Trying to Take it Easy

Or in other words, how thriving on chaos is not a good idea when pregnant.

Where to start, where to start. Well, basically last week was a nightmare from hell. Hahahaha. No seriously -- it's an accurate description. TWO weeks ago we enjoyed a LOVELY visit from my mom and younger brother Jacob. It was the perfect break. Essentially the calm before the storm. For whatever fluke or reason, the whole week they were here, we had NOTHING scheduled on the calendar. Literally not a thing. As a result, I became accustomed rather quickly to the laid back, lazy, kick-back week that it was.

And then last Monday came. Grace had a "Girl's Camp" each day of the week for a couple of hours in the morning, Ethan's 6th birthday loomed large on Thursday (and for some insane reason I told him he could have a "real" party), Scott's sister Kristin came in town on Wednesday with the cousins for the kids to play with, Ethan had a birthday party to go to for a friend on Friday, and for some inexplicable reason, I decided that this week would be the PERFECT week to finish painting the Family Room and Kitchen. Not to mention I had a Relief Society lesson to prepare for Sunday.

But really, it was the painting that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Because you see, somehow Ethan has gotten it into his head that we PROMISED him he could help us paint. Which, let the record state, there is no way in the world Scott or I would have promised a not-quite-6-year-old that he could help to paint an entire room. Nonetheless, it doesn't really matter what we really said, only what he thinks was said. (See the book "Raising Your Spirited Child" for a detailed explanation of Ethan once he gets hold of an idea in his head).

Scott and I had decided to split up the task into 2 different nights, so on Monday night all we painted was the Family Room portion of the job saving the Kitchen portion for another night. Let's just say that Ethan was livid when he woke up in the morning and saw what had been done. And then when we didn't get around to finishing the paint job until just last night, Ethan had no fewer than 2 to 3 full-on, melt-down FITS each day for the entire week about how we had promised him he could help paint on Wednesday and it wasn't FAIR. His broken-record refrain for the week, in fact, was "THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS THAT ARE NOT FAIR TO ME!!!!"

Before

And After

And now back to the week's agenda. In the midst of dealing with Ethan's daily melt-downs and freak-outs, I shuttled Grace to and from her "Girl's Camp" (which was a good 15-20 minutes away) each day, and tried to get things prepped for the birthday party that I "promised" Ethan he could have. In case you're wondering what exactly I mean by "Girl's Camp," it was actually one of the best ideas I've heard of in a long time. A couple of Young Women in our ward who are sisters, put on a week long camp to raise money for themselves to go to Girl's Camp this summer. They sent out invitations to all the Primary aged girls, and for only 15 bucks for the entire week, Grace was entertained for 2 hours every day while doing crafts and playing games and eating treats. It was really, really cute and well-done, and Grace had a blast. And again, I think it's such a great idea.

Tuesday was devoted to running around like crazy to get everything in order for Ethan's party on Thursday, and Wednesday was a brief break from the craziness with the arrival of Kristin and her 4 youngest. Josh and Ben made Ethan's day by helping him "decorate" for his party, and Kristin made my day and then some by grocery shopping and making dinner for us. Unfortunately, even all the fun of having the cousins here and having water balloons to fight with thanks to Kristin and myself spending at least an hour filling those babies up was still not enough to keep Ethan from melting down on several occasions.

The Decorations
(It was actually really cute -- they hung balloons and stars all over the walls and ceilings, and streamers in the doorways and on the walls. All with painter's tape because they could find nothing else around.)

And then came Thursday. The day dawned inauspiciously enough, and Ethan was excited and helpful in getting things ready. Of course, I once again made the mistake of asking what kind of cake he wanted (an airplane one), and letting him make the agenda for the party (decorating visors, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, eating cake and ice cream, opening presents, a pinata, and handing out the party favors). And even though only two kids' families came (one with 2 kids and one with 3), and both moms were there to help out, it still was about as chaotic as you would expect with kids ages 6 down to 1 in attendance. Let's just say that all in all this day WIPED ME OUT. I was dunzo by the time the party ended 2 hours later. And rather than having a happy, appreciative, little 6-year-old thanking me for all the trouble I went to to throw him a "real" party, what I had instead was a rude, disrespectful, out-of-control 6-year-old throwing a fit about anything and everything, and winding up the evening with a full-on fit at bedtime and telling ME that I'm just pretending to be tired and that's why I won't let him paint.

