He's here!

Josiah Patrick Moothart
born at home at 2:25am, September 29th
8 lbs, 3 oz
22.5 inches long

Maybe baby?

It is looking like Josiah might make his entrance tonight or tomorrow morning. I've been in labor (of a sort - very irregular but very intense contractions) since about 3am last night/this morning. Gabe took the boys away this afternoon to let me get on with it in peace, and about an hour ago I asked him to come on home because I didn't want to cope by myself anymore.

We'll see what happens! Please pray that Josiah arrives quickly and relatively easily.

Two days late

Posting this picture, that is. I'm not thinking about that other event for which I am also two days late. :)

When I was pregnant with Jonathan, we regularly took pictures. "Look, this is me at 8 weeks!" "Hey, at 16 weeks I almost look like I might have a tiny little tummy!" "Whoa, 32 weeks is impressive!" Etc.

This time around I think I've only taken two pregnancy photos. Poor Josiah. Hopefully we'll remember to take a few pictures of him. :)

Anyway, here I am in all my 40 week glory.



Because this is such a fun part of pregnancy and it would be a shame if I forgot about it. :)

Things you don't want to hear from your preschooler:

"Ahahahahaha! The computer is sideways!!!"

Financial crises and the federal government

I thought this was an interesting article. What do you think?

Much of the economic policy talk that is being thrown around right now is seriously over my head, much as I wish it were not. It does not make sense to me to have the government swoop in and save us from our financial woes. On the other hand, people with much more economic know-how than myself seem to think it is the only way to save us from global financial disaster.

Still, $700 BILLION???

How good an idea is it, really, to have Washington suddenly "owning" half of Wall Street? Their own track record with debt is less than stellar.

And where, exactly, is this tremendous amount of money going to come from?

Recommended

This evening I opened Google Reader to see if anyone had updated their blog recently. No new posts, but I did find this recommendation:

Duedate

Baby Josiah is still happily snuggled inside.

I'll let you imagine how I feel about that.

Beautiful

Jenni wrote a lovely post, complete with the most beautiful pictures of an emerging butterfly. Show them to your kids - it will be a great science lesson!

Satire

I don't know who wrote this, so I can't give proper credit. But it sure is funny!

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Laugh out loud funny

Even though I really like Sarah Palin. :)

Amen, Sister!

Jenni just about sums up everything I've been thinking about grocery prices. Only she makes you laugh about it!

(Note: Jenni uses some "amended swearing" on occasion. This is one of them. So please be forewarned and don't read it if you'll be offended. But you should read it, because it is hilarious.)

Learning the alphabet

Overheard tonight after bedtime:

Thomas, can you say "Tee, tuh, Lo-la?"

Well, it's a start. Maybe tomorrow we'll do a bit more work on "Tee, tuh, Thomas"!

Children and minimalism

I am becoming more and more convinced that these just won't go together. Gabe and I both have a tendency toward minimalism - we regularly assess the things we have in our home and throw or give away items that are just taking up space. Still, our house is very, very full, and I often get frustrated at the difficulty of keeping everything clean and organized.

Today we're having our carpets cleaned throughout the house. This is a once-a-year occurrance, so it is a big deal. (Yes, I scheduled it two weeks before my duedate. Yes, I am nesting.) The cleaner will move some things to get under them (our light sofas, for example) but everything else that generally takes up floor space has to be moved off the carpets. Being entirely too pregnant to do this myself, I hired my sister-in-law to come help me for a few hours and she (wonderful girl!) moved everything moveable out to the back patio and vacuumed all the floors. The result was this:



Which is what I wish my home could look like all the time. See all those lovely, spare, clean lines? Oh! Love them! Let's just all stand at the table so we don't have to have chairs! (Kidding, kidding...)

The trouble is that if you turn around you get this picture instead:



Not so beautiful, is it. And that is 90% kid stuff. Changing table, kid's play table/chairs, bin of duplos, baby swing, diaper pail, stroller...you get the idea. And that is just the stuff taking up normal, living floor space. There is also an entire closet full of child-related stuff that I can't get rid of because Josiah will need it.

Is it just a fact of life that with children comes stuff? We try so hard to keep toys for our kids minimal and creative (like duplo blocks), and not to get sucked into the current culture of "buy buy buy more! If you loved them you would!" and yet still we have so very many things in the house. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I let another person come into my house and make her own assessment of what we *really* needed to keep. It would be an interesting experiment, wouldn't it? Perhaps fresh eyes would see more clearly.

