A Good Day

My friends and family conspired together to give me a much needed day off today. My mom, the saint, watched the little kids this morning while Nicole treated me to a pedicure. Then we went to Red Lobster for lunch WITHOUT KIDS. We talked like real adults and ate our meal without having to stop for bathroom breaks or drink spills or un-restaurant-like behavior. And Nicole didn't even ask me to cut up her food. I do not know how to behave when I don't have to cut up anyone's food.

Then my wonderful husband took his shift with the kiddos while Nicole and I shopped like mad women. We were all over the place. I picked up some much needed post-pregnancy clothes and I can't wait to try them on.

During this time when my sanity is on the brink, it is incredibly comforting to know that I have such amazing family and friends who can recognize that I need them and somehow know exactly what it will take to help me. It has not just been the events of today, although it was extremely refreshing to get away. They have listened to my ranting, offered their shoulders and do-it-yourself induction ideas, and, in Brad's case, faced the rage that I feel toward my doctor.

And guess what? They're still here! Coaxing the baby out alongside me everyday. It is because of them that, here on the eve of my original induction date, I can say that I feel as peaceful as I can feel at 38 weeks pregnant. I can't tell you that I'm not still a little resentful that I'm not packing my bags and setting my alarm, but I do feel much better than I did last week. I can finally see the end of this thing and I know that everything will work out ok even if the circumstances aren't as ideal as they would have been.

Am I still anxious? Absolutely. Is my body still ready to be all mine again? Without a doubt. Am I ready to meet my child? Could not be more so.

I bet you all are ready to read about something else, and that will happen soon, I promise. But first I had to say thank you to all of you who have stepped up instead of backing off. Thank you for loving me when I'm unlovable and irrational and unreasonable. Thank you for letting me vent. Again, and again, and again. Thank you for just being there. Thank God that pregnancy is temporary. I'm sure we can all agree upon that.

Whine

This is just a warning for any of you who may come in contact with me sometime in the next three weeks.

I am there. That point. The "if you so much as raise your eyebrow at me, I may snap" point. I find myself replying sharply to Brad quite often now and then two seconds later saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just too uncomfortable to be nice." And I really am sorry. I don't mean to snap, it just so happens that everything that comes out of my mouth at this point sounds that way.

The pressure on the inside of my body right now is equivalent to the amount of force that causes a bullet to leave a gun. And my mouth is that gun.

This kid is huge. A lot of people tell me that I don't look as pregnant as I am. That's because the baby has made him/herself at home right back up against my kidneys. My stomach doesn't have to get much bigger this time because the baby just keeps rearranging my organs to create a little pocket for his living room. I'm sure by now the feng shui placement in there is optimal for maximum flow of good chi. Too bad the baby is using it all up. I really could use some good chi right now. What is "chi" anyway? Guess I'll have to settle for a chocolate malt.

Yes, I want the baby to be born healthy. Yes, I know my induction date is only twenty days away. Yes, I know that whining is unflattering. I should be reveling in the last twenty days that I will EVER be pregnant. I should be memorizing the incredible miracle of feeling my unborn child's movements. I should be out buying diapers.

Baby Name Poll

I've already posed the question about whether or not Silas could be used as a feminine name and both responses were good. I can only assume that the rest of you did not like it and just did not want to hurt my feelings. That's ok really, I'm used to people not agreeing with my name choices and I know I have brought that on myself by crossing traditional gender lines and then (gasp) naming my son after a city! How could I?

Anyway, like it or not, boy or girl, this baby will be Silas or Sylas. Which brings me to the point of this post. Even if you hate the name, consider whether Sylas looks more feminine than Silas. I have never really been a fan of changing up spellings because then even if the name is simple, they have to spell it to everyone for the rest of their lives. I've had last names like this so I know how annoying that can be. That is why Cody is Cody and not Kodie.

Brad, while he has not made up his mind about the spelling either, thought we should consider this option and I think it's worth getting a public opinion on. So, what do you think? And just to be clear, we are only talking about the spelling change if the baby is a girl.

Do I Have A Story For You

I know that you all know by now just how excited we are to be moving and becoming home owners. After what happened this morning though, I can't contain the story of how all of this came to be. This is a long story, so settle in.

Flashback ten months when we were trying desperately to find any home for our family. We had tried at that time to purchase a home and even looked into lease purchasing one we found that had five bedrooms. No luck. After a divorce and nine years of single-parenting, Brad's credit was shot and while my credit was still ok then, I had not a dime of income. So we gave up and started looking furiously for a rental.

