like sitting on the floor or repositioning myself on the couch have become seriously fucking unpleasant, and poor Luke has taken over the bulk of evening kitchen clean-up once again.

At my last two appointments, each doctor has recommended using a maternity belt to relieve some of the pressure, but I don't wear belts when I'm NOT pregnant because I hate the idea of having something so constricting touching my skin. However, the pain has gotten worse over the last several days, and even Luke is pushing me to look into this. Have any of you dealt with this condition before? If so, did a belt work for you? Any feedback on this would be much appreciated.

 

It doesn't even look like a typical pregnant belly, does it--all triangular and cliff-like? Plus, my hairstyle is making history by introducing what can only be described as the first front-facing mullet for women! to the modern American public. Clearly, the epitome of sexiness all around!

The saving grace throughout all of this has been Baby Brother's activity, which has been strong enough for weeks to feel at various points throughout the day, and oftentimes it is a welcome distraction from focusing on how uncomfortable I am. I'm already daydreaming about what he looks like, what he'll feel like, and what our lives will be like after we bring him home. Kara and Nathan have started incorporating mentions of Baby Brother in our daily conversations, so I think it's becoming a little more real for them, too.

Kara: Does Mommy and Daddy love you? (She revels in asking this question and poses it frequently throughout the day)
Frema: Yes, honey, Mommy and Daddy love you and Nathan very much.
Kara: And the new baby?
Frema: Yes, honey, and the new baby.

 And we do. We really, really do. 

Working on my business

Turns out we won't be able to pay off our credit card debt before Baby Brother 2.0's arrival.

I discovered this on Valentine's Day after Luke filed our taxes and I created budgets for every paycheck through June. We were so close, dammit--just a few hundred dollars away--but alas, Visa is not the only entity that needs our money. We are furiously pumping dollars into our HSA for my ob/gyn and hospital bills and into short-term savings to cover unexpected expenses during my maternity leave and transition back to work. Our goal to get out of credit card debt is going to take longer than we planned--probably into the beginning of the New Year, unfortunately--but at least the end is in sight.

All of this got me thinking about ways to bring in more money.

I've mentioned several times here my eagerness to explore launching a freelance business I could manage in my "spare time," but right now, it's not going to happen. For one thing, building a client base will be more difficult than I first thought. My original plan was to reach out to some of the advertising, design, and printing vendors I know through work, but I recently learned this type of relationship is regarded as a "conflict of interest" by my employer, so good-bye to that idea. Now, I could still go after like-minded companies to land similar types of projects, but when in my day am I supposed to network, set up introductions, attend client meetings, and just plain be available for questions or immediate needs? My work is flexible, but not THAT flexible, you know? Also, I doubt one lunch hour per week day would be enough to manage those things, and most people are not up for conducting business face-to-face after 5 p.m.

I'm sure some more efficient ways to iron out these details details would present themselves with a litle bit of pre-planning, but at this point in my life, I'm not willing to explore them. It would be easier to apply for a nights-and-weekends job at the Gap and be done with it, but right now the whole point is to increase our income while maximizing our time together as a family.

So I've got a different plan. As the great Monica Gellar once proclaimed in the second season of Friends when she invested her last few unemployment dollars into MGE stock, "I'm going to bet on me!"

In my particular scenario, "me" equals this blog.

Before I had kids, I was able to pay a lot more attention to this here little site, and the unintended (but very welcome) result was a two-year stint at Parents.com. What a wonderful opportunity as a writer to be paid for sharing my thoughts and experiences with pregnancy and motherhood. It's also how I came to know some pretty awesome people.

On the flip side, Mom-101 spends a lot of time talking about appreciating your value as a blogger and not underestimating your worth, and I think that was my biggest failure with Parents.com. Not in the sense that any additional efforts on my part would have kept the community from shutting down, but in hindsight I see that my fear of being labeled a "sell-out" for taking that gig kept me from publicizing my content and making it more accessible to long-time readers. I didn't Tweet links or start a Facebook page because Some People don't like that. But you know what? Some People do, and that includes me. I think it's helpful when the bloggers I follow on Twitter share their newest post, I'm among the first to "like" a Facebook fan page for a blog I love, and I don't think twice when somebody decides to implement advertising on their site. I have preferences on how those things are done, but I don't object to the acts themselves. So why have I always been so much harder on myself than the Internet trailblazers I so admire? Hell, I couldn't bring myself to keep a list of Parents entries in my own damn sidebar. God forbid I give the impression that I believe my writing is actually worth READING.

What it comes down to, I think, at least for me, is that for the longest time the majority of online content was published purely for recreation, without any thought given to financial gain or career opportunities. You blogged because it was fun and didn't assign any value to it beyond random shits and giggles. These days you can host ads, write sponsored posts, receive corporate sponsorship to attend a conference, freelance for other sites, and optimize your posts for keywords that apply to your "desired market." You can manage your personal brand just like the big wigs do over at Best Buy, Amazon, and Apple.

I work in marketing and communications, so I'm pretty familiar with the concept of branding. I've just never really done it for myself.

Thankfully, marketing can be done tastefully and with respect for the end user, but compared to established creative industries like music and book publishing, blogging is relatively new to the concept of for-profit strategy, and the community is still mulling over that proverbial line in the sand when it comes to deciding how far is too far. And opinions vary drastically. To some, blog links on Twitter are tacky. For others, partial feeds to increase site click-throughs are grounds for cancelling a newsfeed subscription. Then there are those who simply ignore any bells and whistles that don't appeal to them and keep on doing their blog-reading thang.

My problem is I've been operating all these years on two potentially faulty assumptions:

• That any reader in the history of the universe who encounters my blog is against any form of self-promotion, and
• That that those opinions should heavily influence how I manage my blog.

Obviously, neither has to be true.

