Nesting. Already?

I definitely don't remember nesting as early as four and a half months into my pregnancy the last two times around, but Sir will probably beg (er.. demand) to differ.

There is no doubt though, I am nesting. As with PC, OUTSIDE is what seems so terribly important right now. I want to finish planting a garden with Dolly and that means we need to actually make a garden area. It wouldn't hurt to mow all the lawns either. Last time I mowed, it rained before I could even finish the big yard so the other three areas are teasingly tormenting me. Beside the mowing, there's the fences that could use some repairs, weed eating that really should be done, the cardboard pile to get rid of, and most importantly to me at the moment, stuff to build. I want to build a kid's picnic table for our kids... and a playhouse someday too (wishful thinking, I know.), but getting the OK on that would take longer than the construction, so I'm not pushing it too strongly.

Maybe I did nest earlier than I thought during the last two pregnancies. With Dolly, we didn't have a yard that could be re-arranged. It was tiny and half of it was gravel. I did however rearrange the house, but I didn't chalk it up to 'nesting' because I was always rearranging the house. It was a tiny little house that had one room for the kitchen, dining room and living room areas combined. How I turned the couch or positioned the dining room table would change the whole area. Every time we'd have lots of company over, the house would transform incredibly. I still don't know how we fit over 30 people in that little place so many times! I thought the 'nesting' during my pregnancy with Dolly, was at the very end where I was almost in a panic state to make sure we had someplace for her to sleep. I started out with setting up a second hand stroller as a bassinet beside our bed until my parents gave us a crib that ended up in our closet which turned out doubling as a nursery.

I might have 'nested' earlier with PC too. When we were expecting him, at four and a half months along, we were starting to look for another place to live, plan our yearly trip to California to visit my family, and pack up for a move. In the end all the major changes happened closer to 7 and 8 months along. As with Dolly, I didn't chalk up all the planning as nesting because I thought I was nesting in the two weeks before he was born. At that time it seemed terribly important to move the chunks of concrete that were beside the house out of the way since I wanted to plant a garden in the area the concrete chunks were occupying. I also strongly recognized the necessity of getting our little lean-to shed put together (it's still in pieces since I went into labour the day after I moved all the cinder blocks around to the other side of the house).

This pregnancy however, is different. Maybe it's because it's the third time around and I know what nesting is finally. I don't know, but although my main interests are organizing and setting up the yards outside, the 'nesting' isn't stopping there. If it's raining and I can't get outside, do you think the nesting instinct is going to take the day off? You're right. It's not. Instead I take one look at the inside of the house and decide I've had enough of the paper piles stacking up in various areas. Suddenly I'm up to my eyeballs in ancient receipts that have needed sorting for months (or longer), and organizing the bookshelves alphabetically or by author suddenly seems very important! Sometimes it's the carpets. They just HAVE to be vacuumed (according to Sir, sometimes three times a week)! If it's not that, it's the boxes of tools and nails and nuts and bolts that must finally be given permanent homes. I guess there's no getting out of nesting this time around! Just a note for future projects... if you're procrastinating too much, the solution is simple. Find yourself expecting your next kid and suddenly procrastinating has no place to exist!

The Little Things They Say

I've been collecting little phrases and comments that Dolly has come up randomly for nearly a month now. It's hard to find the ones that are still just as funny or cute when I re-tell them as they were fresh out of my little one's mouth. Hopefully I'll be able to do it again once PC is talking since it should be interesting to see what the two of them can come up with together!

One day as PC was happily chewing on some crayons, Dolly noticed and scolded him, "PC! Don't DO that! NO!" Then she must have realized she was doing my job because she looked at me standing on the other side of the room, and said as if I needed to be filled in on the latest, "PC's eating my crayons. I told him, 'Don't do that.'".

Shortly after we got the dishwasher Dolly tried to tell me something that included the word 'dishwasher'. She couldn't remember what it was called exactly, and substitued "Washdisher" instead.

When I was crying over Fluffy: "You dripping."
Later as we went outside in the rain that evening, Dolly noticed she was getting wet and said: "Wook! I'm dripping."

Upon seeing her completely plastic scissors Dolly reminded me: "Nember? I cut my wip?" Me: "Yes, I remember. That's why you don't play with scissors!" As she picked up the said plastic scissors: "Can I cut my hair?" Me: No! you can NOT cut your hair." Dolly: "Can I cut PC's hair?" Me: "No, you can NOT cut PC's hair either." Dolly: "Ok, Can I cut my ear?" Me: "Sure, but it will probably hurt." Dolly: "Can I cut PC's ear?" Me: "No, you can NOT cut PC's ear!" Finally she lost interest and went somewhere else.

