A to-do list grander than laundry

I would like to make time someday to work these into my days:

• bicycle race
• paint
• cook bread
• grow a veggie garden
• practice yoga (more consistently)
• design wall art
• make my own pasta sauce (with real tomatoes)
• cook soups more often
• have a dog
• golf
• ski
• horseback ride
• volunteer for organizations I appreciate, like the library

Right now, my days are full. Full with reading books, snuggles, park playing, swimming lesson watching, ball cheering, stroller walking, screen time tracking, daytrips, teaching chores, referreeing, renovating, cleaning, organizing, and more cleaning. But someday, I'm going to add these items to the ever-evolving to-do list.

Genes wonder

Genetics amaze me. I'm sitting on the couch (always with the sitting lately, nursing this babe. Who will soon be a gorgeous fat buddha baby from all this nursing. But I digress.) So I'm sitting on the couch, looking down the lineup of my kids. Blonde, golden-tanned, blue eyed Seth. Dark haired, dark eyed, porcelain pale Thane, my clone. Little blonde Claire is next, with her fair skin and icy blue eyes. And finally black haired Maxwell in my arms, deep blue eyes so far. Will his eyes stay blue or turn dark like my own and Thane? Will he have our pale skin that burns in the shade, or Seth and Troy's golden surfer complexions? He already has the tiny little nose and long eyelashes characteristic of our kids. I see little bits and pieces of both my husband and I in each of them, little bits and pieces of our own parents, our siblings, our extended families. My husband has the blue eyes and dark hair, although he was blonde as a kid, and big strong german features. My grandmother is Danish, where I attribute my two little blonde Danes to.

But how do all of these characteristics line up? How is it that my kids barely look like siblings at times, but in some ways I can see so many resemblances between them? And some other families have lineups of kids that look more like identical multiples than just siblings. And that's not even taking into account their personalities! I see little versions of Troy and I coming out in them so often, and often in ways that couldn't possibly just be learned from us. My nephew even sits like his father. Then there's the ways they're so purely themselves, like Seth's extremely outgoing personality. I'm quite a chatty person, but this kid outshines me tenfold in the chatter department!

So strange.

Week one

We've done it. Week one with baby Max is in. Honestly, week one has been amazingly easy peasy here. Claire has been Troy's constant sidekick, and he's been an excellent waiter for me (and cleaner, and grocery shopper, and general company during my copious amounts of sitting and nursing Max). The boys went to "Grammie camp", as they called it, a week of swimming, swimming, and more swimming in Nova Scotia with Grammie and Grampie Hutt. They got to enjoy a really great, jam-packed summer vacation that probably won't happen otherwise with a new baby in the house. It made for a quiet week for Maxwell and I to get into our nursing groove, and for me to recoup and feel up to doing anything again. It really was good for them to miss my sore-all-over, whole-torso-pain days, where I was consequently irritable. I can't wait to get them home though, I miss them. They left for Nova Scotia on Maxwell's day three, and I'm looking forward to having them home to share and enjoy their new baby. I'm also nervous about their arrival though, I feel like my vacation week is over and it's back to reality now. A demanding reality which is very busy, and noisy, and messy! I'm not convinced I'm ready.

I really love how there are certain things that having been through this before actually help. As much as the first week of breastfeeding hurts, the fourth time through I am well aware that the painful stage is short-lived. It's much easier to endure when you know it will only last a couple days.

Some things never get easier. Today is my first day home alone with Max and Claire, something that I've been nervous about all week. Even the fourth time through I can't seem to get my after-baby panic under control. My state of mind makes things ten times worse than anything that actually happens. Troy left this morning to pick up the boys, meeting his parents halfway. And before he even left I started to panic about having both Claire and Maxwell by myself all day. Pulling myself out of my snit always seems to be the toughest part. If I can manage to do that, and keep myself busy and calm, we really seem to make out quite fine.

In my panic this morning I tried to convince Troy that he should take Claire with him. For the six hour drive. Luckily, experience works in Troy's favor too, and he said that was a really bad idea and that I'd be fine. He's been through this before, I can tell. He knew that in an hour he would receive an apologetic call from me, confirming that we were indeed fine. That I really can get my own food and keep diapers clean and two little birds happy all by myself. I remember after Seth was born (you know that really traumatically difficult jump from one child to two, when you have no idea how to divide your attention that was previously only demanded by one child?), I would cry when Troy had to leave for work, and ask him why he just couldn't call in sick and stay home with me. Yeah, it was that bad.

This morning has had it's ups and downs, but overall it's really been okay. I managed to shower and eat breakfast, and even make and have half a coffee, which helped my mood a lot. I've even unloaded the dishwasher, a vast improvement! Maxwell did nurse a lot though, and it was a bit tough to keep Claire occupied while I sat with him. I was struggling with guilt from encouraging her to play by herself, not being able to jump up and help her whenever she needed, and feeling guilty for generally being relieved when a tv show grabbed her attention. My love hate saga with screen time lives on. I found myself cursing any mess in our house, she kept getting into things she shouldn't. And sitting and nursing I found myself preaching at her, just streams of words that she had no plans of listening to. At one point she took her diaper off, a pretty normal occurance lately, but I only realized later that she had taken it off because she pooped. Not fun.