We finally found the home we are in now and the only reason we could get it was because my mother agreed to co-sign on the lease. Brad's name could not even be on there (I don't tell you this to embarrass him in any way, but it is an important part of why our current circumstances are such a miracle).

For the first three months of our marriage, Brad slaved away at Saturn trying desperately to rake in enough every month. Enough to feed us all and keep us in our home. As a result, we never saw him. He was at work Monday-Saturday from 8am-8pm. He had just become Daddy to Carson and Memphis and they were often still sleeping when he left and already asleep when he returned. Brianna and Meyson and I were still getting used to each other. Needless to say it was a stressful time.

We prayed everyday for a new job opportunity to present itself. Brad couldn't exactly go job hunting because that took precious time away from the car lot and every unit sold was like gold to us. We couldn't afford to miss even one.

And then it happened. Just by virtue of knowing the right people, Brad got hooked up with a man who had instant faith that Brad was just the guy he was looking for. A guaranteed salary?!? Benefits?!? Eight to five, Monday through Friday?!? Talk about an answer to prayer. Little did we know that was only the very beginning.

Sure, we went through some more stress this winter with Brad having to be gone for seven weeks of training, but overall, it has been well worth that struggle. We have health insurance (that's a first for me since being on my parent's policy).

Ok, flash-forward to March when we receive a phone call from our property management company telling us that the owners of our house want to sell it and asking if we were interested in buying it. We told them that with our sixth child set to arrive in May, we needed something bigger and that it was highly unlikely that we'd be able to buy anyway. They told us that if we wanted to stay past July that would need to renew our lease right away for six months and if we wanted to renew again at that point, that it was a possibility.

Brad and I began to get nervous about all the renewing we would have to do just to stay in our home for another year. After all, there was no guarantee about the amount of rent we would pay and we are already maxed out on this place every month.

We started tentatively looking around at rentals and again revisited lease-purchasing. It didn't take us long to begin to feel hopeless about the situation because five bedroom homes in our price range are just...well...*impossible* to find. We tried to keep the faith and we continuously asked God to intervene and solve this problem.

Then one day I was chatting with another parent while in the waiting area at feeding therapy (never thought I would thank God for my son's eating problems). She mentioned that she and her husband were trying to buy a new home and told me about one that they had looked at. Her husband did not like it so they were looking elsewhere. The house had been a repo and was a really good deal, so Brad and I drove by one day. There was not any information in the yard, but the house was empty.

We saw the neighbors outside and asked them if they knew who we needed to talk to about the house and they gave us the name of a realtor they knew. I called him from the driveway and he informed us that there isn't a lease option on a repo, but promised to see what else they had available and get back to us.

I thought the odds of ever hearing from him again were next to nothing since he had absolutely nothing to gain from helping us. We didn't know at the time that God had sent us the man who would not rest until we were in a home. (As a side note, the week after we met him was the week that Memphis started eating again. Coincidence? I think not.)

He called the very next day with a possibility for a lease-purchase and we got the ball rolling. The house had potential, but would need a lot of work. Our excitement over finding something overtook our fear of the work. We wanted it. He had us fill out an application and as we turned it in we began to brace ourselves for rejection. It was inevitable, right?

Nope. Again, God had our backs. Not only were we approved, we were approved to BUY!!!! Not lease-purchase. What has changed? Nothing. We are still the same couple who could not buy a home that was $30,000 less just ten months ago. Yet another answered prayer!

Our realtor wasn't satisfied. He had become very familiar with our family and didn't want to put us in a place that needed so much work. He set out to find us something in better shape and he came through in a major way. He found us a five bedroom house with two living areas (or one living room and the homeschool room that I had given up on ever having!).

We put in our offer and it was accepted the next day without so much as a counter-offer. Just accepted outright. Then the inspection went very well and we got a closing date! Everything has been falling into place as if it had been planned that way. And, we believe it was planned that way. Not by us, but for us.

The only roadblock left was getting out of our current home. All this time I had been assuming that we would only have to pay a relatively small fee to break our lease. If I had known the truth, we would never have started looking for a home. See? Another God thing. Anyway, my mom warned me that I should go back and read our lease again to make sure.

Of course I found that we were responsible for all of the rent until the end of our lease and we would also have to pay that "small fee" for leaving early. Talk about a bubble buster. We were panicked. What do we do? We certainly cannot afford to pay the rent here and the mortgage payment at the same time. How were we going to do this?

