Thanksgiving Thursday!

I didn't even think about the fact that Thankful Thursday would land on Thanksgiving every year but that is pretty cool. We are very thankful today for many many things. Here are the things we said before we delighted in our Thanksgiving feast a few hours ago.

Corilynn: I am thankful for cups and juice and Mommy.
Lyman: I am thankful for my family and the baby in Mommy's tummy.
KaraLynne: I am thankful to have a long Thanksgiving weekend to spend with my family having fun making memories.
Andrew: I am thankful for KaraLynne who is the best wife in the world and that she made all this food even when she is busy making a baby.

I am also thankful that we are still pregnant. I may be the only 39+ week pregnant woman in the world who is glad she is still pregnant. I just want to hold out having this little tiny until 7 days from now when my sister can be here to help out afterwards. Yesterday the midwife felt my baby through the belly and predicted a 7.5-8 lb baby. That made me happy since Lyman was that size and he was so tiny looking when he came out. Corilynn came out a whopping 9 lb 1 oz. and she never felt like a newborn to me. I hope she is right in her prediction because there is something about a tiny baby that is so fun.

Well a very Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, I am off to spend more time with our turkey drugged family. Gobble Gobble!

Family Night Fun

Last night for our family activity we talked about what we were thankful for. Everyone got to put "thankful" leaves on their "Thankful Trees." The kids had a fun time thinking of things they were thankful for and putting it on their trees. We taped the pictures on our bedroom doors so that we could remember all week the things that we were thankful for. It was a fun activity for this holiday week.

Thankful Thursday

Can I just say how thankful I am for the calming spirit of Priesthood blessings. Last night I woke up after an hour of sleep and had some really gnarly contractions. They were regular and frequent and I thought - ohh man, I don't want this yet. Our support doesn't come for two weeks and Andy has so much to do at work and I haven't even packed a hospital bag yet. On the issue of the bag- I know I should but I am so lazy! Plus I have tickets to New Moon tomorrow! :)

Anyway I did all I could to remain relaxed during all the contractions and then looked at the clock and realized it had been 3 hrs already since I had woken up at first. I woke up Andy and asked for a blessing so that I could feel some comfort about the situation because really if it was the right time for the baby to come then I knew Heavenly Father would help things work out.

The moment the blessing begun I felt so calmed and content. It put me in a good frame of mind and reminded me of what I needed to do at that point. After the blessing I put on my hypnobirthing and got into relaxation mode. That helped so much with the contractions - they were not painful anymore, very manageable. I was eventually able to sleep and they went away as far as I know except for the occasional one I felt when I woke up to go to the bathroom or roll over.

This morning I still have the occasional contraction but I think the labor has stopped. I usually have a few of these episodes in the weeks before the baby comes but what made these different is that they were really strong, take your breath away types. In the times before they were more like the harmless Braxton-Hicks ones. Is it because this is my third baby? Seriously - I have been waiting 6 yrs for a good owners manual on pregnancy.

In light of last night, I am especially grateful that my Group B Strep culture came back negative. Yeah for not being Strep B positive! That makes one less hiccup on the labor plan to throw things askew.

Also I am so grateful that my order of delicious Florida grapefruit should arrive today - and if not today, definitely tomorrow. We order a half-bushel from Pittman & Davis every year around the holidays. My mom used to get a gift box of them from my Aunt every Christmas and it just doesn't feel like the holidays without them. Whenever we are home for the holidays we order some for us. This year we got it for Thanksgiving so that I could delight in them early. That is another reason I cannot have this baby yet.

Going fake or all natural?

Andrew and I were talking last night about an important issue of being "green". It is all the rage these days to lower your carbon footprint on the world. I have already made a post about that concerning my leg hairs. We were laughing and wondering if having a fake Christmas tree was greener than having a real one. Here are the key points to either one- then you can decide.

Fake Christmas Tree: made out of plastic - plastic is made from fossil fuels and doesn't bio-degrade in some cases. Some plastics can be recycled but we don't know of any place that recycles fake Christmas trees. A green point though to the Fake Christmas tree team is that you don't have to buy a new one every year and so you save a lot of trees from being cut down. In some case you can use the same fake tree for 15-20 years as we have proven by our dilapidated hand-me-down tree tree from Andrew's parents. Our tree looses more needles every year than it has some how and looks more and more like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Real Christmas Tree: Here you are cutting down a tree. That cant be good for the environment. Also most of the time these get hauled off to the dump with the trash. Some places do recycle real Christmas Trees but they just turn them into firewood or make things out of them (in some processes making stuff like paper out of trees also uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of pollution.) A green point to getting a real Christmas tree though is that it can be recycled unlike most fake trees.

What do you think?

On a completely different topic- 3 days until we see New Moon! WHOOOOOOO!