As I pulled the lawnmower out of the shed Dolly inquired: "Are you going to Vacuum?" I replied, "Not exactly. It's like vacuuming, but I'm going to cut the grass."
After her nap: "'You going to vacuum the grass?"

During lunch one day: Me - "You're making a big mess!" Dolly - "No, I'm making a wittle mess."

After a picnic supper outside one evening, Dolly was helping me pick up the toys before it got completely dark and we had to go inside. She glanced up at the crescent shaped moon and announced to all within earshot, "Wook! the noom! I see the moon!" (she corrected the word the second time around). "Yes," I said, "you're right! That IS the moon." Then she looked up again and excitedly declared at the top of her lungs, "It's a BANANA moon!"

While talking on the mini handmirror Dolly's conversation went thus: "Yeah. Um hm. Ok. Just a minute. I'm gonna be right back! Hello, how are you today? Um hm. Ok. Bye"

When I was finally starting to get over a cold, but still coughing constantly, Dolly asked: "Are you sick and tired Mommy?"

As I was making supper one evening Dolly came into the kitchen and started banging on the side of the oven with the toy in her hand. Me: "Don't hit the stove, Dolly." Dolly as she moved to the dishwasher instead: "Ok. Can I hit the dishwasher?" Me- "No,." She moved to the toy wagon on the other side of the kitchen and said, "Ok. Can I hit my wagon?" Me- "Sure, you might wreck it though." Dolly- I'ne not going to wreck it." and she wandered out of the kitchen.

Dolly declared as she squished her cheddar cheese in her fist at lunch one day to mush, "It's play-dough!! I'm making a monkey, Mama!"

One evening as we got to Chasm and HisLady's house, Dolly called out as she did her job of knocking on their door, "Anybody there? Anybody in there?"

Knight in Shining Armor

The day after I posted all about my poor ill computer, Sir went out and bought a new hard drive for it. Only he got one that was twice the size as the one that died, so I'd have lots more room on it! Then that night at prayer meeting, he picked up a portable hard drive case he had arranged to borrow. He wanted to try and recover as much information on my old hard drive as possible. Next, he stayed up extra extra late setting up my new hard drive and installing the gazillion updates and programs that had changed since my computer was new five years ago. That meant that Thursday I had a brand new computer and a slight ray of hope of eventually getting some of my old documents and files off of the old one. Maybe.

Thursday night my knight stayed up extra extra late again battling my old hard drive, and he managed to get EVERYTHING except my copy of our camera pictures off of it! I was so excited. I had just about everthing. And the only thing that was missing, wasn't the end of the world because he had copies of the original pictures on the main computer. All I really lost were a few re-sized pictures and some scattered miscellaneous pictures that I collected here and there from contacts etc. So, yesterday was my first day with my computer back in perfect health. I spent a lot of time sorting and getting rid of stuff that I didn't need anymore even though I didn't have to do it to save space!

But that's not all! Ok, it's all there is about my computer, but there's more about my good knight. Last night he stayed up with PC for me so I could get some sleep. Just so you know, PC woke up Thursday morning with a cold. It's only gotten worse and was joined by a moderate fever by yesterday morning. He's been perfectly miserable, and hasn't been able to sleep very long due to his coughing, chocking and just burning up in general. Because of his little short naps and the fact that when he's not sleeping, all he wants is Mommy to hold him constantly, I've missed out on my naps and night time sleep was more like cat nap demo.

So, last night I went to bed and when I got up the first time to take care of PC, Sir was just about ready to come to bed. He told me to go back to bed and he'd stay up and settle PC down. But PC didn't want to settle down. He was up every 15 to 20 minutes, and Sir would hold and cuddle him until he'd fall asleep. Then Sir would slip PC back into the playpen and crash on the couch for a few minutes before starting all over again. When I woke up at 5 because I needed to feed PC, Sir was still taking care of him. I'd had a pretty good sleep up to then, so I sent my knight off to bed and took over the PC vigil. It was so nice to get some sleep last night since the night before had been almost as bad for PC and I had been the one up every half hour or so. Sir says otherwise, but I still think that interrupted sleep is worse than no sleep at all! And my knight volunteered to endure it for me so I could get some rest!

Both kids are asleep now, so I should be getting to bed myself. Maybe tonight will be better, but the last thing I should do is waste the first solid chunk of sleep that's available. Good Night!

Halfway There!

Hopefully, all of the cards that we mailed out to our immediate families have arrived and it's safe for me to share our latest (well, not exactly latest) news with the rest of the world. This is what we sent out in the mail last week. Most of the cards had a little note asking the recipients to wait until yesterday to tell others so all the cards would have time to get to their destinations unpreceded by their contents.

