Just A BIT of Complaining and a Bunch of Pictures...

I'm not super excited to be pregnant anymore. I'm tired...I feel like this kid is already about 8 pounds and it doesn't help that he seems to want out as much as I want him to get out. With Ayris and Asher, I remember being uncomfortable with all of their activities on the inside but they rarely were able to make me flinch in pain. This guy seems to seek out random organs and push on them so hard it's painful. Couple that with the fact that I'm pretty sure my entire pelvic girdle could just slide out at any time (if that were possible...I know it's not but it sure feels like it could) and the fact that just rolling from my left to my right side induces all out panting as though I had just worked out for 20 minutes...I'm just kind of over it...and done. LUCKILY, we're almost in April...which means that I only have a good 4 weeks to go before I can start my whining/crying about how my baby has something against me for not getting the heck out of there. I was thinking back to when I was pregnant with Ayris...right around 37 weeks, I found myself crying at my desk on multiple occasions because I thought she was punishing me by staying in there...and I have a friend on facebook who two weekends ago was saying the baby could come any day now and that she figured she'd come that weekend...I never ended up seeing any pictures, so I went to her page and saw that she was only 38 weeks! And here I thought she was at 40 since she was assuming the baby would just come...I think what ruins it for us women whose children seem to think our uterus's are the best things on the planet, are the women who go into labor 3 weeks early with their babies. We get in the mindset that if it can happen to them, it should happen to us...and obviously, I don't think too many pregnant women are in their right mind towards the end...None the less, I feel like in 4 weeks, I can really kick my complaining into gear (lucky Chris! =) and hopefully just talk this little BIG man into making his appearance early. I'd really like to NOT induce at 39 weeks...but in order for that to happen, I need him to decide on his own that he's coming early. That is an interesting fact in itself...it's not the mom's body that decides when to start labor...it's the baby...he/she will send out a signal to start labor...I think that's pretty cool (and cruel at the same time).

Anyway, enough of my complaining. He'll be here in no time and then I'll be wanting to put him back in so my nightly wakings consist of 4, 30 second trips to he bathroom! On to the pictures...I LOVE the colors in this first one...it makes me happy...along with this weather lately!

Here are some shots of Ayris...before and after her little mini facial...

I was trying to get some good shots of the two of them so I could update the main blog picture that is along the top...but unfortunately, Asher is not into taking pictures lately...

Some of these are blurry but I still thought they were cute...

This is Asher "fixing" the bed with his syringe...We got a bunch of syringes when we filled Ayris' antibiotics for her toe and I'm pretty sure Asher has had a syringe in his hand ever since...it's his new favorite thing right now

Ayris took this picture of me...I want you to notice that when laying on my side, my nonexistent boobs are now starting to touch...and it's disgusting. I don't know how women (especially the women in my family who have ridiculously huge boobs) live with those things. I go to bed in a tank top and Chris' boxers and I sweat at night (meanwhile Chris still suits up like an Eskimo at night...he even went downstairs to sleep on Saturday because it was "too cold" in our room)...now that these disgusting things are touching and my only option is to lay on my side, I now have a sweat streak right down the middle of my boobs at night...GROSS!!! Thank goodness they don't touch at any other time aside from laying down...although, another crazy thing happened a month or more back...I was about to get into the shower but decided to go pee first...as I was going, I decided to lean down and pick something up off the floor and freaked myself out thinking there was a spider on my stomach...no, it was just my yuck bigger boob coming in contact with my overgrown belly...that grossed me out too...can you tell I'm not into boobs? I mean, if other people have them, that's fine...but I'd rather not have them myself! At least nothing bigger than an A.

Okay, this next picture is SUPER hot, I know...but I'm posting it because I have decided that going forward, I will be letting Asher take all of my pregnancy photos! I was editing photos on the couch when he picked up my point and shoot camera and took random shots...when I was going through them later, I saw these and noticed that he actually made my big fat self look slightly on the thin side...obviously it was the angle and how my shirt/arms were laying but still...I like it!

He even managed to make my fingers look thin...

Okay, and to recap...the picture below is at 23 weeks I believe? That's when I posted it on the blog anyway...

And this is at 32 weeks.

