8 days... and counting

i came home from work today just stressed out. it seems like there's a lot going on right now and the fifteen minute drive home was just not enough time for me to decompress before getting home and needing to deal with tired kids and dinner and bedtime while being the best mom to my kids - and best wife to the man - that i should be. i hate when i'm like that. but i just didn't have the mental or emotional capacity to do it today.

there are a lot of loose ends to be tied up at work before i leave for a while, and suddenly so much to do at home (i think they call that nesting) that i need these 8 days to get ready, and at the same time i am so anxious for this baby to come i can barely stand it. my feet are huge and i've lost my ankles (it's really sexy), sleeping gets harder and harder by the day and consequently my strings - if you will - are getting shorter and shorter.

the irony is that other than not sleeping really well and feeling like i'm housing a giant reservoir in the bottom half of my body, i actually feel really good. i have energy during most of the day and feel fairly capable of getting around and doing what i need to do without major restraint. i'm pretty lucky that way. but occasionally there are just days where those two negatives catch up to me - mainly the first one - and i struggle to get through the day the way i want to. thank goodness for hank who agreed to put beth down tonight and let me go to the store for an hour which allowed me to chill out a little bit, clear my mind, take a deep breath and let some of the stress go. i feel much better now than i did two hours ago.

sometimes we just need a little time.


on a lighter note, here's a great conversation hank had with beth while we ate lunch together the other day. it went something like this:

hank: beth, is the baby in mommy's tummy a boy or a girl?

beth: that's my sister daddy.

hank: are you sure it's a sister?

beth: yeah daddy, it's my sister. (consistent with every other time he has asked her for the last 3 months)

hank: do you know her? do you remember her from before?

beth: yeah...

hank: well how many sisters do you have?

beth: two!

hank: two?! you have two sisters?

beth: (nodding) yeah, and there's a sister in mommy's tummy.

hank: well how many sisters does hyde have?

(remember he's asking a green 3 year old here...)

beth: three sisters! hyde has three sisters.

hank: (looking at me with both shock, fear, and refusal on his face while i just smile and laugh) beth, if you have two sisters hyde and i are both in trouble.

i can't wait to see if she's right...







8 days.... and counting. 

play day

last weekend hank and i went to arizona. by ourselves. it was awesome. grandma b came up and watched the kids for us all snowy weekend long while hank and i lived it up in the sunshine. we met two other couples there and while the boys went canyoneering, we ladies stayed by the pool, ordered food, got massages and drank in the fact that we were all kid-less and could actually do what we were doing. hank and i have never gone away for the weekend like that before, and it will probably be our last trip for a while, so we both took advantage of it and made it a solid, fun weekend. wish i had some pictures to share from the trip, but i don't.

our flight got delayed some on the way home - it was snowing like crazy in good ol' CO, and our car totally died out 15 minutes from home. that part kind of sucked. i just wanted to get home to my kids who i missed. a stellar weekend, minus that part, and good for my soul. i came back happy and sunburned and ready to get through these next 3 weeks until #3 comes.

and honestly, i can't wait. not because i'm uncomfortable, (because i am, make no mistake), but just because i am so looking forward to meeting this new life and spirit and finding out if it's a girl or a boy! so, so glad we're waiting to find out. the anticipation and angst is massively exciting and if/when (depending on who you ask) we do this again, i want to go the same route. so much fun to keep it a surprise until the end. 18 days and counting....


from a play day a couple weeks ago:

easter: part ii

easter morning. beth understood that it was kind of like christmas where someone comes in the middle of the night to leave presents and hide the eggs to find in the morning, so she was up at 6:15. hyde, on the other hand, waited until around 7:30 to join in the festivities. i think after getting his basket he wished that he had been up earlier with beth. hank came down around 8:30 and we had a lovely easter breakfast as a family.

ps: i realize that their baskets are unconventional and very un-eastery. it was a last ditch effort after a failed attempt to find our real easter baskets in the attic on saturday night. a quick 11:00pm run to the store, and this is what hank came back with. princesses and a baseball. apparently the stores had cleared out their easter gear. certainly not my first choice (probably not even my 5th or 6th choice), but hey, at least they had baskets and we avoided total crisis.




we hosted dinner with some friends late that afternoon - it was a gorgeous day - and of course, hid some eggs full of candy outside for the kids. a few shots from the hunt:



hyde learned really quick how to open the eggs, scarf the candy and then ditch the empty eggs for the other kids to pick up. smart kid....




and a quick throwback to last easter when we blessed hyde. we've all grown a lot in the last year. i wish i had a picture of the four of us from this year, but alas, i failed miserably in that department. oh well.




totally unrelated story: this morning i was dropping beth off at daycare and she came up to give me my hug and kiss as is a very important ritual with her ("mom, you can't leave without my hug and kiss" - we have to do this even if we are just leaving the house to go get the mail). and after she gave me a kiss, she hugged my bulging belly real tight with her arms and head, then looked up at me and said ever so seriously, "mom, don't lose my sister okay? you have to keep her in your tummy. don't lose my sister. okay???" i told her i would see what i could do to make sure that happened, and reassured her that it wasn't time for the baby to come out yet. then later today when i picked her up from daycare with my still bulging belly, the first thing she said was, "mom, did you keep my sister in your tummy?" it made me smile and wonder just how intuitive she might be, given that we still don't know if this new little life joining our family will be a boy or a girl. we're all so anxious to find out - one month from today exactly!!! it can't come soon enough....

easter: part i

so we dyed eggs this year. our first year dying eggs with kids, and i must say, a smashing success. we did it while hyde was napping (best decision ever), kept it relatively simple with just a few eggs and even managed to keep it pretty clean. beth would drop the eggs in the cup, stir it around for about 2 seconds - literally - see that it had some color on it and then exclaim "mom, the egg is green!" and want to move on to the next one. so the whole process only lasted about 20 minutes, but it was still so fun.

i love that she is old enough now to start participating in these kinds of traditions - the stuff i remember and loved doing as kid doing with my family. she's now at that age where we can start giving that to her and it's awesome. i love it. it's a stellar thing when they start to "get it" and you can really have fun with these holidays and make good memories of them.



beth is very into making funny faces for the camera these days...


hank getting serious with the two-tone...


(please don't drop it, please don't drop it, please...)


we almost made it through without any uncracked eggs... 3 out of 15 isn't bad a for a 3 year old, right? frankly i thought my odds were a lot worse!




and a little sneak peek of easter morning:




more of easter day to come...