So, Monday I packed up Carson and Memphis and my huge, pregnant belly and went to the property management office prepared to be as pitiful looking as we could and beg, no, plead for mercy. I was cut short and told that the decision wasn't their's to make. They would have to contact the owner for that.

I walked out of there trying to figure out what creative combination of credit cards could take care of this for us. When Jesus said, "Ye of little faith," He was talking about me. Yesterday, after stressing about this issue, I decided there was nothing else I could do. Whatever will be, will be. And it was then, for the first time, that I felt complete peace about the whole situation.

I received a phone call this morning from the property management company informing me that this was our lucky day. No joke. The owners are allowing us to break our lease. Yes, they are. This is unheard of. They have contracts for a reason. They don't just let people break them. If nothing else in this story has persuaded you that God has been orchestrating this whole thing, this is the one that will do it. Incredible.

When I got off of the phone, I screamed a very happy scream and told Carson, "God loves us very much!" And she said, "Did He call?"

Well....yeah, He did.

No Wonder My Butt Is So Big

Ok, so today I had my 3D ultrasound. I was going to post pictures, but my husband beat me to it. Then he threatened to delete his post when I teased him about it. But, now he can't because I've linked to him. Insert evil laugh here.

Thirty weeks and still truckin'. When this pregnancy began, I was considering just going into labor naturally because the one time I had that experience (Carson), it was pretty neat. But, the more I thought about it the more it made sense that having an induction date was the way to go. We can't very well drag 5 kids with us to the hospital in the middle of the night. And you know that's when it would happen.

Today solidified that decision for me. I am thirty weeks and the baby is measuring three pounds, eleven ounces. Just in case you don't know baby math, that means that this kid will be approximately the size of a Volkswagen at forty weeks. Or around nine pounds. Same thing.

Anyway, I see my doctor on Wednesday and I plan on asking very nicely for a 38 week induction date. Then I will cry and pull his hair until he agrees.

New Name

Brad and I have baby names picked out. We have had a girl's name for quite some time, and finally settled on a boy's name a few weeks ago. The trouble began when we decided that we love the boy's name so much that it makes us very sad to think about not using it if the baby is a girl.

So, I began my crusade to convince Brad that it's ok to name a girl using a boy's name. I've done it twice. And I don't regret either decision. Also, Memphis was going to be Memphis whether he was a boy or a girl, so it would be ok to do that again, right?

I could see the problem if I was suggesting that we name our boy Sally or Mary (so sorry for offending you if you are a guy with either of these names...really, they're very cool names...seriously) or something like that, but this is totally different, right?

I could get hostile and remind him that I'm the one sacrificing my body to bring this kid into this world and I have every right to demand name privileges, but I'm waaaayyy to sweet to do something like that, right? Ok, don't answer that one.

I have to detour for a moment. Bear with me please. I had every intention of posting our name choices here when I began this entry. But as I write, my paranoia is kicking in as I imagine every expectant parent reading our names and realizing what incredibly brilliant people we are for coming up with such amazing names. They will wonder where we've been all their lives and one by one they will use our names until every child born in America between now and September will have the exact. same. name.

Ok, ok, my sanity is returning now. I will pose one last question. One that I very much want your opinion (if you agree with me...) on. Silas is not too masculine to be a girl's name, right?

And just for a little incentive, I'll post full names soon.

New Life

Our little addition is growing strong and everything looks great! Twenty weeks and counting, becoming more real everyday.


Cody didn't want to go to the ultrasound today because "it's just black and white and I hate black and white." I could not disagree more. During the ultrasound, the tech switched to the mode that shows blood flow (I think) and all these patches of red, orange, and yellow appeared.

I said, "Oh Cody look! That's not black and white." She smiled and then Carson said, "Mom, is there a fire in there?" That got a pretty good laugh out of the nurses in the room.

Overall, the kids seem to be excited. Hopefully that will be the trend.

All is Well

It's official, there really is a baby in there. One baby. So those of you who were hypothesizing about there being two can stop torturing me. It has a head, a torso, a couple of legs...everything looks great so far.

Carson surprised me by freaking out just a little while my doctor was doing the ultrasound. She did not want "that thing" (probe) or "that stuff" (jelly) on my stomach. She just kept asking when he was going to stop putting that thing on me. She cared nothing of the fact that she could see her new sibling.

And for those who don't know, we are not finding out the sex of the baby. I know, I know. But we have made our decision and we are sticking to it.