But Max has gone down for a big snooze now, and Claire and I promptly had a big snuggle. We read a few books and now I'm enjoying our new porch swing while Claire trots around the yard playing. In the nude of course, with her bicycle helmet on.

Deep breath, I can do this.

Meet Maxwell.

He's arrived, and he's a boy! Meet Maxwell Oliver Hutt, born July 18th, 7lbs 11oz, at 7:53am.

We're smitten.

And now, we wait.

Today is the due date we've been waiting for.

Everyone has been waiting. The boys are patiently biding their time, filling their days with games, art projects, tv downtime, ball practice and swimming. They know when the baby comes Grammie and Grampie will be coming too, to visit with the new baby and to take them back to Nova Scotia for a week visit, a week these two boys are excitedly anticipating. That Grammie and Grampie, along with Troy's siblings, are waiting for the news that the baby is on it's way, to begin their six hour drive here. My sister is waiting, on call via texting, to be summoned for babysitting duty for these three when the time arrives. Troy is waiting, cleaning, working away on the house, waiting on me. And mostly, I am waiting, kind of painfully, my body so obviously readying itself for labour, teetering between contractions and nothing.

I've never made it to a due date before, this is a new birth twist for us. When I finished up work a few weeks ago I completely expected to barely have enough time to get things in order before the arrival of our new babe.

Troy's been sticking close to home and we've been puttering away at the house. At first our work was hurried and with the feel of a deadline pushing us. We still had our bedroom I was hoping to finish renovating. (You know, the never-ending bedroom project, the bedroom that's been gutted for six months? Yeah, that one.) Troy finished the closets in our room, building the most beautiful walk-in, a bigger closet than I've ever had. I painted the room, and then Troy put in the new flooring. (Beautiful bamboo, I'll do a room post soon!)

Then we moved in our clothes and our bedroom furniture. This unleashed a series of rooms opening up to be organized into what they are actually intended to be used for. We set up the baby's room, that had been previously used as our makeshift closet. And with all our borrowed time, I organized toys and reclaimed the playroom (where our bed had been during the bedroom renovation project). If this baby doesn't come soon, I might even get to organizing the office, where the office and playroom furniture had been stuffed. After a year, I actually feel like we've moved in! It's amazing what a few closets can do. 

Thursday morning I had a few contractions throughout the night and on into the morning. They were just beginning to have a regular 20 minute interval by noon, and I had just decided that maybe we'd have a baby by the end of the day, when they stopped. Just stopped! Now this pregnancy has definitely been different from the others in these early contractions. I've had contraction-like pains throughout the pregnancy that I've never had before, Braxton-Hicks I suppose, whenever I over-exert myself mostly. And now, for the last three days really, I've been bouncing between contractions that feel 'real', and this mild dull constant pain of smallish 'sort-of' contractions. With the boys, my first two deliveries, I really didn't have (or at least notice) any early contractions at all. Thane's delivery especially (my first), was a comedic scene that was movie worthy, beginning out of the blue with major contractions just two minutes apart and ending only an hour and a half later with our baby boy. You might laugh, but the fast pace was ridiculously overwhelming, especially with no prior experience to rely on! Seth's birth was similar, but with at least an hour of the earlier contractions that served as a pretty good warning to get ourselves to the hospital.

So that's the birth experience I went into my third pregnancy with. At the first sign of contractions I knew to get moving, a baby wouldn't be long arriving now. But Miss Claire was different entirely. I woke up with her contractions and hurried to get our things together while Troy called his mom, who would be watching the boys. And then the contractions just didn't get closer together. All day the contractions petered in, hovering mildly around 10 minutes apart. I wasn't even sure how to approach that waiting! Around noon, nervous by my previous labours, my mother-in-law came and waited with us, a nice distraction. By supper they had finally progressed to be five minutes apart and we headed into the hospital. By the time we got there however, they had gone back to 10 minute intervals! The nurse sent us to go out for supper, so we went to East Side Mario's and walked around the mall a bit. It was quite funny actually, it seemed so bizarre to me to just be walking around in public in labour, but the contractions were really pretty manageable at that point. Finally we reached contractions two minutes apart, headed back to the hospital, and within a couple quick hours Claire arrived.

It's funny how each pregnancy, each birth, each baby is so different.

Right now that baby Claire is walking around determinedly diaperless. Typical of each child being so individual, while my boys had no desire whatsoever to potty-train even by 2 and a half, Claire has decided whether I'm ready or not that she must get rid of the diaper. (Because of the impending newborn I really am not feeling so ready.) She wants to sit on the toilet whenever we're near, and comes and tells us, with her pointing and gestures, when her diaper is full, or just takes it off and brings it to us. Yesterday Troy brought out the potty and they have been inseperable ever since (the potty and Claire). She's pretty much refusing to have a diaper put on and carries the potty all over the house.

This is how she has been waiting for baby.

I wanted to see this....

I just realized this exhibit I wanted to see, Sculptures by Léo-Paul Cyr at Gallery 78, was only on display until July 8th.

Phoo on that.

Really must use my calendar for more than T-ball times.

Kid quotables

Out of the blue, my seven year old Thane says to me today,

"When I decide I'm ready to get married, I'm just going to use e-Harmony. You just have to fill out the questionaire and they'll find your match for you!"

Too much tv perhaps? Too funny.