Sisters and googas

My midwife’s practice is 75 miles away from me, but much closer to 2 of my married sisters.
I live very near 2 more married sisters: Ashley (actually a sister-in-law) has 3 children, 3yo and under. Steph is pregnant with her first, with a duedate very near my own, and her midwife practices from the same office as mine.
We try to schedule together, ride together, and visit the others when we make the drive.
Yesterday, Steph and I took advantage of our prenatal appointments to have a gathering of sisters: we loaded up my 7 girls, picked up Ashley and her 3 little ones, and we all headed north to the midwives. I love owning a large van: the 13 of us rode together!
After our checkups, the 3 of us and our 10 children spent several hours visiting with our 2 other sisters and their 4 collective children. We hugged, gabbed, held babies, laughed, reminisced, traded babies, talked some more.
When somebody suddenly realized it was 5:00, we talked faster…then it was 6:00. Yikes!
As we began herding children toward the van, little Gracie reached for my hand. She’s a bit shy, so I was delighted. I reached for her hand, and started chattering to her as she wiggled her fingers around in the palm of my hand:
“You want Aunt Kim to take you out?! Let’s go out to your carseat…oh, don’t want to go out yet?…you’re giving me something…what is it?…googa? What is googa?… oh, it’s a booger… Thank you, Gracie.“

First prenatal appointment!

Well, technically not the first appointment, but today was the first one I attended. I had to keep putting it off because the children were sick, and then I was forced to go to Hawaii…
But today was the day!
I heard the heartbeat: 150/minute.
I had my belly measured: I’m measuring 3 weeks bigger than my duedate indicates, but baby is lying breach right now, so that makes a bigger measurement entirely expected.
I’ve gained 8 lbs. so far.
I received disapproving looks for not remembering to take prenatal vitamins faithfully, and promised to try harder. This was so easy the first few times, and so hard lately! Maybe I’ll pay the kids for reminding me. They eagerly accept chocolate chips as legal tender for all debts.
I had blood drawn. All the girls were standing by, rooting for me to faint, but they were sorely disappointed. The midwife and I have learned through trial and error that I do fine if I lie down and she uses a pediatric needle.
Is anyone out there snickering because I, who have given birth at home naturally so many times pass out when somebody draws 3 oz. of blood? Yeah, I’m laughing at me too. I’m not a baby! Am not am not am not!
Next month is the glucose tolerance test. More blood. Well, actually I’ll have less blood. Yick.
On a brighter note, tomorrow is my halfway point: 20 weeks down, 20 to go. Then I can start counting down. Yippee!

January 22, 1973

Does that date ring a bell for you? Jan. 22 came and went while I was off on a sunny blue beach, but I had really wanted to compose an article about the court case 33 years earlier.
Since I was otherwise occupied, I’ll chime in late with a few good links and an interesting fact or two.

• Did you know that the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade gave birth to 3 children, and never had an abortion?
• Did you know that after many years of working for the pro-death cause and in abortion clinics, she was converted to Christianity in 1995 and now works fervently to end abortion?
• Did you know that Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe’s real name) has written a book about her experience inside and out of the abortion movement? I haven’t read it yet but would love to hear from those of you who have! The title is Won by Love.

To learn a little more about the real Jane Roe, take a look at the transcript of an interview held shortly after her conversion, her own website, and this CNN article.

Real Life is back

I woke up to a full dose of real life this morning. Are you sure you want to read this?
The dog had an accident during the night. Not Lady, the Good Dog; it was Izzy, the pathetic, aged, perpetually depressed seemingly-harmless stray that was allowed to move in with us a few months ago.
We awoke to a slimy, stinky mess spread throughout the living room and entry way. I started counting the spots as I cleaned them. When I reached 12, I decided this wasn’t improving my attitude so I decided to count my blessings instead.
This morning, I was thankful that:

• none of the children got up during the night to step in it and stand crying helplessly in the dark.
• my sweet hubby, who did wake up to step in it this morning, maintained a great attitude and only apologized for getting up too late to clean up the whole mess for me. With that example before me, how could I complain?
• there was no question which dog did the deed – Good Dog accidentally spent the night outside.
• my morning sickness (which seems to be reviving a little due to jet lag) only stopped me once in the cleaning process.
• my 12yo daughter (who had just had her own unpleasant awakening – maybe she’ll blog about it?) misunderstood when I ran for the bathroom. I asked her to watch the remaining spots so nobody would step in them, but she cheerfully worked on cleaning them while I was otherwise occupied.
• we still have a bottle of commercial strength enzyme-based carpet cleaner left over from hubby’s carpet cleaning days. Good stuff!
• our carpet is a temporary scrap until the rest of the house is finished. That may be quite a while, but it was free and it will be leaving eventually.
• I woke up thankful to be home in my routine. Thank you Lord for giving me a good attitude about this – it’s just not fun to be crabby and complaining.

By the way, does anyone want a medium-sized older female dog of non-descript breeding? Very gentle, generally depressed, needs to sleep outside at night.

We’re back!

