Blogging from the iPad = no bueno

I need to look into this further to see if there is a better way to blog from the iPad besides this iPhone app which is clearly meant for posting short blurbs and one photo at a time. I just haven't had any luck uploading photos from the iPad into the regular Blogger site. But this app is the worst, because all the punctuation marks are on a separate screen, which makes adding my much-needed exclamation points, parentheses, and commas quite tedious. Perhaps nearly as tedious as reading my overly-punctuated posts. While we're on the subject of punctuation, let me clear up one thing for anyone who has ever received a text message from me. Though I understand the rules of capitalization/punctuation, my PHONE does not! In text messages, it capitalizes any word that follows a comma, but does not capitalize words that follow periods. !!!! If you know me at all (at all, at all, at all), you know this drives me crazy! So, a text message from me might read as follows. "Are you coming to dinner on Sunday? mom wanted to know if you could bring ketchup, Mustard, And pickles. we will be there, But we will be one hour late. see you then!" I can manually capitalize the missing capital letters if I want to, but cannot UNcapitalize the errant post-comma capitals. Grrr. Okay, I feel much better now that I've gotten the word out on that. Last question...who programmed this phone, and WHY oh WHY did they do this to me?

Okay, I am typing this on my computer now. Much better. But the Blogger app imported all the photos in a weird random order, and it's not easy to rearrange them, so I'll just leave them as is and describe what we see. These pics are all from the iPad. Our camera broke a couple of weekends ago. It was the cheapest model available at Sam's Club almost four years ago, so it was probably due.

Oh no, poor Adelaide is having such a rough night! She had her 4-month checkup and shots today, and she is having her first fussy, hard-to-put-to-sleep night ever. She is the sweetest, easiest baby, this is honestly the first time she has had a hard time going down for the night. Poor thing! It's getting late so maybe I will just post this random mess and leave it at that.

When I go to my camera roll on the iPad, I see sometimes up to a hundred pictures like the one above (self portrait by Sawyer).

All of the above are from Adelaide's blessing day in early February. Do you like the "best" photo we could get of our little family? Luckily we got a better one taken about a month later, without anyone pulling a "can I fly out of here?" move. Isn't Adelaide a dollface?!?

Yes, another self portrait by Sawyer. I don't even know how to make it DO those effects!

Adelaide was having fun cooing and smiling at herself in the big display on the iPad, but whenever I took a picture I didn't catch her at the right moment. I desperately need new glasses, by the way. Those ones hurt my ears, have deep, vision-obscuring scratches on them, and are at least six years old. However, I'll never find a pair that doesn't miniaturize (what's the opposite of magnify? minimize?) the portions of my face that are behind the lenses (eyes, temples). See that? My head looks so wonky. My prescription is THAT strong!

This is the most recent of the lot, from Sunday. We took a trip to Las Vegas with my family last week. We had fun and didn't bring anything home from Sin City except a stomach bug contracted from my sister's kids (poor dears were sick on the trip -- at least we made it home!). Beck had a few gastrointestinal "episodes" that led me to procure this bowl for him. He preferred it as a hat. It is quite jaunty, I must say! He hasn't returned quite to his usual self, but he did have a fun time hunting for his basket and eggs at his Heaton grandparents' house later on Sunday.

The above is, I believe, a portrait of Sawyer's bedhead.

Again from Adelaide's blessing day.

Haha, this one cracks me up. Sawyer came up to me and told me he had turned Adelaide into a Robot Baby.

This picture is to illustrate some big news. No, not Beck's promotion to Captain of the Good Ship Lollipull-ups. No, bigger news that THAT! Sawyer has stopped sucking his thumb! He came and told Tyson and me that he had decided he wasn't going to suck his thumb anymore. We encouraged him and expressed our pride in him for making such a big boy decision, and offered to help him in any way he needed, but secretly I was skeptical. This has been a really entrenched habit for him. We have an ultrasound picture of him sucking away on that thumb while in the womb! The thumb-sucking has also been accompanied by the additional self-soothing behavior of hair stroking, as seen above, and he has done both since he was four months old, day or night, happy or sad, tired or bored, and always, always, when buckled into his carseat and when put to bed at night. I wasn't sure how he would manage to stop, but stop he did. Cold turkey. It's been a few weeks and I've only seen him suck his thumb once, for one moment. Even when I check on him at night, his thumb isn't in his mouth like it always was before. What a big boy! Way to go Sawyer!

