What did you get for your birthday?

Well, mine was yesterday. And it was fun. Or a better word would be funny. It may have been not so fun, but because I was in a good mood it was fine. 

The girls said happy birthday at breakfast and Evelyn asked, "It's my birthday too Mommy!"

"Um, no, your birthday is a little ways away still." 

"Oh." (note disappointed little girl voice). 

I then ventured to made my dessert of choice, a new recipe for a no-bake strawberry cheesecake because chocolate is still black-listed. And I did not go insane while doing it. One of my biggest flaws at this point is my impatience with the girls when I'm cooking. (Really Evelyn, dumping in one tablespoon of cloves into my scalloped potatoes is not appropriate). The cheesecake tasted pretty good, but failed in the presentation section because when you put it on the plate, it looked like the plate was being eaten by a giant pink blob. 

Then I got to make an unplanned trip to the doctor, again. The receptionists and I are on a first name basis. It's a good thing I can usually get in and out of the doctor's office in 45 minutes.  

After this, I went and got my hair cut, and it looks better now than it has for a few months. This was fun. And coming home to see my excited girls was fun. I haven't mentioned that Ben was home all day yesterday, no working on publications or his thesis. Very nice.

Dinner time rolled around, and we headed for a little Chilean restaurant that Ben said had a yummy steak sandwich. After waiting for our food for a few minutes, I hear some grunting in the car seat below me.      

         Gordo has decided it's his norm to poop every 5 days. So when he does there is a lot of it. And the carseat is the one place he has repeatedly blown out in.

Back to the restaurant. Gordon starts fussing for me to change him,  so I pry Evelyn off my lap to pick him up. (She's having miniature panic attacks because there is a fly buzzing around the seating area). I get the baby on my lap, and miss seeing the oozing mass of the yellow persuasion coming out the side of his diaper. So this is what I get for my birthday. I get pooped on! It was no small yellow stain I have on my shorts and in his carseat. Ben has a face of disbelief that this is happening in the restauarant. I clean myself and the fussing baby as much as I can at the table, head out to the van, where I discover I have 3 wipes to clean this up. Incredible! Luckily, a grocery store is a 40 foot walk away, so the dinner, the baby, and I were salvaged (and the steak sandwich very good).  

What a memorable 27th birthday. 

Kiddies

We blessed this darn cute kid last weekend, and had both sets of grandparents here and a great-grandma, but didn't get a whole lot of pictures because, once again, we were lame in the picture taking department. We need someone in our family like my brother-in-law, who always takes pictures of what his family is up to. It's in his genes or something. Or Ben and I just forget that cameras exist. 
Gordo's social side has really come out over the last two weeks, he smiles quite a bit, and doesn't mind lots of people around, as long as they aren't too loud. He initiated a cry this week that begins as soon as I start to put him down when he's wide awake. It's a super-whiny, "I need to be with the action!" cry. And if he's in a room all by himself, he'll start saying, "AH!" to get my attention before he starts whining. It's funny to me to hear this little voice register all over the appartment. I thought only the girls could do that. 
When did this kid grow up? She's looking so much older lately, and I can't quite get over it. I realized yesterday she is 6 months from being 3. Nuts. Love her outfit? All her idea, and Mom can't say much about it. I carefully pick my battles with Jilly, and this is not one of them. 
Dad, Grandpa, and the miniature professor. Any words of wisdom Gordo? "Sleep....sleep is good." 'Gordo' has become his official nickname. I wasn't fond of 'gordy' at all, and I hadn't heard much else. The girls started this one, and because I hear it 80 times a day, I say it too. And calling him this is not offensive (in Spanish 'gordo' means fat), but is actually a term of endearment in some Latin American cultures. Ben remembers on his mission that at dinners, some husbands would call for thier wives, "Gorda!" Ben thought that was mean when he first heard it, but companions told him there was nothing mean intended at all. So I will keep calling him Gordo. 

Here the girls offer moral support to the Grandmas making dinners. They didn't want the grandmas to leave, and almost every day since then Evelyn will ask if we can go to thier houses that day. Like it's just a drive across town. I wish they were all closer!

list addition

Corn is now added to the list, in the "not quite as evil" category. We've gone through 3 burp cloths today. A new record!

I'm still in early April.......

I cannot believe it is May. The Gordo is almost 1 month old. Life is slooowwwly returning to normal, provided I eat the way I'm supposed to. Gordon has a word, or actually a grunt and fuss to say about my diet. Chocolate and broccoli are EVIL. Citrus juices are not quite as evil. Onions, garlic, spices, beans, acidic foods (strawberries and citric acid, what you find in candy and in Fruit Loops) and sun-dried tomatoes are suspected evils. We'll see if that list gets any longer over the next few weeks. I hope not. This list eliminates about 15% of my diet and makes cooking more interesting.

The little guy is really quite sweet most of the time. As long as I get him the sleep he needs and avoid the evil foods, he does fine. He's even flashed me some good smiles, none of which I've gotten pictures of yet. He does have personal space issues with his sisters, who are guilty only of loving him a little too much and driving their parens crazy sometimes. Evelyn likes to come in close and give him 5 kisses, and by the end of this Gordon is waving his arms around, grunting, and trying to get away from her.

