Look Out! Here Comes the Spider Man!

Today is AMJ's preschool orientation, and therefore I must record here what I wrote about him for his teacher...

Aidan is an exuberant, genuine, happy boy.  He has a very happy-go-lucky nature.  He loves to be in the thick of things.  He loves to do whatever his brothers are doing and he loves to play with friends.  He is a people person.  He is very enthusiastic and he loves to tell stories.  He is tremendous at physical activities (and has a lot of energy!) As opposed to my older sons who seem to be "old souls" Aidan is a "young soul."  He really cares about what is fair.  He is so loving and kind and bright and sweet.  He just had a baby sister born in June and he immediately took to her and is so loving and gentle with her.  He always tells her he will protect her, and wants to be with her and his big brothers all the time.  He is very good-natured.

So Many Dishes to Do

Posting pictures, I think, is a better use of my time though, right?  It's been a weird day.  I think the lack of a schedule in our house for almost a month now is wearing on everyone.  I am really starting to feel tired as the adrenaline wears off.  Liam is the sweetest kid ever but being tired leaves him totally in his own world which drives me bonkers.  Brendan and Aidan need to stop taking naps but we tried that today and it was a failure, so they went to bed, under duress, at 7:15.  Come to think of it it's 7:42 and I haven't heard a peep from upstairs in quite some time.  Ellen realized being held is far preferable to not being held.  And my yard, back and front, is COMPLETELY overrun with weeds like you would not believe.  I was doing an ok job of staying on top of that til right before Ellen was born, but a month of letting it go really let it go.  Damn.  Also I have 16 pounds left to lose, not ready for serious workouts yet, so I feel crummy about that and cannot fit into any of my clothes except dresses still, so my Mrs Roper joke is more apropos than I'd imagined.  On top of it all I just found out my former brother in law passed away.  It's been a melancholy sort of day for sure.  It's one of those days where I feel like I just didn't get to spend any quality time with my kids but instead spend the whole day arguing with them and yelling at them.  Those kind of days just suck.  And what the hell is up with this weather?  Alright, what we need here are some cute pictures.  The first one is from the hospital.  She's now about 7 1/2 pounds, so she seems huge compared to when she was born.  You can kind of tell in the picture with Eric where she has actual arm chub. 

Oh, and about Brendan and Aidan being quiet upstairs.  Ugh.

 

Though I Must Say

I'd really forgotten how amazing it is to have a newborn.  Ellen is like a magical presence in the house and we're all drawn to her.  She is a great baby, at just over 3 weeks she's 7 pounds (from 4 11 at birth, 4 6 when we left the hospital) and looks like a real newborn baby now more than a doll.  She doesn't like to have her clothes or diaper changed, her umbilical cord has yet to fall out, she has male pattern baldness.  And she is the softest, sweetest, calm little bundle of baby.  My dad always says when you first bring home the baby they're a loaf of bread, then they become a bag of sugar, then they're a sack of potatoes.  With Ellen she started out like a bag of marshmallows but she's definitely a loaf of bread now.  She's more alert too.  I just cannot believe how much I love her and how perfectly she fits into our family.  I'd include an adorable picture of her being adorable, but I don't have any pictures of her on this computer and I'm going to close my eyes for a second because she's about to wake up.  But I'll put some pictures here soon...

Truth

C-sections suck.  They do.  I was trying to be all zen and no regrets and c'est la vie about it (I'm sure Eric's laughing about that but really at the beginning I was) but now I've become a realist, and the reality is c-sections suck.  I can't even believe I have an adorable 2 week old daughter (6 pounds now!) and I haven't even been outside with her yet.  Or that I have probably at least another month of recuperating.  I know, poor me and my first world problems, but hell, what's the point of having a blog if you can't post about how sorry you feel for yourself? 

A Daughter!!!

Hmm, the full story.  I think whoever reads this knows enough about the leadup to Ellen's birth, so I'll skip that.  Suffice it to say everything was going great until 36 weeks when they said she was measuring too small and they decided to induce.

