Waasup?

There was a time with each of my kids when I realized how utterly in love I was with them and that it was time to have the next one. With SkyWalker and the Princess it was around 18 months old. Not that I don't love them all the time, but there was something about that age with the both of them, that it's just *more*. It was a good signal to me that it was time to start trying for the next, particularly with SkyWalker, because I didn't want that love to start to be smothering. I had been waiting for it to happen with Chewie at the same time and waiting and waiting. And it really didn't. We started trying for the next anyway but I wondered if I had just been split in so many ways already if I wouldn't have that same all encompassing love for Chewie that I did with the other two (this sounds so wrong, like I don't love her or the others all the time. I do, obviously I do, but this is just on a different level.). But the last couple of months it's been there and I realized it had nothing to do with age at all, but with communication. The other two started talking a lot sooner (even SkyWalker) than Chewie. It's taken her a while but she's finally caught up. Sure, you won't understand her and she'll need speech class too, but I understand her and that's what counts. We talk to each other now, and more importantly, she's funny! She's intentionally funny and her personality is just shining now in ways that it couldn't before because she was too busy being angry and screaming. Every single thing she does cracks me up. Everything she says. The way she says "Good job Mommy!" when I flip on a light switch. I am completely and totally in love with her and spend a large part of my day just drinking in her essence. I am glad that it finally happened, and it's good timing since I'm halfway to Quattro's arrival.

The Princess gets older and older. Ready for kindergarten. I was ready for her to go months ago, but I can see it's going to be much harder on me than I thought. She's become so helpful. I could not have survived the early weeks of pregnancy without her. Honestly and truly. Not only did she help take care of Chewie--making her breakfast and lunch and wiping her butt on the potty and brushing her teeth and just caring for her--she helped ME. She cuddled with me and told me that I wouldn't be throwing up forever and that it would be better soon. She supported me, emotionally, in ways that 4 years old usually just don't. She was amazing. Now that I'm feeling better when she's mad at having to clean up or do something she's fond of saying "When this baby comes you're doing everything by yourself!" But, for the most part she's still pretty good. She has tantrums here and there, but nothing like before. She has embraced the big sister role and can't wait for this new baby. Chewie has totally latched on to her and I think it will be hard when she's in school all day. But Chewie will be in preschool twice a week and hopefully she will be distracted by being a big sister herself.

SkyWalker is getting old and moody. He waffles between yelling about having to do "everything" when I ask him to do his laundry and then volunteering to cut the broccoli for dinner (that he won't eat) because he's "ready to help you Mommy." He plays with his sisters but not as much as he used to... demanding his alone time and needing silence to do his homework. He's doing well in school but it's clear he'd rather be home. Can't say I blame him. I like being home too. He's so mature about some things and then still very obviously a little kid about others. When I was wondering out loud how we were going to do 4 showers at bedtime in a few years, I realized that he and the Princess probably wouldn't be going to bed at 8 anymore (sigh) so we'd have the younger two go first and get to bed and then the older two. He replied yeah, the Princess should be able to stay up a little later, like to 8:10. Which was so funny, particularly since I can hear him turning pages until well past 10 pm.

Poor little Haze is still limping and confined to the leash. We've had her crated a lot as well, but it doesn't look like her leg is healing on its own. I am torn. I don't want her to have surgery. I cannot deal with it if something goes wrong. I cannot lose her now. But I don't want her to be limping forever. BUT, she doesn't seem to be in any pain. A large part of me wants to just let her go and run and enjoy her life and if her torn ACL starts to cause her real pain then we can go ahead with the surgery. Isaac's death completely took us by surprise. I hate thinking that we're depriving Haze of a quality life because we're worried about her leg. What if we only have a couple of years left with her? This is the cloud in the sky now. The last time Vader and I discussed it he vehemently disagreed about just letting her run. Aren't there tons of dogs that get by with just 3 legs?