As is the case with so many areas in my life, I need to stop worrying about what other people think and start trusting my own gut when it comes to making decisions, whether they pertain to my boobs or my blog or whatever.

A long time ago, Molly and I talked about trying to launch a mom-centric website of sorts, but neither of us had a concrete idea to pursue, and currently I don't have the mindset to commit to starting something brand-new from scratch. However, this blog has always been important to me, and I never regret the time I spend updating. I certainly don't need another reason to spend more time here, but if there is even a small chance I can take something so personally fulfilling and turn it into a financial opportunity, well, why not at least try?

I have no idea where this will go. I am open to incorporating ads, though I have no idea which network to use, and I could earn twenty bucks a month or nothing at all. I'd love to land another freelance gig but have no idea how to go after that, as Parents was handed to me on a silver platter. I don't feel comfortable writing sponsored posts at this time, and there aren't any resources available in the Frema-Useless Clutter household for blogging conferences or other networking events.

I can...start a Facebook fan page, though, right? That's easy. That's free.

So, all of THAT to say this: I'm going to start a Facebook fan page!  You're trembling in your boots with excitement, aren't you? I can totally tell.

On breastfeeding (or not) again

One of my biggest, all-consuming fears about having baby number three is breastfeeding.

Part of me feels ridiculous admitting that to anyone. After all, I've gone through this twice already! Shouldn't I be a pro by now? Or, at the very least, accept that breastfeeding is not my fight and write it off altogether? After all, to say I've been unsuccessful at nursing would be a vast understatement. To say I'm excited to try it again? That would be a lie.

It's funny; the content of this post has been on my mind for weeks, but now that I'm writing it, I'm not sure what to say.

When I found out I was pregnant again, I resolved to do everything in my power to make breastfeeding a reality for my family. I have read The Books, and the blogs, and the comments to those blogs, so the health and bonding benefits of breastmilk (and, consequently, the drawbacks of formula) are not lost on me. Plus, it's no secret that we are living on a pretty tight budget, so the cost savings aren't anything to laugh at, either. More than anything, though, was this feeling of wanting to overcome a hurdle that has previously appeared insurmountable.

I'm not blaming low supply because honestly, I'm not convinced that was the problem. With Kara, I couldn't keep her on the breast for more than a couple of minutes before she was crying and pushing me away. The lactation consultants at the hospital checked her latch several times, and it seemed fine to them, but who knows? It's not like I had any idea what I was doing, despite reading all those books, so it's very possible my technique was off or Kara's positioning wasn't right or any number of things related to my management of the situation. I never got more than a couple ounces from the pump in a session, whether I pumped every two hours or four, but again, what the hell did I know? Maybe my volume would have increased over time. Maybe I should have just been happy with the amount I was producing and made peace with supplementing the rest of the time.

I didn't try nipple shields, and I didn't attend any support group meetings (though I did call about the one offered through our hospital, and sorry, that once-a-month get-together slated for next Thursday isn't going to help me RIGHT NOW). It's not like I kept at it until my boobs had nothing left to give. It truly was my decision.

So for those who think I didn't try hard enough, well. I suppose they are right. But during those initial weeks of breastfeeding, my mind went to some very dark places. I felt terrible about myself as a mother, which in theory should have been enough to make me go the distance for as long as I could, but even more than that, I hated the idea of doing all those things and STILL most likely failing. Aside from the first couple of days of her life, feeding Kara was a source of stress, self-doubt, and guilt. At some point before the six-week mark I decided that suffering through those feelings for even one more day was more than I could bear. The reality of motherhood, I quickly learned, is that sometimes, when there's a conflict of interest between what you could ideally accomplish as a parent and what you can realistically handle, your own mental sanity has to win out. Second best just has to be enough.

... And THAT was breastfeeding with Kara.

With Nathan, things felt like they were getting off to a better start. I had still had trouble perfecting my latch, but he didn't fight my efforts and ate as often as I would let him, so I was hopeful that this time, please, this time, things would be different. However, at his two-week appointment with the pediatrician, my stomach dropped after the nurse checked his weight and announced a paltry two-ounce gain. TWO OUNCES. My God, did I feel like shit then, and my mind immediately went back to my experience with Kara, and how I fucked that up, and by the time we saw the doctor, any shred of confidence I had about nursing was gone. I continued to pump for another couple of weeks, but I don't think I ever put him on the breast again.

And now, I get to do it all over again with baby number three.

Like I stated above, when I first learned we were having another baby, I was set on doing everything within my power to make breastfeeding work this time around, and hey, third time's a charm, right? I talked about it with Katy, who nursed both of her boys into toddlerhood; borrowed more books; researched lactation consultants; and gave myself numerous pep talks that this time, things would be different.

But now? I honestly don't know. I hate that my first months at home with Kara and Nathan are tainted with such strong feelings of failure. As a working mother, that time to bond means more to me than almost anything else in that first year, and Luke and I are doing everything we can to stock our bank account accordingly so that I can take all twelve of those precious, job-protected weeks off without suffering serious financial repurcussions. I cherish that time to connect with my babies, to snuggle them in the rocking chair and take naps with them on my chest and cover their hands and cheeks and toes with kisses and overall just get to know who they are. It would be so much easier to say, This is not for me, and release myself from ever having to think about this again.

Then again, this time, things might be different. Baby Brother 2.0 could prove to be a fantastic nurser and all my worries could be for nothing. (Kind of like all those "Should we have a third baby?" conversations!) And I do appreciate the benefits, and I do really want those cost savings. Just not at the cost of my self-esteem.

