Couch Potato
I've officially gained 30lbs. so far this pregnancy, and still have 3 months left to go (hopefully) before the babies arrive (and that will still technically be early). I've also been having contractions for the past month, with several bouts of regular, slightly painful ones, so after my visit to the doctor today, I've got a prescription for Terbutaline to take as needed, and orders to be a couch potato for the next week until I have another (extra) appointment. I'm honestly kind of looking forward to having such a great excuse to not do any housework or cooking or anything and just sit and read the pile of books I've got that I haven't read yet. My cervix still seems fine, so that eased my mind quite a bit, and I've got an ultrasound tomorrow which will hopefully show that everything (and everybody) is still doing fine in there with no signs of coming yet. Of course, if the contractions start getting really frequent and regular, then we'll switch to a consistent dosage of Terbutaline, and if things still don't calm down, then I'll start getting daily steroid shots to boost lung development of the babies. Hopefully things don't go there. My belly is huge already, so I think my uterus is a bit confused and thinking it's about time to get things started because it's almost as big as it was full-term with the other kids. Hey, uterus, take a chill pill, ok? Could be over-activity/dehydration/etc. too. It has been over 100 every day here for the past couple of weeks (107 right now), and I do tend to get more contractions if, say, I do the dishes, or pick up my kids, or whatever. Luckily, Mike is being fantastically helpful whenever he's home, and my in-laws have been wonderful about watching the kids and helping out around the house regularly. And my ward is full of really great and wonderful people who I'm sure would be very happy to help with whatever if we need them to. My hormones have been kind of crazy for the past week, too, and I've broken down crying at around dinner time almost every day since Sunday. My poor family. It's going to be a long, tough summer, I think.
This last weekend, we went with my in-laws to California to see Mike's FarFar and FarMor (grandparents), and visit with his brother and family as well. We stayed at the Lawrence Welk resort, which was very fun. I got to try putting on a real golf green for the first time ever (I'm terrible at it, but probably not as terrible as I am at all the other not-putting parts of golf). We went fishing, catch and release, in a pond, with hotdogs and American cheese for bait, and I caught three fish, which was very exciting. And I de-hooked two of them all by myself, another first for me. I haven't gone fishing in a long time, so I really enjoyed that. And we went swimming at the pool, which the kids loved. And we went to a family party, and Mike's grandparents got to see Caleb for the first time (and have all their great-grandkids there at once), so that was nice, and Aiden absolutely loved getting to play with his cousins again. All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip, except for the contractions in the middle of the night our last night there, and the contractions all the way home in the car, and Google Maps telling us to not take the freeway but to take a little mountainous (beautiful) curvy swervy hilly road instead, which led to me feeling very carsick for half the trip, and Aiden throwing up. Minor negatives though. It was most definitely the last trip of any sort that I'll be taking for probably the next six months at least.
My parents went in to the MTC today, and are off to Guatemala in a couple of days. I'm excited for them, and am sure they'll do wonderfully, but I already miss being able to call my mom whenever I want to talk. I will probably be a hormonal emotional crying wreck when the babies get here and she's not here (then again...I would probaby be a hormonal emotional crying wreck after the babies get here even if she was here...I don't do well on not enough sleep). I'm hopeful that we'll figure out some way to go down and visit sometime during their three years there, though I looked at airfare the other day, and holy cow, it's ridiculous. Maybe that'll be what we spend our tax return on in a couple years. Ooh, tax return should be extra big next year with four kids all of the sudden instead of two. I'm sure we'll need the extra, diapers are expensive enough, let alone buying all-new baby clothes for two babies at once, and all the other incidental expenses associated with having children.
Lets see, other things of note since my last update...Mike and I went on a date to the ballet, which was fun, and led to lots of kicking from the girls in my tummy (did I ever mention they are both most definitely girls?). I think they liked the music. We went to San Diego where Mike shot a wedding (I assisted), and that was fun, though I got sick for several nasty hours the day of the wedding, and missed some of the time when I normally would have been helping him take photos. At least I made it for the surfing, the wedding, and the reception. My computer unexpectedly stopped booting up while we were there too, which led to some interesting hijinks trying to offload the photos from the memory cards to free them up for more photos the rest of the day. Booting into safe mode ended up working eventually, and then I fixed all the broken file permissions, and then my computer decided to work again, yay. We also stopped by a baby stuff store while we were there that weekend and got to try out a bunch of different double strollers. Unfortunately, they didn't have the one stroller I'd really, really like to see in person, but they did have all the others I'd been considering. For now, I have decided to hold off on getting another stroller until I determine whether or not I'm ever actually going to go anywhere ever again by myself with my kids. We had our 5th wedding anniversary, my 28th birthday, and Mother's Day all within a week, which was fun (for me, at least...). I got lots of lovely presents, like a (complete surprise) shed to expand our storage space so we can finally turn our third bedroom into a bedroom rather than a storage room, a beautiful green KitchenAid stand mixer, which has already gotten lots of use, several books that I've been wanting to read (The Way of Kings (fantastic), Cooking for Geeks (also fantastic), and Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid (a bit difficult for me to understand various parts of, but very, very interesting so far)). I also acquired this week a copy of Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians, which I'm excited to read. For Father's Day, I decided we should replace our waffle iron, sandwich cooker, griddle, and mini George Foreman grill, and got Mike a combo CuisinArt Griddler (and the optional waffle plates), which so far seems pretty fantastic, and will free up a fair bit of room in my kitchen cupboards. Multi-purpose kitchen appliances are amazing and wonderful. I sorted through a bunch of our stored junk, and have a decent sized pile to sell, and a smaller pile of stuff to toss out, and some stuff to move into the shed, and some stuff to move into other parts of the house, to make room for babies. I wanted to sort through a bunch more stuff this week, but can't now, due to all the contraction stuff. I think that's likely what Mike and I will be doing on his days off for the next month or so.
