Trying to Pass Time

Just to warn you, I'm going to complain and whine for a minute, so you don't have to listen!  I have less than three weeks until I know I will have this baby.  My c-section is scheduled for May 19th, and tomorrow is May!  I am so excited!  Except that thinking of the next almost three weeks feels like forever!  I am not sleeping, and walking actually HURTS!  It's not just awkward, it hurts!  And, to make it worse, I was simply walking across the living room today and tripped on our rug, which is only a half an inch thick, if that, but it is apparently too high for me!  Thankfully, I did not fall, but catching myself felt like I was ripping myself wide open!  I think I pulled a groin muscle.  So, walking was already hard, and now it's even harder!  Especially stairs, or anything I have to lift my legs up at all on.  And, for the last two nights, and now again tonight, my back is aching on my left side by my kidney.  I'm thinking it's just from the extra weight of my stomach making my back hurt, and everything "softening" to get ready for labor (which my body doesn't know I don't have to do), but I can't find a position that helps!  I'm retaining water more, so to use a phrase my cousin used, I now have "cankles".  So, while I am finally counting down and know I am close to the end, I also feel like these last few weeks are going to take forever, and I'm not sure what to do to pass the time.  I have pretty much everything ready for the baby when he gets here, which is good because my ability to actually accomplish a big task right now is pretty much at zero.  So, just when I really want time to pass quickly, I've lost my ability to do much to help that happen!  Instead, I just sit here a good part of the day, trying to still be somewhat of a mother to my other kids, but all while sitting down and moving as little as possible!  Anybody jealous yet?!

Story Time

I have to write this down while I still remember it!

This afternoon, Rob had the kids all laying down on pillows for a pretend "sleepover".  Part of the sleepover was that everyone got to make up a story.  Rob tells one, and then Eden, and then it's Isaac's turn.  He starts his story something like this, "Once there was a man who was poopy."  He said another sentence or two along the same lines, at which point I told him he needed to stop and start over with a nice, clean story.  So, this was the beginning of his next story, "Once there was a clean man.  He liked to clean everything . . . "  Not quite what I meant, but it works!!

Another Tooth for the Toothfairy!

So, just a couple of months ago, my kids loosing teeth was something I really hadn't thought about at all!  Since that time, Eden has lost both of her bottom front teeth, and two days ago, she added a third tooth to her list!  This one, unfortunatly, wasn't quite as fun to loose as the other two.  She had a dentist appointment to have two cavities filled that we found at a previous dentist appointment like a month and a half ago.  This last Tuesday was the soonest they could get Eden in to fix them.  She didn't complain about the cavities that whole time, but about 2 days before her appointment, she did tell me her gum next to the one tooth with a cavity was hurting her.  Sometimes my gums can get a little sore (maybe gingavitis?), so I figured it was just something like that.  Well, we went to the dentist, and it turns out that the bottom molar that had the cavity was infected, and had made her gums by the tooth swell!  He explained that at this age, when a tooth gets infected, they usually just pull it because even if they fix it, it has a higher risk of getting infected again, which can sometimes interfer with the permanent tooth underneath and create other problems.  So, they pulled it!  She actually had another cavity on the other side of her mouth, so they fixed that one first, and then pulled the bad one.  She did SO good!  I asked her after if she had felt anything, and she said that she didn't even know they were pulling and had pulled a tooth till they were done!  I really do like our dentist.  It is Ryan Johansen out at Jordan Landing, and he is so good with the kids, and the atmosphere is really kid friendly.  He and his staff really try hard to make going to the dentist as easy as possible!  Anyway, Eden did great at the office, but once we left, she was in some pain.  I think some of it was the medicines wearing off and leaving her feeling "funny" too.  It took a couple of hours, but then she started doing really well, and by that night she was doing great!  So, her tooth loss total is now up to three!  I'm just grateful it went as well as it did!