Beck has NOT given up his "naked pirate in rainboots" act, luckily. Oh Beckett-boo, you make me smile so many times every day!

Proud creator with his Robot Baby specimen. Quite the belly on that Robot Baby!

Yet again I didn't catch her smiling. She is cute lifting that big old head up, though! She is rolling over front to back and back to front now, but hasn't really achieved anything that looks much like sitting. She coos and laughs and giggles and squeals a lot. Happy almost all the time, and sleeps 12 hours at night usually. Brag, brag, brag. Here are her four-month stats: Weight, 15 lbs. 3 oz. (82%ile); Length, 24.5 inches (59%ile); Head, 16.4 inches (68%ile). I love you, sweet Adelaide!

Looks like I've run out of disorganized iPad photos. I'd still like to report on our little jaunt to Dinosaurland, but in case I don't get around to that I will just say we took a little overnight trip to Vernal and had a great time! Sawyer now tells everyone he meets that he is a "tayleontologist", and Beck runs around with a shovel yelling "Di-sore bones! Di-sore bones!!!"

Oh, one more thing. We bought a Ford Ranger pick-up. Yes, we missed our little Red Ranger THAT much! The "new" Ranger is very much like the old one, but with many less miles, automatic, four-wheel drive, and a few other minor differences. And one major difference: it's PURPLE. Time will tell if it will remain that color and be our Purple Power Ranger, or if it will be repainted, you guessed it, red. The Civic is for sale, if anyone is interested. I'm sad to see the Civic go, and I'll especially miss the gas mileage, but I can see why Tyson doesn't want to drive my hand-me-down anymore. Especially with his commute being two miles per day -- not really making good use of those gas savings! Pictures to follow.

Did you make it to the end of this? Good job.

Valentimes, Bathtimes

Happy Valentine's Day! I saw my Valentine for about five minutes today, but the day was not without celebration. Valentines were exchanged at Sawyer's preschool, and the kids were supposed to write their own names on their cards as handwriting practice. Most of the kids have been learning to write their names in school for five months now, but Sawyer has only been working on this skill for a little over a month since joining the class in January. I knew things would go best if he could trace his name like he traces alphabet letter worksheets for school. I got that far (thinking about it) last week, then forgot about actually doing anything until last night when I realized the day was upon us.

I found a letter tracing worksheet maker here and then decided to use letters and numbers so most preschoolers can "read" the message. Sawyer traced his name and the rest was left untraced in case the kids wanted to do some extra homework. (Happy Valentine's Day...Homework!!!) We punched heart-shaped holes in the side and threaded a Valentines pencil and a Pixy Stix through the holes to holes so the valentine waved like a little flag on a pole. It was actually pretty cute, and Sawyer did a great job tracing his name 20 times. He has 16 classmates, two teachers, a girlfriend (whom he "loves") in our neighborhood, and he also made one for his daddy. I think I'll use the tracing worksheet maker again for other things. He probably would have been happier to give out Disney valentines from the store (if he had known they existed before seeing the ones the other kids gave him), but this is what we had to go with since by the time I realized it was Valentine's Day it was too late to go to the store because the kids were asleep and Tyson was gone to work. So, Happy Valentine's Day from Sawyer:

What's Valentine's Day without a little nudity!?! Here are some dang cute kids in the bath. Yes, Beck is cuckoo like that all the time, and Adelaide is, um, putting on weight. Check out that belly! So much cuter on her than it is on me! She was two months old on February 9. She weighs almost 12 pounds now and was in the 78th percentile for weight at her check-up. I think I need to pull out the 3 to 6 month clothes, because I'm having trouble snapping some of her shirts. She continues to be a sweet and smiley baby who sleeps some nice long stretches at night now, little angel.

In other news, Adelaide's baby blessing was at our church on February 5, and we had lots of dear family and friends join us for the occasion. The blessing and testimony meeting were lovely, I though. We had 40 people over for brunch in the approximately 500 sq. ft. main area of our condo. Quite a crowd! Thanks to those who came, and especially those who traveled far, and thanks to those who were with us in spirit.