One of the most popular retorts I've heard spoken by the more judgemental nursing mothers and that has most enraged me about the entire breast-or-bottle discussion is the whole "Well, if you aren't willing to make sacrifices for your children, why did you bother to have them?" It makes my fists clench and blood boil and and smoke shoot out of my ears, because really, when did how you feed a baby in the first year of life become the sole measuring stick for quality parenting? And who is anyone to say that I don't make sacrifices for my kids? Luke and I bust our tail to live on one income so they can enjoy all the benefits that go along with that. We painstakingly chose our house because we wanted to make sure they could go to one of the best public school systems in the city. We pack their meals with fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and they have yet to even try soda. We have slashed our household budget more times than I care to count in order to enroll both of them into Kara's day-out program this fall. I can't tell you the last time we bought clothes or shoes or even a magazine for ourselves, but Kara and Nathan get everything they need and then some. 

I did not become a mother because I wanted to breastfeed. I became a mother because I wanted to experience the joy of raising children and because I thought I could do a good job. I did not promise to make every right choice. I did not promise to always put myself last. But I do strive to give my family the best that I have as often as I can. I am proud of the home Luke and I have made for our kids and the life we are able to give them. And when I don't have it in me to reach the ideal, I will forgive myself (eventually) and try to move on.

This all sounds so good in black and white, doesn't it? Let's see how well my heart can embrace it, come June.

Pregnancy fitness fail

Today marks 20 weeks of pregnancy with Baby Brother 2.0, as well as the blessed more-than-halfway! milestone, since my c-section will be scheduled sometime prior to the 40-week point. As of 6:30 this morning, I'm still clocking in about two pounds lighter compared to when I first got knocked up, mainly because I could barely tolerate anything except fruit, yogurt, and the occasional bite of chicken for almost the entire first trimester and some change. Things are back to normal now, for the most part, so in the grand scheme of things what felt like Hell on Earth wasn't completely unbearable, and I know lots of pregnant women experience a far more severe case of morning sickness than I do, but dudes. For serious, I was so damn sick, and useless to my family, and overall just a big blob of miserable.

The blog title, it makes sense now, yes?

I had such high hopes for maintaining an active pregnancy right from the get-go. The week I found out, I was running along the Chicago lakeshore, and at around six weeks I finished a local 5K with only a handful of walking breaks. Running is the only form of exercise I have ever truly loved, and I fully intended to stick with it for as long as I was feeling able. Then, suddenly, BAM! Everything upset my stomach, I was nodding off by 8 p.m., and I was plagued with constant headaches. I couldn't gather the energy to wash dishes at the sink, let alone throw on my gym shoes and log three miles on the trail. And now, at the more-than-halfway! point, sporting a belly that has pretty much collapsed into gestational position and experiencing sciatic nerve episodes, abdominal tenderness, and semi-frequent aches and pains ("You talk like an 80-year-old grandma!" Samantha laughed during a recent phone conversation), I am pretty much thinking that running is off the table until after I deliver. I plan to start walking and hiking outside once the weather gets nicer, and my friend Jen shared with me a prenatal video that I want to try, but I'm still bummed I didn't feel up to doing more when my bodily functions weren't being compared to members of the geriatric population. Back in the fall, I read an article highlighting female athletes who continued running during their pregnancies, and my favorite of the bunch talked about how running eased a lot of the inital discomfort she dealt with in those first few months. I am so impressed with women who manage to do this; it's one thing to push through predictable motivational issues that apply to both sexes, but forcing your body to perform when you physically feel like ass thanks to a HUMAN LIFE feeding on you like a parasite? That is mind-boggling to me.

Not mind-boggling: why I will never be described as an elite anything when it comes to athletics.

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While my prenatal fitness thus far has been nothing to write home about, I'm super optimistic about what I can accomplish during the last six weeks of maternity leave. Delivering in late June means I should be cleared for exercise in early to mid-August; it'll be sweltering, for sure, and last year I learned that my body can't handle long distances in that kind of heat, but I'm already fantasizing about updating my iPod playlist and hitting the trail again, if only for two or three miles at a time. I also remember my initial success with The Shred after having Nathan (I'll take another ten pounds in 30 days, thankyouverymuch) and wonder if it's unreasonable to think I could achieve my third pre-pregnancy weight before returning to work in the fall.

It is not lost on me that at this time last year I was visiting the gym several days a week to train for the Mini, and mentally I'm salivating over capturing that spirit again, of feeling invincible and capable and strong. I watch Luke train for that same half-marathon and hate that I can't show up this year to improve my time. Patience, I tell myself, patience; pregnancy is an endurance race in and of itself, to be approached with the same level of respect to process and self. Once I cross this finish line, only then I can set my sights on another.

She trims her bangs, her bangs

Last week, I was all set to sacrifice a proper salon experience for the sake of my family's budget. It would be an adventure! I told myself optimistically in an effort to calm my fears. And good blog fodder to boot! I OWE IT TO THE INTERNET AND ALSO THE COMEDIC GENRE TO GO TO GREAT CLIPS. This was happening.

Then I talked to Gina, my girlfriend since kindergarten who back in high school introduced me to Brenda, My Favorite Hair Stylist Ever, and who appreciates the ability to do good hair even more than I do. When I explained to her my financial dilemma and adventurous plan over a two-hour chat Saturday night, I could practically hear her shaking her head on the other end of the line. "Breain, you can't go to Great Clips. You just can't," she said, and eventually convinced me to call my regular salon and ask about a bang trim, since they were the primary frustration reason I had for scheduling an appointment anywhere. And you know what? It was SIX DOLLARS. So I booked a visit for yesterday after work, and ten minutes later I walked away eight dollars poorer but also two free samples richer AND mentally a million dollars happier. Apparently, friends don't let friends go to Great Clips. Thanks again, friend.