In a perfect world...

this is how doctors and midwives would work together. With respect for each other, the mother, the birth process, and a recognition of the need for hospital emergency facilities and careful and gentle birth coaching.

If it can happen in this little rural community, perhaps there is just a smidgen of hope that eventually people will realize that it works and put aside their differences?

I'm all for home birth, and I'll fight for my right to make my own decision no matter what an OB says. But if I could choose the very best way to birth my children, I'd want it to be just like in this story.


Thanks to Jessica for sending me the link!

The births they "don't do" anymore...

Breech births have been anathema in hospitals for quite awhile now. Most doctors will tell you that it is an automatic c-section; a few will try to turn the baby around first.

BUT, if you get to the hospital really really late like Veronica did this weekend, and your doctor hadn't noticed (??) that the baby was breech in the first place, they do indeed "do" breech births. :)

Congratulations, Veronica!

Updates

Thomas came through his surgery with flying colors. He wasn't himself until about 5pm in the afternoon, but from that point he's been doing beautifully. Today he hasn't even needed tylenol, and his chief complaint has been that we're not letting him eat crackers. We're such mean parents.

I finally got new glasses (they were years overdue) and am now trying to adjust my brain. It is protesting the process.

Yesterday, all night, and this morning I had millions of contractions (averaging about 7-15 minutes apart). Yesterday I kept telling myself that it was not yet ok to go into labor, because I hadn't yet bought any birth supplies, and Thomas wasn't in shape to go to someone else's house yet. This morning, since Thomas was doing so well, I figured that the weekend was a great time to go into labor and I might as well just get ready and see what happened. Unfortunately, as soon as I got home from Target (having bought the birth supplies!) all contractions stopped. Even though I knew that it was unlikely to go into active labor this early, I'm still discouraged.

My brain is tired. Real posts might resume around December.

Thomas' surgery

Thomas will have surgery tomorrow morning (Friday) at 7:30am to repair his tongue-tie. It is a short, simple procedure (as surgeries go) and we have no expectation of any problems. Still, he's going to be under full anesthesia during the procedure, and he'll have a really sore mouth afterward, so could you please pray for our little boy? Thanks.

Nesting when you can't quite pull it off

This has got to be one of the most frustrating things I've experienced in pregnancy so far. I'm nesting. Boy am I nesting. This evening I cleared out a junk collector on our counter that has been there since Gabe and I were married, and he looked at me like I was nuts. Ok, so the circumstances of this particular bit of clutter clear-out probably lent themselves to his conclusion. Maybe. :)

But I'm not really nuts, honest! I'm just nesting under the worst of circumstances. I have all these projects and clutter clean-ups and housecleaning that I desperately want to accomplish, only I have no energy, and two children who can clutter the house faster than I can pick it up. So I have this running list in my head: re-organize the bookshelves to make use of the new one, clear out the closet and reduce the junk that I've been keeping around since grade school, get the house really clean before the baby shows up and I won't have time to do it anymore (I have time now?), weed the garden that has been woefully neglected for the past three months, clean out the car, make freezer meals for when Josiah arrives, clear off all the surfaces that collect junk (where does it come from??) Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, finish working on the photo albums which are still about two years behind.

See what I mean? The end result is the most frustrating feeling of impotence. I think I need a mother's helper next week. Anyone want to volunteer?

And of course I love this...

She wears her baby to work! :)

Sarah Palin

So much is being said about Sarah Palin right now, and if I had all the time in the world I'd be right there adding to it. Since I don't, let me just say that I am totally, utterly intrigued. And I'd like to point you to some interesting commentary.

Peggy Noonan is always worth reading, and has written some very pithy thoughts on the convention and the VP choice. My favorite quote:

I'll tell you how powerful Mrs. Palin already is: she reignited the culture wars just by showing up. She scrambled the battle lines, too. The crustiest old Republican men are shouting "Sexism!" when she's slammed. Pro-woman Democrats are saying she must be a bad mother to be all ambitious with kids in the house.

BeldarBlog is new to me, but I am impressed by the (very early!) insight into Palin as a possible candidate with McCain.

Elizabeth (In the Heart of My Home) makes some interesting points about Sarah Palin's dual roles as Mom and politician.

