It’s a BOY!!! Everything looks great. Georgie is excited. He said now he doesn’t have to pray anymore. Hahahha. Don’t think so. Anyway, that’s it. Just wanted to let you know.

Rachel

So apparently Georgie asked his Dad yesterday if we’re supposed to be scared of God. George told him that it’s like with parents. If you’re obeying, then you don’t need to be scared. If you’re doing what you know is wrong, then you’re in trouble. Plus, God can see everything!

This whole conversation was relayed to me over dinner last night when George mentioned that Georgie had asked an interesting question earlier in the day. Georgie still remembered the answer at dinnertime and managed to successfully explain it back to us.

I asked Georgie what had made him wonder this in the first place and he responded that it was something Trinity had said. I turned to Trinity to ask her what that had been, but she before I even finished she nonchalantly replied,

“I have Godophobia.” She’s seven. I looked at her. Then I giggled. A lot. You see, Trinity is the one who spent most of her car rides this week making up songs with titles like, “O God, O God” (which I at first though was either a mutant hymn title or perhaps a George Burns movie I had forgotten about) that is basically eight minutes of singing to God all the things she’s thankful that He made: the trees, the birds, cars, spring even though it rains all the time because it makes the flowers grow, electricity (electricity!!), a house to live in so we don’t freeze in the winter, rockets, bugs….. Did I mention the song lasts from the time we leave the house until we arrive at our destination (or one of her parents goes nuts). Spiders are pretty much the only item from the natural world that is absent from her list. I’m fairly certain that Trinity does not have Godophobia.

“Trinity, why do you have Godophobia?” I asked her.

“Well, God is everywhere. {okay fine I’m thinking}. He can be anything {ummm}. He can turn into a spider!”

What??? I was so stunned by this logic that I don’t even think I returned any sort of cogent answer unless you count sputtering (which doesn’t count). Well, I did manage to tell her that I was fairly certain the Bible doesn’t mention God turning into a spider. Hmm, come to think of it, I was busy all day today and still haven’t straightened out her peculiar theology yet. Guess I need to put that on my To Do list. God turning into a spider! Sheesh.

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Last Friday night was the lovely, I mean haunting, Halloween party that Steve & Angie (BIL & SIL) put on every year. After a lot of hemming and hawing (mostly hawing), I decided to put the bridesmaids dress I wore for Kathy’s wedding to good use and went as a beauty contestant, Miss Conception. Handily, I was exactly as far pregnant when I wore the dress the first time as I am now. Phew!

And here’s George, who went as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, and his brother Steve who was Cardinal Biggles from the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch (which is pretty funny).

They’re singing karaoke in the garage.

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So, it occurred to me today that I should probably find out what this baby is that we’re having. Lizard? Panther? Well, boy or girl would probably be helpful to know. Tomorrow morning we’re off to the ultrasound! All the kids are coming too, and somehow I suckered George into coming for the first time since I was pregnant with Georgie.

This will be the sixth ultrasound I’ve had and the second he’s come to. I’m delighted about that, and the kids are going to love it, especially Georgie. We’ll drop them off at Amy’s on the way home. Ahhh, the joy of semi-homeschooling. This will be a good field trip, I think.

I’ve been a total snail about getting going on midwife appointments and everything this time around, partly because I’ve been miserably sick and partly because this is not exactly new stuff for me. All the first several appointments consist of is peeing in a cup and listening to the heartbeat. If anything goes wrong in the really early stages, not much can be done. I can pee all by myself without having to tidy my house while I’m sick so the midwife can come over and not find a war zone. After five healthy pregnancies and one miscarriage, I’m pretty familiar with how things are supposed to go.

I’m nineteen weeks along and not so sick anymore, the baby is big enough to determine sex, I’m far enough along that a few more things can be done to prevent a later term miscarriage if problems do show up, and in a few more weeks the baby would actually have a shot at surviving outside the womb if delivery were unavoidable. So far the youngest surviving baby was born at 21 weeks 6 days gestation!

Amillia Taylor was born at Baptist Children’s Hospital in October weighing only 10 ounces. She was slightly bigger than a pen.

Anyway, It seemed like it was about time to see the midwife. She’ll be coming over Monday for our first appointment (same lady who delivered Faith).