I hosted another little party here on Saturday along with three cute girls in my neighborhood. We threw a Pink Elephant Swap Party. The gist of it is, everyone brings some cute, gently-used items (home decor, jewelry, etc.) they are ready to part with, and everything gets displayed on a big table, clothing rack, etc.Then everyone goes "shopping" and chooses any items they would like to take home. So, basically, it's like having a more-carefully-stocked D.I. at your house. If you know anything about me, you know nothing could be better than that! Add in snacks and a bunch of cute girls from my neighborhood/ward, and you have a fun afternoon.

Tyson has been staying busy at work at night, trying to sleep during the day at home, without much time or energy for anything else. He has switched things up a little and is trying to sleep from 2pm to 10:15pm, rather than immediately when he comes home in the morning until the early evening. I think this is working better. He may only be on night shift for a few more months, and will likely switch to swing shift. That would be great!

Beck's nose and eye seem to be all healed. He has been interested in potty-training. Well, mainly he has been interested in wearing Buzz Lightyear Pull-ups, less interested in keeping them clean and dry. He can and will go whenever he sits on the potty, but his progress has been held back by some digestive issues and what I perceive to be a tiny bladder (at least compared to Sawyer, who was incredibly easy to potty train and never had a night-time accident). I'm typing this and wondering why I am even saying all this stuff. If this is a family "journal", is this really what Beck would like to have recorded? I guess I am writing it because this. is. my. life. Tyson took the boys with him to the ranch on Saturday (for a cow slaughter...this is a story in and of itself). He came back with a picture on his phone and a "funny" story about Beck bending over to have Aunt Katelyn wipe his bottom. "Look at this kid, with his bum up in the air!" Tyson said, showing me the picture, "Have you ever seen anything like this?!?" Um, only at least twice a day, every single day, for the past several years. How have you NOT seen this!?!? This. Is. My. Life.

Anyway, we are doing a trial of removing dairy from Beck's diet to see if his problem resolves. This cheese- and milk-loving mom has had to get creative with meal planning! It's probably good for all of us, actually. I feel so sad whenever he asks for a cheese stick or a yogurt, though :-(  . If this helps, small amounts of certain dairy products will be introduced to pinpoint exactly what works. If it doesn't help, we'll look at other food sensitivities.

Beck got a buzz-cut on Saturday. I thought it might make his widow's peak less prominent (see above), but, no. Sawyer doesn't want his hair cut because he wants to have "Thor hair". Sawyer likes to eat "cranoler bars" (granola bars). Beck likes his milk "beep" (warmed up in the microwave) and his noodles with "shake" (parmesan cheese from a can). He also likes his cereal with "shake" (sugar from the shaker), though that request is not usually granted. And apparently he likes his bottled pears with ketchup. That's what he asked for at breakfast today. Ew! I gave him some taquitos with ketchup last night, pears on the side. He must have used the ketchup for the pears, and liked it. Yuck! When I served him pears today with hot oatmeal (so no ketchup), he yelled for ketchup until I decided to give him some, and it kind of seemed like he thought I was dumb for not putting the ketchup with the pears in the first place. Like I was a bad waitress who knew nothing about the cuisine I was serving.

Hmm, long post. Have I covered all the Mom bases? Poop, pee, percentiles, potty-training, pronunciations, parties, partially-nude photos. Yep, I've covered it. I'm a mom. :-)

Beckett's Bonk-a-doo

Blogger and I have really struggled getting this posts up. One post I did from my iPad got erased, and Blogger insists on importing my pictures sideways and I don't want to take the time to fix them! The point is, Beck got a bad bonk on his nose last Friday in the Chick-Fil-A play area, and I wanted to show off his battle wounds. He started out with a badly swollen nose that changed the whole look of his face. It later developed into and ever-changing rainbow of bruises in his eye area. Here's the poor guy:

Preschool, Prison Break, Pretty Baby

We/I got an iPad for Christmas, which is totally awesome - except not for blogging, until or unless I get an accessory keyboard. My laptop has a dead battery and a dead charger (new cord on order), so I haven't been using it. Hence, no posts, even though we've been having lots of fun and we have an adorable new baby in the house. I did want to post a couple pictures and updates, though. Please forgive any typos or weird auto-corrects and whatever format and order the pics show up in.