Besides Eden's fun visit, we've also been busy getting everything ready for the baby.  I did finally find at least half of my baby boy clothes, so at least we have something to start with!  We also finished setting up a bassinet for our room, and got a small dresser so we can have somewhere to put the baby's clothes!  Rob also started BYU-I this week, which has taken up a lot of time!  So, things move forward, and I'm down to less than 4 weeks!  Yeah!!

All Sorts of Fun Stuff

So, we took Eden into the doctor on Monday when she woke up with a pretty high fever still, and turns out she had strep throat.  Luckily, she has been the only one in the family to get it, so by Wednesday she was finally feeling a lot better, although she didn't make it back to school until Thursday!  So, thanks to our couple of weeks of sickness, I have fallen behind on some of the things I wanted to post, so here it all comes!

We did finish our staycation, and one of the places we went was to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum, which I have to admit was a lot cooler than I thought it would be!  I loved the star room, which was a kind of cylinder type room where on all sides, including the floor, the room was black with little lights that looked liked stars coming from everywhere, so when you walked through, it felt like you were waking through space!  That's not the best description, but it was fun! 

One of the really cool things was this sand pit they had towards the end.  I didn't get a great shot of what the whole thing looked like, but it was basically a big circular pit, built like a donut.  The inside was raised for smaller kids so they could reach in easier.  It was full of sand, and had a small stream flowing down the middle of the sand, which made the sand more shapable.  They had these cool aprons the kids could wear, so it was pretty mess free.  The kids loved it, and Rob and I could just sit there and watch them!  It was awesome!

The other place we went was a cute little pay fishing pond in North Ogden.  They have several ponds with different sized fishes, and they have grass surrounding the ponds, and places to picnic.  It was nice!  This is Eden holding up one of the fish Isaac caught! 

If you look close at this picture, you can see the MASS amount of fish in just this one side of the pond.  All the dark spots are fish!  Towards the top, you can see more green color, which is where there isn't fish!  There was no problem catching fish here!  In fact, the only problem is that you can catch them too quickly, so you can hit your limit (which is whatever you want to pay) sooner than you might be ready to go!

We also took my brother and sister, Thomas and Laurie, fishing with us, and Thomas decided to try for a fish at the big fish pond.  This was one of the fish he caught!  It was fun having them there with us!

So, since Easter fell on conference weekend, I dressed the kids up for church the week before.  But, I didn't think through it very well, and only took a picture at the last second, planning on actually taking more and better pictures after church.  The problem was that I forgot to do it later, so this is the only picture I got of the kids in their Easter dresses, and Isaac was already headed for the car, so I didn't get one of him at all! 

Well, I did get this one of Isaac later in the day, but he was already more casual!  I wouldn't have even posted it except I think it's so funny how he will almost always make a silly face when he is getting his picture taken!  He is such a ham!  He loves to make people laugh!  I also love Emma's face in this picture.  I can't tell if she is worried about what his face looks like, or if she is trying to figure out how to make the same face herself!

We did go to Caydin's grave for Easter as well, and so we took this picture of the kids while we were there (see how Isaac is still posing?!).  I'm so grateful for Easter, and what it really means.  Because Easter morning happened, I know that someday we will be a whole family again, all together, and I will be able to hold and see all my children at the same time!!!

The kids got to do two Easter egg hunts this year; one at each grandparents' house, but again, I seem to not be able to take decent pictures!!  This is one of the only shots I got with all my kids in it at my parent's house, and none of the kids are looking at the camera!  I think this pregnancy is really starting to use up my extra brain space, and I don't even realize I don't have great shots till it's over and done with!  I don't have any pictures of the hunt at Rob's mom's house, but we did video tape that one.  It was a fun Easter, and it was nice seeing family!

