Are You Kidding Me?

I had a bunch of lab work done last week.

Surprise!  I have low iron.  It's not really a surprise.  I always have low iron and go anemic on them when I'm pregnant.  It was expected, really.

Surprise!  I have high blood sugar.  Now they're going to do tests for gestational diabetes.  Are you freakin' kidding me?  I can't gain weight.  Sugar makes me sick.  I supposedly have a small baby.

I'm so frustrated.  Nothing has been easy-breezy this time.  I know I haven't had major complications, and that's a good thing, and I am blessed.  But this is getting really old, and I keep wondering what I'm doing wrong.

Did you know that stress itself can contribute to high blood sugar?  Imagine that.

The sorry thing is that I've spent the last 2 weeks really and truly trying to reduce my stress levels.

Apparently, it isn't working.

We Come from a Long Line of Love

...of reading.

We read around here.  We read a lot.  To be fair, I don't read nearly as much as I used to.  I think it has something to do with having innumerable children and an inability to say "no" to people.  But still, if I find me a good book, you're more likely than not to find me hiding out with my book so I can hurry up and get to the end of the story!

My girls read a lot.  They each have their own style and their own likes and dislikes, but they read all the time.  So much so, that this week we had to get all over one of them for reading before doing her homework.  I'm really struggling with the plan, which is to limit her time for reading until she is responsible enough to get her schoolwork done.  This is hard for me, given that this was my very same problem from elementary school through college (and beyond).  Still, getting your work done is important, especially if you are easily smart enough to make straight A's, but don't always because you're always turning in late work (again, where have I heard this before?).

My thrill for the week has been watching my Caleb-boy devour an entire chapter book in a matter of days.  Unusual around here?  No.  Unusual for Caleb, yes.  He's a boy, and he's lagged a little behind for getting on the reading train.  I had started to despair that he never would.  But lo and behold, you watch the girls suck him into the Warriors world (a series by Erin Hunter), and he completely takes you by surprise.

Of course, I'm just put out that he took the book with him to school.  Since he was my third child to read the books, I decided I needed to get in on the action, you know, to be a responsible and aware parent.  I started the book yesterday in the car while he was at piano, and I'm enough pages in that I'd really rather be reading that than doing my chores.  It's surprising really, because I'm not a fan of animal fiction, and especially cat fiction.  Ugh.

I'm sure it's a good thing that the book is living at school with Caleb today.  But he better get finished with those last 6 chapters.  And soon.

In the meantime, our other current reading passion are the Lightening Thief series by Rick Riordan.  And the third book in that series is waiting for me at the library.  Too bad I'll have to fight with Bob for that book.

I love my family!

Overheard

Rex:  Mom, Mom!  There's something disgusting in my cereal!
Elisabeth: Rex, those are raisins, because that cereal is raisin bran.

Oddly, he still looked repulsed.  But when you really think about raisins, who wouldn't be?  They're wrinkly and sticky and eeeewwwy, and I say this knowing that I like raisin bran.

I think my decision to refrain from telling him that raisins are actually dried out grapes was probably wise.

We Interrupt Again

I'm going to have to interrupt my nice cheerful posts once again.  That's depressing, because I was having fun making happy, happy, joyful, joyful, cheerful posts.  But alas, here I am.

I had my follow-up ultrasound today.

The good news:  The baby is still a boy.  Definitely.  No doubt about it.  (I could post the very graphic picture, but then Net Nanny would probably ban me from my own blog.)  And he appears to be healthy and functioning the way he should.  And my amniotic fluid levels are up and improving.

The bad news:  The baby's growth is slowing and they're not sure why.  He's a pretty small baby.  At least for one of ours.  And the growth of my uterus is slowing.  That means I'm not as big as a small house or  motorhome like I usually am at this point.  Probably by now, all of my other babies have weighed 3+ pounds, and nobody's stood around wondering if I'm really pregnant or just getting marshmallow-mannish..  This little guy probably doesn't even weigh 2 pounds yet.

