Cloth diaper giveaway

Softbums, the cloth dipes we use, is having a big giveaway ending today. If you cloth diaper or would like to, this would be a great chance to try them. Head over here to enter. These are GREAT dipes...the best cloth we have ever used.

Pregnancy update

No, I have not "had that baby yet." Yes, I know I am as big as a barn. No, it is not twins. Yes, I'm sure it is not twins.

My original due date was April 2, which just happens to be next Friday, Good Friday. A few weeks ago, we heard an odd heartbeat on the doppler at my visit with the midwife. Liz thought it was hiccups, and I'm sure she was right, but I was still a little worried, so she kindly offered to order an ultrasound. At the ultrasound, the baby was weighing a whopping 8 pounds, 5 ounces, (35 weeks) so the radiologist moved my due date to March 5. Funny. Hilarious, in fact, considering I went 3 weeks and 2 weeks overdue, respectively, with my two other kids. I thought it was a little silly to move the due date based on the baby's weight, as an 8 pound baby is nowhere near full term for me. Mercy was 9 pounds, 4 ounces, and Judah was 9 pounds, 12 ounces, so an 8 pound baby would look downright scrawny to me. Anyway, hearing a due date of March 5 galvanized me into action to get some projects and cleaning finished, even though I knew a baby arriving around that time was highly unlikely. Turns out the baby's heart is fine, but the kidneys are the problem. They were both enlarged, which indicates reflux. It is mild, but we have to have a follow-up ultrasound of the baby's kidneys after he/she is born.

I like being pregnant. I am blessed with good, uneventful pregnancies (and as one friend said..."if they're going to be so long, it's nice that they're good!"), and I usually feel just fine for most of the 9 months. But, I admit, I'm getting tired of being pregnant. I'm ready to meet this little one, and I'm tired of carrying the little elephant around now. It's getting hard for me to pick up the other children, and rolling over in bed is pretty much a joke. I'm just ready to be done. I don't feel grouchy yet like I did when one, then two, then THREE weeks passed after my due date with Mercy, but apparently I'm a little more irritable than I thought. Today, Benj blessed me with some much needed alone time, even if it was just to do grocery shopping. I was browsing in a new health food store that I hadn't had a chance to check out because of not wanting to drag the littles in and out of their carseats for a quick survey. So I'm minding my own business, looking at the gluten free food items, and this woman comes bursting out of the back and says..."Still no baby yet?" like we were finishing a previous conversation. Now, I guess I'm not as good a Southern girl as I had previously assumed, because it generally annoys me when people I wouldn't know if I found them dead in my lunchbox ask personal questions. I mean, I'm polite, and say "hello" and "thank you" and all that, but I just don't like complete strangers questioning me about my personal life, my parenting choices, etc. Anyway, back to the healthfood store. I was rather taken aback by this gusty, presumptuous greeting, and I answered, rather testily, that I'd be rather disgusted if I looked like this and had already had the baby. She laughed, but left me alone. For about 5 minutes. Obviously, not one to take a subtle hint, she came back and asked if it was a boy or girl. Um. Okay. First of all, we don't know. Second of all, do people really think that's any of their business what sex child a stranger is having? Honestly. Needless to say, I hurried out of the store without buying anything. Rant over. See, I said I was more irritable than I thought.

One thing I did for myself today was have a pedicure. I've never done that before, and I normally wouldn't even consider paying someone else to do something I am perfectly capable of doing, but my poor puffy feet are so sore from waddling around on them in tight shoes, and being that I can hardly REACH my feet, I had been rather neglectful of them, and it was showing. So, when I should have been doing my grocery shopping while my sainted husband was watching my two wild toddlers, I was sitting in a massage chair with my feet in a whirlpool. Oh, it was 45 minutes of heaven. She massaged my legs and feet, and I even had a paraffin wax dip. I am now the proud owner of beautiful lavender toes and soft, magnificently-tended feet. And Benj didn't mind at all, as I was in rather a happier frame of mind when I returned home.

So that's the update on me and Baby #3. The countdown is on.

I am married to AWESOME

You may wonder what we've been up to recently as I haven't been posting much, and there's been a dearth of pictures on my blog. The lack of pictures is mainly because my stupid computer has taken to complaining about a lack of disk space and refuses to download many of my pics (don't ever buy a Dell...it was pretty much hate at first sight.) But other than that, we've been too busy to TAKE the pictures.