P.S. Right as I was posting this, I looked over at Ayris and she was pinching her "boobies" because she wanted them to grow bigger like mine...and I asked her if she wanted them like mine or like Grandma Sooner's...and she said Grandma Sooners because she likes how they "hang" and how BIG and CUTE they are. Obviously we're not on board with the same boob philosophy...but there you go Grandma Sooner...as gross as I might think they are, Ayris thinks they're cute...and by the way, she'd like for you to come over and show them to her so she can see if they've grown--no kidding. She just told me that. Feel free to just show her next time she's at your house =)

A New Day

I am amazed sometimes at how a new day can bring such a renewed sense of everything-is-going-to-be-okay...at the end of yesterday, I was emotionally drained and felt haggard...but this morning is already so much better.

So yesterday...I decided to get the kids hair cut. After an hour and a half of sitting in the salon, I was so over trying to wrangle the kids to sit still and quit spilling water on the floor, etc...but as soon as we left, my mood was lifted because of this gorgeous weather...so it didn't matter...

I should mention that BEFORE going to get the kids haircuts, I had taken them outside to get a few pictures before Ayris was going to chop it all off...as we were coming in, the kids wanted to bring some rocks in with them. I said NO and told them to leave them on the doorstep...that we could go outside once we got home and they could play with them then. And we did...we went back outside later in the afternoon. Again, they asked if they could bring the rocks in. Well remember that mom who commented a while back about saying NO a little less and YES a little more? She should have just stuck to saying NO.

I asked Ayris if I could wash her hair because they had put pink stripes all in it and I wanted it out. While we were doing that, Asher decided he wanted to give his rocks a bath...at which point, Ayris decided she wanted to give her rock a bath. Ayris' rock was about 10 times...maybe more, the size of Asher's little rocks. After bath time, I was getting Asher set up on the bedroom computer to play some PBS games while I dried Ayris' hair...she had asked if she could dry her rock off because it was wet...sure, whatever...no big deal. Until the rock fell from the counter down onto her big toe. Long story short, I took her to the emergency room to get it checked out...after about 2.5 hours of being there, nothing was broken and she only had a surface scratch/tear underneath her big toe (that they finally found after about 45 good minutes of them peeling back her entire toenail) that was causing it to bleed profusely. She was sent home with 10 days of antibiotics and some Tylenol with codeine.

I have decided now, after this night of hell, that it'd be easier to be like that mom on the Chuck E Cheese commercials that sends her kids outside all wrapped in bubble tape to protect themselves. Or better yet...just get something like this for all four kids...

We'll obviously need a bigger house if they're going to be riding around in bubbles.

In all seriousness though...I'm THAT mom who doesn't want her kids skiing or snowboarding, motorcycling, etc...as I'm pretty sure people die doing stuff like that...but Chris of course has always countered those thoughts with the idea that we're going to have to let them try new things...yesterday's incident just goes to show that it's possible for them to hurt themselves even if I were to lock them in the house all day.

These are the parts that suck about being a parent though...as I was laying in bed last night, I was questioning why I wanted 4-5 kids in the first place...its always seemed like a good idea but now it was occurring to me that I was going to have to go through these types of things with not only two children but 4 or 5...and last night, I wasn't sure if my heart could handle that...because I'm honestly convinced at this point that my kids hearts are pretty much tethered tightly to my own. Now that it's a new morning, I'm on board with the fact that, at the very most, her toenail is going to fall off as the new grows out...but last night, I was a mess with the idea that something this horrible had happened to my child. When you're sitting there with a kid who is screaming at the top of her lungs because they were hurting her (when they were giving her shots to numb her toe), it kind of seems like the end of your world. I felt sick and couldn't help but cry right along with her. And of course, there's the part about keeping it together. MY mom was always the one who was supposed to keep it together...when did it become MY turn to keep it together? I personally felt pretty distraught yesterday as the whole thing was going on but apparently, in the eyes of Ayris, I must've been pretty stoic. She asked why Grandma Sooner and Daddy both said "Oh my gosh!" when they heard about her toe (unfortunately both Chris and my mom called while we were driving to the hospital and that stupid car function that makes my phone go through the entire car made Ayris aware of their reactions)...apparently, I never seemed scared to Ayris...I just kept reassuring her that everything was going to be okay and that her toe wasn't as bad as it looked (it totally was nasty looking but she was FREAKING out so I didn't know any other way to calm her down)...none the less, it's nice knowing that even though I personally felt like I was falling apart, Ayris must've thought I was fine.

