Hey, Where'd That Blog Go???

Sorry.

It's been wild around here.

I took a bunch of "before" pictures of our 'new' (40-year-old) home, and I thought I'd start posting when I had some "after" pics.

Snort.

Ya, right!  I still have boxes in corners, and moderate chaos still reigns.

So here's a little update:

I am, indeed, still pregnant.  38 weeks and 1 day, to be exact.  I got severely dehydrated and didn't realize it a little over a week ago and actually went in to the hospital to get a fetal monitor strip because baby stopped moving.  (If you knew me IRL, you would know Id have tro be awfully concerned to do that!)  Baby was fine. 

Last week I had 2 different days of unexplained bleeding and had another NST and sonogram, which determined that the placenta is fine, but I was still dehydrated.  I managed to get my fluid back up and the bleeding, which was not to extreme, stopped.  So we assume it was just a weird cervix thing.

Over the weekend I started bleeding again but I was sure it was just a repeat of the cervix thing.  I started having really regular contractions, bleeding stopped, contractions picked up, and I thought I was really in labor.  We actually went in, all 5 of us, Sunday morning at 3 am, expecting a baby to accompany us home!  But as soon as I stepped into the birth center, everything stopped dead in its tracks.  Poor midwife!  Poor mama!

Naturally, as soon as I got home yesterday morning, and snuggled back in my own bed, contractions started right back up again.  Thanks, baby.  I explained very camly to my baby that while I, too, wish we could just snuggle in and get 'er done here, that she would have to accept the fact that she IS going to come at that darn birth center, whether either of us like it or not.

(FYI, it is not illegal to homebirth in Nebraska, but it IS illegal for CNM's to attend homebirths, and direct-entry midwives face stiff legal action if they choose to do so.  As of right now, no midwife within 3 hours of Omaha will catch babies at home.)

After a long day of contractions, everything stopped.  Out of curiosity, I checked myself and found a smooth, membrane-covered head pretty much right there.  I'm not very good at determining dilation, but I'd say a 4?  Unfortunately, she is really wedged deeply in there, posterior.  I've been trying to get her to rotate, but no luck so far.

That was probably TMI for many of you- sorry.

Anyhow, that's the news for now. 



"The thing about family disasters is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into perspective." 
~Robert Brault

"There is no cure for laziness but a large family helps." 
~Herbert Prochnov

Travel, Unplugged

How does a family travel without a dvd player or any of the host of other doo-hickeys and gizmos that seem to be "necessary" for children these days?

Well, here's how we do it. It's called a surprise bag. For a lesser trip, the surprises are less exciting, but this was a Big Trip and I wanted the children to have a delightful experience through and through.

One key to the surprise bag is that EACH SURPRISE MUST BE WRAPPED! To figure the number of surprises you'll need for your trip, take your number of hours of travel and multiply by 2. Voila, your number of surprises.

There's playdough (not the best idea), 3 sheets of bubble wrap wrapped separately, paper with stickers, paper with mini markers, a mini slinky, a mini kaleidescope, a mini tape measure, a rainbow crayon, a lollipop, some tiny wooden colored blocks, pipe cleaners, and a couple books (those went into the bags unwrapped).

Why wrap each surprise? Because it adds a layer of fun and it allows you to keep the interest much longer. Every half hour the children get to open 1 surprise. The packages are numbered so they unwrap the same number at the same time, but they don't have to go in order. Deciding which little package to open next takes about 5 minutes, unwrapping takes maybe 2 because I use really strong tape, and then by the time the little trinket gets boring, another half hour marker approaches.

My grandma did these bags for my 5 siblings and I on our summer trips to Colorado, and I remember the eagerness with which we unwrapped those little things. My grandma was the one who wrapped up sheets of bubble wrap. Genius, really. Kids love to pop bubble wrap! (The big bubbles are more fun than the tiny ones.)

Several hours into our trip my husband walkie-talkie'd me just to say how great the trip was going, how much he loved me, and how wonderful the surprise bags were! (The older 2 were in the UHaul with him.)

For John Paul, I wrapped a plastic magnifying glass, a makeup brush, an old cell phone, a wind-up dinosaur, and some other odds and ends from around the house. Here he is after tickling himself silly with the make-up brush:

So, yes, I purchased all these trinkets BEFORE the Made-in-the-USA challenge, if you were wondering. I spent about $25, which was money well spent. If you bought 2 new dvd's for a trip, you'd spend about the same, but you wouldn't build the same memories or the same imaginations.

And by the way, that UHaul was only thirteen feet long. Thirt. Teen. Feet.

Happy travels!

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
~Albert Einstein