On Tuesday we got to the hospital around 6am, got checked in, got hooked up to the iv, and I had a nurse who told me I had to stay in the bed.  No idea why, I was only on pitocin.  Fortunately her shift ended and my new nurse was fine with me sitting in the rocking chair.  I'm trying to have no regrets about this whole birth story, because truly all's well that ends well, but one thing I really wish I had explored would have been coming in the night before, and (pardon me tmi but) getting cervidil to see if that would have jump-started my labor, rather than pitocin.  I was induced with Liam, but I did not have pitocin with him, just cervidil.  And that started labor for me.  Now granted I was supposedly further along in the pregnancy with him, but he was my first and with Ellen I went into it 1 cm, which for me is a lot more than usual.  But anyway, I didn't do that because ironically I didn't want to spend an extra night in the hospital.  

So...there we were, me rocking in the rocking chair, Eric reading a magazine.  Fast forward 4 or 5  hours, my contractions were pretty regular, starting to get a bit more severe, but I was only 3 cm.  I decided shortly after that to get an epi because I didn't want to wait too long like I've done in the past and then be in crazy pain.   But still after 6 hours I was only 3cm, and then the baby's heart rate started dropping during some contractions.  That's happened to me before in at least a couple of my labors, but usually we've been able to just change the side I was lying on and that would fix it.  With Aidan it got bad at the end, but I was so close to delivering him that the doctor was able to pretty much just reach in and pull him out.  He had an extra long cord and it was wrapped around his neck, but it wasn't a problem.

At first every time I had a contraction that caused her heart rate to drop, she recovered quickly and it was pretty intermittent.  But still at 3 cm the dropping heart rate started accompanying every contraction, no matter what position I was in, and the baby's heart rate didn't spring back so quickly as this wore on.  It is absolutely terrifying listening to your baby's heartbeat slowing like that.  They put an internal monitor on the baby's head to get a more precise idea of her heart rate, but that showed the same problem.  It was very scary and at that point I actually hoped they were going to do a c-section because I knew there was no way we were going to make it like that to delivery.  The nurses seemed to be thinking that same thing, and I'll spare you the heart racing details but they whisked me into the OR and began the c-section.  I will also spare you the details of that, but suffice it to say OMG OMG OMG it is AWFUL.  Awful.  I really do not think I could have done that more than once.  I bet if it was planned they would have more time to get pain meds in, and thank God I already had the epi, but it just was not enough.  In the OR I continued to hear her heart rate slowing, even though they gave me meds to stop my contractions.  I was definitely thinking there might be a bad outcome to this, and it's not inaccurate to say I was totally freaking out.  They finally disconnected the monitor so I couldn't hear anything of her heartbeat.  I listened to hear what they said as they took her out, and it was something long the lines of "Ah, that's why" And then something along the lines of "She had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck two times."  I was so happy she was alive I missed the pronoun.  Then it dawned on me and Eric we had a daughter.  We spent the rest of the time in the hospital mostly refering to her as he.  We're getting better at that now.  :o)

Because of the c-section I only got to see her for a moment before they took her away.  She got 8s on her apgars, which bucked the trend of 9s for all my boys.  Because she was so little and her blood sugar was a notch below 40, they gave her formula while she was away from me.  She's the first of my kids to ever get formula.  She got it a few more times during our stay, which made me feel bad, but fortunately she did great with the colostrum and my milk came in fast so we didn't need too much of it.  The recovery from a c-section is awfuler than I imagined, but having a sweet little healthy happy baby in my room more than made up for it.

However Thursday, just when I started feeling better and getting up a little bit more I thought, this is going much better.  Within one minute of thinking that my stitches moved or something and started to bleed.  I called the nurse.  She gave me something, said it was ok and told me to apply pressure.  Then she said we had to go to the nursery because Ellen failed the car seat test.  I was worried that just walking to the nursery would make my stitches open.  I really wasn't worried about the test itself.  Babies under 2500 grams have to take a test to see if they can ride in a carseat for an hour and a half.  After 10 minutes of the test for Ellen, her oxygen saturation got too low and she failed the test.  At my hospital they recently changed the protocol so if that happens you are automatically admitted to the nicu for 48 hours.  Did I mention there was also a Code Black the night before because of potential bad storms and tornadoes?  I've never enjoyed being in the hospital but this was my least favorite experience of all.  I'd had big plans that with this, my last baby, I was going to take advantage of my stay in the hospital and use it to rest and relax and read and even send the baby to the nursery at night and just have her brought in for feedings, and, no, none of that happened.

