Hiya! Here are some updates for posterity’s sake. Or whatever.
…
*First off, thanks for all the well wishes on Sammy Davis Junior Junior! I had an OB appointment yesterday and thankfully he/she was feeling cooperative and let us listen to the thumpity-thump of its heart two times. With all the pregnancy symptoms I have {which is ALL OF THEM, I GET ALL OF THE SYMPTOMS} you’d think it would reassure me that the little bugger is doing just fine in there, but no, the week leading up to the appointment I convince myself the worst has happened and by the time I walk into the clinic my pulse is racing so terribly that when the nurse takes my pulse her eyes widen to somewhere between saucers and dinner plates and they have to keep re-checking it until I calm the fuck down. Which is right after I hear the heartbeat. Luckily I have a history of very wiggly fetuses so once I start feeling the kicks {16 weeks with Rowan, 14 weeks with Keaton} this gets much better.
*As for how I’m feeling? It vacillates between Eh, Ugh, and Somebody Kill Me, Please. Which is better than feeling like Somebody Kill Me, Please all of the time. I’m happy to report that about two and a half weeks after my midwife upped the {awful, terrible, loathsome} zofran prescription, I stopped throwing up, which means I’m going on about two weeks puke-free. The nausea? Still there! Because it’s an unholy asshole. But much of the time it’s manageable, except for when it’s not and unfortunately it’s completely unpredictable. I can have two okay days {‘okay’ meaning I can crawl out to the couch and stare off into space for a while out in the living room, or sit in a lawn chair on the driveway while the kids throw balls at my head} and then on the third day be so miserable I can’t get out of bed. Plus the side-effects of zofran are, um, HIGHLY UNPLEASANT {and I will leave it at that because I don’t want to traumatize any delicate flowers in my readership} but suffice it to say, I can’t really plan anything, as how I’m feeling is a total crapshoot.
I’ve left the house only three times in the last 8 weeks for things other than doctor’s appointments, to varying degrees of success. I was able to go to my mom’s for Easter which was exhausting but better than spending the holiday by myself. Unfortunately, sitting on someone else’s couch proved to be too much and I was down for the count for the next three days. Next I went to Rowan’s spring open house at school last week, and while I was extremely nauseated and tired by the time I got home, I was able to bounce back the next day {‘bounce back’ relatively speaking, of course}. Then last weekend I got a little crazy and went shopping because both mine and Keaton’s bellies were starting to stick out of our shirts and the poor boy had blisters from his shoes being two sizes too small. It went okay for the most part; I spend most of my pregnancies moderately to severely anemic so getting over the hump of pure and utter exhaustion for the most mundane tasks is tough. The big test will be this Saturday- I’m planning to go to Rowan’s dance competition in St. Paul. Not only is this a longer drive than I’ve attempted thus far, her group unfortunately is dancing early in the day and we have to have her there in hair and make-up by 7:30 am. As of this writing I haven’t gotten out of bed before 10am in eight weeks. I get up everyday between six and seven but the nausea’s so bad that I take a benedryl and rest fitfully until around 10 everyday, so getting up at 5:30 am on Saturday is bordering on delusional/suicidal. Oh well! I like to keep things interesting.
Because of this unpredictability, the grandmas still have been taking care of the kids full time, but I’m hoping to start gradually taking over in the next two weeks. The kids really have adjusted remarkably well to all the changes over the last two plus months, I’m so proud of them and thankful for all the support they’ve had, especially from my mom, Bill’s parents and Rowan’s teacher {who is seriously fabulous}.
I’m going to mostly shut up now and show you some pictures of what the kids have been up to the last few weeks…
As terrible as I've felt, it was really important to me that the kids were able to keep all their Easter traditions, which placed all the work squarely on Bill, who has been a total champ in taking over all my duties plus maintaining his own busy schedule of work/freelance/dad. {Not to say it's been a cakewalk for anybody but I'm not going to lie... the ease in which everybody carried out daily life without me made me feel sort of obsolete.}
Treats for the bunny... the bunny being Bill because the mommy bunny would throw that shit right back up.