About 3 weeks

I have 3 kids. 3 kids. Crazy. Gordo is approaching 10 pounds. Maybe he'll be my first chubby baby.
My hair is getting chopped off. It's driving me nuts. I've finally realized you do a lot of looking down with a little baby, and I can't stand it in my face. How much will go is still being decided. This position is the dude's favorite.
The girls have been really good at entertaining each other the last month, for which I am so grateful. Now I'm glad they are close in age. It's sometimes bad for Jilly though, who I expect much more of because she is so mature for her 2 1/2 years. She's had potty-training trouble on and off all month, and while it drives me nuts I have to remember that she's not as old as Evelyn.

Evelyn had her first experience with motion sickness today. I was at a friend's house for a primary meeting, and my friend has a swing anchored to the ceiling in the basement. If any of you have seen the pouch swing at IKEA, it's the same thing. At the end of the meeting, Evelyn comes running up the stairs, kind of staggering all over the place, and plops on the couch. I ask her what's the matter because she's whining, pale, and sweaty all over, and then acts like she's going to hurl. I get her to the bathroom and only a little comes up. So I make her sit there for a while, and then we go home. Then this comes out: "Mommy, I was swinging around and around at Bella's house. And then I didn't feel good so I came to find you." I laughed and told her it was motion sickness. I don't think she quite got it. Thank heavens it was just that and not the stomach flu.

Hopefully in the next month I can accomplish getting ready for the day 5 days out of the week, instead of 2 or 3 and staying in my pajamas the other days. And get out of bed by 9 am on a regular basis. We'll see about that one. I'm awful about returing phone calls right now, so don't feel bad if you're one of those I don't get back to.

Normalcy. I crave it. I'll get it back soon though, and then I'll miss the little baby days. You can never have your cake and eat it too. That's why you take pictures and movies I guess.

Temporarily Out of Order

Hey all, we are currently without internet and we hope this doesn't last long. Our apartment complex went with Qwest as an exclusive provider of internet and since our promotion had just ended the only price we could get was $50/month. Ridiculous. Hopefully we can get something worked out soon otherwise we may just have intermittent posts here and there when we can make it to Ben's school.

We're alive!

We are surviving the 3 kid adjustment quite well. The biggest hurdle Ben and I have faced is getting enough sleep. Gordon is a good baby so far, the only thing was he had his days and nights mixed up until a few nights ago, and I wasn't getting more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. So that was fun. I go to bed early, and Ben stays up with him until 1 am or so, and then he brings the baby to bed. The strategy seems to be working, so we'll stick with it. Ben is very thankfully done with teaching for the semester, so I have his help with the kids for the next 2 weeks or so. Gordon hardly cries, and is a champion nurser. He's already filling out all his wrinkles.

1 week old

For the record, the C-section wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I don't feel like I really had a baby, minus the sleep deprivation and actual baby. I was more sore from the uncontrollable back and rib muscle spasms I experienced during the surgery. That was the painful part. Not a good time for your body to teach you about muscle spasms. I'm pretty sure Gordon and I would have ended up in worse shape had we not done a C-section. The OB doing the surgery said it looked like this kid was trying to backward dive into my rib cage (feet first, hands over his head), which is why it took them a good 5 minutes to unwedge him. I was going to name him "Mud" when we found out he was breech, but he's been too good of a baby for that. 

Day after coming gome from the hospital. Jilly adores him, but has had her regression issues as well. Like peeing on the floor 6 times in one day. She wore a diaper the next day. I was not going to deal with that again.

Evelyn has been a great helper, fetching stuff for me and helping Jilly do things she's too short to do herself.

The girls have been getting in a lot of Daddy time lately. Ben took them to Temple Square to check out the flowers with Aunt Lyndsey. They got to tour the top of the Conference Center, and Ben took some good pictures for me. Every time I've gone to see the top, it's been closed. 

Notes from a bizarre turn of birth events

1. The Irony. About 2/3 through this pregnancy, I picked up about 8 books on labor/delivery, and unmedicated childbirth. I wanted to do this one without an epidural or IV drugs if I could. So I read up on it. The chapters on C-sections? Skimmed through it. I got the general idea, but didn't digest it like I did other chapters.

2. I'm glad I asked questions when the c-section suggestion came up, because holy crap, once the nurses found out he was breech, there were six new people in there asking me to sign forms for this or that, the anethesiologist was there, and I was like, "Let's slow down the slice and dice train here! Do we have to do this?" So then they realized I was not an idiot and I wanted the info. I really just needed time to process it. 

3. And I'm glad I listened. It took them five minutes to get Gordon out because as the doctor put it, "It looks like he was trying to backward dive into your rib cage." His shoulders and head got super stuck. I'm glad I was kind of out of it, Ben couldn't believe all the pushing and pulling they were doing. Had we done a natural delivery, I really don't want to think about what would have happened. 

4. I'm really proud of Ben, he actually took some pictures of the surgery. (His history with blood and passing out isn't stellar). He told me he wouldn't look, but ended up taking about eight pictures without passing out or thowing up on me. I love him. He knew I would want to see those pictures sooner or later. 

5. The middle of surgery is not the time for your body to decide to teach you how uncontrollable back and rib muscle spasms feel. That was actually the worst part of the whole thing. The muscles are still recovering from that.

Retrospect (3 years later) - I should have just waited for him to arrive on his own. Chances are he would have just flipped back to a vertical position. Or he could have been turned. I know I am not a patient person.