It could have been a lot worse though, because they were going to redo the carseat test on Sat night (the day I was dicharged) but then one of the doctors started to think they should keep her for a few more days of observation so she'd have a better chance of passing the test.  I would have had a really hard time staying in her room for any number of days.  Fortunately they didn't do that and when they gave her the test on Sat night she "passed with flying colors."  The nurse said she was probably just still transitioning from being born when they gave her the original test, so I wish they would have given it to her later to begin with.  She never required any oxygen or anything beyond just monitoring in the nicu, but it was a huge pain, literally and figuratively, because she wasn't in my room and I had to go down to her floor every two to three hours to nurse,  which was especially hard because of the c-section recovery.  And they also didn't explain what was happening very well and I thought they were saying her oxygen was bad and she wasn't doing well over all, and it was the second time I was afraid there was going to be a bad outcome.  I actually required some medicine to calm me down because I was shaking so much.  The nurse wanted to give me a sleeping pill but I was able to pull myself together and refuse that.  If I had gray hairs before this week, they were nothing compared to what I'm sure I have now.

It's so nice to be home with all our kids and our family and friends have been unbelievably wonderful and helpful.  I never really thought about c-sections and assumed that I would never have one, and I did not at all give enough credit to people who do because it is so hard.  I feel so trapped in my own house and my own body with all the limitations there are.  I had the c-section 8 days ago and just walked up the stairs for the first time and am not sure I'll be walking back down them again today.  Is it too much to ask to take a shower?  And why doesn't my house have a shower on the first floor?  What was the architect thinking?!  

But the bottom line is we came home with an adorable, sweet, happy wonderful baby, and that is what matters more than any other thing.  At her 6 day checkup with he pediatrician she already regained her birth weight and then some, weighing in on Monday at 5 lbs.  She is amazing!

:o)

This morning I asked Aidan who the president is.  He couldn't remember.  I said "Barack..." he still couldn't remember.  I said "Barack O...." and he should "Obama! I LOVE Barack Obama.  He says, 'Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas.'"

Well, ok then! 

Rainy Day Chicago, Take 3

I don't mind the rain, but can't the weather get just a little warmer? 

So my test for GD was all good, 11 weeks of pregnancy to go, nothing more to say about that!

Booked our cottage for a week in August. 

Have a large man connecting our tv antenna outside today, not sure why he wanted to come when it's raining but he thought it would take 2 hours and it took 4.  I'm happy he's still alive, honestly.  The best part of having workers over is that it is endless entertainment for the boys.  I am thinking of taking Liam out of school early when we get our new roof so he can watch.  Is that weird?

Liam is in 1.6k activities at the moment.  Much as I try not to let that happen it just somehow does.  Poor firstborn; it's all a learning curve with them.  But there are a lot of advantages too.  I wonder, they have all this research on your position in the family, oldest youngest middle.  So will Brendan AND Aidan be middle?  And in my family, are Diane through Linda and the 5 in between them the middle?

Time to switch the laundry, folks!

Rambling Updates

Aidan - he really likes pickles.  He likes them so much I feel I need to hide the jar so that my entire stock is not depleted. 

Aidan will now refer to himself as Aidan (as opposed to AA), but continues to insist on calling his brothers LeeLee and Brenmahn.

Liam + cooped up during winter = bad combination.  Now that we're sooo enmeshed in this neighborhood, I see yet another reason why we really need to move to California or Colorado.  Oi vey.

I have my GD blood draw Monday and I hope hope hope I don't have that most of all because my nausea is so bad that I have to eat what I need to eat when I need to eat it, and I can't add any further restrictions to my diet than I already have imposed on myself. And I already feel like I am eating so much worse than my usual diet, because of the fact I am so sick, I will feel super guilty if it's affected my bloodsugar. 

We are in the process of booking a weeklong trip to a beach in Michigan on homeaway.  So excited!  Some of the houses I really like were already booked (or $4000/week) and there were two I really liked but one only was available the 3rd week in August and we don't know yet when school starts.  So we picked the other one that looks pretty rad but maybe a little less awesome of a beach and we'll see if they have the availability they said they do.  I hope this new baby likes car rides!

There are a lot of people who have 3, 4 and even 5 kids.  This makes me feel less like a reality tv show.  Phew.  That, plus NPR's advertising campaign - excellent.

Today is WARM!  Today is SUNNY!  Today I feel human.  Oh, why are flurries in the forecast?

We went to Minneapolis last week to see the city and visit Eric's aunt.  Rather successful trip, but getting in at midnight and getting home at 11pm Saturday night seriously wrecked up our schedules.  Not recovered yet. 

