All the photos you'd ever want to see....

Right after birth, kinda purply and swollen.


Me and Tess.


Me and Tess, again.


Me, Tess, and John.


Maria and Tess. She and my mom were at the birth.


The midwives, weighing her in.


Meme and Tess.


Getting all cleaned up and dressed...by me! Not by a nursery nurse! I loved keeping my baby with me, the best part by far. Once I got her, no one took her away.





All dressed!


Kain and Tess, later that day.


I wanted to shampoo the ook out of her hair that afternoon...


Look at all that curly hair!


Three days old, wide awake.

Coming up tomorrow if I get a chance, her birth story, and hopefully a pic of Tess and Jack. He's handling the changes fine so far...until we got home he complete ignored her, heh. Once we were home, he finally acknowledged her presence, but not much else. Now he has kissed her on the head a couple of times and talks about her some. Just his way of dealing with things...anyway, I just haven't been motivated to take more pictures just yet. Organizing these has been my big project for the last couple of days.

Birth Announcement

Teresa Grace was born May 28th at 1:35 am.
She weighed 10 pounds, 15 ounces.
No, that is not a typo. :)
21 inches long, headful of black, curly hair.
The birth was great, we got to stay at the birthing center and have our natural birth. We're both healthy, and she's nursing like a barracuda.
More pictures and details forthcoming in a couple of days. My mom got some great birth pictures, but I need to wait until my bottom is feeling more up to sitting at the computer,,,as you might imagine. :)

The time has come, the Walrus said....

Ok, boys and girls...this looks to be it. Entropy's dream may be more on than I gave her credit for. I've been having regular, strong contractions for 3 hours now. I'm not really ready to leave, I feel like I still have a long way to go, but the birthing center is two hours away through the mountains and we're a little worried about that, so we've decided to go ahead and go. I hope I don't regret it and end up puttering out and coming home!

confusing communion

We sit up front during mass...this works best for our kids. But there's a trick to it. You're first in line for the collection basket. You're first in line for communion too, and since there's hardly anyone ahead of you, you will be receiving communion quickly. You've got to be on the ball to sit up front, something that can be difficult during a mass filled with the distractions that come with juggling kids.

Today, I was ready enough. John filed out, then I followed with Jack by the hand, and Maria was behind me (Kain was at his dad's). As soon as I stood up, a contraction started. I was already lagging behind because I could only move at Jack's pace, so I bit my lip as the baby squished down rather painfully on my bladder and shuffled forward so as not to hold up the line. Once out of the pew, I lunged for Jack, who had jerked away from me, and snatched him by both hands, still contracting. All of a sudden I found myself face to face with our priest. He held up the host expectantly while I looked at him, and it, with confusion, surprised to be there. I almost reached up and grabbed the host with one hand, like he was handing me a cup of coffee or something, which would have been inappropriate to say the least, but that's how disoriented I was. I paused and looked stupidly for a minute at Father, trying to remember if I had even bowed my head or anything, and how I was going to receive when I had Jack by both hands anyway?, and then awkwardly stuck out my tongue to receive before shuffling my still contracting self back to my seat. It all took place in less than a minute and Father probably didn't even notice anything, but I felt embarassed anyway, especially since Father couldn't have possibly known he had given communion to someone who was struggling mightily just to keep from peeing on his feet.

updates...almost week 41

No baby. No, no baby. I'm so bummed.
I went to the midwife yesterday and she said I'm about 70% effaced and a couple of centimeters dilated...she was even able to touch the baby's head, which made me kind of wistful because *I* would sure like to touch the baby's head...and she said I should be ready any time now. She said if nothing happened in a couple of days we would start trying some cohosh and such to try and get things started. Then when I got home I was pretty sure that my water was leaking....but it either sealed over or the baby's head corked everything off. I had some pretty strong contractions for a while last night, but they puttered off again. So, here I sit, in maternity limbo...trying to be patient, trying to stay motivated to keep up with laundry and housework. I swore I wouldn't do this again, put life on hold when my due date approached, but it seems to have happened anyway. I told the kids that if the baby isn't here on Monday we are going back on our school schedule. I wish I had never taken them off of it, but that was mostly so that I could get stuff done that I needed to do before the baby came...now that stuff is done and everyone is bored and cranky. John is on vacation and has already used up a week of time off for nothing. Come on, baby!!!