{And oh yeah! ...Keaton looks a little different, huh?}
Right before I got sick I took him to his preschool screening where he spectacularly failed the vision test. They save the vision test until the end of an already long appointment so I was 90% sure it was because he was antsy, hungry and had to go to the bathroom, but because he failed and this info is all reported to the state, we had to provide documentation that we followed up with a doctor. I made an appointment with a pediatric optometrist at a time of day I knew Keaton would be alert and I also made sure he had eaten and gone to the bathroom right beforehand because I am smart and superior and of course he would pass except on the third line down he was completely lost and nonono, buddy! “You know those letters!” I encouraged, “Try again!” The doctor assured me it was fine, we would switch to shapes even though I knew Keaton knew the letters, as he spit out the first two lines of them with no problem. The shapes went worse, as he couldn’t even identify half of them on the second line and he kept moving his head from side to side for a better angle. The doc then ran a battery of other tests with the various space-agey eye equipment before asking,
“Have you noticed any vision problems at home?”
“Uh, no. I mean… not really? He runs into stuff a lot. But he’s a boy! And just turned Four! He does have to stick his entire face inside the book when I read to him and he moves his head around a lot as if he has to take in the picture one image at a time instead of looking at the big picture…but he’s done that since he was one, I just sort of figured that was one of his quirks…” and here is where I trailed off because even I knew what I was describing at this point was not a quirk.
“He actually has a moderate to severe astigmatism.”
“Shit. I mean shoot. Can you check again? I mean, are you sure? You should check again to be sure.”
“I’m sure. On a scale of 1-5, 1 being mild and 5 being the worst, I’d put him at about a 3.5-4. Sometimes children grow out of astigmatism as their head and eyes grow, but if his is this bad at only four, that won’t happen for him. He’ll have to wear glasses or contacts full time his whole life unless he opts for corrective surgery when he’s grown.”
To myself: Seriously? Why are you telling me this then? Oh some kids grow out of it but not your kid, he’s screwed. THANKS, PAL.
It’s been mostly not a big deal. Keaton was excited to pick out two frames {one for daily use, one as a back-up because let’s face it, four-year-olds are not super easy on and/or responsible with eyewear} and three hundred + dollars later we were all set to go. He’s not super gentle on them and by the end of the day the lenses are absolutely disgusting but he doesn’t ever fight wearing them and hasn’t broken/lost them yet so {knock on wood} there’s that. Still. It made me sad because I had glasses starting in third grade and they are a pain in the ass, not to mention make you a target for teasing, but even sadder to have to cover up those big, blue eyes.
So yeah, where were we? Easterish? Right. Bill made an uneven number of Easter eggs, so after the kids had colored their allotted number of EQUAL eggs for MAXIMUM fairness, they both were eyeing up that last egg, preparing their arguments as to why they should be the one to color it, when Bill said “Since mom has the baby in her tummy she gets to color the last egg”. Then he ceremoniously put the pink and blue cups of dye in front of me and added, “And she has to pick pink or blue to guess whether you will have a brother or a sister.” And then ensued the shrill screeching of the girl child hollering “PPPPPPIIIINNNNNNNNKKKKK” and the boy child hollering “BBBBBLLLLLUUUEEEE BRRRROOOTTHHHHERRRR” and so naturally…
I cheated and picked yellow. I honestly have no clue what sex this baby is going to be. When Keaton is hammy and charming I think how much fun it would be to have another boy. When Rowan says something smart and funny and snuggles into me I wish for a girl. But the truth is that this baby, no matter the sex, isn't going to be a carbon of either of my kids so I just really don't care as long as it doesn't scream at me for 15 months like one other baby I used to know.
Easter morning, obligatory stair photo before we release the kids to hunt for baskets. Evidence that the week leading up to Easter was crazy busy for Bill: His Zorro facial hair.
That afternoon we made it to my mom's where I was able to watch the kids do the Easter egg hunt which made the icky car ride and horrendous three days afterward worth it.
My pictures sort of suck because I have shaky hands to begin with {thanks, dad!} and the Zofran gives me tremors in my hands and arms resulting in a lot of blurry pictures. I'm going to have to invest in a tripod if I want to shoot anything decent this pregnancy.
Crappy pictures aside, seeing their faces as they discover treat after treat magically hidden in grandma's yard is one of my favorite things about being a mom.
I was going to include Rowan’s dance, spring open house, and her newly acquired skill of riding her bike, but I think I’ve already well over-stayed my welcome in this ridiculously long post. Hopefully I will be able to post with some sort of regularity again now that food seems to be staying down. It’s hard to hope after things have been so up and down, but I’m really, really ready for life to start hitting the upswing. Hope everyone had a Happy Easter/Happy Spring.
My super kaduper life 