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Another happiness boost: today is payday, and this morning I realized with a start that it marks the third payday of not having to dip into our savings account OR having to charge anything to our Visa. Step by painful step, our plan to live within our means, pay off our credit card debt, and save for the future is working. It works partly because I am no longer fighting the word "no" -- no, you can't run to Chipotle with the girls; no, you don't need eight subs AND pizza for Kara and Nathan's party, even if you do feel like a cheapskate for serving cold cuts. I know that I wear the same handful of clothes to work every day, eat the same kind of lunch every day, and it doesn't bother me like it did before. Luke has to run in below-freezing temperatures to train for the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon because we can't afford a treadmill or even a monthly gym membership, and he is doing it without complaint. Gifts to nieces and nephews have been drastically scaled down for occasions like Christmas, birthdays, and baptisms, but we do it and just remain grateful we can afford to buy them anything at all.

However, this new reality only works because Luke and I have undergone a huge shift in mindset and a willingness to ask, "What are we really working for? What is the priority here?" while embracing the amount of money we have to work with right now, instead of looking to the future for some magical solution. For example, I mentioned in an earlier post how I thought that our situation would resolve itself after receiving our tax refund check and my annual merit increase, which is typically issued at the same time every year. Well, recent events have made it clear to me that the type of increase I was expecting to get isn't something I can take for granted (the economy is affecting everyone, it seems!). And the tax check will be good, but it won't eliminate our Visa balance, so every paycheck prior to Baby Brother's arrival will continue to be carefully orchestrated to make sure we can axe off this debt, pay my OB bill, and maintain a small nest egg to compensate for what paid maternity leave and short-term disability benefits won't cover. Now more than ever, I reflect on Suze Orman's long-ago-uttered mantra, "I have more money than I will ever need," and strive (along with Luke, of course) to make this true for my family. 

But not everything is a wash. This month is fall registration time at Kara's school, and Luke and I are committed to sending both Kara and Nathan for one day a week this year. Technically, Kara is old enough for preschool, which meets for two and a half hours twice a week, but not only was it slightly more expensive, it also required Luke to finagle three small children -- including one newborn -- out of the house multiple days a week. By keeping Kara in the same type of program she's in now, she and Nathan can be out on the same day for the same number of hours, making drop-off and pick-up logistics infinitely easier on Luke. It wasn't an easy decision, knowing that Kara is capable of (and would enjoy) participating in a more education-based curriculum, but there's always next year, and we do plenty at home, and again, we're just grateful she can continue an activity she loves and that we can offer the same opportunity to Nathan. After all, THEY are what we're working for. THEY are our priority. We would gladly give up a lifetime of gym memberships and a million fast-food tacos for them.

For he's a jolly good fellow

Nathan's second birthday was a picture-perfect day.

Our January 31st started bright and early with breakfast followed by PRESENTS!

 

He and Kara adore jigsaw puzzles, but Nathan is especially smitten, so Luke and I stocked up on a few of those (the 24- and 48-piece Melissa and Doug ones are my favorite) and thew in some books for good measure. Man, am I grateful for how easy it is to please toddlers when it comes to gifts.

The day continued with a prohibited picnic lunch at an Indy-area park.

 

In my defense, I had called the facility ahead of time like a good little park enthusiast to ask about a suitable place to eat our food and was easily directed to the nature center; however, we were hit in the face with "No food and drink allowed" signs immediately upon entering the building. So Luke and I felt a bit like rebels here. I was stuffing plasticware into our picnic basket as fast as we could empty it. Totally worth it, though. The kids were captivated by the view.

 

After lunch, we spent a considerable portion of the afternoon camped out in the children's activity center, which featured small animals in tanks, toys, books, games, and puppets. And since it was a Monday, we had the whole place to ourselves.

 

Look, a toad! Their knowledge of toads is limited to the aptly named character in one of Kara's favorite series, but they were pretty taken with this one.

 

The insect bucket was also a huge hit.

 

HUGE. As was the owl puppet Nathan is clutching here.

 

LOOK MOM A PUZZLE CAN YOU BELIEVE IT.

 

Nathan would not enter this cave. Would. not. do it, and in fact felt the need to confirm this decision on multiple occasions for the duration of our time: "You don't have to go in the cave if you don't want to, riiight?"

 

Kara, meanwhile, had no such reservations. That's my girl.

 

We wrapped up the day with snickerdoodles and a wagon ride through the park, which lasted all of ten minutes because Nathan didn't like his cookie and didn't want to stay in the wagon but didn't want to walk and he was too wiggly for me to carry and he was fighting Luke tooth and nail. Clearly he was suffering from an unfortunate yet common toddler condition known as Dude, where's my nap? itis. We promptly left the park to oblige.

 

The day could end no other way, of course, except with cake. Nathan doesn't actually care much for cake and typically only takes a few obligatory bites when it's placed in front of him -- it's like he knows he should go batshit crazy over this delectable combination of carbs and sugar and doesn't want to disappoint his peers. However, he adores the idea of cake, and it was all he asked about in the days leading up to his big day.

"You can have cake on your birthday, riiight?"

"It can have candles?"

"You can have letters on it, riiight?"

Luke, the maker and baker of all edible goods in our household, did not disappoint.

 

Like I said, picture-perfect day.

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One weekday morning last week, Luke and I were still in bed when I heard the sound of rustling through the baby monitor we still keep in Nathan's room. Then, a few minutes later:

"Daaaaddy.... Daaaaddy...."

Silence, then:

"Daddy, I pooped my pants."

[pause]

"It was a big poop."

Luke got up to investigate, but there was no number two in sight. Probable culprit? Flatulence. Honest mistake. Could've happened to anyone.

