Reactions-Working through it

So there's been a lot of fascination with and discussion about people's reactions to this pregnancy. We knew about it since before Thanksgiving, but decided not to say anything. Neither one of us felt like dealing with the inevitable reactions. Well, I told my grandmother on Thanksgiving- but I knew she was the one person who would just be happy for us. Not even a slight negative reaction from her. Which I need.
Tom is thrilled. If anything, he was a little upset that my reaction wasn't better. I have very mixed feelings about this. This one truly was a surprise. Tom suggested I take a pregnancy test when I mentioned wanting a burger and he commented that I'd been having an awful lot of cravings lately. I realized that I had, so maybe I'd better take a test, just to be sure. I didn't really expect it to be positive. I even took a second test with the midwives, to be sure it was really true.

Yes, we do know what birth control is and how to use it. Thank you for the concern. We know what causes babies too (Sometimes people oh so wittily suggest that may be the problem). And yes, I am well aware that you can still get pregnant while nursing, even if you haven't gotten your period back yet. I merely commented that it is more difficult when nursing two children. It is different for every person, but there is a certain level that when your hormones fall below because nursing wanes somewhat, fertility returns. Apparently I am really fertile.

I would definitely not have chosen to have a child now. I was just starting to lose the weight I'd gained from the last two pregnancies. I was just starting to feel like I was regaining a bit of freedom again as Timothy was getting older. I don't really feel like going through pregnancy again. We've really been struggling financially since Tom's been working for himself. And I feel like the three kids I already have need more attention. A year or two would have made a big difference. Still, what's happened has happened, so we just have to deal with it and move on. As my grandmother said, it may seem impossible, but you just adjust, with each child. And we will. I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason-so this child was meant to be.

So please please, don't focus on the negative. I do that quite nicely all on my own. I seriously doubt that there's a negative aspect you could mention to me that I haven't thought of on my own. Babies are wonderful, there is so much to welcome about them. I know that Timothy really brings out a sweet side of Justin, very nurturing. And Leanna is really looking forward to holding another little baby. So there are positives to more siblings as well. Seriously I am very hormonal this time and if you yell at me I will cry! So please just be happy for us, and the fact that we're getting the big family we've always wanted.

This week

I haven't posted lately because of Christmas and it's aftermath. I'm still trying to unbury our living room here. And pregnancy contributes-it mainly just exhausts me, I can't get enough sleep. I think partly, during the holidays I was still going on an adreneline rush. Then after everything's done, you just sort of crash. It leaves you more exhausted, even though you're no longer running around or wrapping gifts and shopping, etc. etc. When I wasn't feeling too nautious to do anything this week, I was opening packages so I could throw out all the cardboard and twisty ties and tape! kids toys today come packaged as though they were precious jewels-they are glued, taped, and twisty-tied into the box. It takes forever to get the toy out of the box!! Boy did we throw out a lot of garbage last night. And yesterday I finally started taking some of it up to our rooms. Then I had to get caught up on dishes from not really being home for three days in a row. Then there's the new Christmas stuff that has to be washed or laundered! I feel like I'll never escape the pile of work I'm buried under!!
Tom's spent all week watching his favorite Christmas present, an Abbott and Costello dvd, his present to himself. He actually had it gift-wrapped and put it under the tree!

Sooooo.......

I'm catching up on other people's blogs tonight while I eat my supper. I haven't been on the computer much this past week or two, so that's why you haven't heard from me here or on email. If I get a chance later I'll post some pictures and Christmas info. And I have to email my father-in-law some pictures so he can UPDATE HIS WEBSITE!!!!! His last update was when Jonathan was born, which is over two years ago!!

Also, prayers are needed for my grandmother-in-law who was rushed to the hospital the day after Christmas. Last I heard it was a urinary tract infection, but they weren't sure why she was found unconscious.

The kids and I are still catching up on sleep, and Tom's having a very slow work week so he's been getting some extra sleep too. Which is both good and bad.

Oh yeah, and for anyone who hasn't heard the news yet, we're expecting our 4th on July 22nd.

Someone's getting coal in their stocking!!!

I would be furious with the teacher, even if my own children don't believe in Santa when they get to that age-it's not the teacher's place to ruin that for the kids!!!

Decorating the cookies

Cookie fun

Cookie-making is hard work, but lots of fun too! We made the dough, had to refrigerate it for 3 hours, and then you use the cookie cutters to make all the shapes, bake them. And make the iceing, and then decorate all the cookies. We spread this out over two days.

Can you tell they're brother and sister?

Making cookies

I know, it's been a bit...........