Preschool

Sawyer started preschool yesterday, and loved it. Adelaide woke up screaming right as I was leaving to take him (I had been hoping she would stay asleep at home with sleeping Tyson while I dropped off Sawyer), so after taking care of her we were really rushed to get out the door, so I didn't take a proper picture. Wow, that was an awesome sentence. Anyway, I have two cute pictures of Sawyer smiling, with major interference from the sun, and I have clear ones of him not looking at the camera. It's the first day of kindergarten picture that really counts, right?

Prison Break

Beck has finally moved from the baby jail (pack n play with a zipped mesh tent on it) to a real bed. The transition has not been super smooth, but we're managing. I moved Sawyer out of their shared room to facilitate the transition (the boys tend to play a lot and keep each other up after bedtime, and I figured things would only be worse with Beck on the loose), but Beck was so sad last night I carried a sleeping Sawyer into the room and put him in Beck's bed with Beck and he settled right down. Aw, brother love!

Pretty Baby

Adelaide is growing so much already. I think she'll be out of the newborn size clothes soon, and I'll really be sad to see those tiny, girly clothes go! She is a really sweet, good baby. What a blessing! She smiled for the first (awake) time yesterday, but it will probably be a while before I catch a photo of that.

Beck has warmed up to Adelaide now, though gentleness is still not his strong suit. He likes to provide her with a large selection of toys in her crib, then seems somewhat annoyed when she doesn't play with them. The picture of Adelaide and Beck is from today. The one of her alone is from last week.

Sweet kids I have!

You are so beautiful to me

Adelaide Josephine Heaton
Born December 9, 2011
Photographed December 12, 2011 by Kara Toone

Thanks to my sister Kara for taking these photos of baby Adelaide. My little girl and I had a difficult time being photogenic simultaneously, but the shots of her alone are gorgeous (the baby's mom said, completely without bias).

Adelaide is a sweetheart who just sleeps well and eats well and is an all around joy. Tyson and I got to enjoy some alone time with her (and with each other) when Grammy (my mom) took Sawyer and Beck to her house for four days last week while Tyson took three days (er, nights) off work for paternity leave. We are glad to have our whole family back together again, but we did relish the time we got to spend getting to know Adelaide under such peaceful circumstances. Our boys are many good things, but "peaceful" is not one of them! Sawyer loves Adelaide very much, and likes to help with her care and sing songs to her. From what I can tell, Beck is not convinced we should keep her. He seems to be adjusting day by day.

Oh, a comment on my last post asked why I had been awake for forty hours when I wrote the post. Here's the explanation, which I guess will serve as Adelaide's birth story. I woke up at 7 a.m.-ish on Thursday December 8th like usual. I got in bed a little after ten that night and was using my computer when I started to feel ill and soon realized I was also having true contractions (around 11 p.m.). I had been burdened by extremely frequent Braxton Hicks contractions for most of the pregnancy, but this was the real thing.

Since I had tested positive for Group B strep, my doctor had advised me to not delay going to the hospital if I thought I was in labor. They would need four hours to get the proper antibiotic doses into my IV before the baby was born. My entire labor with Beck was only five or six hours (he arrived less than two hours after we got to the hospital), so it seemed time might be of the essence. I timed my contractions over the next couple of hours and they were getting stronger, more regular, and closer together. During this time I packed a hospital bag, took a bath and shower, and FREAKED OUT because I hadn't bought one single item of clothing for the baby yet. I had sorted out the gender-neutral items from my boxes of baby boy clothes, but I hadn't washed them yet. I had only done a little of my Christmas shopping. My house was a wreck. Etc., etc., etc. I had gone to term with Sawyer and one week overdue with Beck, so I was fully expecting this baby to arrive on or after Christmas day.