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He loves to count but often forgets the number five. He's an easy-going eater but rarely drinks all of his milk. He often asks to sit on the potty before bedtime and has even gone once. His current favorite book is an I Spy compilation Kara received for Christmas, and he is insanely good at identifying all the objects, sometimes more quickly than Kara. He loves to help and is quick to throw out a "Sure!" whenever I ask him to put away his trucks or help Mommy pick up blocks. He loves trucks and trains and dinosaurs and his Build-A-Bear panda. He is more articulate than a lot of toddlers his age I've seen but still has adorable pronounciations that mark his still-visible babyhood, like "meelt" for milk and "bannas" for "bananas," and "Kara" often sounds like "Tara," with a bit of an East coast accent. He's a demanding child when he's got his eye on something, and it's not uncommon to hear him shout out commands like "I want my meelt!" or "I want ranch, Mommy!" He's also very loving and is generous with thank-yous for even the simplest of tasks.

He soaks up his time with Kara and constants seeks out her feedback and companionship. "Hey, Kara, come play trucks with me!" "Let's play with the doctor set, Kaaara!" His favorite songs to sing are "A Bushel and a Peck" and "You Are My Sunshine." He loves to dance to "the Energy song, Mommy!" and will shout "Be! Be! Energy!" as he skips in circles during the chorus. He STILL hates having his diaper changed and is not a fan of brushing his teeth. He enjoys finger painting and coloring and playing the new Goodnight, Moon game received at his and Kara's joint birthday party last month. His cheeks are so soft it's impossible not to shower them with kisses. He's a daddy's boy in many respects but thankfully still likes to cuddle with Mommy. Though cuddling is for daytime hours only; he has yet to want to sleep in bed with Luke and me. Good thing, too, seeing as it's crowded enough what with HIS OLDER SISTER thrashing about a handful of nights per week.

How many ways can I say it? He is amazing; amazing! It blows my mind to think that soon he'll play big brother to another little guy just like him. Except that nobody will ever be quite like Nathan.

 

Happy birthday, buddy. We love you.

Video courtesy of Luke and the outdated Photoshop Elements program on our computer.

So long, Cecilia

That was our front-runner name for a girl. Cecilia Mae because we liked it or Cecilia Maureen in honor of my late Nana, whose actual name was Gloria Darlene, but we were going with Maureen because it's the name of my grandmother's sister, so it was still using a name from her side of the family without burdening the child with a fuddy-duddy throwback like Gloria. Though I actually did like Gloria and would have seriously considered it for a first name except that Luke was not. on. board. Darlene was, well, never an option.

Anyway, it's a moot point now. We're having a boy.

 

And not a shy one, apparently. I could tell before the ultrasound tech finished typing the first word what our little guy was sporting down there.

 

Kara and Nathan weren't much impressed by the news, but Luke and I both had tears in our eyes, and I couldn't stop smiling. I can see our future so clearly now -- birthday parties, graduations, treks through the Grand Canyon, room-sharing arrangements, tossing out casual phrases like "The boys are in the yard" -- all of it. This tiny new person, my youngest son, our new Baby Brother, feels so right for our family, and for the first time since learning I was pregnant, I sincerely CANNOT WAIT for him to get here. We love him so much, already.

To read my pre-appointment ramblings from last night, click here.

I Want (To Know) Your Sex

To be sung to the tune of the classic George Michael song or uttered like a blood-thirsty vampire. It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure for blog titles!

On Tuesday, I will be nineteen weeks pregnant. Tomorrow, Luke, Kara, and Nathan will accompany me to this month's ob/gyn appointment, also known as The Big Day. Private Parts Day. ULTRASOUND DAY!

[Include grand proclamation-type trumpet sound here]

"You know, we're not guaranteed to find out the baby's sex," Luke informed me, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Until then, this baby's giving up the goods, y'all.

I have mixed feelings about this. Not about finding out, but what I'm hoping for.

When I was expecting Kara, I wanted a girl. After all, I'm a girl. I know what girls are like and how they think. I had dreams of sharing my childhood interests with a girl while she was young and sharing my vast perspective as a wife/mother/daughter/career woman as she grew older. Of watching her take that information and use it to shape her own path. Plus, girls' names are more fun to play around with. When I was a kid, I kept a notebook of potential character names, and my list of girls' names was more than double my list for boys.

Anyway, we all know how that turned out. My baby was a girl! Hooray for me.

When Luke and I found out we were expecting Nathan, most people assumed we'd be gunning for a boy, playing into the whole "one of each" mentality that seems so ingrained into the picture-perfect middle class family. But once again, I hoped for a girl. I am one of four daughters and am extremely close to two of my sisters; so close that I watched one of them GIVE BIRTH. You can't predict the quality of relationship your children will have with each other as they grow up, but nonetheless, I wished for this same type of connection for them.

Of course, we didn't have a girl, and of course, I have no regrets. Nathan is amazing and has brought more happiness to our lives than I ever could have imagined. I never longed for a son the way I did a daughter, but I couldn't be more in love with my thoughtful, quirky, joyful little boy.

Upon learning about our latest bundle of joy, true to form, my default reaction was to wish for a girl. I still love the idea of being a mother to sisters and watching them bond, and again with the more interesting pool of girls' names to choose from. (To date, Luke and I agree on one boy's name. ONE.) I also like the idea of Nathan being known as our boy and not the middle child. Then again, I think about how much fun it would be to have two little boys running around and to watch that relationship grow. And if Kara were to be our girl, well, that could only bode well for her in the long run. Though maybe not her boyfriends.

In the end, I guess what I'm saying is no matter which type of parts present themselves tomorrow, I will be delighted either way. Be sure to check in for the news!

That's what she said

"I swear I didn't pull it that hard" was the opening I received upon taking in the broken car door handle in Luke's hand, severed from the Cobalt on Tuesday during his ninety-minute quest to free my car from several layers of ice.

"The door handle begs to differ," I said.

