Anxiety...Somewhat Appeased...

Just as a little update on my pre-partum psychosis, Nels isn't abandoning me this weekend anymore. :) Poor Nels, he really wanted to go, but I think he would feel worse leaving and missing the birth of our little onion! :) That being said, now she won't come until her due date, you know? If he had left, she probably would have been here within hours! Hmmm....I wonder if it's too late to call his boss back...lol!

Also, just so you know, the Lord really is merciful...even to crazy people. If I can calm down enough to feel it. He really is there to let you know that everything will be as he wills it and to stop worrying. My only problem is "letting" him be in control - I mean, I really want her here now, right? So what if His will is for her to come in 3 weeks???

(((Deep Breath))) Everything will be fine. She'll probably come in a month.

Anxiety

I tell you what, I have this crazy way of not getting excited about things by keeping myself really busy all the time. I make lists and lists of things that need to be done and there is nothing so satisfying as being able to cross each and every one of my tasks off as they get done. I do a LOT of this when I am particularly excited or anxious about something. I think I do this because otherwise I really turn into a mess waiting around for something. I hate it. I'll sit around being totally preoccupied to the point that nothing gets done, I get kind of edgy, and I just get a little depressed. What a healthy way of coping with stress, right? Either total shut-down or extreme energy and denial. (Wendie really likes the saying "Everyone is somebody else's weirdo." :) I think that fits this situation!)

Anyway, throughout this pregnancy, I have kept myself really busy. From a month before I got pregnant, our lives have been totally turned upside-down by circumstances out of my control and some that I've had total control over. First, Nels got told that he needed to find some real work when his colleague could no longer fund him in making the movie. From that point, we thought we were moving to Spokane for a job, applied for another job at BYUI and moved from Idaho Falls, putting all our stuff in storage, to Bountiful to live with my parents with our 2 kids until we knew for sure where we were going. We thought we would be there for a couple of weeks and ended up there for a month and a half while first the job at BYUI got filled and then the one in Spokane fell through as they didn't have the funds to bring Nels on as they'd promised. We then applied everywhere else in the U.S. and Nels had a promising job interview in Park City and eventually got hired right back in Idaho Falls where we had started. So we moved back into a rental. The week we moved back I started getting sick all the time. This summer we started looking for a house to buy. The weekend before we closed, we took our third trip to Spokane in 6 months for a family vacation with the rest of the Chicks. We closed and moved as soon as we got back and I decided to start up a part time job, just to make myself "useful". The cute little house that we bought has a mess of a yard and was one of the filthiest places we have ever lived. (I say "one of" because we've moved into some real winners in the past 5 years of marriage.) I've spent the entire summer working 21 hours a week, chasing around my 2 VERY active children, running all over with family reunions, and making my all-consuming LISTS of things that need done around our house (mainly deep cleaning every crevice and painting every surface!) All while Nels has spent every spare brain cell and second thinking about and trying to finish an independent film that he and a friend of ours started last May and have FINALLY submitted to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

So in the past two weeks, I've stopped working until after I have the baby, finished all of my major painting jobs I had on my LIST to finish before going into labor, Nels has finished working on the movie, we've cleaned out the garage...and my list is getting smaller and smaller as I can't plan too far ahead because I don't know what the next couple of weeks are going to bring.

In the end, I'm left with contractions all the time that leave me really distracted from my ability to distract myself with working to death and a somewhat-messy house that gets a whirlwind cleaning everytime I start having contractions - again - that end up not getting me anywhere closer to the hospital.

I'm turning into a real mess. Especially with Nels asking me every couple of hours if she's coming yet. He has started doing this because his boss scheduled for him to make a trip up to Moscow, Idaho (close to Spokane & over 9 hours away) this coming weekend to film some footage for a company called Potandon that is biologically engineering new kinds of potatoes. This has been planned for months and I still can't figure out exactly why Nels didn't talk to his boss about the fact that his wife will be a week and a half from her due date during that time - and that both of our other children have come exactly during that time period.

ANYWAY I know that this post really makes me sound like a whiner and you're probably all thinking that I'm 2 weeks from my due date, she's going to be here before you know it, so give it a rest, right? BUT I really felt like getting off my chest the fact that I'm a crazy, pregnant weirdo who is just a LITTLE anxious and REALLY ready to not be pregnant anymore and probably really just needs to sit down and make some new "lists" and kick myself in the fanny to get them done and stop thinking that I'm going to have the baby anytime in the next month at all.