Oh, and we got the air conditioner fixed...$830. Goodbye, economic stimulus check! I was so hoping to use that to pay the fence guy to come finish our privacy fence...(sigh)...

just hormones,,,I guess....

A little background...Kain and Jack sharing a bedroom has kind of been a bust. The two of them going to bed together...not good. Counting on Jack to be tired enough at the slightly later bedtime to pass out quickly...not happening. Counting on Kain to be the responsible older kid who sets the proper bedtime tone...yeah, right. I pretty much might as well be putting *two* three year olds in bed at the same time and counting on them to fall asleep quickly and easily. They keep each other up for hours while I turn into a shrieking maniac.

So, back to my crunchy momma roots, I brought Jack back upstairs to the hippy family bed. The baby's crib is already bumpered up against our king sized bed. I'm hoping it'll actually see more action this way. When Jack was a baby, it was pretty much a $200 laundry hamper for the first few months. Anyway, I made up a little pad on the floor next to John's side of the bed for Jack. For the last several nights, at 7pm, I take Jack up there and we read, we snuggle, we sing...I smooch his neck and drum out the Mexican hat dance on his belly...just sweet, silly stuff. Then I pretend to fall asleep myself, and he soon follows. When John and I come up to bed later on, we move him to the pad on the floor. Sometimes he stays there until morning,,,more often he ends up back in bed, wedged up against my back. I have really enjoyed having this time with him at night and don't regret bringing him back to our bed one bit. It's been such a gentle and lovely way to end the day with him, and often the only one on one time we get together. So, I guess that's why, tonight, once he fell asleep, I stopped to really look at him, and trace his eyebrows, and breathe in his breath, and uncurl his fingers, and then started crying for my baby who won't be the baby anymore, any day now. And he's so unaware of how much things are going to change for him, he doesn't really get what's about to happen at all, and he's so secure in his place as "the baby", and I know the changes will be for the better overall, but I'm still sad to see it all change for him, for us. How can you happily anticipate something so much and still feel some sadness about it at the same time? I can only hope it's just hormones.

update on peanut

Well...yesterday was my due date. So now, I am overdue, overdone, like a turkey, which is what I feel like, pretty much, a giant, overheated, overdue turkey.



I have contractions every day, and baby feels quite low and uncomfortable. I think I passed part of my mucus plug yesterday (there's that mucus talk again, sorry) and hoped that would be a sign of things really getting started. Things did not. It did motivate me to jump up and clean the kitchen though, so that was something.

In other news, John is officially on vacation now, so he's home for three weeks, which is wonderful. It's just nice to have the company, the distraction. Kain had OT yesterday, and then soccer practice, and John was kind of peeved that I took him to these things because "we are trying to have a baby", but sitting around here 24/7 doesn't make it any more likely to start labor, and it makes the waiting more irritating. It's far better for me to try to just do our daily lives than to sit around on the couch like some kind of Buddha.



Don't you like all the images today?

I'm trying to keep up with the daily house stuff so that I won't freak out too much when the in-laws head our way. We have dropped all pretense of doing school, although I really need to at least resume poetry...they are both in the middle of memorizing poems and I'm afraid they'll forget everything! Today I plan to catch up on bills and deskwork type stuff again. I also need to call the air conditioner guy first thing this morning because our AIR CONDITIONER QUIT WORKING LAST NIGHT, ARRRGGGHHHH! Totally unacceptable. Could the timing BE any worse?

Anyway, I will post something when things get started, which really should be any time now. My last two were right around their due dates, so hopefully this one will follow suit.

Brought to you by the class of '92

John, as I said, enjoys teaching Jack weird things to say...the latest has been the lyrics to "We Are the Champions". So, I had to look up the video for the kids on You Tube. And then I had to look at a bunch of other videos too. I love Queen. Love. Queen. Anyway, Maria stuck around to make fun of the guy in the leotard and to ask every 20 seconds, "WHY is he wearing a leotard anyway?" Because. Because he's Freddie Mercury, that's why. Because, when you are that freakin' talented you can walk around in a tent and nobody cares. Because, it's the 70's, and spangled, too-tight clothing was all the rage and considered hot on anyone, even way too skinny British guys with overbites.