I still wasn't sure this was real labor, but the contractions were telling me otherwise, and I wanted to be safe rather than sorry and get checked at the hospital. Once the contractions became less than five minutes apart I left for the hospital. Tyson was at work, of course, but lucky for me his sister Katelyn had been staying at our house. She was there, so I didn't have to wake the boys or pull Tyson home from work in the middle of his shift. The oddest thing happened as I was driving to the hospital, which is only a few blocks from my house -- my contractions got a little further apart. What?! I arrived at the hospital at 3 a.m., got checked in, changed into a hospital gown, and got attached to a monitor for the baby and a monitor for the contractions. They were showing a regular pattern and intensity, but had slowed to six minutes apart by this time. I was sure I was going to have to do the Labor and Delivery "walk of shame", but the nurse checked me and I had dilated two centimeters since my doctor's appointment on Wednesday, so she decided to wait an hour and check again before deciding whether to fully admit me and start the IV for the antibiotics. After that hour passed I had progressed a little more, but the contractions had slowed further. The nurse decided to re-check again in another hour. Next hour, same story. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless, which is the definition of "true labor", so my doctor advised that he wanted my IV started.

Tyson came from work at about 6:30, and his mom kindly picked up the boys from our house and took them to her house for the day. Tys and I proceeded to while away the next few hours while nothing much happened. I dozed while he ate breakfast in the cafeteria. The contractions had become even milder and further apart, and I was sure they couldn't be causing things to progress, but regular checks proved me wrong. Nonetheless, in the interest of moving things along I was given Pitocin starting mid-morning after I had received all necessary doses of antibiotics for the strep.

After that the contractions and progress picked up, but they still were really easy to handle. Not so once my doctor broke my water at 1:30 p.m.. The contractions finally intensified to what I remembered from my other labors, and Tyson was in danger of having his hand squeezed off. I eventually called for the anesthesiologist so I could have an Epidural, which I also had with my other two babies. Everything was smooth sailing from there :-) . I had a whole new experience with this birth. I didn't have to push. Twenty-four-plus hours of painful labor with Sawyer (8 lbs. 13 oz.), with over two hours of pushing. About six hours of fairly-painful labor with Beck (8 lbs. 6 oz.), and a few pushes. Fourteen hours of easy labor and one hour of pain with Adelaide (7 lbs. 5  oz.) and NO pushing. She just was ready to be born as soon as the doctor walked back into the room. And she really was a girl!!! I hadn't let myself be too sure because the gender had been revealed to me at a hospital ultrasound that was a check-up on some complications I was having (or threatening to have) at about 17 weeks, not at the true anatomical ultrasound you are supposed to have at 20 weeks (and which I never had because it was right at the time of the move). So I never saw any pictures, so I never was REALLY sure, because mistakes are sometimes made!

But she was a girl, and she was beautiful and healthy! By the time she was cleaned up and we were moved to our Mom & Baby room and we had some visitors and I ate a BLT, it was 11 p.m. when I was going to bed and writing that post. So, if my math is correct, I had been awake (except for a half-hour doze while in labor) for 40 hours. But it was all worth it!

An early and welcome arrival!

Written yesterday, December 9, 2011:

Our darling little GIRL, Adelaide [Middle Name Yet Unchosen] Heaton, arrived today at 3:38 p.m. I must confess that they have just given me an Ambien to help me sleep, and it's probably time for me to stop trying to blog before my ramblings become hallucinatory and I try to buy wildly expensive collectibles on Ebay (true story), I'll press through the wooze to say she weighed 7 pounds 5 ounces, was 20" long, has a little covering of short, dark hair...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Written today, December 10, 2011:

Well, that was a bust. I fell asleep on the keyboard and the nurse later came to check on me and gently suggested it "looks like you're done with your computer?" I was so tired, after having been awake for 40 hours or so, and, you know, delivered a baby.

Here she is. Again, ignore the tired mama and focus on the beautiful baby. She's so cute and seems tiny to me, after her near-nine-pound brothers.

Yay, she's here!

Sawyer and I Have Named the Baby

The last pictures on my camera are from Sawyer playing in the snow on 11/05, so, whoa, apparently I haven't found anything worth documenting since then, or haven't had the energy to do so. I'll give you a hint...it's the latter. I am past 36 weeks now by all measures (38 weeks tomorrow by the most ambitious measure), and Big Momma is TIRED! I did put up and decorate the Christmas tree, but have done no further decorating, unless you count stacking a few red-lidded plastic bins of decorations against my dining room wall as decorating. And when I say "dining room" I use the term loosely. I own two full dining sets, but the table to one remains disassembled, and we are worried about the chairs to the other scratching the floors, so that whole set is resting under a tarp on the patio until I can find a rug that meets these qualifications: 1) It is the right size (has to be 8' square or round, so kind of difficult right off the bat); 2) I like it; 3) Tyson doesn't hate it; 4) It's as cheap as possible; and, very importantly, 5) It hides stains and/or is easy to clean. So, pretty much a mythical unicorn of a rug. But when I say that, I DON'T mean this:

I really should buy a rug and get that table off the patio before it snows again (and again and again) and we can't bring it in until late May when spring arrives to Cache Valley. Until something gets figured out, we have a card table in the dining area, with three random chairs pulled up to it. Currently it has a big blanket over it and is functioning as a fort. I am also sitting at it to type this post. No one ever sits down to eat at it but me. We eat at the island/bar in the kitchen.

But enough about decorating. Back to...me. And the baby. And the title of this post. As many of you know (and some of you are very frustrated by this fact), Tyson and I do not pick out a name for a baby until the child is born. Tyson is not at all interested in tossing around names. Weirdo. Whatevs. I like to think about names, but realize the conversation will go nowhere, so I don't bring it up. Instead, I make a quite large list of names I like and bring it to the hospital when I go to have the baby, then Tyson chooses something off that list.

Things are a little different this time around. Whereas with my other two pregnancies I didn't have my heart set on any one name, with this pregnancy I do have a name I really like. I have quite a few other names I like a lot, too, and still an even larger list of names I think are worth considering, but yes, I do have a name I like above the others. I haven't mentioned it to Tyson because I don't want him to veto it right away. Sawyer is another matter. Sometimes he asks me what the baby's name is, so I have used him as a sounding board for name choices. For a few months now when he asks that question, I have answered, "How about [...]?" filling in the blank with a name from my top ten or fifteen, but NOT with my #1 pick. Of all the names I threw out for him, the only one he was briefly enamored with was Nora (or Norah), which he could not at all pronounce, since he can't say his letter R. So, "No-yuh" he repeated back to me a few times, but then forgot about.

Well, a couple of days ago I finally pulled out the big gun and floated my top name to see what Sawyer had to say about it. To my surprise, he latched onto it and said, "Yes, that's our baby's name," repeating the name back to me several times. His ability to pronounce it correctly is another mark in its favor, and it sounds so cute when he says it. But then he TOLD ON ME. He went and told Tyson that this was the baby's name! Tyson didn't veto it immediately, but asked if this was the first name or the middle name, and said since Sawyer and Mom picked out this name, he gets to pick out the other name. Sawyer answered that this is the baby's first name, and she doesn't HAVE a middle name -- no naming privileges for you, Dad! Hahahaha. Then Tyson asked a question that brings up a little sore spot with me. See, this name has a common nickname that I don't exactly hate but don't particularly love. There are other (to my mind, better) ways to nick the name, but this is definitely the one that will most easily pop into people's heads or roll off their tongues. Tyson asked Sawyer, "Will we call her [nickname]?" "No," Sawyer said, "Her name is [full name]." Exactly. I explained to Tyson that Sawyer has heard at least ten of my name choices and that this is the first one he has favored. It seemed like this possibly might be enough to seal the deal, and we might choose this name for the baby. I hope so!

And no, I'm not going to spill the beans about the name until/unless we end up going with it when she's born. You're welcome to guess. I'll give you a hint. After hearing the name Tyson suggested a name combination which I vetoed because it has the initials RAH, and that's on my list of initial combinations to avoid (basically any initial combination that spells a word or a less than desirable sound -- think SHH, ECH, BAH, AHH, HAH, etc.). So, the name in question starts with an R or an A. I think I may have mentioned it to my sisters and/or my sisters-in-law before, so you guys keep quiet. I really love this name, but my other reservation is that it is an old-fashioned name, especially when compared to Beck and Sawyer. So, it's not a done deal. We shall see. It's fun to think that in so few weeks the wait will be over and we will have our baby girl here!

Well, I guess that was a long, anti-climactic post, but there you have it.

"Now I Have to Measure Your Hips...Wherever You Think They Are..."

I had to go to a Health Assessment today at IHC Workmed to see if I qualify for a discount on our insurance premiums because of my good health and habits. My appointment was at 9:00 a.m. I was instructed by the person on the phone to come fasting, even though I am 33 weeks pregnant and that's usually a no-no. I inquired about such, but was told to fast. When I arrived, the person at the desk said, "I hope you didn't fast. You don't have to if you're expecting. [Pause.] You ARE expecting, right?" Um, yeah.