The Birthday Cake

Wearing some of the "prizes" from the game

Waiting to sing Happy Birthday

Hitting the pinata in the steam bath that was the great outdoors on Thursday

(As a sidenote, Sophie is all about wearing "play dresses" these days. It is basically all she will let me put on her.)

And before I forget, Ethan had already celebrated a "pretend" birthday party with my mom and Jacob before they left the week before. All in all I don't think he's due another party until he turns 8 -- if even then. Hahaha.

Decorating the cupcakes

Blowing out the candles

Opening presents -- on Ethan's list this year? An alarm clock, a mailbox, and a CD player.

As for the rest of the week, I realized on Thursday night that I had way overdone it over the course of the week, and I made the executive decision to cancel all plans for Friday and put myself on modified bedrest. And in response to Ethan's insistence that I just "pretend" to be tired at the end of the day, I created a little object lesson for the Bobbsey Twins while Sophie was sleeping at naptime. I put a 5 pound bag of sugar in Grace's backpack, and one of those big Krusteaz brand bags of pancake mix from Sam's in Ethan's backpack, and then made them put the packs on backwards (over their bellies) and told them to go ahead and start picking up the Living Room. "This is easy!" were the first replies, but the novelty soon wore off and reality set in and pretty soon Grace started whining "This is too heavy!" I think it was fairly effective in making them see how much harder it is for me to have to bend over and pick things up off the floor and clean the whole house while carting around an extra 20+ pounds of baby weight. To their credit, they were fairly cooperative in helping out for the rest of the day.

However, my efforts to take things easy on Friday were not quite enough seeing as to how I woke up on Saturday morning around 6:30 AM experiencing semi-regular contractions on and off for the whole morning. They weren't really painful and I didn't think it was super serious, but I thought I'd give the doctor a call just to see what they thought. Well, they thought I should probably head over to the hospital to be monitored just in case, and after having Scott laugh at me when I told him he could just drop me off, and then waiting until Ethan finished his fit about not wanting to go and telling me to just go by myself (and of course, bringing up once again that we were supposed to paint on Saturday and it wasn't FAIR), I finally got settled in and hooked up to monitors for a couple of hours so that the contractions and baby could be monitored.

In the end, everything was fine -- which I thought was the case anyway -- but sometimes it's nice to have doctor's orders to lay down and rest for a few days. What that meant for poor Scott, though, was that he had to deal with our little darlings by himself all day on Saturday and then again on Sunday at church while I played hooky to rest a little bit longer. This is already too long of a story as it is, so suffice it to say that Grace decided it was her turn to kick it into high gear of out-of-controlness. Grace's primary teacher had to kick her out of class, Scott ended up leaving a little bit early, and on the way home she proceeded to punch and pinch and hit Sophie for the entire car ride thus failing to respond to Scott's ultimate, last resort threat of having a cold shower -- while fully clothed, of course -- when she got home. So a cold shower it was (Scott says "don't judge me") and after that things calmed down a LITTLE bit.

Alright, we're almost done here. Yesterday I had my 31 week check-up and the doctor's follow-up orders were just to listen to my body and take it easier when I need to. Indeed. So there you go. I don't want to jinx anything, but we've implemented some changes with the kids around here, and so far this week things have been looking up. Of course it helped that we finally followed through on our "promise" to let Ethan help paint last night, so maybe that's all it would have taken to make last week better. Hahahahaha.

Home Sweet Home...and other happenings

First things first. According to my sister in a recent phone conversation, I am a new woman. And just why is this the case you may ask? Well, let's just say that every mom needs to escape every now and then -- and in my case I was just so fortunate to have an understanding and supportive husband (who was also overly eager to make up for the great Mother's Day debacle of 2009) and family to tag along with on an already planned trip to Washington, D.C. last weekend.