The funnest part about this round so far has been the reactions we're getting from various people. Especially when they get the information that we put on the back of the card... which I've included below.

This means that the newest addition to our little(?) family should arrive right around the end of summer... probably no later than September 7^th. Our official due date is currently a week-long range from August 30^th to September 7^th. So, Tomorrow marks day #1 of our 20^th week of pregnancy. Halfway there!

Perfect Timing

Four days ago, I realized that my last post must have been more negative sounding than I had thought (or intended it to be). I was getting a lot of comments of sympathy. I didn't mean to sound so depressed or whatever I sounded like, and decided to write another post to get the conference post off the top of my blog. I opened the 'new post' page, and then started flipping through my camera pictures to find a picture to stick at the top of the post. But right about at that moment, my computer decided to die. Completely and most uncooperatively, it just gave up the ghost.

For two or three days prior to it's death, my computer had been acting sick. It had been doing little things like sending serious error messages or just turning off without permission. Sir was going to look at it when he got a chance, and it didn't seem to be the end of the world or that we needed to make a electronic checkup a high priority. So, it was a surprise. I guess I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was because my computer was going on five years old next month and had served me well. It had survived a few minor illnesses during it's lifetime and just before the extended warranty ran out last year, I sent it off to have all the little things repaired. Little things like the screen coming away from the lid (my computer is really a laptop) or the lights around the power button not lighting up, or the speakers that buzzed looked at (the repair shop people seemed to think the speakers were perfectly fine and sent it back with buzzing speakers). There were a few other things that they tweaked or brushed up as well such as a general cleaning and either cleaning or replacing the fan since the computer had been overheating and turning off on me at random intervals. I had compensated for that problem by propping it up at an angle but, like I said, it was random so my solution wasn't the most reliable.

Anyway, since it had been carefully looked over only a year ago, I didn't expect my computer to just up and die. But since it did, I was then left without a computer. No way to read the blogs... or the additional comments on my conference post... or a way to check my e-mail... or the weather forecast (I want to mow the lawns again, but I'd like to have a few dry days in a row first). I couldn't even look up random information off the internet that occasionally drives me crazy until I find an answer. To top it off, I got to stare at Sir's computers all day long for three days. He has two of them. A desktop and a laptop, but because he still does a few jobs at home for his self-employed business, he keeps the computers locked so his clients will know that their projects are kept secure.

While Sir has been looking into figuring out what was wrong with my computer, like trying to get it to turn on enough to recover my files etc., he's come to the conclusion that the problem is the hard drive. So, we get to replace the hard drive and then we can re-install the original programs that the computer came with and I'll have a brand new computer. Which means I've lost anything that I did and filed on my computer since I sent it away a year ago, but hey, at least it wasn't five years of stuff that's lost. Besides, Sir is hoping to try to actually get at the dead hard drive and still managed to get my stuff off of it later.

So, until all of this happens to my unconscious computer, I'm getting to borrow Sir's laptop. He kindly transferred all the stuff he needed to keep secure to his desktop computer and removed the passwords so I can use his laptop at my desk and still get at my blog, and the random information on the internet. Today was the first day he was able to get around to setting his laptop up for me, so I'm very happy about that and am looking forward to getting my 'blog fixes' in while my computer is recovering or being resurrected. And I'm sure there have been quite a few updates in the last week!

Now I just have to figure out how to post videos so I can show off PC's walking skills at 9 months before he turns 5! At least the conference post isn't top and center now even if I couldn't get at any pictures to put at the top of this post!

And this way, you can all know that it's my computer that's dead. Not me! :)

We Made It!

*

We survived our conference weekend! I learned a lot this time around though, including:

1. Think realistically. I will not have time to feed TWO kids by myself AND be done with enough time to be of any useful help in the kitchen clean up. So note to me: Don't sign up for clean up unless there's no one else that can. Especially for Supper clean up. There was the same amount of time for each meal, but for some reason the rush for supper is much more crowded than the one for lunch and in order for me to have any time to clean up I HAD to be one of the first ones through the line.

2. Do not start out with Great Expectations. Don't even try to keep your kids on a decent schedule. Conference is exciting why would they even consider sleeping? Accept any and all help when it comes to your kids, and ASK for help when it's needed (which is a lot of the time!) I'm terrible at asking for help. I feel like it's not fair for me to burden some innocent person with one of my very wiggly kids. So, because of that, I almost fell apart by the middle day of conference. At first people would say 'I'm available if you need help'. That was fine. As long as I realized when I needed help. But I don't usually notice that I need help until it's way past when I needed it and by then I'm not thinking rationally. Then people said stuff like 'I can take one if you want'. That's when I would feel guilty for considering the option of dumping one of my kids on them and I would just not tell them that I really could use a little help. Finally a few started asking me for my kids. For some reason I was most comfortable with that. I felt like THEY wanted one of the kids and not so much like they were doing ME a favour. Because of those people, I survived. I even was able to enjoy parts and pieces of some of the meetings. It's so discouraging to be so busy that you don't get anything out of conference and it was so much work just to get there.