I've run a bit here and there, some good some bad. I wore a one-piece bathing suit under my running clothes when I went out on Sunday and it really helped support my growing belly, which helped the back pain. I plan on trying it on the treadmill today. I fantasize about running a half after this baby is born... but first I need to get back to being able to run a 5K. The entire world is training for either a half or a full marathon right now and I am slowly eeking my way through 2 miles. But in 5 1/2 years I will be able to run whenever I want to between the hours of 7 and 2:45 because all of my children will be in school. Maybe I'll even run a marathon.

Catch up

I know.

It's been a while.

Everything has been on repeat... laundry, dishes, etc. I straighten up the house all day long and it's never done. Skywalker's room is fine because he's in school all day and he has to clean it up himself. The girls room is always a mess... The Princess is capable of cleaning up but most of the messes are made by Chewie. The large majority of messes are made by her. Vader's solution is to tell Skywalker and the Princess that they have to clean up her messes, but as the oldest child I just don't think that's fair. So I wind up doing a large part of it. She's napping less and less and in her room... making messes. The other day she put aveeno lotion in her hair and I had to give her a bath when Skywalker came home from school.

We're potty training now... and it sucks. This is the first time I've done it during the school year when we have to leave the house and it's setting us back because I put pullups over her underwear to try to help protect her clothes. She's fine when she's naked. She's getting better about staying dry when she's wearing underwear. But she just does not poop in the potty. When she does it's a fluke. She'll sit and try, but for the most part she's either pooping in her nighttime diaper or in her underwear. In some ways I wish I hadn't waited until I could stay home for an entire week or 2, but I didn't. We did stay home the first couple of days because I was sick. I was just so tired of wrestling with her to change her diaper.

I had Skywalker's Parent/Teacher conference yesterday and he finally has a teacher who understands his strengths and is positive and encouraging. He's doing so well, finally reaching his potential. He's doing his work well, but also finishing it, something he couldn't do last year. She said he takes his time, but she's okay with that because he's doing quality work. He's her strongest reader, she has a range of kids who read 22-108 words per minute and he's the 108. We already knew he was good at math, but he's also good at writing, which shocked me because he doesn't like it. But he says he doesn't like to handwrite because his hand gets hurt, he'd rather type. Apples. Trees. I have an online blog because I don't like to write in journals.... She's going to try to incorporate the computer more since he's so good with it.

The Princess is doing well in preschool and if I could send her to kindergarten now I would. She's driving me a bit crazy. I call her Sibyl... she'll be fine one minute, cleaning the floor for me, and then screaming the next because she doesn't want to pick up a lego. She's been hitting me A LOT. She's been in time out every day for a week now. I'm not quite sure what's going on... she talks like a baby a lot too so it could just be that she thinks she needs to act like Chewie to get attention.

Naptime is all screwy and I haven't been able to run a lot. This week has been the exception because Vader was home yesterday and he'll be home Friday so I'll have 3 outside runs. Last Sunday I ran 7.2 miles. It took me forever, but it was less time that it took me to run 6 the week before. I would like to run a half marathon someday, but I don't see it happening soon.

Haze is still on the leash and taking pain medication for her leg. It's a giant pain in the neck. I don't know how much longer we have to do it.

I have dishes that need to be done and messes that need to be cleaned up and books that need to be reviewed. And a throbbing headache. But I'm getting cuddles from Chewie so it's all good.

Blathering

School started a few weeks ago and we have yet to fall into a good routine. The girls were sick last week and that screwed things up. Chewie has been taking later naps, leaving me with very little time. She finally fell asleep at 2 (after taking her diaper off. Again. I don't even care if she wets the bed, I just need her to sleep.), I got the Princess up there shortly after and that leaves me with a grand total of 40 minutes. Yesterday we had gymnastics so she was tired enough to fall asleep at 12:30ish and slept a good 2 hours. I was able to run my intervals and shower, and they woke up just as I got SkyWalker off the bus. I'm not sure what's better--to have more time to myself or to have them sleeping when he gets home. I think it's the former. And I think we're going to have to get up a wee bit earlier in the morning so naptime is earlier.

