No, we’re not done yet!

(September 14th, 2011, around 6:00pm)

My babiest boy is a week old today!

Dee and I had recently arrived at the hospital this time a week ago, and I was hooked up to a machine that monitors the heartbeat and contractions.  (The lack of machines is one thing I would love about a home birth!)  I was 5 centimeters dilated when we arrived, and even though we were only at the hospital for 4 1/2 hours until Zach was born, that was a long 4 1/2!

I’m glad it’s over.  Labor and delivery is HARD!  I’ve given birth to all 5 of my babies naturally, without pain medication.  But in the moment, I always moan to Dee, “Are you SURE I can do this without an epidural?”  My sweet husband always tells me he knows I can do it, but that I can have an epidural if I want one.  Good answer!  He passed the test.  And then usually, by the time we’re done talking about it, I’m almost fully dilated and ready to push the baby out.

And I’d do it all again, yes.

Yes, for those wondering, I think we’ll have more kids.  I LOVE my children!  I can’t imagine being done yet.  Now, if you’d been a fly on the wall in the hospital, you would have heard me tell Dee, “Let’s have five kids.  Five is good!”  But that was moments after pushing a head and fist, and the rest of a 8 lb, 10 oz little body into the world!

It always makes me mad when I go to the hospital to have a baby, and the nurse doing the “questioning” asks if I want my tubes tied.  I know it’s a mandatory question.  They probably have to ask the women with 1 kid and the women with 5 kids the same question, but it still makes me mad!  But I usually only get mad on the inside, so the nurse only sees me smile politely and say “No,” while I’m thinking, “NO!  I DON’T want my tubes tied!  I chose to get pregnant with all of my kids, and you’ll probably see me at this hospital again in a year or two.  So there.”

Why would I want my tubes tied when I can have another one of these…

We’ve been rocking a lot, me and Zach, in front of the kitchen radio.  By the window with the pink roses outside.  We sway to country music, since I assume that’s his favorite!  He’s been listening to it for 9 months.  Yesterday, the song “High Cost of Living” came up.  It’s a sweet lullaby tune, good for rocking babies to, but such a sad song for too many people.  I was thinking how so extremely grateful I am that we can have 5 kids, plan to have more, and afford to put diapers on their butts and food in their bellies!  Even so many of our wants and wishes are met, not just our needs.   I love being a mom, and I love knowing that I have the rest of my life to “mother” my 5 kids.  (Sorry, kids!)

Waiting busily! (Is that an oxymoron?)

No baby yet!  But I do have permission, from Dee’s boss, to go into labor any time now.  Dee had a big commercial job to unload today, with multiple truckloads of roofing material arriving every 45 minutes.  He’s the only driver that could do it from our branch, so his boss really wanted him to be available today!

Now that job is done, and I can tell it’s a load off of Dee’s mind.  He kept calling me today, after he was done, asking, “Sooo… How are you feeling?”  I’m thinking, “No, Dear, I have NOT gone into labor yet!”  But I was just polite and said, “I’m fine.”  Because I am.  No contractions, nothing.  Which is fine, because I haven’t even reached my due date yet!  I’m happy to have Baby stay in until he’s strong and healthy and ready to face the world.

Dee’s been super sweet recently, helping me get stuff done before Baby comes.  Monday night he put new cabinets in our bedroom closet, which now looks amazing!  I’ve been throwing stuff out like CRAZY!  All over the house.  This afternoon I finally dropped off the whole Suburban load of junk things at a thrift store.  It felt good to get everything not just out of the house, but off the property!  The nice people at the thrift store were very grateful.  I don’t know if it was genuine.

(Side note:  You know how little boys usually want to be like their Daddy when they grow up?  It’s hilarious in our family.  EVERY. single. time we pass a dumpster, all the kids shout, “Mommy!  Mommy!  A dumpster!  Can we dive into it like Daddy?  PLEEEASE?!!”  I mean, who dreams of dumpster-diving?  Maybe I should say “yes” one of these days.  At least we’d get free food from the Taco Bell dumpster!   Annnyyyyhoo….  At the thrift store today, Cboy decided he WAS going dumpster-diving, and proceeded to bloody his toe all up trying to jump from the hood of the Suburban into the thrift store dumpster.  Dangerous work, I tell you!)

Dee’s also been letting me get out to shop and run last-minute, before-Baby errands.  He had the day off work on Monday, and instead of working on his projects, he sent me and Anna shopping while he watched the kids.  AND did school with Kbug and Cboy!  While watching a two-year-old and a three-year-old!  I was properly impressed and appreciative.  And, I was properly appreciated when I returned home Monday afternoon.  I asked how school went, and Dee said, “Good… But next year, they’re going to PUBLIC school!!!”  Oh yeah.  I’m thinking he’ll be bringing home lots of compliments and Starbucks home to me this school year!

Tuesday evening we hung out with friends, and tonight we took the kids swimming.  It’s been nice to take a break from projects, and just kick back with our kids.  This morning, my three youngest kids piled in bed with me for half an hour, and I soaked up every precious minute!  I can’t wait until they have a baby brother or sister to come and cuddle with in the mornings.  This little baby is entering the world with a ready-made fan club!

