"Baby"

Today as I was changing Rachel's diaper she saw this figurine I have on the shelf and she pointed and said, "baby."  I think she's catching on that her world is about to change.  I think she has a little angel whispering in her ear telling her that she is going to have a little brother and explaining to her that she is going to have to share Mommy's lap in less than two months. 

When I finished changing her diaper, I took the figurine off the shelf and had her point to the baby.  She sweetly looked at it and said again, "baby."  I love hearing her say the word.  Heck, I'm just happy to hear her say any word.  She's been rather mute in the vocabulary.  Then I asked her to point to the mommy.  She looked at it.  Put her hand to her mouth and gasped with big eyes and said, "Ga gone.  Awwww.  Ga gone."  I hope that her little angel assures her that her mommy will not lose her face when she has the new baby.  Or her fingers.

Just not myself

I just haven't been myself lately.  I've been accomplishing things, not taking pictures, and not blogging.  Don't worry, I'm sure the old me will be back someday. 

I had a great list of things I was going to accomplish today.  One was to mail an Easter card to my grandmother.  The kids drew her some pictures and they were excited to send them.  I usually only get the mail once a week because I don't like to be bothered by it.  There is usually more bad news than good news in there.  (Unfortunatley because of my bad habit, we were unaware that Bradley was supposed to give a talk in Primary last Sunday.  I told the Primary secretary on Sunday that email is the best way to reach me and to save the $0.44 next time.)  So when I mailed the Easter card, I decided to check the mail.  And of course, there was bad news in there.  There was a letter from a collection agency.  My husband had a merchant service account (so he could accept credit card payments for contract jobs) that he had cancelled a couple of months ago because no one was paying us anyway.  Well, it never actually got cancelled and since I didn't realize the company went to paperless statements in January, I never realized that the statements weren't getting paid because the bank account was closed too.  So to make a long story short, we have a $210 balance to pay off and they were going to charge us $295 to cancel the account.  However, we got the $295 fee waived.  It just bothers me that two hours of my time was wasted trying to fix this mess today because somebody made the mistake of not actually cancelling the account.  I'm not trying to blame anyone in particular, it's just one of those unfortunate events.  BUT we were told the account was cancelled earlier this month.  On top of that, I had to call our medical insurance company and my doctor's office to fix some errors in some recent doctor's visit claims.  Again, more waste of my time.  Needless to say, I didn't accomplish everything on my list today and the distractions made me grumpy. On top of that there were two dresses that I was going to return to a department store this evening.  I searched and searched and searched for the receipt and couldn't find it.  I finally found it in my wallet crushed by the huge wad of cash I had in there.  (Ok, so it was only really crushed by a few one dollar bills.)

So that's my day.  We have been working on our garden.  We ordered 7 cubic yards (in case you didn't know, that's a big pile) of compost and soil conditioner on Saturday and we have been slowly putting it in our new vegetable and flower beds shovel by shovel.  We hope to start planting this weekend.  Woo hoo!  My tomato and pepper plants aren't as big as I had hoped them to be by now.  I think I repotted them about 3 weeks too late.  I'm learning. 

Now off to bed.  I have such an active little fetus here tonight.  It feels like he is doing somersaults and about to burst my bladder. 

Learning the Secrets to Success

I kind of lost my blogging momentum.  Even though I'm still about 7 1/2 weeks away from having this baby, I'm seem to be in turbo nesting mode.  My back doesn't bother me as much, it's spring, which I think gives me more energy.  So while the energy still exists, I'm determined to become more organized, which means that blogging goes on the back burner.  I've been applying the Pomodoro Technique to help me get things accomplished.  Basically the technique has you write a feasible list of things you want to get accomplished for the day and for each one you set a timer for 25 minutes.  When the buzzer rings, you stop what you are doing and take a five minute break.  If you haven't finished the task, you set the timer for another 25 minutes or move onto the next task.  I realize it is common to write a list of things to do and work on them throughout the day, and I have done this in the past, however, the timer is the key to success.  It helps you focus, avoid distraction, and not get bogged down with unnecessary details.  Of course with six kids there is always distraction, but I have them write their own lists each day and they also use the technique to get their school work and responsibilities finished.  It seems to be very effective.  Instead of spending 3 hours to finish two pages of Math, they can usually finish their work in one or two 25 minute sessions.  I'm totally stoked about the progress we've made in learning and organization the past couple of weeks.  Very exciting. 