She's a complex, full woman, who is clearly confident in her varied roles. She's a nursing mom in her forties who wears her baby to public speaking engagements. Her family looks very much like the big families I know. It was obvious just in the short time we saw them how they are all interconnected to meet each others' needs. My daughters recognized themselves in the teenaged daughter cradling the baby. And though I have no aspirations to ever be in politics, I could identify with this woman and her abundant life.

Then she defends her first post with strength and grace:

We need to come to our senses. Christian women who are threatening to stay at home instead of voting for a woman who has a baby and growing family are really missing a valuable point.

And all that was before her defy-everyone-who-said-she-wasn't-ready speech last night!

Commentary on that from Jonathan Martin was interesting reading (does anyone else read any of his political commentary? I find it fun and informative.)

Already falling for Palin, the delegates were ready to elope by the end of a speech that was rollicking, feisty, fun and impeccably delivered.

Danielle Bean (a Catholic writer whose thoughts I enjoy) has pulled together a variety of responses from around the Catholic blogosphere. The comments that follow are also interesting.

The observations about the Sarah Palin nomination that I found most interesting were those that had nothing at all to do with abortion, the environment, gun control, the war, or typical politics of any kind. They were the ones that had to do with motherhood. More specifically, whether a mother of five children, one of whom is still an infant, has any business seeking the vice presidency.

And I'll leave it there for now, except to say that I'm spending an awful lot more time caring (and reading) about the election now than I was before Sarah Palin entered the mix. Before, I was going to vote for John McCain because it was a vote against Obama. That is no longer the case. And if I, as the busy and tired mother of two-almost-three, can get interested in the election, I'm betting that there are a lot of others like me who will get excited, too. Will it be enough to get McCain into office? I don't know, but you can be sure I'll be paying attention and enjoying the ride!

To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question...

Actually, that isn't the question. The real question is how to make sure that all members of my family get the proper amount of sleep, given that we all want it at different times of the day/night.

Thomas is in the process of giving up his morning nap. He still needs it about every 2-3 days, but the process is definitely begun. Thus on any given day I never know if he will need to sleep at 9am, 10am, or 12:30pm. And then the question of an afternoon nap needs to be answered as well (if he slept in the morning he'll need another nap at 2pm or so; otherwise he won't get sleepy until too late to nap, and he'll be cranky and need an early bedtime.

Jonathan always has a morning quiet time (ever since he gave up his morning nap) and is currently in the process of giving up his afternoon nap entirely. Right now we're mandating a second quiet time on the bed in the mid/late afternoon, and he falls asleep during this time about once every 3-4 days.

Mommy wishes she could do nothing but nap, all day, every day.

Then there is night sleeping.

Jonathan is our night waker. He has always had a rather strange manner of sleeping at night (since he was very young he has awakened extremely early in the morning) but it is getting really bizarre now. Last night was somewhat typical: I woke up at 12:30am to find the light on in the family room. Jonathan was back in his room, asleep again, but at some point between 10:30pm and 12:30am he had gotten up and (I discovered in the morning) retrieved the 2.5lb block of cheese out of the fridge, taken six bites out of it, and thrown the rest in the trash. (You can imagine how very happy this made me.)

At 4am I woke up to find the light on in the family room, and Jonathan sitting on the couch, guiltily eating yogurt pretzels (which he knows quite well are treats that he is not to get for himself!) I informed him that it was the middle of the night and helped him back to bed. He got up for the morning sometime between 6:15am (when Gabe left) and 7:30am (when Thomas and I woke up.)

I have absolutely NO idea what is going on with Jonathan's night sleep (or lack thereof). If anyone has ideas, please let me know.

For napping, I'm also finding myself somewhat at a loss as to how to balance the differing needs of the family members. Right now, of course, we're just in flux and it is just going to be hard for awhile. But it seems like we're moving toward nap needs that just don't coincide well. If Thomas needs one mid-day nap, and Jonathan needs a morning and an afternoon quiet time, is there any way for Mommy to get a rest, too? Also complicating things: when in the world do we do errands, or take Jonathan to preschool, or visit with friends, if we're bound to the house by three different nap/qt needs?

Please don't remind me that I'm about to have a baby who will almost certainly not fit into any schedule whatsoever. Or that I'm about to lose my very precious night-time sleep. I might cry.