There were hassles with my paperwork and I ended up having to wait a long time to be seen. The forms did ask whether I was pregnant, how far along, pre-pregnancy weight, etc., but the main components of the assessment were blood pressure, blood draw, weight, and body measurements. The young guy who did my assessment said he'd never had to do one on a pregnant person before, and that he thought it was awkward. Really, Jose? Why? Because when you reached around my "waist" with the tape measure it felt like you were giving me an unwanted (by either of us) embrace? Because you were supposed to measure around my belly button so you said, "Is...THAT...your...belly...button?" You seemed confused and frightened by the lump of my popped belly button, so clearly visible through my shirt. Or, best of all, when you said, "Now I have to measure your hips...wherever you think they are?" Haha, who the heck knows the answer to that question? And I love the fact that they're going to be comparing my waist-to-hip ratio (whose measurements were only .5" off from each other) to determine whether or not I am healthy. They also measured my wrist (which remains thin). That ought to throw a wrench in things.

At least I didn't have the boys with me to make the appointment even MORE fun. Tyson had come home from his shift about 40 minutes before I had to leave for the appointment. Since it was bedtime for him he requested that I feed the boys and contain them in their room so he didn't have to actually DO anything. Understandable, yet still kind of funny. I did my best to oblige, but Sawyer, who had stayed up late as usual, wasn't awake yet as the time approached for me to leave. I thought fast and brought a plate of non-messy foods for him and set it near his bed, along with a sippy cup of water. String cheese, a couple wedges of pita bread, grapes, a half a banana. I put Beck in the baby jail and put on a "Blues Clues" video. My plan was that Sawyer would awaken, be enthralled by the video, notice the food and begin eating it, and have no reason to emerge from his room and bother his dad. Of course, I thought I'd be home by ten, if not much sooner, so I thought my plan would work.

I arrived home from the appointment at 10:15, with Tyson calling me as I walked in the front door. When I reached the top of the stairs Sawyer was coming out of my room, where he had been pestering Tyson, and said to me excitedly, "My Sawyers came in the night and left some food for me in my bedroom for me to eat!!! They brought it from the moon!" Oh, those thoughtful Sawyers!

Sawyer followed me downstairs where I broke my fast with a bowl of Cheerios. Yes I put a little sugar on my Cheerios, and yes I had to move aside a package of pita bread to get to the sugar shaker. "Hey!" Sawyer exclaimed. "That's the kind of bread my Sawyers gave me." I said I had bought it at the store, and that they must have gotten some for him out of the cupboard.

"Or they have the same kind on our rocket," he said.

Yeah, or that.

Home

Unpacking is basically finished, but there is still a lot of organizing yet to do. I organized the herbs and spices today (a rather extensive collection), so that's something, right?

Tyson arrived home safely and got the garage organized. There are still a few pieces of furniture that need to be sold/given away/sent to D.I. before we can park a vehicle in there, but we did get a lot of off-season stuff loaded into the attic space above our garage. We had never used or looked at the attic before, and hadn't realized it would be so large and hospitable for our bikes, camping gear, Christmas decorations, etc. Well... not Christmas decorations yet, because it's about time to use those. Tyson got a good area set up at the end of the garage for all his tools, and even hung up the two cabinets we bought at a yard sale for a couple bucks each just after we moved to Pennsylvania.

I'm having trouble deciding on hardware for my kitchen drawers and cabinets. Also, all the doorknobs in the house are still removed, waiting for me to spray paint them so they're not polished "brass" anymore, but now it's gotten too cold for spray painting so I might just reinstall them and wait until later to paint them. We're getting a little tired of doors that won't stay closed and kids that burst into our bedroom whenever they feel like it. On the other hand, I have kind of enjoyed observing Beck through his doorknob-hole when he is supposed to be settling down for his nap. I can tell he is soooooo tired...he is woozy looking, and wobbles all over the place just sitting there, yet he insists on performing headstands and chattering away to himself or to his array of naptime companions: a tiny stuffed Elmo that vibrates when his string is pulled, a "Buzzyear" soft toy, a traditional-style sock monkey, and a Curious George stuffed animal. He'll be chatting away and then, abruptly, he will fall over asleep.