Since several people have asked why I haven't posted:
1. I'm still not feeling so great, and the boys still have minor colds yet. When I don't feel good I don't usually feel like writting.
2. It's the holidays, which means lots of extra work for women! I was trying to get the place cleaned up enough for making/decorating cookies (I didn't really suceed though), and to get it cleaned to put up holiday decorations and find room for the Christmas tree. Then there's the actual task of getting out and putting up the decorations and putting the empty containers and boxes away. Then there's keeping track of who you have presents for and how much you've spent on everyone. And the actual wrapping of the presents. And the extra time spent finding and buying the presents.
And I was having trouble just keeping up with the usual laundry and dishes, in addition to the holiday stuff.
3. We've had some appointments and Tom's been working late all the time which makes things hard.
We've just been having a rough time in many ways lately so I haven't felt much like talking about my life.

No particular reason

I just like these pictures of the kids ready to take Leanna to school. It takes a bit longer to get them ready when it's cold out, until you get all the coats, hats, and mittens on their hands!

Pbbbbbbbbth!

I would just like to point out here that Laura thinks my kiffles taste just fine! So there Mom!!!!!

The evil eye

Leanna is NOT happy with having to eat her supper (Baked Ziti).

The lazy Husband: How to Get Men to do more Parenting and Housework

This book looks interesting.

Welcome to Adulthood!

Claire is 18 years old today! Happy Birthday Fishface!

A nice night

Many thanks to my Mom, for taking me out to sears tonight. I managed to get out without a single kid! That doesn't happen too often. I got gifts for two people that I had no idea what I was going to get them-one of whom reads this blog so I cannot say who ( or what). I am now almost done with Christmas shopping. And thanks to the wonderful people at Borders, I have 2 gifts wrapped already. Yes, that's correct, I have only 2 gifts wrapped at this late date!

Leanna's school had a thing where you could bring your kid in to shop for cheap Christmas presents for everyone. So for about $20 she found Christmas presents for 11 people. That's not too bad. She really enjoyed it. And since we came near the end they gave her a beanie baby(or barbie doll) sleeping bag for free. I think she enjoyed being out alone with me as much as she did picking out presents for people so it was well worth the money!!

LOL!!!

Now that's too funny!

Cookies, kids, and tradditions

I like this post (from the swiffer lady) about Christmas cookies and kids. Her parenting advice seems as good as any from any parenting expert I've read. It's certainly what I would like to happen.

this holiday season

Our runny noses here have started to turn into a cough. I'm just hoping everyone will be completely well before Christmas. I can't believe how fast it's coming! It still doesn't seem quite like the holidays yet. Maybe it's because I used to be able to get out more and do more Christmas shopping-that probably helped keep me feeling in holiday spirits. And I'm just more overwhelmed now, with three young children who need me for so much. The day to day stuff just keeps me occupied. Last night we finally brought up the Christmas stuff and started to decorate the tree. We didn't finish-only a small front section near the bottom of the tree is decorated. You know, where the kids can reach. There's a lot of ornaments that are difficult to hang. Either they just have small holes for putting on the branches or they're so heavy that you have to push them very far back on the branch and balance them on top of other branches. Why do they make ornaments so heavy nowadays? I also realized that I have a lot more stuff to decorate the house than I do ornaments for the tree.
Anyway, we'll have to finish the tree today and see if I can get any house decorating done. I made kiffles Monday night. It turned out rather depressing though. I haven't made them in years and years and I didn't remember exactly how to roll them out, or how much filling to put in. The recipie was my great-grandmother's, and she just knew it in her head. My Aunt as a teenager wrote down what she saw her grandmother doing, that's the reason we have the recipie. So it's not spelled out exactly the way it would be in a modern cookbook. If you put too much dough around the filling or too little, they split in the oven. And then I kept having to stop and pull Timothy off the table. He was crying for me to hold him practically the entire time. So it was just really difficult to get the right feel for it. Leanna and Justin didn't like them, which I pretty much expected. Then Tom came over to me and said, Hey that really stinks! And didn't understand why I was offended. He just said it at the wrong time-I was feeling bad because they weren't turning out exactly right and it's a fair amount of work to make them, especially when your own family doesn't like them, and it was hard to do with constant interruptions from the kids. I just feel like nothing has been working out the way it's supposed to this holiday season. We're going to try the cookie thing again this weekend with Laura. Cross your fingers for us that it goes better than the other attempts!! I need something to go right!

the kindness of strangers.....

To help with your holiday mood......

What does it take to lead a happier life?

Apparently your happiness level does not have to remain the same throughout your life (as was once thought).