3. Be flexible. Don't stress out when little things go wrong. There will ALWAYS be little things that go wrong. What is important to you, sometimes isn't even noticed by most people. It's OK if people use the nursery as a shortcut to the meeting room. It's OK if 5-12 yr. olds use the quiet room to have 'secret meetings' or to hang out during a meeting. Getting upset about the little things only ruins your spirit and makes you an unprofitable servant.

Thursday night our kids got to bed over two hours late due to the excitement of conference starting and having guests stay with us. That meant they slept in a bit Friday morning which was good for them, but put me in a rush to get them fed and ready to go with time to get to meeting before the first meeting began. Friday Dolly didn't take a nap at all, and PC was really cranky and only slept for about 45min throughout the whole day. That night he got sick while he slept and I had to change him and his bedding in the middle of the night. It also meant that he needed a bath Saturday morning which put the time crunch back on me for the second day. Saturday both kids were starting to fall apart. They were getting tired, but wouldn't sleep. I was getting overwhelmed too. I finally packed them up halfway through the second reading and took them home. They had naps, I fed them, bathed them and put them to bed early. Then I took a shower and went to bed early myself. We all needed it and I felt so much better the next day in spite of getting up with PC SIX times that night. Consequently Lord's Day didn't seem nearly as difficult as the other days and I was able to enjoy a lot more of the meetings.

The Readings were in Revelation 2&3. They took up the history of the Church. I missed the last reading, but all of the meetings are online at the Recorded Ministry website. Including the last sing talk which wasn't included in the sets. I'm looking forward to going back and listening to the meetings that I missed or couldn't pay attention to. There was a faithful gospel given each evening, three addresses, and an open meeting on the last day.

The weather forecast was supposed to be rain, rain and more rain. There were a lot of prayers that went forth leading up to conference and the Lord provided a clear Thursday evening, a beautiful sunny and comfortable Friday, a partly cloudy/sunny and dry Saturday and a cool, breezy and barely misting Lord's Day. Perfect weather for so many people in a crowded building! We have so much to be thankful for!

I packed our camera all three days, but I don't know what I was thinking. I was always so busy that I managed to completely forget about it each day. So, I didn't get any pictures. I did get a chance to say 'hi' to a few people which was better than nothing at all.

We all stayed late Sunday night. Sir had stayed behind Friday and Saturday nights working on the recording copies and I had gone home with the kids after gospel or earlier. A lot of people had headed home throughout Lord's Day so it almost seemed a little more relaxed that evening. Maybe it was just because I was more rested. I vacuumed a bit after gospel, took a break and cleaned the bathrooms while the Young People were in the meeting room for the Sing and then finished the vacuuming when the sing was over and they were all in the Cafeteria for refreshments. I know how much work it is to clean the meeting room normally and after conference would be a lot more work than normal. I couldn't' leave it all for Aunt Knittery to do by herself. Sir worked on the recording sets and our kids stayed out of trouble for the most part. Dolly didn't have a single accident throughout the whole conference which was far better than I had even dared to hope for. She even came and found Sir and myself a few times to tell us she needed to go potty.

So, we're almost back to normal. The kids and I took two naps yesterday. Today seems to be ok so far. We're gradually putting the house back to normal. Today the toys are going to all move back to the playroom, but we're going to vacuum and clean the carpet in the playroom first. Yesterday we tackled the dining room and living room floors. -And I need to get going. It's lunchtime and PC just woke up from his AM nap.

*Photo compliments of the Chatty Housewife

What's With the Weather?!

Yesterday Morning:

This Morning:

Ok, so we get snow in three seasons out of four. Or six months out of the year. Even I know this isn't normal for this area. Of course, the weather hasn't been what the experienced locals consider 'normal' almost the whole four years that I've been here, but even this is more abnormal than usual.

Yesterday morning I woke up to it raining snow. It was coming down fast and at first was mixed generously with rain, but within half an hour, there was no more rain and the snow was actually sticking! It all melted away before 3pm and the rest of the day was actually pretty nice. Even the sun peeked out for a look for a little while. Then as if yesterday was a mistake or something, the weather is almost summer like today. You don't even need a light sweater outside and it's not even noon yet!

Maybe at this rate we'll have gorgeous weather instead of the icky stuff that's currently forecasted for our conference weekend. It would be pretty crowded if the 200+ people that will be milling about our meeting room didn't have the option of going outside!