The Princess is ready for kindergarten. She's ready to go and I'm ready to send her. I'm going to have to request a teacher who is very patient with little girls who don't know how to stop talking. Because she can NOT STOP TALKING. My head is going to explode.

Chewie is talking much more and repeats everything and likes to tell me to be quiet and shhh and "top it." She's very rude. She's peeing on the potty again but not doing anything else. She likes to take her diaper off. And her clothes. Big surprise. I don't know why my children always like being naked. I would like to go cold turkey and potty train her, but I don't want to have to stay home. And I can't stay home because of preschool. I need a school break, but I don't want to do that over Thanksgiving or Christmas, so that leaves February. But that seems so far away and I am so very tired of wrestling her to get a diaper on her.

SkyWalker is doing well in school. He has a nice positive teacher so I think things will be good this year. He is getting tired of living in a house with so many girls and gives me guilt trips on a daily basis. He is definitely growing up. He used to be so grateful for anything and this birthday he complained about the books I got him, the legos I got him, everything. I intended on saying "I'm sorry your birthday has been so disappointing." but instead I said "I'm soSOBrry, your SOB birthday SOB has been so disappointing SOB!" (No, I cannot blame this on pregnancy hormones. I am still not pregnant.) He left the room. Vader followed him and I wasn't sure at the time whether or not he told him to be more grateful or not to worry because Mommy does that crap to him all the time too... but he did eventually thank me for everything and seemed to be genuinely happy with it all.

I've done very little. Dishes/laundry/sweep. That's pretty much it. And run. I stopped writing articles because the payback was so little compared to the stress of trying to write multiple articles a week. I generally just read the books I have to review for VOYA now.

Vader and I went to see Primus last night. I didn't recognize many of the songs, but it was a good show nonetheless.

Haze hurt her leg, the same way Isaac did years ago. Vader took her to the vet yesterday who confirmed that she should have surgery. He also said, however, that we could medicate her and keep her on the leash and make her comfortable. At first we both thought there's no point in that if she did completely tear her ACL. But then I came on here and looked up Isaac's SECOND injury and all we did was medicate him and keep him on the leash for months and then he was fine. It was when I was pregnant with Chewie and we really didn't want a second surgery. I would like Haze to be healed... but I don't really want to do another surgery. Besides the fact that it's another $3000 that won't go towards redoing our attic (if we ever redo our attic), I just don't want her to have to go through that. If she has to be in the crate for 2 months and won't be able to lay right next to me...  When Isaac hurt his first leg he couldn't even get up the deck stairs. I had to put a ramp out so he could get up. When Vader touched it, he didn't howl in pain, but he definitely yelped a bit. Haze has shown none of that. She'll still run if we let her (we've had her on the leash for over a week), she doesn't yelp or cry or seem in pain. She's just limping and walking funny. I'm kind of leaning towards giving her the medication, keeping her on the leash, and waiting it out. If she gets the surgery she has to be crated for months and then confined to a leash for more months. So we might as well wait and see.

Short silly runs, big hills, sad dog

It's been 2 weeks since the Friehofer's and I have barely run. I took the week after off so I could rest my foot. It feels much better now, although it's not completely pain free. But now it's more that I am just aware of it, rather than out and out pain. When I stretch it in certain directions in hurts more. I'm pretty sure it's muscle and not a fracture. I don't think fractures go away on their own.

After the week off I started transitioning to my new Merrell Pace Gloves. It is a brutally slow process. It's pretty much like learning to run all over again. I can only run 1/4 mile or 2 minutes for the first 2 weeks. I'm in the second week of that. Last week I ran on both the treadmill and the driveway. After I got back from my Friday evening run I switched to the Pace Gloves and ran my 2 minutes on the treadmill. On Sunday when I came back I went back out with the Pace Gloves. I want to make sure that I test them on the road, but it's such a pain in the neck being limited to 2 minutes. This week I've decided to alternate runs instead of switching shoes. I did my "regular" run yesterday and then today did my Pace Glove run. But I didn't actually run in the Pace Gloves... it's recommended that you throw in some barefoot running in the first couple of weeks, regardless of whether you are transitioning to minimalist shoes or going all barefoot. Since I was doing it on the treadmill today I wore my injinji socks, no cushioning but I didn't have to worry about the 'mill getting too hot (although with only 2 minutes I don't know how much of a worry that is anyway.)