 

It's hard to be mad about it when he was doing such a kind thing for me, braving freezing temperatures to spare his eighteen-weeks-pregnant wife from all that time outside. Plus, it was the passenger-side door, and since normally only one person is in the Cobalt at a time, it's not a big deal in the long run. Luke is hopeful that he can superglue the handle back on once the weather is warmer; meanwhile, I worry we are one step away from using engine hoods from different vehicle models and garbage bags from under the kitchen sink as substitutes for legimate car repairs. At least superglue is budget-friendly!

This was just one of several winter-weather troubles experienced by my husband during Indy's two-day, house-bound Iceapalooza.

 

RIP, ice scraper number one.

 

...And to your cheap, good-for-nothing brother, ice scraper number two.

He also took a decent fall yesterday while completing his training run for the Mini-Marathon, attempting to hike the slope leading from our trail to our backyard, which he is still paying for today by way of cuts on his nose and lip and various aches and pains. He nearly scared the bejeezus out of me when he came back into the house.

 

Thankfully, Monday's weather was uneventful, so the four of us were able to enjoy a lovely afternoon at a nearby park to celebrate Nathan's birthday. More on that (plus his video!) soon.

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In our on-going effort to live within our means, pay off our credit card, AND have something leftover for savings, Luke and I are constantly reassesing our priorities and searching for less expensive ways to accommodate the non-negotiables. One such item that I have been consistently moving over to the next pay period for myself is a haircut. The salon I usually go to is affiliated with Aveda and charges $29 for a wash and cut. For someone who spent the better part of her teens and early twenties fighting with stylists from walk-in places like Fantastic Sam's over the best way to hack my curls, this price has never phased me because the service is top-notch and I am usually satisfied with the results. Plus, even when I was in Chicago getting the best cuts of my life (I still miss you, Brenda), the most I paid for a cut was $35. Again, so worth it to me for the service and expertise.

Unfortunately, our current budget disagrees. Either I can keep putting it off until I can afford my regular place, every day growing one step closer to resembling the cavemen in those Geico commercials, or resign myself to searching for cheaper, possibly less-experienced pastures. As evidenced by the photo below, I think it's obvious there's really just one option.

 

Look! With the proper backdrop and everything!

Action must be taken, and soon. Therefore, sometime between now and next weekend, which is when we'll travel north to attend baby Rosemary's baptism, I will cross my fingers, say a prayer, and brave the chair at Great Clips. I will be sure to keep the cut simple; right now, my hair is actually a little too "fringe-y" for my taste, and the layers are out of wack from postponing all these weeks, so a clean-up is definitely in order. The long-term goal is to grow it out to shoulder-length by summer; before that, though, I need a cut that will be more conducive to less upkeep. My hope is to replicate a style I had in 2006 during my pre-engagement/newlywed period, as pictured here:

 

Not drastically different from how I wear it now, just a little fuller at the top without the tails framing my face. That shouldn't be hard for even a new stylist to handle, right? I wouldn't think so. But then, I also thought all stylists knew how to do a blow-out with a round brush. Apparently, that is not the case.

Wish me luck, friends.

(Also: SOB, I miss that outfit. And my hair color! And the money and the basically care-free existence we had back then! Naive fools, both of you!) 

Three is different from two

As is two and a half, and two and seven months, and two and eleven months. Life, it is like a river, what with all the ebbs and flows and and rapid changes, and while the water is often delightful, there are many times throughout each day where I feel like HOLY CRAP, THIS RIVER IS KILLING ME.

This entry has been so difficult to write (hence, why it is also more than a month late) because Kara is not a baby anymore, and my interactions with her feel more intensely personal than when my primary concerns as a mother were breast or bottle, stroller or baby carrier, and cry-it-out or rock-it-out. We have in-depth conversations now about her friends Jack and Mary and Phil and Gertrude and how they like to go on picnics and ice skate in the dining room and Mommy, they are very nice, and oh yes, their parents are nice, too. We sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at bedtime, and when I come home from work she likes to come upstairs with me while I change into my sweat pants, and once I hit the closet, she cries out, "Hooray! You get to see your mommy again!" and runs to throw her arms around my legs. Last month, while reading one of our Christmas books and talking about Mary and Joseph being Jesus' parents, Kara said, "Mommy? Do I have parents?" Also, "Can I have a Christmas Day?"

Her ability to rationalize and think through a situation never ceases to amaze me. She is so smart, so thoughtful. I love her just as much as I did when she was a baby, but I appreciate her more as I discover more about the person she is and imagine who she will become, with all her contradictions, complexities, and surprises.

However, she has also reached an age where she can be held accountable for some of her actions and can more directly impact the dynamics of our relationship - intentional or otherwise. Meanwhile, I have reached the stage as a parent where my cognitive skills and foresight have become critical to all of us having a good day. 

Before we hit this stage, Luke and I talked a lot about how we would handle issues from a discipline standpoint, and we both agreed that for our family, spanking/hitting is not a resource we care to add to our parenting toolbox. However, as a kid, I was hit all the time, for all kinds of reasons - meaning I have no personal experience with time-outs or anything resembling non-violence until I was too old for that sort of thing, and even then, there was still lots of yelling and little to none of that sit-down-at-the-kitchen-table-for-a-loving-but-firm-conversation-about-your-actions ala Full House or Family Ties.

In other words, I am totally winging this, relying on nothing but my own instincts, my ability to effectively communicate with my husband, knowledge and tips gleaned from numerous mommy blogs, and random episodes of Super Nanny.

Case in point: On the day of Kara's actual birthday, Luke and I planned to celebrate by taking her to Build-A-Bear. We had it all planned out: pick her up from school, drive the 45 minutes to the overcrowded mall where the store resided, let her pick out any animal she wanted (along with a few accessories), have a treat in the food court, and drive home for dinner and cake. Easy peasy, and heartwarming memories. Double score!