(((DEEP Breath))) I'm feeling much better now. I'm sure that it's no surprise to any of you that I'm a freak running around in disguise --- maybe not a very good disguise . . . we'll have to put working on that on my next list.

My Funny Daughters!

So, today Nels helped me clean out our garage! Since we moved in 3 months ago Nels has been so busy finishing the movie and I've been so pregnant that we haven't been able to get it done. All of our extra stuff ended up in the garage in the move and it was a disaster! (By the way, it's now all in our basement waiting to get sorted through before putting it in the storage closet because we had a birthday party to go to tonight - Big Improvement, eh?) So, after we got it to a point where I could sweep it out and park the van inside, Nels wanted to go to Pizza Hut as a reward-type dinner. While we were there I was talking to the girls about our new baby and how excited we are to have her come. I think more than anything I am just so excited to see how this little baby fits into our family - to see her little personality. Every child changes the dynamic in the family so much and I'm excited for her to come be a part of it!

So, while sitting in our booth I was asking Hazel what she thinks our new baby Elsie will be like. She sat there for a moment and then said, "I think, she will be like a Beautiful Smelling Onion." -------- LOL --------- This still makes me laugh so hard! I clarified with her that that's what she actually thought her new sister would be like and she said, "Yes, I think so." I really wish that I had been thinking clearly enough to ask her WHY she thought that, but I was laughing too hard. She cracks me up! Months and months ago when I found out that we were going to have a little girl, I was talking to Hazel in the car about what she thought we should name our new baby. My favorite and the one she stuck to for several months was "Fish". I think "baby sister" will be forever grateful that one day I decided to ask Hazel if she liked the name Elsie for our new baby. She had previously turned down all of my attempts at getting her to agree on another name, however, when I proposed Elsie, she took to it immediately and said, "Yes, I like Elsie.........I think maybe Elsie is a better name than Fish." Thank goodness Fish Chick will only be Elsie's "funny name" - as Hazel informed me.

Another funny thing that we have had a lot of in our house lately is sassing. --- Now, granted, I have two little talkers in this family and one very sassy husband, so that's not something really new, however since Spring of this year Lilie has taken it to a whole new level! When I would correct my little two-year-old or tell her something that she doesn't want to hear, she would hold up her pinkie and stop me mid-sentence saying, "Ssssss!" It was really quite hilarious for anyone detatched from the situation to see. "Lilie! I told you - 'Sssss!' - to stop - 'Ssssssssss!'" All with her pinkie in the air and her head turned away.
Granted, the situation sounds ridiculous and if you could see her, it really is quite cute, but being 'Sssssss'ed as by my two-year-old really isn't that funny! One day when she had done this to me quite a few times and I was trying to stop her from climbing up the cupboard or hitting Hazel or some such thing she did this to me over and over. I stopped and grabbed her arm and told her, "Hey! You don't Shush your mom!" She turned and looked at me with all the indifference her sassy little self could muster and said, "I didn't Shush. I said, 'Sssss.'" --- That's my girl. She has her own way of veiwing the world and getting what she wants.

I think that maybe some of the difference in my children is just birth order related. Recently my mom was up helping me out and I was talking to her about growing up in her house and the difference between the way that she and her older sister approached life. Rosemarie had a very head-on way of dealing with things. Very direct. Where my mom would take the stand of, "You can think whatever you want, and I can think whatever I want, and I don't have to tell you about it." So when it came to the "beatings" :) she didn't need to argue with her dad, she would just stand on the sidelines telling her sister to just shut up and don't tell him you don't agree with him. You can think whatever you want, just shut up. As she was talking about this, I could visualize much the same difference between my own two girls. Hazel is very in-your-face about what she thinks, she needs to let you know. She'll argue till she's (you're) blue in the face. You tell Lilie something that she doesn't like and she'll just out-right ignore you. At this point in the conversation, my mom said that she thinks that second-borns are just a bit smarter because they learn a lot from the first. I corrected her that second-borns just seem to be much more sneeky in the way they go about things. Lilie is much more subtle than her older, bolder sister. I can't wait for them to be teenagers! Can you imagine what I've got in store for me???!!! THREE teenage girls all at the same time! :)

Anyway, into this chaos that is our lives, I am so very excited to bring this new little baby! What a joy to see how they all interact and how different they all are! I love my girls and I love being a mom! There is nothing better in the world (and nothing harder) than this job. It is the most frustrating and humbling job...filled with more feelings of inadequacy and failure than anything that I've ever done...and at the same time so fulfilling and satisfying. Nothing in the world that I'd rather be doing that raising these sassy little beautiful girls - the Drama Queen, the Sass, and the Beautiful Smelling Onion!