What I'm coming from

What I'm going to

My "regular" runs have been less regular too... I'm not training for anything, I don't need to get a certain number of miles or hit a particular pace, so I've done a lot of running with the Princess in the driveway, and yesterday I put Haze on the leash (and harness) and we ran around the yard. It was the most fun I've had running, but at the same time it was sad. She's not the puppy she used to be. I remember her pulling me around on the leash, but for most of the run she was doing a 12 minute pace. I told her she was slow and she did speed up to an 8:45 but she couldn't keep it up. We didn't even do a whole mile, but it was actually pretty taxing than just a mile on my own would have been. When we were done she immediately took a nap. We never really took the dogs on the leash because we have the fenced yard for them to pee in and they always ran around with each other. But without Isaac, all Haze does is lay around. She's lost weight from not eating as much. I thought she was only eating once a day, but Vader said it's been less. But after running with me yesterday, she ate her dinner last night AND ate her breakfast this morning. So I might have to do this more often with her. It's worth it to give up my regular mileage.

This sums up her activity on most days now.

Last Friday I ran the Big Hill on my road again and it just kills me. I had thought about riding Bridget's coattails and doing hill repeats, but quickly said Uh-uh. I was curious about the elevation so I uploaded my garmin data and compared the elevation graph from my road and the Freihofer's. There's a pretty big difference in the hills. See for yourself:

Elevation from the Freihofer's. There are hills but it doesn't look like any of them are more than a 40 foot difference.

My road. I did the hill twice during this run. I must have run a little bit further down the second time. In any event, there is a difference of roughly 150 feet for the first time and 180 for the second. 

I guess now I know why I kept waiting for the "big hills" at the race. Maybe if I did those hill repeats I could break 27 next year...

One day

Tomorrow it will be 4 weeks since Isaac has died. In many ways it seems like an eternity has passed, but yet I still feel like I am out there on the deck watching helplessly.

It's not easy to grieve for a dog. Or a pet. People don't expect you to do it. They don't quite get it. There are no funerals or rituals or ceremonies to help you grieve and move on. So it tends to linger.

We move through our days. Quietly. Trying not to notice the absence. Trying not to feel the emptiness.

Haze sleeps a lot. She wants to be close always. She lays under the table as we eat, not begging, just being close. I let her.

I am glad that I am home. Glad that I have filled my house with loud children for her to follow and love. If I were working I am sure I would have quit by now just to stay with her. She has always been a people-dog. I am sure that one day she will be fine. We both will. One day.

Acting out

I knew it was just a matter of time. Mommy can't do as much as I did, not paying enough attention, can't play... etc. It's natural to act out, but chewing a marker cap when we're home is just unacceptable! Haze has been particularly naughty lately--chewing pencils and markers and papers and things that she had seen everyday for months and was never tempted by. The kicker was yesterday though when we discovered a cap that had been destroyed in the living room while we were in the kitchen. Vader didn't even yell at her (he's done enough of that), just shoved the remnants in her nose and asked her why. She was shaking, literally shaking, to the point that I thought she was having a reaction to the marker chemicals.

Last night when I went to bed I hugged and kissed them both, difficult because of the bending, and I gave her some extra little loving and told her to stop being so destructive. It doesn't help that it's been so wet outside that they can't really run around like they should. And of course it's going to rain all week and Vader will be home late and I don't want to deal with the mud.

SkyWalker and I had a playdate yesterday with the neighbor. It was a lot of fun... I have stories... but I am tired and my "break" is over so they'll just have to wait.

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Almost there

I can't remember how long it's been since I updated last, but I've been told it's been a while. ;-)

#2's room has been successfully painted (white), the crib has been put together (by my amazing husband on Saturday while taking care of SkyWalker at the same time), the dresser has made it upstairs and all of the gender neutral newborn onesies and outfits are in it. I need to get a bookshelf (I already have one picked out--the same one I bought for SkyWalker) and little odds and ends, but the major things are done. The car seat still has to be installed but I think I would be pushing it if we did that this soon.