So I thought I might share some of my successes.  I will be sharing a little along the way.  I'm also learning that there are a lot of set backs when trying to make progress.  Today I spent about an hour sweeping and vacuuming wheat kernels from half of the downstairs because Jason and Rachel dumped a bag of it.  And my other set back leads me to this word of wisdom:

When cleaning out your cupboards, DO NOT put instant mashed potato flakes down the kitchen sink!!  It will clog your pipes like crazy and you will have to take all the plumbing apart and scoop the nasty mashed potato mush out of the pipes and it makes a mess. 

This was completely my doing and none of the kids was to blame for it.

More success stories coming soon....

Now for a picture of a huge strawberry I ate the other night.  I wanted to take a picture of it and the closest reference I had to demonstrate the size was this naked Barbie (She was on the kitchen counter waiting for her hair to get washed because it got something sticky in it.):

Update.

Still here.  Just pregnant and doing taxes.  Yay!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I can't believe how into St. Patrick's Day people get with all the leprachaun traditions and such.  I didn't do anything "green" or leprachaunish like color my toilet water with food coloring, make rainbow desserts, or anything.  I woke up, said, "Put on something green," and they obeyed.  My sister came through for me this year and mailed us some Lucky Charms, necklaces, and a pair of socks for me.  I'm low on the green maternity clothes.  Anyway, it was a good day.  My sister was disappointed that the package didn't arrive in time for breakfast (it was supposed to be here yesterday), but it worked out perfect.  They served themselves cereal for lunch while I finished some laundry upstairs.  They weren't too happy with me this morning for serving them oatmeal for breakfast, but it was punishment for not getting their room cleaned on time.  However, Jason doesn't think of oatmeal as punishment.  He ate his bowl and everybody else's bowl of oatmeal.  As long as there is enough brown sugar on it, he will shovel it into his mouth.

It turned out to be a good day.  My husband's parents are here and we went out to dinner in celebration for his birthday.  Unfortunately he was out walking Rachel when they came to sing to him.  When the servers saw that he wasn't there, they all dispersed and the waitress dropped the bowl of ice cream off at his empty seat and said, "Sorry, we're busy."  It was kind of strange, because the restaurant wasn't all that busy.  I think she meant to say, "lazy".

The Driver's License

I told my husband I supported him with whatever decision he made regarding his driver's license.  He was undecided until last minute and finally decided to go with renewing his commercial driver's license.  He just couldn't bear the the fact of losing his coolness and being an "regular" driver.  He also gave me a convincing list of other rationalizations of why he should have it.  So he went and got his physical during lunch today for 90 bucks.  In addition, he got to have his balls grabbed by a young female doctor.  He said she was just as embarrassed as he was.  I told him, "She probably thought you were hot."  Because seriously, who doesn't think a guy with a commercial driver's license is hot? 

So our next family vehicle is going to be a school bus.  I can't wait to be cool and have a CDL too.

In other news?  My fetus has hiccups again.  Apparently blogging gives him hiccups.  That's weird.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

\

Today is my husband's birthday.  He's 39 and has some gray hair to show it.  We baked him a white cake with homemade Hershey's Special Dark frosting.  Every child ate every single bite of their slice of cake.  My husband's driver's license expired today and he forgot to renew it.  Thankfully there is a 9 month grace period, so he won't have to take the test again.  I've only been reminding him about it for the past 2 months.  The problem is that he has a commercial driver's license because he was a school bus driver when we first got married.  In order to renew a CDL you have to have a physical by physician which costs $90 and you have to actually go to the DMVto renew.  There is no online renewal option.  I've been trying to convince him to just get a regular license and spend the $90 on a new pair of good shoes, but he is reluctant to give up his CDL because of the "coolness" factor it adds to his life.  Anyway, we will see what he decides to do about it tomorrow....

Happy Birthday, hot stuff! (Even though you never read this.)

Other news?  My fetus has hiccups right now.

Art Class

Today I heard Emily instructing a class on "How to Draw Spongebob Characters".  It was fun listening to her describe to her siblings how to draw Gary.  However, I don't know if I should be impressed or ashamed that she was able to do her drawings without having any visual references of the cartoons in front of her.  I think I'm going to go with impressed...

Disappointment

I'm disappointed with my ice cream/frozen yogurt choice.  The ribbons of fudge are more of a nuissance than a pleasure.  I was thinking it would be more like mint cookies and cream, but it's not.  The cookie part is good.  The fudge is not.  Too bad.  I'll just have to eat some brownies....

Six Things

1.  I'm officially waddling.
2.  I went to the grocery store tonight and stood in front of the ice cream freezer for at least 10 minutes trying to decide what flavor to buy myself.  I opted for the Mint Cookie Frozen Yogurt.  I figured I could eat twice as much because it was lower in fat.
3.  I think now I understand why Sarah thought my face didn't go with my pretty princess outfit on Sunday.  Princesses aren't pigs.
4.  I went to the doctor today and they totally forgot to give me my RhoGam shot.  Now I have to go back on Friday with my kids. :(
5.  I am grateful to have married someone who doesn't like brownies.  More for me!  However, my kids do love them and they think I should share them.
6.  I am blogging because I'm procrastinating washing the dishes.

