Day 8: Feeling Catty...

So, today would be day 8 of bedrest if I were actually ON bedrest.  The first day, I actually stayed in bed.  Then it all went downhill from there.  But I can say that I have been taking it easier and have been trying to get a nap every day.

I'm pretty tired of the whole thing anyway. This is torture!  When this baby comes, I will have stories to tell her about this pregnancy!

I have been staying home, though, and  I can say that I'm not picking  up the babies.  So that counts, right?

The thing is that it is impossible for me to stay in bed.  There is too much to do to keep the house running, and if I am at all alive, then I have to be in it otherwise by the time I resurface, things won't even be recognizable, and so what good is that?  The recovery from that situation would be enough to put me back in bed!

Jo's birthday is this Saturday, too.  I have planned nothing, and no one has gotten her a present.  Elizabeth was supposed to be painting a doll house for her, but since I have been 'down' and not pushing the issue, it hasn't gotten done.  And since it's at my parents' house, it is a pretty good bet that it's not going to get done by Saturday.

And that would be fine except that Jo knows that it's her birthday Saturday, so she will be expecting something.  Luckily, I have a puzzle put away and also a friend of mine let me go through some toys she getting rid of in her move and I found some really cool stuff that I know Jo will love.  Also, one of Jo and Gabriel's friends is having a birthday party on the 13th, so they will get to go to that, so Jo will get to have a fun time somewhere at least.  I will have to make it up to her later after I'm back in full swing.  Maybe I can get Elizabeth to make her a cake, too.

My in-laws came over for the 4th, so we cooked out, and that was a lot of fun!

Corn was shucked...

...shoes were muddied.....

...hotdogs were eaten....

...s'mores were cooked.....

...and eaten...




















and then Jo and Elizabeth and Annie went to my parents' trailer on Solomon's Island with my brother and his wife of 6 weeks.  The most that any one has spent with Jo is one day, and my brother and his wife have never been alone with her.  I have mentioned Jo's issues to my family, so they are well aware of the difficulties she sometimes has, but I don't think they ever really believed me.

Well, they do now.

The thing is that she was over-excited, and then she got to bed late the first night she was there, plus she ate a sugary dye-filled cereal for breakfast (which is a recipe for disaster even in the best of us!) so on Saturday she had a bit of a melt down in the middle of the camp ground.  It was around the time that she should have taken a nap, but since everyone thought that they knew how to handle her, she didn't get her nap and was 'handled' differently than we would have done it at home.  Elizabeth was trying to use the methods we use at home while my brother's wife was trying to calm her and my brother was telling her to leave Jo alone because she was making it worse.  Then someone was saying 'See?  That's what happens when you have kids!' and someone else was saying 'Wait!  One crying kid can't ruin the whole day for everyone' while someone else was asking if they cried would they get all the attention, too.

Jo was worked up, Elizabeth was stressed out over the situation, and a fun time was not had by all at that moment.

Eventually, though, Elizabeth managed to get Jo to calm down, and they went on with their day, but everyone seemed a bit agitated by the experience.  When Elizabeth got home, on Sunday afternoon she was so tired from the stress that she crashed on the living room floor and slept for an hour even with all the kids climbing all over her!

Interestingly enough, Jo has little to no recollection of the incident.  She just talks about the fun she had on the bikes and in the pool and with the other little girl that she met.  She talks about the cereal she ate for breakfast and how funny it was that she got to ride bikes with Aaron and his wife and then they happened to see Grandma and Grandpa riding their bikes, too.

Which personally, is fine with me. I'm glad she had fun.

Here's some pictures of Annie and Elizabeth tubing behind the boat...

Bed Rest: Day 1

Well, so we have made it through the first day.

I actually stayed upstairs in bed until about 6:30 when Jesse went to bed.  I took naps with him when he slept during the day, but a 6:30 bedtime for me is just plain too early!  Both he and Gabriel are liking my sleeping with them at naptime, though.

Annie came by to help Elizabeth with the 3 Littles and Baby B, and it really went quite well.  There was very little fighting or crying coming up the stairwell, and they got to spend a bit of time outside between rain showers.