Oh! I bought window crayons for the kids. They're pretty awesome and I love having colorful scribbles all over our sliding glass door. I can't believe I've never used them before.
This last weekend, we went with my in-laws to California to see Mike's FarFar and FarMor (grandparents), and visit with his brother and family as well. We stayed at the Lawrence Welk resort, which was very fun. I got to try putting on a real golf green for the first time ever (I'm terrible at it, but probably not as terrible as I am at all the other not-putting parts of golf). We went fishing, catch and release, in a pond, with hotdogs and American cheese for bait, and I caught three fish, which was very exciting. And I de-hooked two of them all by myself, another first for me. I haven't gone fishing in a long time, so I really enjoyed that. And we went swimming at the pool, which the kids loved. And we went to a family party, and Mike's grandparents got to see Caleb for the first time (and have all their great-grandkids there at once), so that was nice, and Aiden absolutely loved getting to play with his cousins again. All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip, except for the contractions in the middle of the night our last night there, and the contractions all the way home in the car, and Google Maps telling us to not take the freeway but to take a little mountainous (beautiful) curvy swervy hilly road instead, which led to me feeling very carsick for half the trip, and Aiden throwing up. Minor negatives though. It was most definitely the last trip of any sort that I'll be taking for probably the next six months at least.
My parents went in to the MTC today, and are off to Guatemala in a couple of days. I'm excited for them, and am sure they'll do wonderfully, but I already miss being able to call my mom whenever I want to talk. I will probably be a hormonal emotional crying wreck when the babies get here and she's not here (then again...I would probaby be a hormonal emotional crying wreck after the babies get here even if she was here...I don't do well on not enough sleep). I'm hopeful that we'll figure out some way to go down and visit sometime during their three years there, though I looked at airfare the other day, and holy cow, it's ridiculous. Maybe that'll be what we spend our tax return on in a couple years. Ooh, tax return should be extra big next year with four kids all of the sudden instead of two. I'm sure we'll need the extra, diapers are expensive enough, let alone buying all-new baby clothes for two babies at once, and all the other incidental expenses associated with having children.
Lets see, other things of note since my last update...Mike and I went on a date to the ballet, which was fun, and led to lots of kicking from the girls in my tummy (did I ever mention they are both most definitely girls?). I think they liked the music. We went to San Diego where Mike shot a wedding (I assisted), and that was fun, though I got sick for several nasty hours the day of the wedding, and missed some of the time when I normally would have been helping him take photos. At least I made it for the surfing, the wedding, and the reception. My computer unexpectedly stopped booting up while we were there too, which led to some interesting hijinks trying to offload the photos from the memory cards to free them up for more photos the rest of the day. Booting into safe mode ended up working eventually, and then I fixed all the broken file permissions, and then my computer decided to work again, yay. We also stopped by a baby stuff store while we were there that weekend and got to try out a bunch of different double strollers. Unfortunately, they didn't have the one stroller I'd really, really like to see in person, but they did have all the others I'd been considering. For now, I have decided to hold off on getting another stroller until I determine whether or not I'm ever actually going to go anywhere ever again by myself with my kids. We had our 5th wedding anniversary, my 28th birthday, and Mother's Day all within a week, which was fun (for me, at least...). I got lots of lovely presents, like a (complete surprise) shed to expand our storage space so we can finally turn our third bedroom into a bedroom rather than a storage room, a beautiful green KitchenAid stand mixer, which has already gotten lots of use, several books that I've been wanting to read (The Way of Kings (fantastic), Cooking for Geeks (also fantastic), and Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid (a bit difficult for me to understand various parts of, but very, very interesting so far)). I also acquired this week a copy of Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians, which I'm excited to read. For Father's Day, I decided we should replace our waffle iron, sandwich cooker, griddle, and mini George Foreman grill, and got Mike a combo CuisinArt Griddler (and the optional waffle plates), which so far seems pretty fantastic, and will free up a fair bit of room in my kitchen cupboards. Multi-purpose kitchen appliances are amazing and wonderful. I sorted through a bunch of our stored junk, and have a decent sized pile to sell, and a smaller pile of stuff to toss out, and some stuff to move into the shed, and some stuff to move into other parts of the house, to make room for babies. I wanted to sort through a bunch more stuff this week, but can't now, due to all the contraction stuff. I think that's likely what Mike and I will be doing on his days off for the next month or so.
Oh! I bought window crayons for the kids. They're pretty awesome and I love having colorful scribbles all over our sliding glass door. I can't believe I've never used them before.