Expectations

I am coming back to the blog following a VERY interesting season of expectations.  Allow me to play catch-up:

 - We are now expecting baby #2.  His name is Alexander Daniel, and he will arrive sometime around July 2nd-ish. 

 - Alex was quite planned.  In fact, I knew I was pregnant within a week, because I had SUPER-HUMAN smell-abilities.  Expectations met.

 - Beginning about week 4.5ish, I experienced some light bleeding.  Daily.  For the entire first trimester.  Not expected.

 - Two ultrasounds at the beginning (along with a dream I had) made me fairly sure I was miscarrying.  Not expected.

 - My hormone levels were increasing despite all the signs.  Not expected. (I had adjusted to the probable loss by this point, so I was shocked.)

 - Third ultrasound revealed that all was well with the lil guy, but my placenta had begun growing in the wrong spot (placenta previa), hence the bleeding.  Just a grumpy placenta.  Not a baby issue.  Unless the placenta got REALLY grumpy, then it could affect the baby.  Ordered to take it easy for around 9 weeks.  Stopped going to gym, too, since that seemed to be grumpifying the placenta issues.  Not expected.  *btw, placenta moved!  Praise God!


 - The EMOTIONS.  Oh my word.  Got pregnant.  Super tired.  Thought I was losing the baby for 2.5ish weeks.  Found out I had not lost the baby, and in fact, he was just fine (as big of a shock for me, after having adjusted to the idea of losing him).  Stopped exercising (one of the best ways to handle mood swings for me...).  My life was a roller-coaster of emotions.  Still having bleeding every single day at that point.  Not expected.

 - Last pregnancy, I was the nicest possible version of myself.  It was amazing!  We were really happy when I got pregnant again, because we knew the red-headed side of me was going to tone down a bit.  And it did...  Expected. 

 - ...Then the second trimester began on Christmas Eve.  Bleeding stopped that day.  Hoped for, but not expected.  Woohoo!!!

 - ...Then the hormone swings started.  Our guess is that it was the testosterone.  Not sure, but I was super-difficult to live with for a while.  Not expected.

 - Turns out that we are having a boy!  Yep.  Figured that out from the mood swings.  Expected.

 - With baby #1, I spent all of my nesting energy on my classroom.  None went into my home.  For the last two years, I've struggled to catch up with the feeling that I have a massive To Do List I just can't wade through.  I didn't feel like the house was ready for her when she was born, and I still feel that way sometimes.  Too.  Much.  Stuff.  Not Expected.

 - Now nesting has kicked in.  I want to rearrange the entire house.  Right now!  Unfortunately, I have to take it in baby steps for a myriad of reasons.  Glad nesting phase has finally arrived.  Expectations met.   
( Irritated that I can't do everything at once.  Not expected. )

 - There has been a slew of super-fun-unexpected financial stuff, too, that I won't go into now.  It has felt quite epic.  Not expected.



All of that to say, the vast amounts of "unexpected" have kind of caused a rolling series of emotional crises for me from October through March.  I thrive on information.  

Last pregnancy, I read six (or seven?) books on childbirth and labor.  We also attended a childbirth prep class.  By the time I got there, it was quite unnecessary for me.  I wasn't super-stressed about having E, because I felt informed.  Yes, thousands of factors negotiate the birth process, but knowing what they all were, and that one of them could come into play at any time gave me a deep sense of calm.

This time around, I knew miscarriage was an option, of course.  However, I was not prepared to be fully confident I had lost the baby, and then discover that I hadn't.  I was also not prepared to still live in constant doubt until my 20 week appointment.  It did me in.  I was a mess for a good bit.  Emotions mixed with first trimester hormones resulted in 3 hour naps (matching my toddler's) every day.  Also, partly due to the financial uncertainty, I reacted by binging on fast food.  I was crazy out-of-control for a bit there.

I am finally coming out of my slump.  I do things like cleaning, and cooking, and laundry again.  I find that I can pray again.  For a while, I just couldn't figure out how to talk to God.  I was so worried about so many things, that I couldn't really get anything else out, other than, "um, God, can you please fix _____ soon?" 