So, of course at some point we were watching Bohemian Rhapsody. And, of course, if you were a teenager anywhere during the time that *I* was a teenager....



...you know what happened. At the appropriate moment, I whipped out my scrunchie and proceeded headbanging, in the finest pit style. Maria pronounced me "not cool", repeatedly, but what does she know? She thinks Hannah Montana is the height of coolness after all. Anyone that can't recognize the coolness of such a maneuver is too young, too old, or just a nerd. Because everyone else knows that thrashing during Bohemian Rhapsody is very cool indeed. But not recommended. My neck still hurts.

bugs and boys

A few weeks ago, when the weather was warming up, I found a swarm of ants in our main bathroom. We've never had them there before...in the kitchen, yes, this is Arkansas after all, and the ants will zoom in on some microscopic ice cream drip from the night before and swarm your kitchen within hours...but not the bathroom. Some investigating revealed a previously sucked-on and discarded hard candy that didn't quite make it to the bathroom trashcan. I chipped and pried it off the floor and the ants eventually left me alone.

Since then, I've been eyeballing the bathroom better, keeping an eye out for more food discards. The kids aren't supposed to throw away food in any trashcan but the kitchen one, but, well...you know how that goes. The other day I was in the bathroom and I found a saltine cracker carefully propped up in the window sill. All the kids were in bed, so I threw it away and made a mental note to question them about it. But my mental note of course got lost in my swiss-cheese pregnant brain and I forgot all about it. Until the next night, when the cracker had mysteriously returned to the windowsill. I threw it away again, again made my mental post-it, and of course promptly forgot all about it. Last night, another cracker had appeared. This time the kids were still up. I called the older ones into the bathroom for questioning. Kain admitted to leaving the cracker in the windowsill. He did it for the ants, he said. He wanted to leave them some food. In my bathroom. He left out food, on purpose, in my bathroom, for the express reason of bringing the ants back. And what's more, he just looked kind of confused when I tried to explain why this was a problem for me. Why *wouldn't* I want to feed the ants from our bathroom, after all??

blah, blah, blah

Ok, here's an update....
I'm actually keeping up with that ambitious list. Yes, I do deserve huge rounds of applause. I finished painting the master bedroom/bathroom this past weekend...I'll show some pics after this coming weekend's job of finishing organizing the room/baby stuff. It was a heck of a job, and frankly, my nesting energy has left. I had to really push myself to do it. But it's done. Maria helped me a lot, God love her. Not everyone would let an 11yo help paint their house...but she really doesn't do too badly. At least, her skill is comparable to mine. I don't know if that's saying a whole heck of a lot though. And she likes to do it, which puts her head and shoulders around anyone else around here I could recruit.

Otherwise, everything's going well, onto weekly midwife visits and that's getting old really fast, but baby is doing well and I keep getting bigger. Our activities are blessedly winding down. The kids finished their co-op classes, we all finished with PSR... I'm no longer feeling all antsy for the baby to come. I feel...I don't know...tired and cranky mostly, hormones I guess, but the thought of having a baby to take care of right now is kind of overwhelming. Maybe I'll be in a better mood once I finish getting the rest of my list done this weekend.

Less than two weeks to go,,,ready or not!

the poop

We are having poop issues.

Every night I put the boys to bed together.
And every night, after no more than 5 minutes, Jack comes out with a loaded diaper. Now, he's been potty trained during the day, and he'll even go all night most of the time without peeing. But he *will not* poo on the potty, hasn't done it even once. He waits until that diaper goes on.

Then I have Kain...Kain doesn't poo his pants, thankfully,,,but within 15 minutes or so of going to bed, he also has to get back up to poo. It doesn't matter how long I have him sit on the toilet before going to bed, he can't go until he has been *in* bed. This, of course, means that Jack is back up and running around again too, just for the heck of it since he's already had his poo taken care of.

In addition to all the poo problems, Jack has decided over the last few days that he isn't as potty trained as I thought. He's decided that instead of using the toilet, he just prefers to strip off his pants and pee on the floor of whatever room he happens to be in.

I'm so glad I got rid of that stupid cat that wouldn't use the litter box. But what am I supposed to do about the children?