Finally, I'm not sure I actually want to post this picture, but thought sometime down the road I would want to see it!  I am now 34 weeks and 4 days along, and this is how big I am!  I feel huge!  And, I still have a month to go, and a month where the baby and I are suppose to still be putting on some of our biggest weight (per week)!  I don't mean to sound like a whiner, but I'm very uncomfortable, and I am feeling this pregnancy a lot!  I bet my waddle covers a good six inches or more from side to side if I don't make an effort to keep it more under control!  Stepping up into our van, which I never thought of as high before, feels like I'm trying to do the splits!  I actually decided to try to get one more really good tub washing in before I thought I might be too big to do it a couple of days ago.  I thought I was fine, and got the tub part all done, so I started to stand to do the walls, but my lower side started to hurt pretty bad, so I decided to go sit down for a minute.  It didn't help, and actually got worse, so I decided to go lay down.  I could barely make it into my bed!  It felt like after I have c-sections and using any of my stomach muscles just kills!  I figured at that point I must have pulled either a muscle or a tendon/ligament, and had Rob bring me Tylenol.  After a half an hour of laying down, I still wasn't getting any relief and started worrying I might have done something worse, so I called the nurse.  I described to her what was going on, and she said it sounded like round ligament pain, which she said can be quite painful, but isn't serious.  She suggested I take a warm bath to help loosen the ligament, and if that didn't help, to call her back.  I wasn't convinced it would help, but tried it anyway, and to my surprise, it actually did help!  Of course, our tub isn't very big, so half my stomach was sticking out of the tub, but I was grateful it was enough to finally bring some relief!  I also thought it was kind of ironic that I had a nice clean tub to bath in after hurting myself cleaning it!!  I was still sore the rest of the day, and really couldn't move well at all, but by the next day, I was feeling a lot better!  I did invest in a stomach support band after this incident, which has helped a ton too!  So, I'm glad I only have a month left!  Our crib that we have used for all of our other four kids got broken when we moved from Springville, so this week, we had to go buy a new one.  We were able to find one on KSL that also had a matching changing table, and all for less than half the price of even a cheap new crib, so we were excited about that!  After cleaning it and all our bedding for it, Rob and I set it up in Isaac's room, so at least now we have someplace to put the baby!  Now I just have to go through all our storage and find and then wash all the little boy clothes, no easy task for someone that feels like my body has been harded into a super inflexible whale! But, on the bright side, it is finally feeling like it is getting closer, and I'm getting excited to hold him when he gets here!!

Sickness

This week my family has been taking turns being sick; not the flu, luckily, but running fevers, tummy aches, and half of them getting pretty good colds with runny noses. Nobody has really been sick at the same time, so it has felt like a long week because as soon as one gets better, the next one starts into it! So far I think I have been lucky enough to either only catch it very mildly, or not get it at all. I can't tell for sure because I have enough pregnancy ailments that I can't tell if I have a cold, or if my nose is stuffy from being pregnant! My body aches, but it's been aching for a long time now, and I'm only getting bigger! I have to admit that I like coming to my blog now and seeing less than 40 days left on my baby ticker! I'm really hitting that uncomfortable stage in my pregnancy that lets me know we're almost there, although that doesn't always make the days easier to get through! So, hopefully we all get healthy, and the weather turns nice and warm so we can have some nice distractions this last month to get me through! I have taken up my crocheting again to try to keep myself somewhat busy since my ability to move around is becoming more and more limited! So, if anyone needs any washcloths, I should have a nice little stack in the next few weeks!

It's Official!

My c-section is scheduled for May 19, so unless something happens to change that date, that is officially when I am planning on having this baby! I'm excited because having a for sure date makes it feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel! It always helps when the date is sooner rather than later as well!!

Goodbye Sleep

Sung to the music of "Hello My Friends" by Neil Diamond

Goodbye my sleep, goodbye
It's been nice to have a while
I'll think about you now and then
When it's getting late
And I'm still awake
Goodbye

I'm not sleeping much these days, and somehow I don't think it's going to be getting a whole lot better for a while even once the baby does come. Sigh. Good thing babies are cute, right?!