I'm not sure exactly what caused the change, but I will say that worry caused a large portion of the problems I had.  As an information person, I got all the information on every possibility, and then, instead of relaxing until I knew the outcome and dealing with it at that point, I worried till I knew the result.  I'm not sure exactly what the difference was between my last VERY informed pregnancy and this one, other than the element of worry.  Any of the things could have gone wrong either time, but this time, they had actually started to, so I began worrying.

During my first two trimesters, the thing that I have missed most is my walk with God.  I have been a mess for so long, that I couldn't see past a lot of my issues to really lean into Him, His promises, His provision, and His protection.  I missed out on a whole lot of peace.  We are just now getting back into sync, and I am re-learning some old truths.

In February, I got the chance to hear an awesome message about this exact topic (and boy was it timely).  I encourage you to look it up.  You can download the MP3 from this site to listen to in the car, or you can watch the video.

http://www.wcrossing.org/default.aspx?page=3699&item=216

Jesus commands us not to worry about the basic necessities of life.  It's because he knows it will totally rip you up inside if you do.  Ulcers anyone?  I had been doing exactly that.  It was awful.  The solution?

Matthew 6
³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

 Anyway, I've begun to try to let Jesus do the worrying and providing, and I'll do the living.  It's working a lot better.

Homemade Baby Food Pride

Hola!  I made baby food from scratch.

This is in reference to #3 in my New Year's Resolutions List.  I thought we could do a lighter, brighter topic for today after the last few posts. 

FYI - Should you ever attempt this, you may want to know that you should only do one item at a time.  One squash will provide LOTS of baby food portions, and more than one will be overwhelming - but you will feel like a sacrificial wonderful mother while you learn how dumb you are.  :)

Alright, here are my BE-U-T-FUL pics!

 

Yes.  I really did plan to make all of these at one time.  I'm crazy.  I stopped short of the sweet potatoes, though. 

But...I did this on November 5, and we still haven't run out!

For how to make pumpkin puree, please visit my friend Hannah's post.

 1.  Wash the pumpkin.

 

2.  Cut off top.

3.  Scoop out the seeds. 

4.  Place seeds in a bowl to bake later

...or to neglect until they're moldy...ahem.

 

5.  Place in a baking dish and add water.  (Then bake as recommended on Hannah's blog.)

Squash is a lot like pumpkin, hence the similar photos.

 

Eventually, I realized that I was CRAZY and would never make it on my own, so I enlisted reinforcements. 

*Well, actually, just one reinforcement.

 

 

All baked!

 

Then we just had to scoop out the yummy insides and puree them.

 

 We had so many things that we had to store TONS of puree in ziplock bags until the first batch had frozen, because I ran out of containers to freeze in.

All I could think of once I hit the third and fourth hours of the night in my over-zealous cook-ahead-ness was Proverbs 31:15.

"She stays up into the night;
   she provides food for her family" 

I think it may actually say something about that blessed woman getting up while it's still dark, but I'm not a morning person, so I've adjusted the text a tiny bit.  ;)

10 out of 10 Ants Agree: Spit Happens

Baby girl woke up at 8:30am, right on time for her morning feeding.

(Well...technically mid-morning, as her morning started at 5:30, but since she went back to sleep until 8:30, we'll say this is her morning feeding.)

She needed a diaper change prior to eating.

*Note: ALWAYS change a baby's diaper before feeding them even if it only barely needs it.  The crying in the middle of the night for a few moments (as you change her and delay her meal) is MUCH better than the diaper becoming over-saturated during the nursing process at which point which baby, with abundantly overflowing diaper, is cuddled up next to you.  (I'm not saying I know from repeated experience.  Really.  I'm just saying it may be a good idea.  That's all.  Hypothetically.)

Ok, I promise I'm getting to the real reason for the post soon, but I need to explain something else first.

You see, some wonderful, kind, sweet, precious friends have given us LOTS of clothes (and bibs) for Little Bit.

This is fantastic, because she goes through a rather ghastly number of clothes and burp cloths on a daily basis due to her spit-up tendencies.  I mean, seriously, the child is like a bulimic volcano.  Whatever goes in just keeps pouring back out nice and slowly in a creamy, lava soup ALL DAY LONG.  As a result, I have to do laundry for her every two days at least, or we run out of the 20 burp cloths we have.  Please try not to be jealous.  Please.  Try.  And stop laughing, too.