I'm only 28 weeks.

I feel somewhat silly pressuring myself to get all of this done, but then I look at my pregnancy scrapbook from last time and we got the room together and the car seat installed and it was literally the next week that I was in the hospital with the second bout of bleeding and subsequently had a preemie child. I am taking no chances this time. That and the fact that I think as time goes on there will be less and less that I can do. Physically or mentally.

A couple of weeks ago I had a lovely surprise. Some out of town friends came to see me (expected) and threw me a mini-shower! Totally not expected! Complete with vegan cupcakes. It was just amazing. The generosity of this group of friends literally brought me to tears. I am truly honored to know them.

SkyWalker has been particularly funny lately. I taught him to say "mommy's womb" when I ask him where the baby is. I can't wait for someone to say something about a baby in my tummy and have him say "No! woooomb!!!". I love it. He has a Thomas tattoo on his arm and proudly showed Pop (who also has tattoos) on his arms. He called it a sticker for a  few days but he's finally accepted the fact that it's a tattoo.

There's stuff going on at work... I don't really want to say too much since this is a public blog and I make no attempt at hiding it. But let's just say we're in between a rock and a hard place--more money for us at the expense of the part timers that make this place run. And considering that I would like to be one of those part timers the rock I'm stuck next to is even bigger....

I worked all day alone since BossMan was in the courthouse waiting to be picked or hopefully not picked for jury duty. I told him to say inappropriate things and to simply tell them that his pregnant co-worker isn't allowing him jury duty anyway. It would be a 4 week trial. That would suck. A lot.

Friday is my next Level 2 ultrasound. I wonder if we'll get another 3D pic. That would be cool. Oh--we went to the consultation with the surgeon last week. Surgery is not a given--they want to avoid it for as long as they can. They'll monitor my ultrasounds and see the progress and they're still hoping that this will work itself out. And there's no reason for us not to have more kids. Because SkyWalker had hypospadious there is a greater chance that if this is a boy he may also have it. Which would royally suck if it turns out that surgery is necessary for the kidney. That would be two surgeries by 6 months old (kidneys by 3 months, hyspospadious at 6). That's a bit much. Am I selfish for wanting this to be a girl?

I had my checkup on Thursday. Everything's all good. I have to go every 2 weeks now. I got the shot in my ass (I'm rH negative) and I'm up to 114. I can't imagine gaining another 10 pounds in the next 10 weeks but I suppose it can be done. They don't seem concerned (although she did mention that I had lost a pound. Well, yeah, you made me fast for the damn glucose test and then you made me wait in the waiting room forever. I'm sure I've gained the pound back since then).

SkyWalker is sitting next to me on the couch watching his fire truck movie (bire cuck moo-yee). He has him arm around me like he's on a date and looking to get some. It's quite funny. He also smells like urine. That's not that funny. Daddy will be home soon so as long as it's just urine I'm not getting up. Although I suppose I should make dinner soon.

Haze has just relocated so she is sitting directly in front of me. On guard. Her neck is craned. It's funny. She's my little puppy girl. Oh--that's what SkyWalker has been doing! I was in the bathroom yesterday and I come out and see him at the back door--with it wide open--wearing his scarf and hat, coat in his hands, calling the dogs. He let them out. And apparently decided they should come in. At least he didn't leave but his hat and scarf being on was scary. And then when we got home today I let the dogs out, hung up my coat, heard the scratching on the door, and saw him run to it, so I ran to it, but he was closer and well, faster, so he got there first and let them in! Which could be useful if he would promise not to go out himself. But 2 year olds are not to be trusted, so the door has to be locked all the time now. Knowing Haze she would lead him to gate and between the two of them they'd figure out how to get out of the fenced yard and run free.

I really should make dinner now. Sometimes I wish we didn't live so far out. Delivery is never an option. Ever. We have never had food delivered. Ugh. And now I am starving.

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