We needed to do something about the children's sleep arrangements before the new baby arrived. Mercy had maybe six more months of growing room in her crib-converted-to-a-toddler bed, but Judah was really too big for the pack-n-play. We planned to just put Judah in the crib and put Mercy in a trundle toddler bed, to be pulled from under the crib at night to conserve space in our small nursery. We use chemical free latex and wool mattresses, so when we looked into buying a mattress for Mercy's toddler trundle bed, we decided that it was a much better financial decision to go ahead and buy the natural twin size mattresses, as it would carry them through the teen years (natural latex mattresses have been known to last beyond 20 years), rather than just another six months to a year. Of course, buying twin mattresses meant buying or building bunk beds. Benj was game to build them and told me to start looking for pictures of what I wanted. Well, woe betide him, I found several business sites that specialized in "theme beds"...everything from princess castles to pirate shacks to tree houses. I wanted something gender neutral and found a basic style of shack that could be used as a log cabin design. At prices as high as $15,000 (yes, there are the correct number of zeros on that!), Benj would either have to build it, or we would have to settle for plain bunk beds. Benj said he was willing to try it, and armed with two small pictures at angles that weren't especially helpful, he drew his own plans and flew into it. A lot of time went into simply planning. He spent hours drawing the plans and researching non-toxic options for materials. We found a place an hour and a half's drive that sells soy-based, non-toxic MDF. Usually, Benj is a purist and uses solid wood. In fact, I don't think he's ever used plywood or MDF in a woodworking project. However, since the bed would have to be carried inside in pieces, and we wanted to make sure it could be disassembled and moved with us when we move west, the MDF made it much less heavy and less complicated. I researched non-toxic paint, and settled on Mythic Paint chemical free paint (great stuff, by the way...how do you like that for a review?). After in excess of 100 hours, the bed is done and installed. The kids LOVE it. I usually read to Judah and rock him for about a half hour before I put him in bed, but now, when I tell him it's time for bed, he runs and jumps in the bed before I even rock him!

Now, what you've all been waiting for:

The pictures don't do it justice, but the room is fairly small, and I couldn't get everything in the frame. There are built-in drawers in the steps for Mercy's clothes. Her bed is in the loft. And there are two large built-in drawers underneath Judah's bed in the bottom. Benj even made the wood shingles and nailed them on one at a time. I painted the room a gorgeous color of turquoise and painted the mural of the tree on the wall. I may add more, such as hedgehogs and owls, at a later date, but I'm tired of painting for right now.

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The second big project we just finished is a play room for the children. I've been wanting to do

this for months, but moving the bedroom suite out of the former guest room to my parents' house was prohibited by the four feet of snow that took seemingly years to melt. We finally moved the furniture out a few weekends ago, and I got busy painting. Again, the pictures don't do it justice, but the wall color is a deep pumpkin, and the futon and valance are chocolate. I LOVE this room. I know it's pretty simple, but considering the chaos that reigns there during the children's waking hours, I wanted lots of storage, clean lines and colors, and no clutter on the walls. Mercy's play house is now a reading nook that they both love, with a blanket and basket of books. The cubes hold toys that stay out all the time (musical instruments, blocks, cars/trucks, play food and cookware) and the toybox holds more cubes for toys that I rotate in and out of circulation. They get less bored this way, and don't make near the mess as when all the toys are out at once (they can't get the toybox open by themselves at this point). They spend hours playing nicely in here, and it literally takes me 10 minutes to clean up after they go to bed since there is a place for everything and the mess is contained in one room. End result: happy kids, happy mom. Oh, and because everyone always asks, yes, I handpainted the lettering on the wall freehand without a stencil.

So now, we lay down our hammer and paintbrush, and welcome the new baby to come when he/she pleases. Because of course, I couldn't have the baby until I was done my projects.

Thought for the day

Isn't making a "smoking section" in a restaurant like making a "peeing section" in a pool?

Ugly Shoes

I hate March. To me, it is the armpit of the calendar. There is something wishy-washy about the month, as if it can't make up its mind to be cold or warm, rainy or sunny, short sleeves and sandals or coats and boots. My favorite seasons have always been fall and winter. I've even learned to like summer, though I'm not a hot-weather fanatic. Judah and Benjy both have summer birthdays, and our August anniversary brings reminiscing of the happy summer I spent preparing for our wedding, as well as of the day itself, which endears summertime to me in a way that I couldn't have appreciated in earlier seasons of life.