My Best Friend!

You know, I was just looking through some old photos of ours today and came across some of my very favorites of my best friend. This one here depicts exactly one of the biggest reasons why I love him so much! He is always ready to make me laugh. He is just so fun and allows me to have fun and be a weirdo too. --- I guess that's the heart of it...he's a weirdo. How could I NOT be totally in love with him?

He takes care of me and takes care of his kids. He occasionally does the dishes and is always happy to take over being the "Boss" when I need him to. The other day, he came home from work to a messy house and crazy kids and a really fat and tired wife who had been running, running, running all day. I went and layed down on the bed...he made dinner for the girls, cleaned it up, got the girls in bed all by himself...while I fell asleep on the bed, not to be awakened until 8 the next morning. He really loves me. And I love him SO much. I have the best husband in the whole entire world.

He makes a lot of sacrifices for us too. For example: he's never gotten to be a touring rock-n-roll star, a long-haul truck driver, a famous actor, live as a vagabond traveling from hostel to hostel in Ireland and Europe, or spend the rest of his life making movies. I love this sweet guy who has given up so much to be my husband. What an amazing man!



I love him more than life and I'm so thankful that the Lord sent him to me.

I'm Lonely and Satisfied!

You know, after 4 years of being a mom, I must say that I've become quite accustomed to it! My kids and hubby have been gone all weekend and I REALLY miss them! I get really lonely being by myself! I've hardly known what to do. I thought I would have the time of my life, but I've spent most of the day wandering around the internet and looking at the clock to see how much longer till they get here! What a boob I am!

However, on the bright side...I have gotten a tremendous amount of work done this weekend!!! My mom and sisters came up to Idaho Falls this weekend to help me finish some painting jobs! It has been SO fantastic! I can't believe how great my house looks and how clean and fresh and happy it is! I can hardly believe this is the same dingy little house that we moved into nearly 3 months ago now! When we moved in, everything was either painted dirty greyish off-white or manure green...even all the mouldings and doors! When Nels and I did the final walk-through of the house we got to the basement and I genuinely was so nauseated that I was looking for a place to throw up!!! How sad it is that the only thing that kept me from doing so was the fact that the only place to puke was in basement bathroom that the previous owner had admitted hadn't been cleaned in SEVEN years! (Okay, she said it hadn't been USED in 7 years...Be that as it may, they had 3 kids and the bathroom HAD been used, so I KNOW that what she meant was CLEANED!) We now have a sweet little home that still needs a lot of loving work, but is clean and happy and so warm and wonderful! We are SO happy here! I feel SO satisfied with the progress that we've made and would like to thank Melissa, Wendie, and my sweet mother for loving me so much that they would come help me with such a big project! We were able to get done in one day what would have literally taken me probably 2 weeks! We had to set up scaffolding on the stairs and it was impossible to get up and down them, so you can guess how well that would have gone with our little family! Thank you so much!
I know that it's hard to get a good idea of what it really looks like! It's hard to take pictures in a little room, but I think you all can use your imaginations!

You know, I really should have done the dishes before I took this picture! Ha! It looks like I DO have a few things to do in the next few hours before Nels and the girls come home! I'll take the time to post a few more pictures over the next few weeks of our home so that you can all get a look at it! I want to finish the baby's room first!

I'm SO mad!!!

So...I love cats, I love dogs. I have always been an animal lover and I'm sure I will be until the day that I die. I don't have a dog, because there's no way that I'm cleaning up poop in my backyard! Cats are pretty low maintainance, they take care of themselves...they're very independent creatures. If you look at my other posts, you'll see that picture of Lilie holding our new kitten, Toby, they are inseparable, both the girls love him and I could not imagine a more lovable "toy" for the girls. They think he is spectacular...and truth to tell, he's an amazingly patient cat. I've never seen an animal put up with so much. Lilie loves to tote him around with her. She slings him over her shoulder or carries him squeezed up tight to her chest. When she puts him down, she'll come to me and say, "I put Toby down so he can breathe."

He is truly a great cat...but so help me, if that damn cat ever poops on my floor again, I'll squeeze his little head off!