Little Tiny

Yesterday I saw a little tiny newborn baby and got so excited. Newborns are so cute - I love how you can pick them up - holding them under their arms and their little body just curls up under them - legs up by their bellies. They have these little round bums and are just so fun to snuggle. Anyway when I saw this little tiny baby I thought it must be brand new. I asked and it was a month old! I commented on how little it still seemed to be for a month old. The lady (a proud grandma) replied that it was 8 lbs now - growing from 6 lbs at birth. I chucked to myself - no wonder that baby looked so little to me even at one month old. My babies come out at least 8 lbs or bigger so of course it would look little to me. Ha ha - my baby might even be bigger then that baby already. My baby can beat up her baby any day. :) JK!

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful that I to have someone to talk to about worries or stresses in my life. Last night I woke up in the early morning hours unable to go back to sleep because I started to worry and fret over various stresses in my life right now ranging from the baby prep to Christmas shopping to the economy etc etc. I layed awake for hours worrying about different things and trying my best to get them out of my mind. When I heard Andy's alarm go off at 5:30 am for work I turned to him and talked to him for a while about the things I was worrying about. It was nice to verbalize the thoughts in my head and to have them cleared. Most of the things I realized were needless as I heard his thoughts on the matter. Regarless, I was put at ease just by getting to discuss things with him. I just dont know how people do it when they dont have a spouse or someone close they can talk to about these kinds of things. I would be a nervous reck sometimes if I didnt have the grounding element in my life of my husband.

A quarter of a century of greatness...

Today is my sister Tiffany's birthday. She like a million years old. JK - You cant make fun of the age of your only little sister because then it just means you are older. Here are some reasons I love Tiffany.

She is stinkin' funny. She makes me laugh with her witty sarcasm or off base comments. She also laughs at me which make me remember to laugh too.

She is cute. Man - she never ages - she looks just as great as she did 5 years ago. While the rest of us look like we are aging in dog years she stays forever young. (also a reason I don't love her - jk)

She is a little bit crazy. She is adventurous in ways I am way too lazy to try. She takes her kids on outings and takes great pictures.

She insists on making everyone of her family members confess she is their favorite. Its a good thing we have a lot of people in our family that can lie with ease since their real favorite is me.

She is a good mom. Every mom has strengths and weaknesses. In Tiffany, I only see strengths. Her kid can ask her in the middle of the afternoon for eggs and she will cook them.

She calls me all the time to talk. I love that we talk on the phone and that she is one of the few people I can call on MST that is awake at cheery at 7 AM when I am already needing to vent and it is only 9 AM my time.

There are a lot of reasons to love Tiffany and I'm glad to have her in our family. She is a vital part of it. Happy Birthday Tiffany!

Thankful Thursday!

Thankfully it is almost over!

Holla! Ladies and gents, the countdown begins. I have 28 days (4 weeks) til D Day. Yup! Try to follow my convoluted thinking here: 4 weeks isn't that much and what is exciting about 4 weeks is that in 1 week it will be 3 weeks and at that point everyone who looks at you to think "Wow, she has to be due soon" will hear 3 weeks and feel reconciled in their thought. Plus at 4 weeks left, I have completed 90% of the pregnancy. 90% is an A and so I can give myself an A for effort. Also at 4 weeks left, my appointments become weekly which makes the time feel a bit faster. The funny thing is though now as the weeks are less and less - people start to act sort of afraid of you. Carefully talking to you when they hear you have not many weeks left, give you plenty of space to walk and generally tip toe around as if the slightest rushed movement or sound of theirs will cause the ticking time bomb that is your belly will go off. Ha ha ha - I just thought of something. I am a ticking time womb.

The only negative side of 4 weeks or less is that every time I sneeze, cough or laugh to hard I feel as though my body is trying to pop. Its like that children's game of trying to sit on the balloon to get it to pop. You cant squish it many times before it will pop. So everywhere I go I get these thoughts in the back of my mind of how horrible it would be for my water to break right there. Like worse place ever - in the pew at church. A lady I know said that she was grocery shopping when she coughed and her water broke. She said she stopped right in the aisle there, left her cart and tried to walk secretly out. Ha ha ha.

The nice thing is that I haven't hit that end of pregnancy "wall". Runners have a "wall" they hit during their run that they have to push past to get their stride. Its like that for pregnancy. You have to hit the "wall" where your just cant stand being pregnant anymore to get to the point where you would do ANYTHING to get the baby out. So because I haven't hit the wall yet I am still quite positive about it regardless of the aches and pains. This is good since I still have at least the 4 weeks, maybe a day or so longer, to be pregnant. Hitting the wall this early is disastrous because you are miserable every second wishing you were done. I usually hit my wall about a day or so before my due date when I am throwing up (still!) and thinking - "oh common! Enough of this already!"