This weekend is our annual card weekend in which me and my card group buddies disentangle ourselves from reality and escape to the beach from Friday to Sunday for a weekend of staying up late to play cards and shopping at the outlet mall. It occurred to me today that I may potentially want to do a bit of shopping for the new squirt and it would be helpful to know if I were girl shopping or boy shopping. I have exactly no boy stuff anymore, so if it’s a boy I guess I will need to do a lot of shopping. Gee bummer! If it’s a girl, not quite so much with the shopping…. I’m reasonably sure I could dig up one or two things for her to wear if I have to.

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And lastly, Amy who is my friend both from church and from online business stuff (she runs JournalModiste. Not the same Amy who does school with the older three kids) tagged me today; and since this is my first tag, it seemed like maybe I should actually do it.

Rules for the tag…
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. When I get nervous (which isn’t very often), I tend to get really quiet, slightly bug-eyed, and say “I’m fine” when asked if I’m ok. Usually I don’t actually look nervous and my husband is often the only one who can tell.

2. I hate being pregnant. This wouldn’t be so weird if I hadn’t done it so many times…. Duh!

3. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was 30 and even then it was frappuccino, which I consider more of a coffee-flavored milkshake. Yes, I’m a coffee wimp. I admit it.

4. The reason I didn’t drink coffee all those years was because my Mom drank strong black coffee the entire time I was growing up. Then she would eat cheese. Then she would put me to bed. Do you know what coffee & cheese breath smells like? Well, it will put you off coffee for 30 years, I’ll tell you that! Oddly, I’m ok with cheese. (My Mother is going to kill me now….).

5. I have one sibling, a brother, and was pretty much the only girl my age on our block. My Mother has one sibling, a brother, and was the only girl on her block. My Mother’s Mother had one sibling, a brother, and was the only girl on her block (she told me once that all the guys on her block used to entertain themselves by standing in a circle and spitting!). All three of us are rather bossy and unintimidated by men. Now you know why!

6. I had super straight, stringy hair the whole time I was growing up. When I got into junior high and high school, I permed it once a year, which both made it look much better and lightened the color. After I got married, I quit perming it so it got straight and darker again (I cut it short so it wasn’t so stringy). When I was 27, I got pregnant with baby #3 and my hair decided to be wavy. It has stayed that way ever since! Now it has the same color and wave as my brother’s and my Dad’s (or what color his used to have before it turned all grey). Much nicer. And free!

7. I’m a humongous Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. I own all seven seasons on DVD, two music CD’s (one from the musical episode and one of music they play at the Bronze, which is the club the kids hang out at on the show. My Hubby bought me those for Christmas last year), the new Buffy Season 8 comics, the Angel Season 6 comics (well, they’re on pre-order and I don’t have the Angel DVD’s because Angel wasn’t as good a show as Buffy), and a trivia book. Oh! And a 2007 calendar. Hmmm, I guess I need to get a new calendar for next year. Hehe.

One of these days when I get completely sick of Buffy, I’m going to lump all this stuff together and sell it all on eBay, where I’m expecting it to make some money eventually (like in ten years).Yes, me nerd, I know. Shhhh, don’t tell.

Okay – so I’m only going to tag 3 people ’cause I’m too lazy to find seven (I have no friends). Also because Amy only tagged three and I’m practicing being a sheep today.
Bethany
Karen
Elly

Just a couple oddball items from the week. For those of you who haven’t seen Kyra in a long time, she’s got really curly hair (and is the only one of the kids who has curl at all). She’s rather proud of her spiral locks.

“God gave me curly hair, Mommy.”

I look up. She looks at me.

“I like God,” she finishes. Okay then.

Yesterday I was watching back episodes of the TV show Bones on DVD after dinner while folding laundry. I don’t let the kids watch this for slimy dead body type reasons, but they were getting ready for school the next day and working on after-dinner chores themselves.

After awhile Georgie (he’s 9) pops his head in and asks,

“Mom, what’s the point of this show?”

ME: “It’s a crime show. Every week there’s a murder and they have to figure out who the bad guy is and put him in jail.”

Georgie looks appeased. Fifteen seconds later he pops back in.