We are working on that...improving familial relations between Elizabeth and the Littles, and I must say that I was impressed by how she handled them today.

For me, the day didn't drag out too horribly until around 3 when it was getting close to when Jimmy would be home, but not close enough!  And then, he called me to let me know that he would be late!  That threw a monkey wrench into my happiness!  But it does seem that things are calming down.  I didn't have nearly as many contractions today as I had yesterday, and I pray for continued improvement in that area so I can heal completely and have the opportunity to get up!

Anyway, after Baby B went home and Jimmy finally got here, Elizabeth and Annie came up to visit with me and take a break...

Yes, that is a faceplant into a pile of Legos.  She was that worn out...

My in-laws come tomorrow, so I expect that it should be an easier day for everyone.  Jimmy's home, too, since it's the 4th of July, and he also took Friday off so we could move the girls' room from upstairs to downstairs.  Yes, we are once again revamping the house.  The girls are coming downstairs to where my in-laws were and the boys are moving into the girls' old room so that the baby can be in our room with us.  Otherwise, to put the baby in our room would mean there would be 5 people in our room, and that's just too many even if they are small!   I think that we are not going to repaint the room the girls are going in since it is a purple-y color and we just painted it in November when my in-laws left, but we do need to paint the room where the boys are going.  Right now, it is painted a color called 'Potty Train Purple' which is a very deep purple and it has been that color since Elizabeth was 5!

For the time being, we are going to leave Jesse in the crib and Gabriel in his toddler bed for space reasons, but we are on the lookout for bunk beds for the girls.  Right now Elizabeth is sleeping on the floor since we had to get rid of her bed and Jo is in a twin bed, the mattress of which I believe we will be able to keep.  We will put the baby in a bassinet, and when she outgrows that, we will re-evaluated and decide if we are going to get another crib that can change into a toddler bed or if we are just going to move Jesse to a toddler bed and put the baby in his crib.  Jesse is a climber, but so far except for the one time that he fell out of the crib because the mattress was too high, he has not tried to climb out.  

Anyway, I should have more time now to keep up with this here and keep you all posted on how we are doing...probably a lot more up-to-date than anyone really wants in fact...

A Walk in the Dark

Jo and Elizabeth share a room.  And while it's not as if when they are awake they are the best of friends, but when Elizabeth is not there to sleep with her, Jo can get very stressed.  This stress causes her to sleepwalk even more than  usual.  Actually, it's not that she sleepwalks that often, but she does often get up and cry or scream,  not like night terror scream, but just like her usual loud cry scream, or talk in the middle of the night, and sometimes she gets out of bed and calls to us.  When she does this, it is sometimes hard to tell if she is sleeping or not because she will attempt to have a conversation with us, often about what has happened in the day or what she is looking forward to for the next day.

This week, Elizabeth is gone at camp, so Jo is sleeping alone and she just got up out of bed and tried to come down the stairs.  This is the first time she has done that.  She almost fell, but Jimmy was in the living room and when I heard her, I recognized her sleep voice and told him to run up because she was not actually awake and needed to be lead back to bed.

But that's kind of a scary thing.  We now need to remember to close the gate at the top of the stairs.  We also have a house alarm that we were considering upgrading, and I think that we will move ahead and get it done.  Not only will it protect us from the boogie men outside, but more importantly, perhaps, it will let us know if Jo ever gets as far as going out the door.

Does anyone else have experience with this?  She is almost 6, and it shows no sign of abating.

I Just Can't Hide It...

No, I didn't swallow a watermelon...

Yes, number 5 is on her way.  

Yes, I said HER!   

It's gonna be a little girl! (I wasn't going to find out, but I had to go in for a dating sonogram, and Jimmy really wanted to know, so we found out.)  She'll be here sometime in the middle of November, which means I'm 20 weeks pregnant!  

Jo is super excited and made me a book of all her favorite names.

Gabriel doesn't really get it.  Jesse doesn't care as long as he still gets his love and snuggles, and Elizabeth is resigned.  