Helping others

This afternoon we took advantage of the nice weather and walked downtown to find gifts to donate in the toys for tots bin at the bank. That's a traddition I started last year and hope to continue. I really want the kids to understand that it's important to help others. We don't have a lot of money, but there's always someone who is worse off than you. I think it is our duty to help others in any way you can. I explained to Leanna again about how some kids don't have toys or homes and their parents don't have money and Santa may not know how to get to them. So we help give them presents to give them a merry christmas too. I asked her to explain it to me today, to see if she did remember what I said. And she did understand. She picked a princess glove, purse, ring thing as a girl toy and a mr. Potato head as a boy toy. And then she put them in the toy bin herself. She did very well, only asking to buy something for herself once.

Nurse Leanna

The best part of this past weekend happened because I wasn't feeling well. I was just sitting on the couch feeling miserable. Out of nowhere, Leanna brought me a cup of water and asked me what she could make me to eat to help me feel better. She brushed my hair back and kissed me and hugged me. She was just a little mommy. She went and got cheerios for me (not that I wanted them, but it was a nice gesture). I finally went and made myself some soup, and after that I went up to go to bed. Leanna came upstairs and rubbed my back and even my head! Then as I was falling asleep she went and made me more food. I don't know why, I was in bed already, but she came upstairs with a little bowl of: apple jacks, trail mix, bread, wheaties, and cheerios. Yum. She encouraged me to eat it the next day too. I think she was really rather proud of the food she made me.

It was nice, not just because someone was trying to take care of me or because someone cared that I felt bad; but because I felt like some things I try to teach her must be getting through! There are times when all she does is fight with her brothers and whine and get in trouble. I tell her the same things over and over. I wonder why I bother. Then finally something like this comes up and I think, well maybe I'm not doing quite as bad a job as I thought.

Mommy takes too long

So the tree is standing (with the chair in front to help keep the kids away, and also because I haven't cleaned enough to rearrange the furniture) and I guess Justin and Leanna got tired of waiting for me to decorate. Here a half naked Justin hangs candy canes and samples them too!

Fun with Santa

Some are scared kids, some are scary Santas! At least my kids are in good company!

Our merry visit with Santa

Justin kept covering his eyes, Timothy cried the entire time, and Leanna decided that she was going to be shy with Santa. Merry Christmas!!

The Scream

You know that painting by Edward Munch? The Scream.....where the guy holds his hands up to his face? Well that's what Claire made with Laura's batch of cookie dough. Note the beaters positioned as the hands. Why would she do this, you might ask. Because it was quite appropriate for yesterday, I might answer.
NOTHING went right yesterday. It was supposed to be cookie-baking day. We were all dragging our feet and didn't even try to get started until mid-afternoon. I felt miserable and the kids, mainly the boys, had runny noses. Not ideal for a day when you're trying to make and decorate cookies. Justin still forgets to turn his head half the time. Anyway Laura realized that she had used the incorrect copy of my great grandmother's white cut-out cookie recipie. The one where my Aunt accidentally wrote one TABLESPOON salt, instead of one TEASPOON salt. Yeah. Big mistake. And to make matters worse, she had made a double batch of the dough. We searched the internet for a way to correct it, and I tried calling my grandmother to see if she knew of a way to fix it, but alas, it proved a waste of time. My grandmother said if it was soup, you could add potato, but that doesn't work for cookies. I couldn't find anything that mentioned cookie dough specifically, but one website mentioned you could add plain yogurt to some foods to take away the saltiness. So Claire walked to the store and came back with Light & Fit vanilla yogurt. They also tried adding more butter and more sugar. Still salty. Claire said it felt and tasted like play-doh. We were all kind of depressed. Laura was having apartment-mate troubles, and was upset about the dough. I hadn't had a chance to finish cleaning up, so I didn't really feel ready for cookie-making anyway. Plus I was just feeling really sick, and it's been hard to get into this holiday season, so I just wasn't feeling into it. Then Tom called and said he'd be working on Sunday too. Things were just not working out! Claire was for once the most upbeat of the three of us. I did make an effort to save things, suggesting if someone would go buy some butter, we could make another batch of dough, or else we could just decorate the salty dough and make ornaments with it. Claire was all for just making the cookies anyway, just to have the fun of decorating. But Laura didn't want to make cookies she couldn't eat, which I kind of agreed with. We decided to make supper and then make cookies, but after supper no one did anything and we ended up just watching a few episodes of Srubs in an effort to cheer ourselves up.
No cookies were made.