Actual turn of events: Pick her up from school. Drive the 45 minutes to Build-A-Bear. Spend TWO HOURS in the store as Kara bounced from area to area, touching all the unstuffed animal shells, claiming to want everything from the brown bunny to the blue bear to the gray owl but then promptly melting down when we tried to guide her to the stuffing machine. She wanted everything, and wanted nothing. It was an incurable bout of Indecision, with no cure in sight; if anything, they become more frequent as time goes on.

Anyway, the pivotal moment came when, after Luke and I suggested we visit another store to pick out something different, Kara threw herself down on the floor kicking and screaming and I had to carry her outside of the store. Together we sat to the side of the entrance, me holding her on my lap and repeating, "It's okay, it's okay," while she wiggled and cried and passersby looked down on us with wide eyes and that disapproving expression of, "Does that mother not know how to control her own child?" One woman actually came up to me to suggest ADDITIONAL WAYS to restrain my child. That was especially appreciated.

Eventually, though, Kara did calm down and settle on an animal to take home. The winner? Hello Effing Kitty. Surrounded by adorable furry creatures of all types and colors and she goes after the most commercial of the bunch. And it's not like she even knew who Hello Kitty was; apparently, it was love at  seventy-millionth first sight.

And because our little Nathan was such a champ during the entire ordeal, we let him get something, too. He selected the black-and-white panda bear you see in the picture below and couldn't have been sweeter about it.

 

"Honey, are you SURE you don't want to reconsider? Maybe select a doll that doesn't make your mother's toes curl with disdain?"

 

She was sure.

Afterwards, because we left the mall so much later than planned and because we had no energy left to prepare anything at home, Luke and I took the kids to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner.

 

Wearing a happy face once again (both of them).

 

That night a surprise visitor made a special appearance, which delighted the children to no end. He, Mrs. Claus, and several elves were seated at a table directly across the room from us, and Kara and Nathan could not keep their eyes off them. And that's actually how they preferred him - at arm's length, as evidenced by this picture.

 

Ending the day on a brighter note.

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Kara's birthday didn't go at all how we planned, and it certainly wasn't fun to work through a tantrum in front of a crowd of strangers, but as we move through the Year of Three, I hope that more often than not I will be able to draw strength from that experience and remember how much of the outcome depended on my willingness to stay in control and not give in to the frustration that was building up inside of me. I'm not proud of the scene she caused, but I'm not embarrassed by how I handled it, either, and for me, that is the most important thing in the end. When all is said and done, the setbacks experienced in any given day become less important than my living, breathing response to them. I can't control my children's actions, but I can control my own, and commit to doing better when I fail.

Happy belated birthday, sweeheart.

(As always, mad props to Luke for the birthday video.)

Chasing the clouds away

It's so easy to let money troubles define who you are by measuring your life against that which you cannot do. At least, that's how it feels to me sometimes. My monthly book club dinners are out. Luke can't join a gym to support his training for this year's Mini (!!). Kara can't take dance lessons, and Nathan can't start (pre-pre)school by his birthday like we once planned. Granted, these can'ts will resolve themselves in a few months, so they're not hindering us long term, but how do you get by in the interim? How can you turn your day-to-day into something meaningful using only what you already have? And during the coldest, darkest time of year?

Those were the questions Luke and I were asking ourselves at the beginning of the month, after evaluating our money situation for the remainder of winter and coming up with a game plan to get us through. It's easy to fall into a "Why me?" sort of attitude and feel sorry for yourself. But clearly, asking pointless questions and indulging useless emotions won't get you anywhere. So here are some of the ways in which we are accentuating the positive:

Cleaning house: Luke and I love to play the "What if?" game when it comes to remembering all the other houses we could have purchased instead of this one, but when she's wearing her Sunday best, it's easier to appreciate all the positives we gained with this place: open space, natural light, optimal number of bedrooms, and plenty of toilets to accommodate large family get-togethers. I am working hard to stop clutter from piling up in hot spots like the microwave top, the mail stand, and my dresser top. I make the bed every morning before I leave for work, and I've stopped using our CD rack as my own personal storage unit. We won't be implementing any major renovations this year, but we do plan to paint the kids' bathrooms and our kitchen before the baby comes, and a new splash of color can do wonders to improve the overall mood of a room. (Right, Molly?)

Being creative: Last week I received a gift certificate from my employer acknowledging my five-plus years of service. The certificate was for an undesignated amount of money for a site that very much reminded me of those catalogs from grade school - you know, the ones that told you what you could score for selling five to twenty candy bars (sparkly pen, bangle bracelets), fifty to seventy-five (NKOTB tribute band CD, piggy bank), etc. I could have redeemed it for a sassy new hobo bag, but Luke and I chose boring cookware instead, because our current set was scratched up something fierce and there was no room in our budget for replacing it. It wasn't a fun choice, but we saw an opportunity and jumped on it.

Taking stock: It's also been helpful to remind ourselves of all the things we do have that make this rough patch more manageable. The maternity clothes I once planned to unload to Goodwill, for one - I'll need more clothes when the weather gets warmer and my belly rivals the size of a world globe, but for now I can stretch out live off my regular work pants and the oodles of three-quarter-sleeved shirts I found at Kohl's near the end of my pregnancy with Nathan.

Thankfully, we need very little baby gear for Number Three. Nathan's room is still set up to accommodate a baby with a matching crib, changing table, and dresser set, courtesy of my 2008 Christmas bonus, and his and Kara's closets are jam-packed with items Luke and I weren't sure what to do with but didn't want to get rid of: crib mobile, swing, baby carriers, activity table, random infant toys, and so on, and our bassinet will come back to us from Samantha and Dan the next time they come to visit. And ninety-five percent of what we don't have is either being handed down to us from family and friends. We'll need a new single stroller, and we'd LOVE to get our hands on a jogging stroller, but ultimately we won't be missing anything necessary to bring the baby home.

