We celebrated Father's Day with Grandpa on Saturday since Annie was still in town. We ate brats (Henry's favorite) and ice cream cake and we all had green and blue tongues for 2 days afterwords. Also, I think I discovered the source of the one-eye squint smile. 
On actual Father's Day we took Papa out for ice cream and donuts and drove to the lake to watch the sunset. It was a beautiful evening. 
But the nice, comfortable weather ended on Sunday. It’s been hot this week folks. HOT! So we have spent the majority of our time inside the house. Henry ran through the sprinkler with the neighbor for about 15 minutes on Sunday. Then they moved on to stomping in the mud followed by riding bikes, then climbing trees, then jumping on the trampoline. It’s funny, when he is playing by himself he can draw or paint or play with legos for hours but when he has a friend over the maximum amount of time allotted for each activity is 15 minutes. Things move so quickly I can barely keep up. I will have just gotten the basketball from the garage and they have already moved on to the sidewalk chalk. But other than those three hours of circuit training play time with the neighbor, the rest of the weekend the past week have been pretty mellow. Last Saturday I woke up to find a little boy and an orange cat in our bed. Apparently both of them were frightened by the thunder of an early morning storm. Those early snuggles made for a lovely, slow morning. Cool and dark, we all stayed in bed way too long and then took our time eating breakfast and laying around the house reading the paper and playing with Legos. It would be safe to assume that nothing productive happened in our house that day until after 2:00. But really, who am I kidding, that’s how most of our Saturday mornings go. The baby seems to be acquiring new real estate in my abdomen at rapid rates these days. He/she has recently taken over the space that once housed my bladder, forcing me to use the bathroom every 16 minutes. My stomach has been evicted from its 10 acre compound in the spleen district, and moved to a cramped 2 bedroom condo, just south of my liver. I can tell that space is limited since it continuously sends out search crews of stomach acid up my esophagus. Ironically, this forced downsizing has had zero impact on my appetite. If anything food just moves through faster, making it so I have to eat every 32 minutes (every 2 bathroom breaks). The size of my “bump” has forced me to start lying about the due date. It has to be done in order to avoid the “twins” joke. Telling a pregnant woman with a 5 year old son that she probably has twin boys in her uterus is a misdemeanor in several states. It’s true, don’t do it. I can still fit in to my jeans with the help of a hair tie and a belly band but I learned an important lesson last week about the security of one’s belly in a belly band. They need a warning label: Belly bands will roll up over your belly if you sit for more than 3 minutes. Unfortunately, a coworker had to be sacrificed to order for me to make this discovery. A kind old man that held the door open for me one morning as I hopped out of my car and ran across the parking lot with my shirt and belly band rolled up under my chest, revealing not only my entire midsection but also my jeans that were held together with a raggedy old red hair tie, stretched to the max and covered in knots of yanked out old hair. Once the door shut behind me I felt a cold breeze and slowly reached down to find flesh where I should have found several layers of fabric. My only comfort is that the sun had not fully come up yet and that he was an old man, so he probably had cataracts or at least terrible night vision; I hope for his sake. I’ve also lost the ability to pick anything up off the floor, a stumbling block I hadn’t expected until the 7th or 8th month. With Henry I was still able to pick things up off the floor well into my 8th month using my feet-hands skills: a cleaning technique I perfected as a child. A combination of extremely long toes and several years speed cleaning tiny Barbie doll accessories with both my hands and feet has made me foot-hand ambidextrous. But right now I have so much hip and thigh pain I can barely pull my own pants on, let alone grab a tiny Lego wheel with my second and third toe and drop it into a 1 foot high bucket. I currently require 5 pillows in order to get my 6 hours of interrupted sleep: one for the back, one for the belly, one under the leg and two under the head. Honestly, I am not sure that Wade even fits in the bed anymore. He may be there somewhere but since I go to bed at 8 and wake up when it’s still dark outside, I really can’t be sure. I am also convinced that I have developed pregnancy narcolepsy. On Monday I sat on the sofa watching Henry play with the cat. What seemed like seconds later I awoke to Henry telling me that the neighbors came to the door to ask if he wanted to play and he let them into our house to show them our new cat. I was on the sofa, 2 feet from the door, sound asleep.
I love the advice people give pregnant ladies. Everyone does it, it’s impossible to resist because every mother has a story. I didn’t understand that when I was pregnant with Henry and got annoyed by all the stories, but now I understand where it comes from and appreciate the camaraderie that comes from sharing the experience with other Mamas. It’s a life changing experience that never goes the way you have planned, and most of the time that makes for an interesting story. The stories range from non-helpful: My child’s arm fell off in the birth canal, to very helpful: teach your husband to put powder on your face because otherwise you will look like you were dipped in a vat of Vaseline in all your pictures. The good news is that because I am not able to retain a memory for more than 30 seconds, most of the scary, non-helpful stories float right past my long term memory. Of course I remember my own experience with delivering Henry and am determined not to make the same mistakes that I made this time around. And one piece of advice that has stuck in my head, probably because I heard it from so many of my friends is get a doula. So we did. She’s great and gives never-ending amazing massages and will cost us less than a new stroller because our doctor’s office pays half the expense. I did a lot of research on doula’s and this is what I found: women who have doula have a 50% lower rate of c-sections, 40% lower use of forceps and a 60% reduction in labor time. Sold! Plus, I like the idea of pulling the “You’ll have to have a c-section” card out from the nurses because I heard that at least 3 times with Henry and honestly, it’s just a cold-blooded thing to say to a woman in labor. A doula is like a bodyguard. A massaging bodyguard.
On Wednesday we have our first sonogram. It’s going to be a different experience because we get to find out the sex. I’m so excited to find out; I honestly don’t know how we had the self-control to wait with Henry. I can’t wait to start on my sewing projects and to decorate the room. Plus it will be nice to stop debating over names. I have a list of 12 people that I have to text with the news and strict instructions that I have to do it BEFORE I leave the doctor’s office.
That's all I've got today (thank goodness, right? Rambling post there, sorry). I'll catch up with you all on Wednesday with the big news....twin boys! Just kidding Gigi.
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