This is how it all went down. My mom and youngest brother and sister were already planning to take a quick trip to D.C. before Amy left for BYU. They had initially invited us to drive over and meet up with them, but I quickly vetoed that figuring that the long drive with the kiddos would NOT be fun for me, and touring around D.C. with them in tow would NOT be fun for my family. Fast forward to the week after Mother's Day when I was still moping and feeling sorry for myself and bemoaning the fact that as a mom I am never off-duty, when all of a sudden it struck me that this doesn't have to be the case! I decided I needed to get away -- take a vacation from all responsibilities, if you will -- especially before this baby comes, when I really won't be able to take that kind of break until she's weaned.

After checking with my mom to see if it was still okay for me to come, and checking with Scott to make sure he'd be able to handle the kids for 4 days without me, I managed to find a last minute flight into D.C.! I got there last Saturday morning and left on Tuesday evening, and it was truly FABULOUS. We packed in so much stuff it felt like we were there for a week. And of course, it was truly a luxury not having to take care of any children for the whole time I was gone. Here are a few pics of the trip:

Our first day in D.C.

Sarah and Andrew and Eleanor joined up with us and we hit up 3 of the Smithsonian Museums the first afternoon. Here is the American History Museum above.

And here is the Air and Space Museum. (We also went to the Natural History Museum that day, but I spent most of that time sitting down in the cafe to rest my poor tired little feet).

The Washington Monument

Chilling outside Mount Vernon

I loved Mount Vernon! It was beautiful.

View of the Potomac from George and Martha's back porch

Before our tour of the Capitol

And the obligatory shot in front of the White House

Yes, indeed, it was a fabulous trip. And in case you're wondering, Scott's stint as Mr. Mom went fine as well. Aside from Ethan coming down with a fever and having to stay home from school one day, I think it was pretty uneventful.

And now to back track. Here is a condensed bullet-pointed list of the last few weeks:

• Kindergarten Graduation

Or "Kindergarten Sing" as they called it. A few weeks before school was out Ethan's class put on a performance for family. They decorated their classroom with signs and sang a few songs for us before their teacher called their names and gave them a certificate and a little goodie bag. The kids obliged me with another photo shoot at school after it was over, and here are a few of the pictures as well as a video snippet of Ethan's "performance." Keep in mind that the videoing was done from my regular camera -- so the focus isn't great -- and I was trying to keep Sophie quiet and still, so the picture is not quite steady either. For those of you who don't know Ethan very well, this video sums him up in a nutshell (at least in public settings). I love how you can see the struggle within him to show how excited and proud he is for us to be there and see him, with his inherent dislike of having any attention on him in group settings. His reserve basically wins out, but you still catch glimpses of his excitement.

• Memorial Day

Our ward had an awesome Memorial Day celebration at a nearby park. And even though rain threatened the whole entire time, it didn't start to come down until the very end of the picnic. In the mean time, the kids had a blast hitting the pinata and playing some good old fashioned games such as potato sack races, 3-legged races, and wheelbarrow races. It was a blast for sure.

The first race

Grace coming in dead last...

Ethan happy and relaxing after his first win

Gearing up for the 3 Legged race

Sophie getting in on the action

The wheelbarrow races

• Painting

In other news, we have now lived here for a year! And it has taken me the whole year to finally decide upon which color I wanted to repaint our Family Room and Kitchen (which out of necessity need to be the same color since they share a common wall). We have succeeded in priming the walls, but (much to Ethan's disappointment and chagrin) have not yet painted the real color.

The Before color

(That little square of "Celtic Gray" on the left of the door is what the After color will be)

• Bambi

A couple of weeks ago, as we were pulling in the driveway one afternoon, we startled a deer and her baby coming out of our backyard. After a long stare down, they must have felt we were no threat and moved on, but I have to say that even though I am NOT an animal person by any stretch of the imagination, this baby deer was THE CUTEST thing I've ever seen in my life. It couldn't have been more than 2 feet off the ground, and it was all wobbly on its legs and precious. Well, the morning I was leaving for D.C. Grace noticed that same baby deer by itself curled up in our backyard. And then while I was in D.C, Scott said he saw it again one morning when he went out cut the grass. After talking to a neighbor at the bus stop, Scott told me that she said that apparently mother deer deposit their babies in a "safe place" and stay away from it to keep it safe from predators. Apparently this mother dear doesn't really know Grace, because I'm not so sure I would consider our backyard a "safe place" after seeing her go right up to it with a headband and whipping the band towards it. Luckily she was a good 3 feet away from the deer, and in her defense I think she was trying to get it to move to see if it was alive, because it wasn't moving at all when we first saw it that morning, but still. And end scene.