Georgie: “So, it’s a mystery like Nate the Great. Except with no pancakes.”

ME: “Right.”

If you aren’t familiar with Nate the Great, it’s an excellent series of children’s books that follow Nate he solves all manner of conundrums with the help of his trusty brain food, pancakes.

Five minutes go by. Georgie pops out yet again.

“Did they catch the bad guy in this episode?”

ME: “Actually, this episode they had to save the main girl from being killed by the bad guy.”

Georgie: “Oh. So this one was a Damsel in Distress story.”

Well, I’d say this child has his genres figured out!

Rachel

Ahhh, so much has been going on the last few days. Where to start? First, I’m feeling better. HURRAY!!!! I can tell because 1) I don’t feel like a reject from a zombie movie quite so much anymore, 2) I can walk up my stairs again without huffing like someone who’s just run the Boston Marathon, 3) my house is starting to look less like a blast detonation site, which is because I’ve tidied it up a little bit instead of super helpful friends and family coming to de-sticky it, and 4) I made a decent dinner tonight for the first time in ummmm, never mind. Mostly, even though I’m still returning food at about the same rate, my energy level has improved so much that it’s nowhere near as debilitating.  Yay!

So, busy weekend over here. Friday night my Dad called and invited George and I to go with him to OMSI (our local science & industry museum) to see the BodyWorks 3 show since this was the final weekend. It was fascinating! If you aren’t familiar with it, BodyWorld is a display of bodies that have been donated to science and then “plastinated,” which is more or less what it sounds like.

This technique allows for preservation of not only form, but color as well and allows the bodies to be molded into specific poses so that the viewer can see how the musculature extends or contracts, where the tendons attach, and a whole host of other possibilities. You can read more about it at www.bodyworlds.com. If you saw the newest James Bond movie, BodyWorlds was featured in one of the early scenes.

We told the kids where we were going and received typical responses:

Georgie: I want to go!
Trinity: I want to go!
Georgie: Wait, I don’t know if I want to go. It might be too scary.
Me: Neither of you guys are going. I think you’re still a bit young.
Georgie: Oh good. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to see dead bodies.
Trinity: I want to go!

Also this weekend was Georgie’s 9th birthday, so we had a Transformer birthday party for him on Monday. A bunch of his buddies came and we invaded George’s parents’ house for cake & ice cream and presents and then packed everyone all off to Bauman Farms to run around for three hours. Here’s a couple of party pictures:

Trinity modeling what Uncle Steve and Auntie Angie gave Georgie (so lovely!):

Every October, Bauman Farms turns their normally lovely little farm into fall heaven with corn and hay mazes, a zip line, teepee, fort, huge slides and swings, and all kinds of great stuff. We usually go there for Georgie’s birthday. Like a big dummy I let Anika talk me into crawling through one of the hay mazes, which I realized was an error before I even discovered that I then had hay in my skivvies. Duh!

Trinity figured out how to make duck calls all by herself, and then spent the next twenty minutes trying to call the ducks over. Of course when a humongous goose arrived instead and startled her, she jumped back about five feet and promptly switched to “baaaa”ing at the sheep. 

When we finally made it home around 6:30, Kyra was pretty pooped. I put Faith to nap at Mom & Pop’s house instead of taking her to the farm with us, but I let Kyra skip nap. When we arrived home, I pulled her out of the car and put her on the driveway to go in the house and she sort of crumpled in tears. By 7:30 she had disintegrated to wandering around the house crying. Bed time!

Naturally, she didn’t actually want to go to bed and continued crying away in her bunk. The bed is scary. The wall is scary. I’m not sleepy. The ceiling is scary. Clearly logic is going to be no help here!

I picked up her stuffed bunny and took another tack:

Me: Let me introduce you to Peter Rabbit. Say “Hi Peter.”

Kyra stops crying and says hi to Peter.

Me: Peter is reeeeally sleepy and knows he’ll feel much better after he gets a good night sleep, but Peter is scared. He thinks the ceiling is scary and doesn’t like it all dark.

Kyra seems to have forgotten that she herself was protesting twenty seconds ago.

Me: Do you think you can take care of Peter for me? Can he curl up and sleep with you so that he won’t be scared? You’re such a big girl; I know he’ll feel much better with you.