Speaking of stuffed animals, Sawyer has lately taken to a small stuffed dog he has named "Woofster". Woofster is very affectionate, and we are all well-licked. We had snow (barely a couple of inches) on Saturday, and Sawyer played in it for almost two hours, building a robot snowman. He's eagerly awaiting the next snowfall. In another post I mentioned Sawyer's Sawyers, and said I might explain later. Here's the gist...

Sawyer is apparently the leader of a group of other Sawyers. They all live on the moon (or sometimes on another planet somewhere). They travel to earth on a rocket. On this rocket, and on the moon, they have pretty much everything we have here on earth. For instance, if I give Sawyer something to eat he has never had before, he will say, "We had this already...on my rocket." I wasn't quite clear on the Sawyers...was this just the term he was using to refer to "boys" or "friends"? No, they are clones. "My Sawyers look like me and they talk like me." We hear quite a lot about the moon, and the Sawyers. Sawyer will talk about them at great length with anyone who will listen (and with people who WON'T listen, too). This is just one of several imaginative scenarios that have caught his interest lately, but the others are equally grandiose. For instance we ate lunch at Hamilton's, a local steakhouse, on Saturday, and Sawyer spent quite a long time describing to me in detail how he built the whole building himself, because he is such a good builder. One highlight of the meal was having Bananas Foster prepared (flambeed) tableside for dessert. The kids were quite delighted with the whole thing, but then Sawyer didn't want to eat food that had caught on fire.

I finally did "real" grocery shopping on Saturday for the first time since we've been back in Utah. It's nice to be really cooking again. We made smoothies yesterday (pretty regular thing for us that we haven't been able to do for a long time), and this morning I made Hootenanny (German pancakes) for breakfast. Tonight I made Carnitas (America's Test Kitchen recipe) for dinner, and the whole process was just so satisfying. It feels good to be home in our home.

Some amount of weeks

I've had some requests for prego pictures of me (gluttons for punishment, I guess?). I have finally been photographed for the first time in this pregnancy. (Well, there are a couple photos of me from Beck's birthday, but they don't show my belly.) Fair warning: I have had quite a few comments lately about how BIG I am. ("Wow, you're so BIG!" "You're REALLY PREGNANT" "WHEN are you DUE!!!???" "Don't take this the wrong way, but, you're a lot bigger than my friends who are pregnant and due at the same time...") Most of these comments came from younger female relatives (both sides of the family) who have yet to experience the joy of having your body grow out of control while inhabited by, basically, an alien parasite for the better part of a year...er, I mean the joy of nurturing a precious and tiny child inside your body for nine glorious months.

I did unpack the calendar wherein I had charted out how many weeks along I would be at any given time, but it's downstairs and I don't want to consult it. I think I'm somewhere between 32 and 34 weeks along, depending if I want to believe the doctor's due date (December 27), the suggested due date from my early ultrasound (December 25), or my originally calculated due date based on LMP (December 16), which I believed to be my due date for the first several weeks of my pregnancy, and which I still mentally clutch like a child clutches a beloved, threadbare stuffed animal, stroking it lovingly and imagining it's real.

Anyway, without further ado... (Apologies for the poor lighting and bad self-timer photography -- also the no makeup (hence the extremely shiny cheeks) and the wet hair pulled up. This is still the best I had looked in days!)

Beck brought me the camera this morning and said "Pictchoo, pictchoo!" very urgently. He gave me the camera, so I obliged and took his picture. This was the face he felt it was so important to have documented. Well, he still melts my heart, even when he's sticking his tongue out at me.

Here is Sawyer modeling some "face armor" he made out of one of his birthday gifts, a starter set of Magformers. He wants me to help him construct some armor that completely surrounds his head!

I've gone about as far as I can go on the unpacking without further help from Tyson. Lots of stuff is stacked precariously in the garage, with tiny passageways between items. I'm sure you realize that the belly pictured above and "tiny passageways through precarious stacks of furniture and boxes" are not a good mix.

One more thing I'd like to mention is how beautiful and LONG this fall (autumn) has been. We still have pretty leaves on the trees and mild weather for playing outside. Thanks, Cache Valley, for gently easing me into your winter this year!