And we’re glad. I missed y’all – no internet access for those of us with a prehistoric laptop that didn’t have wireless capability.
Hawaii was glorious, and the water really was warm and looked exactly the same color as the postcards. It wasn’t too crowded since it was winter, and “only” 70 degrees every day – oh the trials of this mortal life! The people really smiled all the time and said “Aloha” instead of hi or bye, and “Mahalo” instead of thank you.
We had dinner in Pearl Harbour on the battleship Missouri; saw the Hula Bowl; went on a whale watching cruise and saw not a single whale; haggled with venders for island souvenirs (most of which came from Samoa, the Philipines, etc). We ate pu-pus with a straight face, and enjoyed mahimahi, taro bread, and other local foods.
We looked at unbelievable landscapes, marvelled at the power of the pounding waves, splashed in the surf, climbed down scenic lookouts and up volcanic craters, oohed and aahed at the tropical fish casually meandering along the shores.
But a week was the perfect length of time to make me miss the laundry and dishes (yes, truly!) and my own bed, and especially our girls. It was very comforting for this always-cold person to leave 70 degree tropical Hawaii and arrive in San Antonio to a temperature of (get this:) 69 degrees.
The flight home was long enough that I still can’t remember what day this is. Is this today or tomorrow, and if this is today, what day is it? I’m still doing the math in my head: we left Hawaii Tuesday night, and it was light when we changed planes in Los Angeles, then we picked up the kids and took them to see Narnia and it was dark again when we got home, and now it’s light…Actually, I think yesterday was tomorrow, so today must be the day after tomorrow…

Last day. Check hubby’s blog for pics and audio.

New Carnival formin’ in my brain

Attention, people!
I’m feeling inspired by the new carnivals popping up around us (Homeschooling, Unschooling, Beauty, to name a few. I’m not sure if the Carnival of Cockroaches really took off) and I feel the need to fill another gap in the carnival world.
I know I’m not the only one whose children say and do funny things. Those laughs need to be shared, to brighten the days of those poor souls that don’t spend each and every day surrounded by small amusing people.
Anyone who knows why this is a terrible idea, speak now or forever hold your peace.
If no one has anything to say on that matter, then we need a name for this event. Ideas, anyone? Preferably something painfully cute, with apt alliteration and a self explanatory title. That’s not asking too much, is it?
I’d really like to have this ready to go by the next time my kids have hubby and me rolling on the floor in laughter. That may not leave much time, so let’s get right on this.

A riddle

Who can guess where I’ll be posting from tomorrow?

[doing the Happy Dance: can't wait, can't wait, can't wait!!!]

You owe me a guess for the laugh you just had. Tell the truth: you were laughing at the visual image of a pregnant lady doing the Happy Dance, weren’t you? Come on, just try to guess. I gave you the answer already.

Narnia

I have purposely not read others’ reviews of the Narnia movie, so I suppose I should ask myself if I deserve to have you read mine. But I really was determined to love the movie and didn’t want anyone to spoil it for me by telling me how bad it was.
Don’t worry – I won’t spoil it for you. I loved it.
I have always loved the Chronicles of Narnia. They were the first books I ever bought with my severely limited little-kid pocket money. I spent months saving over $14 to buy an entire set for my own consumption, and I gorged myself on Narnia for many years thereafter.
I expected myself to be a purist. I was quietly fearful that every departure from the *real* storyline and the *true* dialogue would rankle me. I was concerned that it would take some true determination to love the movie.
I was wrong. It was love at first sight, with ne’er a moment’s doubt.
It was not a flawless production:
The dialogue was not quite pure: many correct and important phrases found their way into the script through the wrong lips, while others less essential were skipped over entirely, no doubt in an effort to end the movie at less than 2 1/2 hours. But the abridgement was not cruel; the flavor was right.
The queen-witch was not quite right; she reminded me more of the Borg Queen from Star Trek than of Jadis. But she was sufficiently cold and evil.
Overall, the movie was very faithful to the book. Yes, there were some departures, but only one that rankled – the scene which leads up to the 4 children finding Narnia in the back of the wardrobe. This scene struck me as wrong, disappointing, and entirely out of character for at least 3 of the 4 children.

The animation was superb. Each new character met with an audible reaction from the audience: Mr. Tumnus, Mr. Beaver, Maugrim, Glenstorm, Aslan.

The casting of the children was perfect, and the characters were, I thought, developed in much the same direction as the book.

We saw the potential in Peter right from the start, but we also saw it come to fruition as he grew scene by scene.

Lucy’s sweet childlike faith made us want to be just like her.

We could see (or was it just me?) hints of what is to become of Susan in later books.

And Edmund was very well played, from sour and selfish to repentant and self-sacrificing.

Hubby, who graciously stayed home with sick children and encouraged me to take our 2 oldest, asked me if the Christian elements of the story had been compromised in the telling. My answer is that these elements are so deeply ingrained into the substance of the story that no faithful handling could hide them. Maybe unbelievers will see nothing more than an entertaining story, but no Christian could miss the message.

Natural Highlights

This blonde joke took me a few minutes. No, I’m not blonde. But I have a lot of natural highlights.