One last thought. I am so thankful for hypnobirthing! This is the most amazing relaxation/natural birth preparation method you can use. I used it with Corilynn and you don't have to believe me but I didn't feel the pain of labor. It was a quiet, series of tightening sensations in my tummy. If you don't believe me still - I have video of some of the labor (nothing graphic - just me during the latter stages of labor before the birth - relaxed and looking asleep - despite having contractions every 2-3 minutes and in the hardest part of labor -transition). I am practicing a lot right now to prepare for birth. The basic theory behind it is that fear causes tension (because it triggers the flight or fight response in your body) and tension causes pain. Pain comes from the body moving the blood to the essential organs and large muscle groups in preparation for a fight or flight scenario. Believe it or not but your uterus isn't an "essential" organ. :) Therefore the lack of blood causes tension and the build up of lactic acid the muscles of the uterus causing the contractions to be painful.

So hypnobirthing teaches you deep hypnosis as a a relaxation technique to stay calm and work through fear, any perceived threat of discomfort and the misconception that labor has to be painful. Combine this with exercises that naturally stimulate endorphins (the feel good natural anesthetic) and there you have it - a relaxed, controlled mind floating in a sea of happy hormones. If you have ever been reading a book and someone called your name but you didn't hear it or visualized a good performance on some athletic event you were going to participate in then you have experienced self-hypnosis. You are completely alert and in command of your own senses. None of the nonsense of "when I snap my fingers you will squawk like a duck." Though that could be pretty funny.

Obviously natural birth doesn't suit everyone. We strive for it because I feel healthier and I feel the baby is safer from all the drugs you avoid. Birth isn't about how you get there - its about making sure the experience you have is a wonderful memory.

On a similar topic - I am thankful for the laughs I get from my kids. Just a few days ago I overheard Lyman talking to Corilynn. They were doing some kind of make-believe play and deciding who was going to be what. Lyman said to Corilynn, "do you want to be a boy?" She said "no, I want to be a girl." then Lyman said "If you are a boy then you don't have to be pregnant." Ohhh man - I laughed so hard about that. Apparently I have made the idea of pregnancy pretty terrifying for him. He has been scarred by seeing what I go through everyday. I may never get grand kids out of that one without some serious therapy bills. :)

Of Leaves and Leg Hairs

I am naturally a very spoiled person and like any naturally spoiled person there are things that I would place in my "perfect world." I love the look of trees - green full of life and swaying in the wind. I love when they change colors and fill the world with vibrant reds, oranges, yellows and purples. I don't like when they die and fall onto my lawn and stay there until I have to remove them. In my perfect world - trees would always keep their leaves or the leaves would magically disappear before they hit the ground. My kids on the other hand have no problem with leaves on the ground - in fact they consider the leaves on the ground as one of the coolest things in their world to play with. While I was hefting a heavy leaf blower (are you kidding me - I'm not going to do manual raking? Not when I have a big strong husband around to do it. Pshhh.) around my whole yard today to clean up the carnage of dead leaves I considered a few things...

Falling leaves remind me a lot of growing leg hairs. As I diligently did my home owner's duty to my lawn, I watched still more leaves fall from the trees right where I had cleared the ground. It doesn't matter how well I clear the leaves, more are going to fall. No matter how well I shave my legs, the hairs will keep coming back.

So why do I do either? Well of course they both look nicer. They both are more attractive and both are considered essential maintenance. But they both pose a great deal of work and they both only bring short lived happiness. The only real difference I see is at least at the end of the season, eventually all the leaves will fall and I wont have to rake again for a whole year. Why cant my leg hairs go into hibernation for the winter too?

Stay with me - I understand I am working on limited mental resources ever since many of my brain cells were eaten by the baby. In a few weeks I hope to sound more rational.

Back to the subject at hand - Technology has allowed us many new ways to make getting rid of leaves easier. My neighbors have separate lawn mowers (ride on even) that are only designed to suck up the leaves, chew them up and deposit them like their own leaf brick poos they can easily throw into the forest behind their house. We have a few rakes and a leaf blower. The leaf blower is nice because it can get the bulk of the work of gathering done for you and then all you have to do is rake the remaining refuse into piles you can shove into garden bins to dump in the forest.

Why has not technology caught up with the demand to remove leg hairs? I know there are laser treatments that are supposed to make hair removal permanent but I also know people who have spent the 2 grand required to do it and years later the hairs still fight their way back. We also have waxing which makes the need to shave less frequent. And of course there is Nair - the delightful chemical burn way of removing unwanted hairs. But as far as I know there is nothing that we have that makes leg hair removal painless and permanent. If I could only get at least a leg hair blower -- I wouldn't have to bend and shave blindly the places I no longer can see because of the planet orbiting my center region.

And one last thought on the matter - Not shaving is "green." It saves on many precious resources when you don't have to take longer showers to shave or create the steel in my 15 blade Gillette Ultra-Power-Almost-a-Government-Held-Military-Secret-Best-a-Man-Can-Get Platinum IV razor. And I'm pretty sure like with animals - leg hairs keep you warmer. So no more wasted physiological resources keeping you warm. We could all minimize our carbon footprint on the planet if we stopped shaving.

Ahh but in the end - I rake and remove leaves. And in the end I shave. Both unpleasant chores but both essential to good breeding. Hmmf.