So come on, little one, we’re all anxious to meet you!

Meltdowns

I’m sleeping on the couch again.  Nope, not a fight!  Just my little boy who needs Daddy when he’s sad.  CJ always cries for Dee when he’s upset, and most recently I haven’t felt like sharing our queen-size bed with CJ’s wiggle, kicking feet!  The other night he woke up screaming that I’d dumped all the pretzels out, and why did I do that, and now there’s no more… (All in his imagination, I swear!  We have a HUGE container of pretzels still in the cupboard.)  Tonight, CJ woke up crying really hard because his leg hurt.  This happens every so often, and I think it must be “growing pains.”  I try to remember to feed him calcium-rich foods, but forget more than remember.  Then I feel like a bad mom.

When Moosies broke her collarbone the other week, I felt like a bad mom.  Like, maybe she wouldn’t have broken her collarbone if she had stronger bones from more calcium?  Dee said he felt like the bad parent, like somehow he should have been closer to her and caught her before she fell.  It was nice to hear from a bunch of people at Indian Hollow that collarbone breaks are very common.  And then the doctors and all the web pages I Googled said the same thing.  But still, I wish I could have prevented it…

And now, almost every day, I feel like a bad parent when Moosies trips and falls.  The orthopaedic doctor stressed several times that Moosies should NOT fall right now!  He showed me the second X-ray, and said she might end up with a shorter collarbone on one side if she falls again and the one bone slips behind the other.  BUT I CAN’T KEEP HER FROM FALLING!  She falls at least once a day, and then cries, and then I cry.  I was actually sobbing the other night in bed, because I feel so helpless to make sure my daughter’s bone heals correctly.  I just begged God to do it for me, since I’m failing.

I can’t keep my flowers and veggies alive outside, and my house is not scrubbed down from top to bottom.  Somebody else PLEASE tell me they have dirt behind the couch?  And grimy windowsills? And unwashed floor registers?  And dusty closets with too much junk?  And dusty, disorganized kitchen cabinets?  And all the lightbulbs are not washed?  PLEASE?

My poor husband has dealt with several tearful meltdowns recently.  I hope he remembers that I have extra crying hormones right now?  And that I still think he’s super-dad, and the best hubby in the whole world!  Maybe I should write him a letter tomorrow.  You know, one of those mushy love letters that dwindle off in amount as the years and kids pile up.

He’s working his butt off right now to finish the basement before the baby comes.  After he comes home from working his butt off at his job.  I can feel sad that I’m not getting a whole lot of romantic, special attention right now (think: back rubs, long talks, fresh coffee…), or I can realize that he IS showering me with romantic, special attention.  In his own, manly, provider way.  He wants to be able to kick back and relax with me and the kids and the new baby next month, plus help out with the house and school and whatever else my newest meltdown is about!  Okay, I know I’m really begging for sympathy tonight, but does anyone else have meltdowns?  Anyone?

I’m going to go sneak in my room and grab my body pillow now.  Oh, and I’ll try really hard to post pictures of the basement project soon.  And try not to have a meltdown about it. =)

Raising bookworms

All four of my kids are signed up for the summer reading program at our local library.  I am too, but I don’t get the same cool prizes that the kids do!   The kids get 1 point for every 30 pages, or 1 point for every un-numbered picture book.  They can pick up their points (printed on brightly colored, money-like pieces of paper) once a week, and then in August all the kids cash their points in for those cool prizes I mentioned.

All of my kids love books, but since Kbug can read by herself now, she’s really racking up the book points!  I think she has 121 points so far.  We are totally going to wipe out the prize table in August.  Heehee!  This is bringing back childhood memories.  I was a huge bookworm when I was little.  I’d sneak books into the bathroom, read under the covers at night, bring books in the car, and read pretty much every chance I got.  I’d read instead of doing chores or schoolwork too, so I vexed my mother quite a bit!  And if I wasn’t reading, I was petting my chickens, or daydreaming outside.  Kbug takes after me in her chicken-loving, daydreaming ways too!  I think my daughter is payback.  I don’t mean that in a negative way, just that I see so much of myself in my oldest daughter.  Hopefully that means I’ll be quick to remember what it was like when I was 6, or 10, or 17… and be quick to relate to my daughter.

Tangents, tangents…

So when I was younger, our library also had a reading program every summer.  I picked up several packs of baseball cards every week, and I’m sure some other prizes too.   I was really into baseball cards though, so that’s what I remember.  Getting all of those free packs of cards was AWESOME!  The library probably had to increase their spending budget for prizes once the Dagarin kids started reading.

I’m thrilled that my kids are following in my footsteps!  It just wouldn’t be acceptable if my kids turned their nose up at a book!  I’d rather be frustrated that they’re reading too much than be frustrated by that fact that they have no interest in books.  Or that they’re playing too many video games, or watching too much TV.

Yesterday at my midwife appointment, Kbug asked if she could go out in the waiting room to read books.  One of the nurses asked, “How old is she?”  I told her that Kbug was almost 7, and the nurse kind of sighed and said, “I wish my daughter would ask to read a book!  She hates books.”  Can I just admit that I puffed up a little?  I am so proud of my daughter.

And thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me to read, and encouraging me to read, and for not taking my books away forever when I read at inappropriate times.  And Dad, I’m even grateful that you made us read a biography every 3 books, even though I still roll my eyes about your old rule.  I’ll probably be passing that rule on to my kids!

Mommies need push-up popsicles too.

Today I scrubbed down the vinyl seats in my Suburban with a toothbrush.  Not all of them, and no, not extreme nesting.  Just the parts of seat and floor that Kbug hit with her vomit.

It was just one of those days!

One of my boys woke up with pee-soaked sheets, which isn’t really a big deal, but sometimes things like that set the tone for the day.  It shouldn’t, I know.

Our library had a kids program at 10:00am, so things were rushed getting everyone out the door.  (We go every Tuesday, and we have yet to make it on time!)  I don’t like rushing.  And I was tired from waking up at 4:00am with  CJ, who was coughing and crying about his sore throat.  He only wants Daddy when he’s sick, so I moved to the couch and let him take my spot in bed.

Since I was already out in the kitchen/living room, I got up at 6:00am to pack Dee’s lunch.  I never do this anymore, except on rare occasions, so I got extra kisses from Dee!  That’s always nice.  Not that he’s sparing with his kisses, ever…

The library program on Tuesdays is for 6-8 year olds, so Moosies and CJ always get bored.  Then I have to entertain them for 45 minutes upstairs while we wait for Kbug and Cboy to finish up with the big kids.  All of my kids love books, but 45 minutes in the library is a LONG time for my little guys.  Then when we were ready to check out books and leave, the computers were extremely sluggish.  Apparently, because all the libraries were closed July 4th, the whole integrated library system got whammed July 5th!  Happens after every holiday.  I’m going to remember that!  But the 15 people stacked up in line behind us were very pleasant, and my kids stuck with me (instead of running the book isles) and acted very well-mannered.  I think they were hoping for candy.

On the way home from the library is when Kbug threw up.  I’m hoping it was just from the sweltering heat, and trying to read in the car.  I really don’t want to deal with a family-wide stomach bug right now!

I had told the kids we’d try to go swimming after lunch, before naps, but by the time I got the throw-up mess cleaned up and fed the kids lunch, it was time for naps.  Because Mommy said so, that’s why.

My lunch, while I banished the kids upstairs for 20 minutes, was a package of pizza Combos and a push-up popsicle.  I even got to read 2 pages of a new book I snagged at the library.  (If you’ve never thought this through, let me just explain that it is really, really hard to browse for “Mommy books” while keeping track of a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old at the library.  Make that impossible.  So I just grabbed five books off the shelf closest to me, and hoped they were good ones.)

Everyone but Kbug took naps after lunch.  (And everyone but me had a healthy lunch of french toast, made with whole wheat bread and our farm-fresh eggs!)  I stuck her out on the couch with a book on tape, and told her she could turn a movie on when “Pinocchio” was done.  Besides the physical disasters of pee and throw-up, I was tired from all the fighting and whining and lying that happened today.   (And, I’m 32 weeks pregnant and it’s HOT and my hormones haven’t gone anywhere!)  The pee and stuff I can handle, it’s the soul issues that wear me out.  I’m not sure what happened to my normally a-lot-sweeter children!  I felt like asking Dee to watch the kids when he got home from work, so I could escape for a little while.  BUT, I knew the kids and I needed to do something fun together, so we drove to the creek after naps and played in the water.  Built rocks dams, pretended we were beavers, found “dragon eggs” and then slayed the dragons that hatched, watched fishermen… and then CJ had to go poop.  No way was I dragging all four kids into the gas station rest room, so we went home.  Where CJ couldn’t get any poop out, but oh well!  Dee brought Sam’s Club pizza home, bounced with the kids on the trampoline, and helped me tuck all the kiddos in bed.  Mmmmhmmm!  My hero.

Words do it for me!

It’s Friday again!  Five minutes of writing, and I’m done.

Today, everyone over at The Gypsy Mama is writing a post about what makes each of us, personally, feel loved.

I feel the most loved when…

My husband tells me he loves me.  When he tells me I’m doing a great job, and I’m a great mom.

It’s hard taking care of four kids.  And being pregnant.  And homeschooling the oldest while I try to get the two-year old to entertain herself.  And keep the boys from fighting.  And keeping up with the laundry, and the dishes, and the clutter.  And the dust and dirt.  And cooking healthy and delicious food for six people.  Every day.

Not undesirable, all of this, just hard.  It’s easy to get discouraged, and overwhelmed, and feeling like I’m not good enough.  Like I’m not doing a good job raising my kids, and how are they ever going to be responsible, hard-working, smart, caring adults?

And then Dee pulls me out of my funk and says, “Babe, you’re an AWESOME mom.  You’re doing a good job.  The kids are happy, and you love them.  I love you, and I think you’re amazing.”

And the world is right again.  I feel loved!  Even though I knew it all along, it’s easy to forget.  And it’s so nice of my man to remind me again, and again, and again, that I AM loved.