Anyway, because I always have so much baby laundry to put away in the first place, I just got around to washing two HUGE loads of the new clothes last week (baby clothes are small, so a huge load is right around 250 items, give or take).  I still had not begun to sort or put them away, although my sweet, sweet mother in law tried to get me started.  Thanks Suegra!  (That's Spanish for most amazing M-I-L ever!)

Speaking of which, you may want to know:  Hubby's parents arrived last week!  We are super-glad they're here!  Although, actually, at the moment, no one other than myself or Em are currently at the house, since Matt is at Dragon-Con, and his parents are visiting friends for the weekend.  Everyone comes back tonight, so as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to be cleaning like crazy so they can't prove I only sat around and ate brownies and bon-bons all weekend.

So...

I have three clean baskets of laundry and am currently keeping dirty laundry on the floor.  Ours is in our closet, and Em's is under her changing table.  Bad idea.

This morning, I was changing her diaper, and I looked down and saw ONE ant on the floor.

Now, for those of you who have missed the privilege of experiencing ants, suffice it to say, they never travel alone.  Never.  I looked around and didn't see any others, so I killed the one guy and went back to the diaper change.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw about 20 or so on the floor at the corner of the changing table.  As I kept one hand on the baby -

**NEVER, EVER leave a baby unattended (or without a hand on her) on a surface higher than the floor.  I may be dumb enough to not change a diaper before I feed her (or I may not - I'll not confess a thing...) but I would NEVER let go of my baby for some ants!

Anyway, keeping one hand on baby, I bent down, and lo and behold, this is what I saw:

It's an ant smorgasbord! (that means buffet)  :-(

I was so shocked, I almost let go of the baby.  (I didn't, though, no worries).  I did, however, decide that she did not need to eat as badly as the situation needed to be addressed.  So, without even re-buttoning her onesie, I put the poor thing back into her crib.  I knew she was upset, but I told her that one day I would explain everything when she could understand, and she would agree with me.

This was the look I got:

She did NOT agree with me.  (Mom!  Don't leave me!  I'm HUNGRY!!!!)

Sigh.  Oh well.  She forgave me when I finally fed her 15 minutes later, and when I killed the ant that was somehow crawling on her head.

After putting her down, I transferred the ant-infested cloth to a plastic trash can.  The other clothes were immediately dumped into my plastic laundry basked (after I emptied the clean clothes that were in it onto the guest bed), and I put them into the laundry, ants and all.  I ran it on the hottest, longest wash for good measure.

I took the ant-infested cloth...

in case you'd forgotten what it looked like...

...outside and shook it in the yard.

FYI, for those of you who don't have the pleasure of living in sunny, sandy Florida, our ants are everywhere, and they're mean.  Grass is simply a covering for ant hills.  Don't send your kids in the backyard barefoot.  Trust me.

Anyway, I took it outside and shook it, and the mean little buggers went flying everywhere, but they were still chomping, so the ones that landed on me (around 10) went on and transferred to their second course---me.  I was getting a little squirmy, but I went on and shook one more time (ugh), and then dumped that one into the laundry, too.

I vacuumed up the floor, fed the baby, killed the stray ant that had made it to her head, scratched some ant bites, and then went to check on the wash.

The water had killed all of the ants, but they were still in my washing machine.  So, as I transferred clothes to the dryer, I shook each item out until all of the ants had fallen off.  Then, I took a paper towel and wiped up the ant carcasses so that my washing machine is no longer a graveyard.

And that, my friends, is why I entitled this post Spit Happens.  'Cause it most definitely does.  And now, the ants know it.  We'll see if actually putting dirty laundry in a laundry basket (not the floor) will make a difference.  If not, I promise to let you know.

Oh, and remember how I really appreciate my husband?  Well, last night, I especially appreciated him even more as I set out the trash and the recycling in the scary dark of night.

This morning, I looked out to see if recycling had been picked up yet.  It hadn't.  Neither had the trash.  Today is Labor Day.  I braved the dark of night for nothing.  Dang it!