There Were Five in the Bed

On Saturday Eric and I went for the big ultrasound reveal. Liam and Brendan were at their grandparents' and we had a whole late morning and afternoon to ourselves, which is a seemingly very, very painfully rare event lately. The ultrasound went well, the baby looked good, and apparently looked like a boy. I was surprised, because I thought he was a girl, but if there's one thing I've learned about being a mom it's that kids never ever do what you expect them to. After the appointment we got massages, and then, instead of doing even one of the 6.12 million things we were planning on doing, we just drove to a random Indian restaurant on Devon and had a delicious lunch. Because we could. I still ate it about twice as fast as I needed to, being so unused to getting to sit down and eat slowly and relax and enjoy my meal, but mmmm.
For about the last two months Brendan has been sleeping so badly through the night that he now wakes up Liam, who then has a hard time getting back to sleep because of the hypothetical monsters that he knows probably don't exist but still possibly might. It's been brutal, I'm not going to lie. We have tried pretty much everything you could think of, and nothing has worked. So today, after an incredibly stressful, no good horrible awful night last night, we are going to try and enlist the help of a pediatric sleep specialist. I have about 5% hope for a positive solution, but after more than 2 years and 3 months where we've only gotten maybe, maybe 10 full nights of sleep, I'm out of ideas.
On a more positive note Brendan and Liam surprise and astound me every day with how freaking funny and smart they are, and how good they can now play with each other (well and fight too, which is a wholly new concept to me having never had a sibling anywhere near my own age, but apparently it's normal though I still hate it and constantly try and crush it out. It's not bad but I just want them to never fight, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.) Both of them are sharp as tacks and are phenomenally good talkers, so I just love to sit back and listen to their conversations. Liam had set the bar so high with his verbal skills I really didn't expect Brendan to match up to him, but there again I was so wrong. And he is actually a much clearer talker, but to my great surprise, similar to Liam, he will not perform on command, will usually not continue to do what he's doing if I get out the camera, and often quiets down when we go out in public. Not always, but a lot. So I guess some Eric genes did make it into him after all.
Last week we finally started getting our basement finished. We are very very excited about this, even though it's a pretty small basement, but having another room in the house is becoming increasingly important. I really want to leave some of the brick exposed down there, which we're not planning on doing right now, but aside from that it's the coolest thing to walk down in what had always been the dungeon and see it transforming into a cool place. After that the only other renovation we have left for the main house is the upstairs bathroom. Of course once we complete that, if we stay in this house, we will then need to think about the plans for an addition. And I say, why not sink more money into a place that depreciates a little more each day? What's there to lose? I mean, beside our house and all our money and everything but the clothes on our back, right? This is America, for God's sake!
I have recently discovered that overall I have a pretty idyllic life, which is a good thing to realize every now and then. You really can't beat having a husband/Dad who works from home, a wife/Mom who works part time 5 blocks away, two terribly-sleeping but otherwise ideal sons who make even winter a ton of fun, and a house with something changing every day. Now, if I could somehow just manage to schedule one of those prenatal massages into my week EVERY week...