Oh, I conveniently forgot to mention that while I intended to book two nights in Minneapolis at a hotel I knew had no pool, then two nights at a hotel which I thought did have a pool, both our hotels had no pool.  The bad time to learn this is when we're in the hotel room with the boys in their swimsuits.  Ouch, that stings.  We were on the 27th floor though, so that's cool - right?  And instead of the pool we went to a Robotics competition at the university and the boys really loved it.  The robots were throwing frisbees!  Other highlights were:
- the flour mill tour, sounds lame but was eerily like the Guinness tour and the views were cool but don't believe it when you read you get fresh baked cookies in the end (which I was thinking sounded like an ok alternative to the Guinness I can't have anyway)
- hanging out with Eric's cool aunt
- exploring the city
- probably other stuff but I forgot

I still am nauseous morning til night, just in case you were wondering.

You Know?

You know how you have to roll down your window to unlock your door, and you forget every time?  Oh, you don't?  Oh.  Ok.

At the Diner on the Corner...

I'll say straightaway, I am a terrible restaurant patron.  I am the customer who asks for what is not on the menu, then asks the waiter/waitress to hold the (insert 3 to 5 ingredients here) and put the (1 to 2 ingredients) on the side.  I like eating only when things are just so, both food things and environment things.  I have a lot of, um, peculiarities about food and if I don't enjoy my meal I DO NOT enjoy it.  It's wonderful or terrible and no in between.  I often end up getting the same thing every time from a certain restaurant because I know I will like it and when I experiment I am too likely to meet with disaster.

Eric and I love to take the boys out for dinner.  That adds another level of challenge to any dining experience.  Indeed.  So this evening we walked over to a little Mexican restaurant that opened up last year just a few blocks from our house.  (Short story long, a few years ago we saw some primping and goings-on happening a few blocks from our house on the street where there are many little shops.  We thought it was going to be a little independent coffee shop.  We were SOOOOO Extremely Excited (aside, I HATE when people say ginormous, yet I have no problem with myself writing SOOOOO.)  It was even called something like Boulevard Cafe.  I had visions of my true love, The Grind in Lincoln Square, once again located near to my home.  Turns out it was an Eastern European white tablecloth restaurant.  Bleh.  If they would have asked me I would have told them sincerely there's no way that's working, don't even try, no one likes that sort of place.  I was right.  It closed.

Then lo and behold we got a fun, colorful, good tequila Mexican restaurant.  So that's great.  Like I said, I'm a weird eater and Mexican is not my favorite, but if I can pick and choose what my meal consists of then I can definitely enjoy Mexican food.  Ok, so back to tonight.  I asked for a meal they don't really have.  I tweaked a menu item and the waitress said they could do it.  The Big Clue this meal was not going to work out - there are five of us, one of her, and SHE DIDN'T USE A PEN AND PAPER.  She was going to remember everything we said.  I felt a tad concerned that on the list of ingredients for my food the only thing I had to say I didn't want was sour cream.  Mustn't there be cheese too?  But it wasn't listed on the menu and I was sure she'd have enough trouble remembering the whole order anyway so I didn't want to confuse her by verifying the ingredients.  The boys are well behaved.  The food comes.  I see a solid ten minutes where I could eat my food in relative peace and drink ice cold water out of a thick, beautiful, iridescent blue glass.  I cut open my dish.  It is swimming in sour cream.

By the time the new food comes it's time to leave and I have to take it to go.  It is not anywhere as good eating it at the dining room table.  The thrill is gone.  The moment has passed.  My first world problem of the day, now here before you as a sorrowful, pathetic lament.

Oh, but in good news I have a patron at work who tells me I look like Laura San Giacomo.  I used to hear that closer to the days when Just Shoot Me was on, but haven't heard it in a long time.  I'll admit, it endeared me to him.  Well that and the fact that he smiles and is nice and doesn't yell at me (it happens more than you would think, especially during tax season.)  So today I had my hair up in a ponytail and he came up to the desk and said, "Well jeez, now you look like you're twelve years old."  So silver lining, right?

