a bit late daybook

Outside my window...insanity. Last week it was in the 60's and beautiful. Then it snowed 10 inches and we had a hard freeze over the weekend. Yesterday it was in the 60's and sunny again and everything is almost melted already...and has turned the yard into a sopping mess. It's very weird to scrape snow off your van when it's too warm for a coat.

I am hearing...Jack chattering softly to himself. He woke up too early, and I'm trying to sell him on the idea of dozing back off on the couch.

I am thinking...about priorities. We are all off kilter here. Our daily routines are kind of a mess and we are just kind of flying by the seat of our pants every day. It's not good for anyone, especially the boys. I really need to work on our routines and get back into a good schedule. But, we are already hitting that "waiting for baby" limbo where it just seems futile to try and make new plans. So, I'm working on simple, open plans, not a schedule so much as a routine of events, open and gentle enough to carry us back into a new normal after the baby arrives, and maybe even through the summer.

I am thankful for...a husband that comes grocery shopping with me. Yesterday I just reached the "I can't take another step" point and left John to check out alone while I parked it on a bench.

I am wearing...gray capris, a white tank top with a black long sleeve shirt over it.

We are currently reading...Kain and I are reading The Long Winter. I love this one in the series. I always enjoy the children's reactions to reading about real and actual hardship...they don't appreciate how insulated they are from such things. Hunger around here is running out of favorite snacks before shopping day comes around again. I'm reading Dr. Bob Sears' new Autism Book...it just came out!

I am praying...that this baby doesn't go 10 days late like the last one. Please. Pretty please.

Pondering these words... "Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful speeches and railings. For what does it profit if we abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour our brothers and sisters? The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor. " St. John Chrysostom

Latest on the babies...We are 37 weeks along. Wow! And I am in pain. I seem to have developed pubic symphisis dysfunction. I've diagnosed myself, heh. The two halves of the pelvic bone come together in a joint of cartilage at the front of your pelvis. Close to birth, hormones cause this joint to relax so it can separate during birth and help the baby pass through. In later pregnancies, this can happen a bit early. It can be quite disabling. I wouldn't say I've hit the "disabling" stage, but I've definitely hit the "in some degree of pain most of the time" stage. The softening causes the joint to be unstable and slip back and forth when walking, rolling over in bed, etc. This is cramping my plans a bit too. I wanted to start painting the living room next week. I'm not sure I can make that happen now. I feel like I could handle it with help from John and Maria, but I'm afraid of making this worse. Hmmm...

Jack is starting OT very soon, probably next week. He'll be going twice a week. They've also managed to switch Kain's OT appointment so it lines up with one of Jack's, so that will make life more manageable. We are still waiting on speech, because we are still waiting on our report from the children's hospital to arrive. But not at all in an obsessive "anxiously checking the mail everyday" kind of way. Nope. Not me.

From the kitchen...hahaha! Ok, no, sorry. Let's see. We switched over to a new spring/summer lunch menu. It's nothing impressive, just some different things that don't require use of the oven. Still fast and simple. I've not made any more freezer meals. But I am keeping meals very simple and collecting even simpler "fast food" type recipes to use in the coming weeks. I probably have about 10 freezer meals, so that's something.

Around the house...standing paint supplies.

In the learning room...again, just working with Maria mostly. I ordered her a new spelling program. That's a weird thing to do in March, huh? We will work on it through the summer though. Her spelling is just...atrocious. I'm making one last ditch effort with something new that was highly recommended for dyslexics. You can see it here.

In the garden- Our bulbs started coming up. Now they are covered with snow. Not sure what will happen to them now. Maria has been clipping branches of forsythia to force into bloom indoors. They still haven't bloomed outside. Usually they bloom in February, but we have had a weird, long-running winter.

Plans for the rest of the week...This month has been insanely busy. Things are slowing down this week, thankfully, and should stay a bit saner as I avoid scheduling as much as possible and activities begin to wind up for the school year towards May. Kain is still in day treatment and should be getting out sometime after the baby comes...hopefully later than sooner. I'm not sure if I am going to homeschool him next year and change my mind about it constantly. I want to homeschool him. I'm just not sure I'm up to homeschooling someone that I have to do battle with over things like rinsing his toothbrush, you know? I guess we have the summer to figure it out.