Kyra grins, curls up with Peter, and I hear not a peep as I close the door. Hehe. Success! I head downstairs to go help the big kids finish up their homework. A few minutes later we hear Kyra crying again from her bedroom. What? I could have sworn that worked.

George is upstairs already, so he goes in to see what’s up. The kids and I listen from downstairs.

Kyra in tears: Peter Bunny won’t go to sleep with me!

George scolds: Now Peter Bunny, it’s time for you to go to sleep now. No more fooling around; it’s bedtime. You curl up here with Kyra. It’s not scary. It’s time for bed. Night night.

When he closes the door, the older kids and I laugh and give Daddy the thumbs up. Nice work! Kyra is quiet the whole rest of the night. Some days you just feel like a genius.

Rachel

Due to our unusual schooling arrangement (my friend Amy homeschools them in a sort of private tutoring/homeschooling deal), we start school rather later than, well, everyone.

So today was the first day of school for Georgie, Trinity, and Anika who are in grades 3, 2, and 1. Anika was soooo excited! Last year she did school at home with me so this is her first year off with the big kids. She’s been counting down the days for a week now. (“Mommy, only three more days until school starts!”). Yesterday she got her lunch ready and laid out her clothes and had a permanent smile on her face the entire night.

Here’s their first day of school picture. Aren’t they cute?

In preparation for school, we moved all the kids’ bedroom assignments around this weekend. Georgie and Trinity were together and the three little girls were in the bigger room. We needed to move the two little girls into Georgie & Trinity’s smaller room and put Georgie & Trinity with Anika in the larger room. That way the three school children would all be together.

So Thursday I cleaned out Anika’s room and Friday Georgie and Trinity and I weeded out their room, which naturally took three times longer despite being a smaller room with fewer people in it (mostly I sat on the floor trying not to pass out and directing traffic). I had done Anika’s when the kids were gone. I should have done the same with Georgie & Trinity’s.

Saturday was moving day so George and I took apart both sets of bunkbeds and swapped all four bed pieces into the opposite bedrooms. Why, you ask, couldn’t we have just swapped the bedding like normal people? Well, Georgie and Trinity’s set we got second hand (Craigslist) and it’s a lot more wobbly than the Kyra and Faith’s set. Plus it’s missing some of the bars at the top that keep the top occupant from falling out on their head. The bigger kids have enough sense to keep their heads out of the holes in the bars, but the littler kids are largely lacking in that helpful commodity.

So we took the beds apart and moved them back and forth down the hall and around the corners. In case you are wondering, this is not an advisable thing to do when you are pregnant and feeling rotten. After we moved the first bed, George looked at me and said, “you sure lose steam fast!” WELL DUHHHHH!!!!!! You want steam? I’m steamed now! What do you think I’ve been lying on the couch for two months for??

No, I didn’t say that. I just thought it very loudly. And we still had three more beds to move! And I’ve had more steam the last three days or so than I have had the last two months! When we were done, I crumpled on the couch for two hours and passed out almost immediately.

Another item in this weekend’s plus column: I made it through an entire church service (two hours) on Sunday for the first time in eight weeks. Hurray! I’ve only tried maybe three times during that period but every other time I’ve felt so rotten that I’ve come back home within about 45 minutes or so. I always feel weird when I don’t make it to church, so it was quite nice to enjoy an entire service.

All that is the demonstrative way to say that I’m feeling mildly better. I think. Although my going off the meds experiment a couple weeks ago ended two days after it started when I quickly went back on the meds, I seem to be getting a little bit of energy back. I cleaned half my kitchen the other day before pooping out (hubby comes down the stairs to find me on the couch with white lips and not moving. “You look wiped out!” he says. He’s so astute…. and it’s only taken six pregnancies to notice these things!).

Yes, pooping out after cleaning half a kitchen is really pathetic; but compared to the zero amount of kitchen I’ve been cleaning (my MIL, Mom, and various other people have been over to help some so the kitchen has not been growing science experiments for eight weeks straight), it’s an improvement.

Well, I think that’s all the news around here. I just had to share about the kids’ first day of school and my miniature burst of energy over the weekend (well, it was exciting to me).

Rachel