Day at the Museum

Some days you have to teach your first grader how to play hooky.  Or maybe you don't?  But anyway, we did and a good time was had by all.  Good and exhausting.   We started at the Field for a few (4? 5?) hours.  Next we drove around for a bit so Aidan could nap and then stopped at LPZ but it was 4:20 and they close at 4:30 and so all we saw was a cardinal and one leopard.  Then we went to the Art Institute to remind ourselves how museums should have more enclosures around precious paintings and works of art.  Then we went to the Pick Me Up Cafe and oh my lord you cannot get food like that in the suburbs.  Or if you can I don't know where but I'd really like to.  We spent about 12 hours downtown (and despite not paying entrance fees anywhere and only buying 3 cheap dinosaur toys the day cost almost $200 AND the "cheap" street parking by the Field is now $9 thanks to that stupid parking lease crap) and now I am going to sleeeeeeep and sleeeeeep.

Couldn't get a picture of Aidan standing still...

LT in his element...

Almost didn't come because of a recent problem with tantrums but he did great...

Why Do I Still Have Awful Morning Sickness???

Harumpf!

Ugh and Cheerio

If any lucky soul out there is wondering, is it possible to still have daily morning sickness at 18 weeks, the password is...YES.  Ughhhh....  On a happier pregnancy note, I can feel the baby move now.  It started on Wed at Liam's piano lesson.  With Aidan I swear to you I could feel him moving at something like 13 or 14 weeks.    This kid, 17 weeks.  Maybe he won't be the contortionist that Aidan is. 

We have two weeks to decide if we want to know the sex of the bambino.  I'm mostly leaning toward no, and honestly feel very, very sure he is a boy.  The only reason I'd want to know now is just for practical getting rid of clothes reasons.  But who knows how it'll play out when the time comes. 

I just watched the first season of Downton Abbey.  Loved it.  Obsessed.  So happy I have another full season to watch, wish I could pace myself better. 

Must go, morning sickness, ever the bane of my existence. 

But Just So You Know....

On the other hand, Aidan was standing in the back room repeatedly saying "hi guys, hi guys!" real excitedly, but no one was responding because they were playing their own games.  I called out, "Boys, Aidan's saying hi to you, please respond."  Brendan's response?  "Hi Aidan... can you talk to Liam?"

This Is Just Cute

Yesterday I heard Brendan on the couch talking with Aidan.  He was saying, "Aidan, you are so cute.  You know what, I think you are the best of all of us."  :o)

Ok, I'll Admit It...

I've grown to like it here.  My little Mayberry neighborhood.  Don't get me wrong - I'm still scouring Craigslist and Zillow for houses out by Mountain View and occasionally Boulder and even once in a while Ireland, but now that the boys have started school it's getting harder to think of leaving here.  I mean, logistically it's amazing.  I am 4 blocks from work, the school is literally half a block down the street and visible from the front window, the Metra is 3 blocks away when we need a quick downtown fix.  Heck I just read the public high school here is actually ranked a couple slots above my own high school, and the park district facilities rock.  It's looking more likely that if we don't move out of the area we'll either move within a few block radius of our current house, or just add on to where we live right now.  I definitely want more room, especially considering we'll be a family of SIX this Summer, but the main problem with adding on is that I really don't want to encroach too much on our existing yard.  Also we're super close to having completed every major upgrade to this house that we wanted, and now it's really not half bad.  We'll get a new roof this Spring, and I think the only major things left to do are replace the hideous siding on the addition and garage and get a back patio (we seriously don't have one, at all.)  Oh wait, I did forget to mention most of the food options here are still sub par suck.  There's a specialty grocery store that's awesome, and owned by our local celebrity chef, and a little Mexican restaurant opened up just two blocks away and it is quite good.  But really though there are many restaurants within walking distance, none are too great.  It's what I would consider the biggest drawback of where we live.  I really love being able to walk to everything, and I would hate to live someplace that required a lot of driving to get around.  I'm sort of a homebody, and I think without exception every place Eric and I have lived has been super walkable.  I think our apartment in Park Ridge was the furthest removed from the main drag. 
The other thing is we've made a lot of friends and I really love it.  I mean LT and BP (and even AMJ) have so many friends and Eric and I have become close with a number of parents, and these are people and families we'll be able to not only hang out with but go on vacations with and that means a lot to me.  Even knowing that we could make new friends someplace, it's getting much harder to imagine doing that.  So, for now at least, we're (probably) staying.  And expanding (our family.)  And re-roofing.
Maybe next time I'll write about how horrible my morning sickness STILL is!  See, and you were just wishing I blogged more.
We're going to Don Juans now.  Brendan didn't nap and Aidan only took a short nap.  Wish us luck.