And even though this was not planned, Jimmy is over the moon, and I am excited!

Heavenly Bodies

We had an awesome experience last Friday.

I had mentioned to my brother, Aaron, that Elizabeth could use a microscope and if he so desired, he could get her one for Christmas.  A few weeks before Christmas, he called me up to tell me he had an awesome gift for Elizabeth.  He asked me if she still needed a telescope, since he remembered that I had mentioned something about a something-scope, so that's what he got and he had already put it together for her.

There was no way I was going to tell him that we really needed/wanted a microscope and not a telescope, so I agreed wholeheartedly that this would be an awesome present and that Elizabeth would be very happy to receive it, and she was.

But we had no idea how to use it.  I mean, other than the obvious to point it at the sky and look through it, we were completely ignorant of how to really use this huge thing that was hanging out in our house.

I may have mentioned before, but we have been truly blessed by a man in our church offering to tutor Elizabeth in Algebra 2, and it just so happens that he is really into astronomy, too!  What a double blessing!  So, last Friday, he and his wife invited us to stargaze with him.  We took our telescope down to a dirt lot that had a good view of the sunset horizon, and he helped Elizabeth set it up and we got to see some planets!  It was incredible!  First, we saw Venus, Jupiter and Mercury, and then we turned around to the other side and got to see Saturn!  We got to see the phase of Venus, and we also saw the rings and the space in the rings of Saturn.  I have never seen anything like it up close and personal like that!  It really looked just like the pictures you see in the books!  Awesome!

I can't wait til next time.  Elizabeth is all pumped up about it now that we know how to use the telescope, and she is also anxiously awaiting her next astronomy lesson!

Reading and Math

I have realized that unlike Elizabeth, who loves to read and from whom you have to physically take books away so she will stop reading and go to bed or do her other homework, Jo does not like reading.  She is still a beginning reader, and so she is still pretty much just sounding out all the words, and the long vowels still trip her up, so reading with her can sometimes be a bit of a chore, especially when she gets frustrated or bored with it.

It took me a while to figure this out, though, because she is an absolute whiz in math, and she picks up concepts very quickly.  She also learned her letters and sounds quickly, but it's just the putting them together that she doesn't like to do.

In fact, that's not entirely true.  If we are out somewhere, she will just suddenly pop up with something that she has read off of a sign or a store name, so it's not like she can't do it, it's just that she doesn't want to do it at the times when she is supposed to be doing it.

She can't put words to the reason why she doesn't prefer reading, but my thoughts are that she likes things in order and predictable, which is exactly what math is.  No matter how you write it, 2+2 will always be 4.  And 2+2+2 will always be 6 even if you write it 2x3 (which she actually figured out herself).  But with reading, there are so many rules and exceptions to the rules and all the little letters can add up to be so many different words!  It's not predictable, at least not at her level, and so for her, it's distracting and no fun.

So, I found a fun and easy dot-to-dot book that I have decided to keep aside and 'reward' her with one of the pages when she finishes her reading.  I am hoping that it will entice her to read more and read more quickly without so many tearful interruptions, so that she can get to the dangling carrot of a fun math page.  And I figure that since it's not her actual math workbook, then she will not confuse that and see it as optional, even though she often does her math workbook just for fun anyway.  And my ultimate hope is that by encouraging more reading, she will get better at it and it won't be so torturous and therefore more of an incentive on its own.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it works.

Memorial Day!

Jimmy only had to work a half day last Monday, Memorial Day, so we got to have a little fun after he came home.  

First, we grilled some dinner, then we got the fire going in the fire bowl and while that was getting to perfection for roasting marshmallows, we played some Uno.  It's a great game because it's pretty much a game of chance that we can all play as long as someone helps Gabriel with his cards a little.  

Then, we got down to the serious business of roasting the marshmallows.

Then, we managed to get marshmallow in our hair....

And, of course, all over our mouth!

But showers afterwards removed most of the stickiness (can you ever really get all the stickiness off a 3 year old boy?) and it was declared a fun evening by all!