We are also feeling better about our car situation. The plan was always to try and fit our current Chicco infant seat into the Outlander along with Kara's and Nathan's Britax convertibles, but thanks to some of the comments on my last post, we are now considering investing in smaller seats if that's what it will take to cram fit all three kids in there. Plus, there's a good chance that Kara can move into a booster seat by summer, and that will save us some room, so we're exploring that option, too. Not fretting over taking on a $300-plus car payment does wonders for a mother's piece of mind. Imagine that!

Finally, thanks to the size and layout of our house, we'll only need a smidge of rearranging to make room for Number Three. So far the plan is for the two older ones to share Kara's bedroom, which is the larger of the two rooms by about the double the square footage; they are so young right now that the gender issue doesn't come into play, and it just makes sense for the kids who share a bedtime routine to also share their sleeping quarters. We'll transition Kara into a twin-sized bed and Nathan into her toddler bed sometime this spring and leave his room pretty much as is for the baby (though we do plan to paint). All of this will require some creative thinking on our parts in regards to organization, but creative thinking is free, and paint is cheap. This is good.

And on the leisure and recreation front, Luke and I realized we still have plenty of ways to keep busy. We finally made space for his drawing table - which had been sadly collecting dust in our garage for almost as long as we've lived in this house - in the little nook in our bedroom, and we've been alternating between the library and our current book collection for new reading material. We have rediscovered the old Nintendo games saved on our Wii, and my brother- and sister-in-law passed along a TV antenna last week, so two nights ago, for the first time since August, we were able to view network television. LIVE. On our actual TV instead of a laptop. If I weren't pregnant and, you know, vehemently against smoking, it would've been the perfect moment to light a cigarette, post-coital style.

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It's easier to think positively when your stomach isn't hurting almost twenty-four hours a day. I'm in the middle of my sixteenth week, and over the few days or so, I've seen an increase in my energy level and a slightly higher tolerance for a wider menu of grocery items (though for some reason almost every tomato sauce I've had tastes terribly sweet and overall not right to me. What's up with that?), so when it comes to feeling like complete and utter crap, I think I'm finally, FINALLY, out of the woods. (I've even taken to washing dinner dishes again, hooray for Luke!) I'm still getting headaches, but they're not as frequent, and sleeping is still relatively uneventful, save for the three-year-old who has a habit of climbing into her parents' bed almost every night. However, while this pregnancy saw the quickest recovery of first(ish)-trimester symptoms, they definitely hit me the hardest this time. So...I win? Sort of?

My next doctor's appointment is February 7, at which time we'll get to see Number Three's privates and consequently start focusing on only one set of baby names. Time is flying by this go-around, it seems, so I'm not impatient with waiting, only excited. And for what it's worth, I'm not even as nervous about affording this baby, now that we (assuming) have the car thing under control. Hopefully that means my future posts will read more like this one and not my last.

Thank you, as always, for letting me be honest.

15 weeks and personal finance mumbo jumbo

Today I welcomed my fifteenth week of pregnancy by vomiting for the first time since I peed on that fateful stick back in October. For future reference, prenatal vitamin + leftover Raisin Bran milk = blaaaaaaaaah.

In other, less disgusting news, I had my monthly ob appointment yesterday, and Number Three is doing well; very active, according to the doctor, and the heartbeat sounded strong at 150 bpm. There are a few aches and pains going on that are typical of this stage - the acting of up my sciatic nerve, for one, and a tenderness in my abdomen that was diagnosed by the doctor as being diastasis recti. I also found my first pregnancy-related skin tag ever near my collarbone, a couple of nights ago. Way to go, baby, for keeping things interesting!

Here I am in all my gestational glory:

 

Why do I look whiter than the Pillsbury Doughboy? And is it just me, or is that picture frame crooked? Oh, well, at least I can still fit into my regular-sized dress slacks. So long as they are cotton and sport elastic waistbands.

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At the start of the New Year I outlined our household budget through the remaining winter months, and I know these issues are only temporary, but things feel bleak, friends. Luke and I are working hard to pay off our credit card balance before the baby comes in June, which means almost every bit of cash from now until March is needed to cover our car insurance premiums, homeowner's association fees, and necessary grocery and household items as well as pay down our Visa bill. Luke and I did not exchange Christmas presents, only token stocking stuffers, and there are no travel plans slated for anytime soon, save my niece's baptism in Chicago next month.

Sometimes I feel like a complete and utter failure for not being able to manage our finances more efficiently, and then I remind myself that some things were simply out of our control: a $164 increase in our mortgage last fall thanks to a negative balance in our escrow account was the most jarring, and the random but major car repairs totaling almost two grand in September were definitely not on our radar. Luckily, there is light at the end of the tunnel: tax refunds in February and my annual raise in April should put us on more secure footing, though we have decided there is no way in hell we have any business taking on a car payment to buy a vehicle that can accommodate three car seats anytime soon. This means we'll be hauling two cars if we need to go anywhere local as a family and renting a van if we find ourselves needing/wanting to travel north. But hey, at least we have two cars that we own outright, and we can still pay our bills and put food on the table, and we don't have to talk about Luke going back to work (as if we could afford three kids in daycare, anyway), and really, this money glitch is so temporary in the grand scheme of things. Nothing on our plate is unmanageable, just really hard to get through sometimes on a day-to-day basis.

How's that for keeping it real?

This is just one more reason I have been considering launching a part-time freelancing business sometime this year. I'm not looking to replace my full-time income, just supplement it with some meaty writing projects from time to time.

Have any of you had any luck starting your own business? How did you get started? Are there any books you would recommend?