But here we are in March. I've always disliked this time of year, when I'm ready for warmer weather, planting flowers, and sunshine, and this purgatory of cold clamminess seems to be never ending. But now I have a different reason for despising it. March 14...today...2005 was the day my first baby Hope was due. The date was near Easter with all that holiday's hope and happiness, and the theme of new life seemed especially appropriate given that we had been suffering from primary, unexplained infertility for several years. This pregnancy was a result of our first "shot in the dark" fertility treatment (hard to treat a condition for which there is no known cause). We couldn't believe how blessed we were to conceive on our first cycle. I nearly made it into the second trimester before we learned Hope had already celebrated her birthday in heaven. Even though I knew miscarriage was a possibility, there is an innocence, even naivety, to pregnancy for those who have never had a loss. Most young women go into pregnancy with the idea that two lines on a pregnancy test means a "take-home baby" in approximately 36 weeks. I fully expected to have a baby in March. To lose that expectation devastated me more than I thought possible.

I thought that having children would heal the pain of infertility and loss. To a certain extent, it has, but the scars are still there. Mercy was due on Valentine's Day, 2007. To my dismay, she didn't arrive until the dreaded month of March. I thought that having a daughter's birthday in March would redeem the month for me. It didn't. At least, it hasn't yet. I am so thankful for my Mercy-girl, thankful for her life, for making me a mother of a living child. But imagine my shock when I found myself sitting and holding my exactly one-week-old perfect daughter and sobbing hysterically because she should have been my second born, not my first born. She and Hope would have been 23 months apart, like MY sister and I are. I was puzzled and taken aback by my reaction at the time. I still don't understand, except that I lost a child, and the grief shows up when I don't expect it at all.

I don't think about the fact that this healthy, active baby inside me should be my fifth, not my third, baby very often. I don't think about my heaven-bound babies every day. I rarely cry over them anymore. There has been healing and fulfillment in the children that are earthbound here with me. However, losing children has changed me, I think forever. Fluff annoys me. I'm impatient with meaningless and frivolous things. If I can't connect with a person in a deep and meaningful way, I don't have time for that kind of relationship. I have learned that life is uncertain at best, and I have become part of a group of people that I wish I had no knowledge of.

A Pair of Ugly Shoes

I am wearing a pair of shoes.
They are ugly shoes.
Uncomfortable Shoes.
I hate my shoes.
Each day I wear them, and each day I wish I had another pair.
Some days my shoes hurt so bad that I do not think I can take another step.
Yet, I continue to wear them.
I get funny looks wearing these shoes.
They are looks of sympathy.
I can tell in others eyes that they are glad they are my shoes and not theirs.
They never talk about my shoes.
To learn how awful my shoes are might make them uncomfortable.
To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them.
But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.
I now realize that I am not the other one who wears these shoes.
There are many pairs in the world.
Some women are like me and ache daily as they try and walk in them.
Some have learned how to walk in them so they don't hurt quite as much.
Some have worn the shoes so long that days will go by
before they think of how much they hurt.
No woman deserves to wear these shoes.
Yet, because of the shoes I am a stronger women.
These shoes have given me the strength to face anything.
They have made me who I am.
I will forever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child.


Author Unknown

Amen, Sistah!

This evening, Mercy was "walking" around on all fours and she told me she was a flamingo because she could bend her neck like a flamingo. I asked her what other animal has a long neck, and she said a giraffe (said with a hard g). I said, "Hmmm. I wonder why God didn't give you a long neck like a giraffe." Mercy's response: "My neck fits me perfectly."

Ah, a lesson in contentment for all of us.

Happy Birthday, Mercy!

Hard to believe my Mercy-girl is 3 today. In some ways, she seems so grown-up. Her vocabulary is amazing. She's funny and sensitive. If she's in another part of the house playing, she'll stick her head out in the hall, and say "Are you all right, Mama?" She's motherly and sweet and generous. But in other ways, she still seems like such a baby. I was looking at her hands the other day, and she still has dimples across her little knuckles. I told Benj that as long as she has dimples on her hands, she's a baby! Her name, Mercy Eliana, means "in mercy my God has answered me." Happy birthday, sweet answer to prayer!