It's a Good thing...

that it is the end of the year and I am certain my Mother of The Year Award is already in the mail.

A little background:

1. We are trying to get ready to be out of town for an extended period of time over the holidays (extended=more than a week). We have a few gifts to buy, gifts to wrap, Christmas letters to send, groceries to buy, work parties, friend parties, church parties, cats to tend, packing, bedrooms to paint and the small detail of my gestational diabetes bloodwork to get taken card of by the end of next week along with the general stresses/demands of daily life. I'm not complaining. We've done this for the last 7 years of our marriage and I really love our Christmas traditions. It is just a lot of work getting there.

2. I am pregnant and a little hormonal. If I am being fair, I would have to say that I am a little more on the side of crazy this year that normal. I admit it. But, I really don't know what to do about it except decorate the bedroom, bake the 40 different kinds of cookies and then cry about it. All right now, no waiting.

3. NewBaby is currently feet down in my belly. While I love the bumps and pokes, they are becoming stronger every day and becoming uncomfortable sometimes. Especially because the target of many of the pokes/bumps is now my bladder/pelvis area. It is like 48594819819897846513518 times a day you suddenly need to go to the bathroom urgently (if this offends some of you, you may want to check back at the end of March. I fully intend to discuss my cervix with you later in this pregnancy. Just not today). The sensation lasts only 2-5 seconds at a time. This is usually long enough for me to stop what I am doing and move towards the restroom. Then the pressure stops and I realize the restroom isn't quite as urgent as I thought. However, plenty of the time I still do need to go and I take care of business. Not a problem once, but when it happens all day it can make a girl crabby.

4. Yesterday I woke up with a little cold that is making me drag. Everything is taking extra effort and being tolerant of other people is requiring some extra energy. Especially when that other person is two and has some very definate opinions about what they would like to do.

THE REAL STORY
Today I shut William's hand in the car door. It was just after noon and I had was on a roll. We had been to: the grocerry store, the post office mailing Christmas cards, the lab office for my hour long diabetes test and dropped somethings off with a friend. I was on fire. But, I was crashing. I was tired, hungry, had a car full of grocceries to unload, a full list of chores to complete during nap time and a sweet little someone was stepping on my bladder.

I unloaded William from the car and leaned back to shut the door (leaning is now required in order to not shut the belly in the car door). I felt William shift in my arms toward the car door and I realized he was probably reaching for the door as he was NOT happy about me carrying him. Quite suddenly his whining stopped and his body became very still in my arms. I turned to look and saw his little hand trapped in the car door. I had to open the door to get his little fingers out.

Because it was noon, our doctor's office was closed for lunch and John wasn't at his desk. So, I did what any horomonal woman would do. I called my mom. At work. Almost barely holding my horomonal self together. I wish I could publish her phone number here because she did an AMAZING job talking me through what I needed to look for and advised me about what needed to be done. She also told me several stories about how she shut my brother's fingers in the door more than once. No nurse would have done that. However, she already has a full time job and probably doesn't need you all calling - plus I'm not sure I want to share.

Anyhow, his fingers are brusied, but not broken. We're keeping a close eye on the fingers/hand to be sure nothing shows up tomorrow, but he was using it normally only minutes after the accident happened. I am pretty sure I am more tramatized then he is...

Decorating?

One of the 100,000 things I'm working on is picking out and putting together some type of boyish decor for William's new Big Boy Room. I am totally uninspired and don't have any good ideas. All I need is a picture to get me started. Help anyone?


*What I am looking for is a Big Boy Room that will work for a few years without needing to be redecorated. Maybe until he is 10 years old? 13? 18 years old?

None of us follow sports at all which is all I can seem to find. So, boyish but not sporty. Something he will like now and will work for a long time (nothing cartoons). See? What else is there?

Welcome....

Baby Girl! She arrived this morning and the new mama and baby are doing well (and so is the daddy)! Congratulations to Jessica and Chris!






PS I know the name, but I'm waiting for official permission to share (plus I want to make sure I have it spelled right!).

Blocked Duct Work

Do you think this is the reason our house is so cold?

--
-

-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The cat has found one of the two open vents in our house right now (we shut all the other vents in an effort to keep William's room above 54 degrees)

Music to my Ears

Better than any song I've ever heard is this.

We had our 24 week doctor appointment this morning with my doctor. Everything is looking great and measuring perfectly. Normal, normal, normal... it is a good place to be. We were able to look at the results from the ultrasound done last month which looked perfect as well - which is what we were figuring because no one has called us to report anything differently. I need to go sometime this month from the glucose screening to determine if I have gestational diabetes. If that test comes back positive, Christmas could be a real bummer. Anyone out there want to volunteer to do the diabetic diet with me?

Santa Time!

Our school district puts on a holiday party for preschool aged kids which includes some special time with the big guy himself - for free! The wait was long, but there were some fun activities to keep us busy while we waited. A special thanks to Dada, who came with us even though he is feeling a little under the weather.

One activity: shoveling "snow". William thought this was great. Mama had a hard time breathing with all the flying shovels in the air...
More shoveling. If you look carefully, you'll notice the snow has fallen off the shovel and onto William's right shoulder. He thought this was hilarious...
Throwing "snowballs" through the target. These kids behind William looked super familiar to me. Only after stewing about it for close to 2 hours did I realize where I knew these people from (this is Mookie and Connie from the park)!
Coloring craftiness... this activity lasted only .25676451 seconds before William was done. He was really only interested in coloring on the paper belonging to the little girl to his right. No interest in his own paper despite what this picture looks like.

More craftiness. Again, it looks like William is helping. In reality he is trying to spread glue over every possible surface. We learned tonight the child has a serious love of glue stick. Will do anything to get one. By the way, didn't I make a cute stocking full of toys for myself?
Mama being crafty again and William gluing again. Nothing will distract him from his glue. Note to the Grandparents: even though he loves glue, this does NOT mean he needs to find anything with glue in it underneath the Christmas tree.

And finally it was our turn to sit with Santa. I was so proud - he didn't cry this year either!
Who is this guy? Still not crying...


Although, to be fair, he wasn't exactly happy either!

PS The posting is going to have to slow down here for awhile and I put my cute little elf hat on to get us ready for the holidays....consider yourself warned!

More from the Cell Phone Archieve

Here are some more pictures from my old cell phone. These are from the day we took William home from the hospital (Jan 28, 2007). He is really bundled up because I think the high that day was around 9 degrees. More tomorrow...today was a lot of catching up with mail, bills, e mail, phone messages, laundry, etc.