Fun Site

An example of the stuff on their site:

10AM By the Way, the Papillomas Are Lovely This Season

Customer: Hi, I'm looking for a climbing plant, but I'm not sure what it's called. It sounds like 'clem'-something, or 'clam'-something?
Employee: Right... Ah, 'chlamydia'?
Customer: Um... No, that's--
Employee, yelling over the crowd: Hey, Linda*, I have a customer looking for chlamydia. Do we have that?
Linda: That's a venereal disease -- she probably wants 'clematis.'
Employee: Hey, she left!

Farmstand on Route 2Lincoln, Massachusetts Overheard by: petunias for me, thanks

Wow

Good News / Bad News: Stevie Long, 4, was successful in scaring off two home invaders who had been holding a gun on his mother, her boyfriend, and four children; Stevie had quietly excused himself, put on his Mighty Morphin Power Ranger outfit, grabbed a plastic sword, and then burst on the scene, yelling, "Get away from my family!" The startled men fled empty-handed. The bad news is that a counselor, after talking to Stevie, said that the kid "fully believed he morphed" into the Power Ranger.

Remembering James Kim

Turns out, he was a really nice guy too.

The fresh prince as a parent

An interesting short article on Will Smith as an actor and parent.

Close, but no cigar!

We watched a little bit of some special on tv last night about decorating the white house. They must spend a fortune just to decorate for Christmas! All the planning that goes into it, amazing! They kept showing Laura Bush, and Tom thought she looked like Nancy Reagan, so I corrected him outloud. Leanna must have been paying attention, because later she told me, "Look! There's Laura Rock!" It took me a second to figure out what she meant.

Very Sad Update

They finally found the father of the family lost in the canyon, he didn't make it.
His 7 month old daughter has already been released from the hospital and his 4 year old and wife are supposed to be doing well.

It's that time of year........

Favorite Christmas songs:

Leanna: Feliz Navidad

Justin: Jingle Bell Rock

Timothy: ?

Tom: ?

Me: duh-Last Christmas!-the best non-tradditional Christmas song evvahh!

This one's for my Mom

just funny

Boy arrested for opening presents early

Santa answers his letters

Dear Leanna,
Thank you for your letter! Up here at the North Pole, we have been very busy this year! The elves are really excited that Christmas Day is almost here. They have been working day and night getting all the toys ready for Christmas Eve. Mrs. Claus made us her extra special chocolate chip cookies last night since we've been working so hard. They taste great with a big glass of milk!
Once my sleigh is packed and ready to go, I'll be off on my journey around the world. Remember, I know if you've been bad or good, so please try to be kind and helpful to your family and friends.
While you are asleep on Christmas Eve, the reindeer will quietly land my sleigh so I can tiptoe into your home.
I see that you like building sets. I like building sets too. It's a lot of fun to build things, like skyscrapers, houses, cars and airplanes. You can even build your own make-believe city! The elves have been very busy this year making new building sets for Christmas!
I'm really excited about making my big trip on Christmas Eve! Remember, you have to be asleep when I come, so make sure you go to bed on time!
Ho! Ho! Ho! Have a Merry Christmas!
Your Special Friend,

Santa

Rescued from the woods

A family was trapped in impassible snowy woods, the Dad went to look for help and is still missing. The wife and two children were rescued from their car. Luckily she was breastfeeding the 7 month old, so she was able to breastfeed the 4 year old also to keep the children alive. Temperatures were in the 20s to 30s, so they're hoping the Dad built a fire to keep warm.

Catching Santa

We attempted a meeting with Santa this weekend, but it was not to be-we were running late and Santa decided to leave earlier than scheduled. It was not an ideal day. But I did get a couple Christmas ideas, and next time we go, after we catch Santa, hopefully I'll be able to get a few more presents. It's only 2.99 a picture at Q-mart, versus about $17 at the malls. Maree did take the opportunity to dance with the plastic Santa on display.

Baby kisses

Tonight, out of nowhere, Timothy leaned over and put his face in front of mine and gave me a kiss. That's the first time he's ever done it without being prompted first. And I wasn't even playing with him-I was picking up and he just came over and kissed me! I feel very lucky to have three children who are all so sweet and affectionate!

Nice to hear

Yesterday at the grocery store an elderly lady stopped me to admire the kids. "They're all so cute, all of them!" she said. "Are they all yours?" Then she told me that she had 6 brothers and 3 sisters and they all had such fun together. She said she had a friend who was an only child who used to love to come to thier house and play because she wished she had siblings. The lady said it was always such fun because you always had playmates around. She said again that all three of them were cute and then added before leaving, "You won't have money, but what you do have will make up for it!"

That was a nice change of pace to hear that, and I was glad she shared that with me. (I do get a little tired of always hearing, boy, you have your hands full!) That was sweet of her.

Call me G-Ma!

Not ready to be called Grandma yet??