I have been told this isn't necessarily cause for alarm.  What is warranted is more careful attention and observation.  Translation: 2 week appointments instead of 4, and a follow-up follow-up ultrasound in a month.

The suggested solution so far:  I'm not getting enough calories, and specifically protein calories.  I'm supposed to start drinking protein shakes every day.

I see a number of problems with this, the first being that I can't even drink protein drinks when I'm not pregnant.  My doc said lots of women add a scoop of ice cream to them and that helps, but ice cream sadly makes me sick these days.  I haven't had a second serving, or sometimes even not the first serving, of ice cream in months.  And two, not enough calories?  Hello, I've spent my entire adult life, and a bunch of my adolescence, trying to eat fewer calories.  I don't even know how to eat more and healthier calories, especially when I (bizarrely) crave nice calorie-deprived foods like lettuce and cucumbers and carrots.  Okay, there are the occasional cravings for Cheetos or Lay's potato chips (which, btw, I don't even like when I'm not pregnant), but I'm thinking the sodium counts in those are probably not too healthy when you have questionable amniotic fluid.

So, what's the conclusion of all this whining?  Umm...pray for me to be able to eat more calories?

Sorry, I was choking up there.  :)

Please keep us and the baby in mind, and pray that we and our family can be healthy and well.  We'll take all the help on that count we can get.  Hugs to all!

White Christmas

People in Oklahoma often wish for a white Christmas.  It's not completely unreasonable or impossible; but it is almost always highly unlikely.  Ordinarily, our wishing is rewarded with 50-degree football weather, and we can try out all the cool outdoor toys we get for Christmas.  This year, as most of you will know by now, we wished so hard that we got a full-blown blizzard, with near white-out conditions and driving wind and pelting "snow" (or ice pellets, if you want to be realistic).  Personally, I think I would have been happy with the 50-degree weather.  In any case, on Christmas morning, our kids had a ball.

Except for Rex, of whom you will see no pictures.  It was just too cold for him.  It might not have been, except that he wouldn't wear socks under his galoshes, and the first thing he inevitably did with his mittened-hands was to plunge them into (wet) snow.

Caleb, incidentally, has done much snow shoveling over the last 2 weeks. Who knows? Maybe more is in his future. We're supposed to drop into arctic temperatures soon, and much of the Christmas snow still hasn't melted.  But then again, ice is more likely than snow, and fortunately for my hard worker here, ice doesn't shovel all too well.

Talented and Gorgeous, Too!

The Thursday before Christmas vacation was Lizziy's* combined orchestra and honor choir performances. They all looked and sounded fabulous, and fun was had by all.

Several people thought we must have spent hours on Lizziy's hair, but the lucky girl has hair that holds curl well.  That was one time around with the rollers, one comb-through with a pick, and one barrette, all accomplished in about 20 minutes, most of that time waiting for the rollers to cool.  It's just sick and wrong.  But then, Hannah and I have hair that holds curl for all of about 20 seconds.  On the other hand, when Hannah or I don't comb our hair, it doesn't always look nasty.  Lizziy has to spend several sessions a day with the hairbrush.  I guess there's pros and cons to everything, right?

* For those of you who have been wondering, Lizziy chooses to spell her name this way.  It's unconventional.  But so is our Lizziy.

Happy 7th Birthday, Rex!

I had a really hard time getting a birthday picture of just Rex.  Everybody wanted to be in his pictures, and he was too anxious to wait for them to get out of the way.  Just take the pictures, already!  I probably shouldn't have gotten so annoyed with them all, because after the grand present was unwrapped ... er, I mean, retrieved from the trunk of the car after I had claimed to return it because Rex figured out what he was getting, all 5 of them sat down on the living room floor and played with the castle and its trappings.  It was enough to warm my little heart up on a cold night.

In any case, time sure flies when your baby boy is an adventurer and an explorer and all of the wonderful things that Rex is.