• Last day of School

Enough said. I still can't believe that the school year it over. It really flew by.

• Sleepovers

To kick off the summer, I let the kids have a "sleepover" on Friday night. I don't even know where they get their ideas from. For the last couple of months they've been begging me to have a sleepover, and for various reasons I've been able to put it off. I finally gave in on Friday, figuring they don't go to sleep at night anyway, these days, so maybe if they were playing together in one room there would at least be fewer fights to break up. Let's just say that sleepovers will not become a regular occurence in our household. Ethan and Grace had a blast playing in Grace's room, creating all kinds of messes, and inventing all kinds of games, and in the end went to sleep WAY too late and woke up WAY too early the next morning and as a result all THREE kids were in various stages of emotional decomposition all-day long on Saturday. It was literally a joke. At any given time, one or more of the kids were in the midst of a full-on, melt-down fit. So fun.

• Taming the Jungle

After Ethan threw his first fit of the day about not wanting to clean his room, I commissioned him to help me tame a jungle wilderness that was growing by our garage door. Having never been weeded since spring has arrived, the weeds had grown to monstrous proportions. Here is a before and after shot:

Before


During


After

• Fancy Nancy Party

Against my better judgment, I decided to go ahead and take Grace and Sophie to a "Fancy Nancy" party at a local Barnes & Noble yesterday afternoon. They were fine enough at first (although Sophie did end up missing a nap, so that was bad news bears), and they had a lot of fun listening to Fancy Nancy books, and playing Fancy Bingo, and having cookies and pink lemonade (although Sophie was probably a little too young to fully enjoy the festivities), but in the end my attempt to tack on some errands when the party was over proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Neither girl was able to handle themselves, and we left for home amidst even more meltdowns. Here are some pictures BEFORE the fun ended:

With the other "Fancy" girls

Playing "Fancy Bingo"

Decorating hairbows

The beginning of the end...

• Letters to Mrs. Yeatts

Ethan was lucky enough to have the best Kindergarten teacher in the world this year. I really am so sad that she can't move on to 1st grade with him for next year. When school ended this last week, she gave all the students her home address for them to write to her over the summer so they can practice their writing skills. Well, Ethan must really love her, too, because he already mailed her a letter yesterday, and today during church I saw him starting a new letter. It made me laugh out loud. Here it is:



In case you can't read his "kid spelling," it says "Mrs. Yeatts, I have 4 grown-up teeth and I love you."



Alright, that's about it. Congratulations if you are still reading. I think I'll go back and issue a warning at the top of the post that this is a LONG one. In closing, here is a conversation with Ethan before bed tonight:

Ethan: Last night was the best night ever!

Me: Oh yeah? Why is that?

Ethan: Because it was so quick. It went by like that [he snaps]

We put the kids to bed EARLY last night due to their sleepover induced dramatics. They fell asleep almost right away and weren't up until about 6:30 this morning, when Ethan came in our room in a fantastic mood all excited and started talking about how quick bedtime was. I'm assuming he means because he fell asleep so quickly and slept so soundly due to how worn out he was. Apparently he was still thinking about it tonight, and has now relegated its status to the "best night ever." Actually he amended his statement a few minutes later and says that it is actually tied with the night over Christmas break in New Orleans when he went with Freddie and Amy and Jacob to City Park's amusement park. Simple pleasures, right?

And one more thing. The baby count down is officially ON. I know this is a real set-up for disappointment and frustration to be thinking this way, BUT if this baby comes as early as Sophie did (3 weeks early) then I only have 9 weeks left to go!!! That makes it sound so much more bearable than 12, right? Right?? *sigh* In case you can't tell, I can't wait to be done with this pregnancy. My back and ribs just can't take it much longer! Until next time my friends...