But again, today is a new day and Ayris is enjoying it. She was served breakfast in bed and thought that was pretty cool in and of itself...I also made her favorites for lunch...hard boiled eggs and jello...and I told her she could pick dinner (She chose KFC because she wants chicken, mashed potatoes and macaroni)...and all day she gets to pick movies that we are watching as a family in her room so she can keep her foot elevated (she could probably walk around but I personally would prefer her not until we change her dressing tonight and see what her toe looks like...it continued bleeding all through her dressing last night and that was 5+ hours after she dropped the rock on it).



I must admit I am feeling guilty for never thinking about devoting a day to each kid before...instead of waiting for something crappy like this to happen...after seeing how much enjoyment Ayris is getting out of it though, I think I may try to make this a weekly thing...maybe make Fridays a kids day...and go every other for each kid...so next Friday would be Asher's day and Ayris' the following, etc...

In some less depressing news, the other day when we were in the car, Ayris just told me out of the blue that when she was a baby in my tummy, she knew she wanted to pick good parents to love her and now that she was out of my tummy, she was glad she had us as her parents. Isn't that so sweet? Of course, this was all before the toe thing! But it's those random comments like that that make the hard days all the more worth it.


Here are some of the pictures that I had gotten yesterday before everything went down...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE how vibrant this scarf is in these pictures...I'm using a trial basis of Lightroom for editing my pictures right now (in addition to the wonderful camera/lens that is allowing for these blurred backgrounds).

Doesn't she look SO grown up?

And this is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE! What a beautiful girl...seriously, Chris and I did that!!

Asher...not looking ANYTHING like a baby anymore. Boo for growing up babies =(

And these were just some pictures I shot after getting this lens to try out the blurred backgrounds...

Ayris' choice of outfit/head apparel...

Two Year Olds Are SO Helpful!

You know what's super cool about toddlers? They are just extremely helpful. So helpful in fact, that when Asher couldn't make it to the toilet in time to go poop, he just decided he'd take off his underwear and try to clean up the mess himself. I was downstairs making lunch and kept hearing him running back and forth from his bedroom to the bathroom...I called him downstairs and asked him what he was doing...as soon as he said he went poop in his underwear and I noticed that his underwear were in fact absent, I went upstairs to find this:

It could have been a lot worse...but he did manage to get footprints of it on the rugs (that had just been washed yesterday) and I of course had to spend the next 10 minutes cleaning the floors and toilet yet again (remember yesterday was the entire scrubbing of the bathroom to get rid of the pee smell from when I had spilled some of Asher's pee all over the floor while emptying his toilet)...not to mention all of the liquid poo (because of course, this had to be the soft mushy stuff instead of his normal ball like BM's) that was up and down Asher's legs/butt...he was immediately deposited into the tub for his 2nd bath of the day.

Here are a few pictures that I was going to post yesterday. The weekend was spent celebrating Grandma Callie's birthday...this picture below was of Ayris during Saturday night's dinner...I just thought she looked like such a little grown up here...

Sitting with daddy....

TJ and Asher...

Grandma Callie with Amber and Chris...

Ayris took this picture of "her brother"

Just a few random shots of Asher...

In other news...I belong to a number of survey companies...and one of those companies always lets you play this little poll predictor game at the end that gives you "chances" to win prizes...so the closer you are to the right answer, the more chances you get. I'm normally pretty good at this game but I was dumbfounded recently...the question posed was if McDonald's was your favorite restaurant...so in all of my infinite McDonald's wisdom, I put something like 70 some percent...because afterall, not everyone could love McDonald's as much as myself...imagine my surprise when the number came back like at 3 percent or something crazy like that!

And then, the poll today was "Have you ever made someone cry?"...I guessed 47 and the number was 90! Man...Ipsos survey members are meanies! Meanies who are missing out on McDonald's! I'm not quite sure I fit in with this group of people =)

Also, the community director just quickly shot an email back saying he was sorry to hear about my missing cat and asked if I could tell him which community I lived in so he could answer my questions fully. Maybe that means that other communities allow missing pet signs and dogs to poop in other people's yards? Who knows...I'll just keep waiting for those questions to be answered fully. I did hear from a friend today who said she knows someone whose cat came back a week later...so that gives me more hope.