My Day

A 3 year old's masterpiece. (It's not Crayola Washable.  It was a big fat permanent marker.)

A mother's elbow grease and sore arm tomorrow.

Mr. Clean saved Jason today.  Thank you Magic Eraser.  It's a good thing I pray for patience every morning.

Always tell the truth?

This morning as I was helping the kids get ready for church I noticed a stain on Sarah's dress sleeve.  I kind of scowled at it and made a comment about it being dirty.  She fessed up to the fact that she was cleaning up the blood from her bloody nose she got last night and it got on her dress.  Then the blood got wet and it spread more into an orangish stain.  It wasn't that big or noticeable, so I didn't have her change because it was too much work and time to pick a new outfit.  As I curled her hair, she made the comment that she felt good about being honest and telling me the truth.  I reassured her it made me happy when she tells the truth.  I didn't get mad about the stain, I was just frustrated that we were beginning the day with stained clothing.  I was glad all those lessons in honesty were sinking in and working.

As we were finishing breakfast, I was standing at my computer checking my Facebook when Sarah commented how pretty my church outfit looked.  As you can see in the picture below my shirt is quite pretty.  It's a Pepto Bismol pink layered mesh Motherhood top I've had for a few of my pregnancies.  It definitely accentuates the maternal curve and screams "Big Belly!", but it is quite princessy, which is why I'm sure Sarah liked it.  My skirt also had some meshy lace on the bottom.  I was so happy that my daughter made the effort to tell me she liked it.  But then she said, "But your hair and face don't look so good with your outfit."  OUCH!  My self-esteem was immediately shot down by a six year old.  But honestly I wasn't that offended, because I thought I looked pretty good that morning.  My hair dried nicely.  No zits.  My maternity facial fat is helping to fill out my crows feet and other wrinkles.  Perky big boobs.  What more could a woman ask for?  Apparently I'm just not natural princess material and Sarah just doesn't understand about the "glow of pregnancy" yet.  I had my husband reassure me later in the day that I'm not ugly. 

I think now that Sarah has the principle of honesty nailed down, we will move on and learn about tact.

Help Wanted

I think I need to hire someone to post blog posts for me.  Like I've said before, I'm not that busy, just not in the mood.  I've been getting some good organization done in my house lately.  We did some yardwork today.  Blah blah blah.  Anyway, I promise to try and do better.

Today I took a tour of the new hospital in town.  It is replacing the old hospital that all six of my children were born in.  This next baby will be born in the new hospital.  It's the same hospital system, just a new building.  It is due to open April 1.  The tour began at 2 PM and when I registered they told me that it just for adults, so I went by myself while my husband watched the kids.  As I pulled into the parking lot there were flocks of couples walking into the shiny new building.  The pregnant women had shiny nice new maternity clothes.  Walking in by myself with my 5 year old maternity clothes made me feel like the woman married to a dead beat dad.  But it was all good.  I saw someone I knew as I stood in line for the tour.  We chatted for a moment and she asked me, "What number is this? Seven?"  I replied, "Yes, number seven."  The husband in front of me said, "Did you just say, 'seven'?" I told him yes.  He remarked, "You must be a pro at this."  I never thought much about it before, but I guess I could consider myself a "pro".  Now if only I got paid to do it.  That would be awesome.  But....I am paid in blessings.  Right now I blessed with big boobs. 

So the tour was fun.  It seems so fancy.  There are HD televsions in the rooms and not a single scuff on the walls.  There is heightened security so people can't steal your baby.  I'm kind of excited to try it out.  (The hospital, not stealing babies.)  My only question was, "Are all the post partum recovery rooms the same size?"  The answer was, 'yes'.  I was hoping that maybe there would be a couple larger ones for people with lots of visitors, but there's not.  That's not all bad though.  It might just give me some more time to myself during my two days in the hospital.   There was also talk of how they are encouraging the baby to be in the room with the mother as much as possible.  Forget that!  I have no problem sending my baby to be carefully watched by the nursery staff.  Unfornately, the recovery rooms don't have bathtubs.  That's a total bummer.  I'll just have to take super long hot showers.

So that was my day.  I guess I should go to bed now.  I have to teach in church tomorrow.....

Answer to yesterday's question:

Here is the clean version:

1. Lip
2. Hip
3. Leg
4. Arm
5. Toe
6. Rib
7. Gum
8. Eye
9. Ear
10. Jaw