life right now

So I'm not even going to bother apologizing for however long it's been since the last time I wrote a blog post, because I've already done that many times before. And I also won't make any promises about mending my ways and henceforth blogging three times a week religiously, because we all know that's not likely to happen!

So, life right now is:

- living in Maryland where we are MOSTLY completely moved into our new house (except for the garage, closets, and basement... heh)

- staying home with 3 kids full-time

- homeschooling Faith in kindergarten

- driving to the NICU every day to visit my 1-month-old twins (yup)

- pumping round-the-clock

- admitting I can't "do it all," trusting God, and either outsourcing or letting some things go

I'll try to go into the whats, whys, hows, and wherefores of each of those things eventually... but believe it or not, it's the last thing on that list that's the most difficult for this type-A control freak who's always prided herself on her self-sufficiency and competence. (I'm a decided INTJ, for any Myers-Briggs aficionados.) I've always been the person who says to herself, "I can handle it. I've got this." Wellllllll........

So suffice it to say, this summer has been a much-needed and long-overdue lesson in surrendering my plans to God and being okay with that.

Besides, they're worth it:

answer me this: coffee, fro-yo, and goal-setting

So I've missed a bunch of these, but today I'm linking up with Catholic All Year (who's still hosting this linkup, incredibly, like an hour after having a baby) for Answer Me This!

1. What's your favorite grocery store splurge?

Good coffee. I mean, I don't buy the super-fanciest stuff, but I buy whole-bean coffee and we grind it at home. We love coffee.

2. How's your penmanship?

It's okay. It's not beautiful, but it's decipherable. Which automatically makes it way, way better than most other doctors' penmanship.

3. Do you have a "Summer Bucket List?"

Nope. For one thing, I have all little kids (my oldest is 4), so summer isn't a particularly special/different time of year yet. For another thing, we currently live on Guam, which is the Land of Endless Summer... it's mid-80s and humid year-round. And for a THIRD thing, I'm not big into setting myself lists of "requirements" that aren't actually requirements.

Okay. That last one is a lie. I'm an INTJ; I looooove making goals for myself that I NEED TO DO, that no one else actually thinks I need to do. But only if it's my own idea, or if I think it's a good idea independently. I hate doing things just because someone else thinks I should do it.

(Found this on Pinterest. Source page gone. Sorry.)

4. What's the best thing on the radio right now?

Hm. Honestly, I don't really listen to the radio. I'm kind of a Spotify + podcasts sort of girl.

5. Ice cream or frozen yogurt?

Well, I find this to be an entirely different sort of question than say, "Coke or Pepsi?" "Milk chocolate or dark chocolate?" or "Twizzlers or Red Vines?" (For the record: Coke, dark chocolate, and Twizzlers. Definitely.) This is more like, "Strawberries or watermelon?" I don't know. They're different, and both delicious. 

Now the caveat here is that we're talking about, like, tart yogurty frozen yogurt from a frozen yogurt shop. If we're talking about "frozen yogurt" from the grocery store, aka "fake ice cream," then I'm going to have to go with ice cream. 100%.

Yes.

No.

6. Have you had that baby NOW? (Again, you can skip this one if you want.)

Yup, and he's 3 months old today!

Head back to the linkup!

what's the deal with developmental milestones?

I've heard a bit of hating on the concept of developmental milestones lately. Many parents seem sort of derisive and indignant about the idea, insisting that "each child is an individual," "they all develop at their own pace," and "the doctor is just trying to scare you." Well, the first two are true, but I doubt the third one is (unless your doctor is a terrible person, and that's a whole other issue).

I think people misunderstand what developmental milestones are and what they aren't.

They aren't hard-and-fast deadlines that every child must reach at the exact age specified OR ELSE. For instance, rolling over is a "four month milestone." But some babies roll over at 3 months, and some at 6 months. That's generally okay. It's an estimate, an average.

They aren't a judgement on your child or your parenting. If your doctor expresses concern that your 15-month-old doesn't say any words yet, they're not saying that your child is dumb, or that you're a bad parent. They're not even saying-- and this is key-- that anything is necessarily wrong at all... which leads to my next point.

Developmental milestones aren't meant to be taken in isolation. If an 8-month-old baby isn't sitting up yet (typically a "six month milestone"), but everything else is totally fine-- he's babbling, putting things in his mouth, grabbing toys, scooting across the floor-- it's probably no big deal. It's just something to keep watching for and encouraging. But if he's not doing any of those things yet? That could be a sign that something's wrong.

And that leads to what developmental milestones actually are.

Developmental milestones are a group of guidelines, meant to be taken as a group, illustrating the rate at which the average child develops. The AVERAGE child-- which means that kids may hit some milestones earlier and some later. The milestones are meant to give parents and doctors and other caregivers an overall picture about how a child is doing in several areas of development (usually categorized as fine motor, gross motor, communication, problem solving, and personal/social).

So why do we need these specific milestone markers that stress parents out, if the individual markers don't matter and they're just meant to give an overall picture? Several reasons:

•    Parents may not realize their child is behind in a certain area, especially if they don't have a lot of prior experience with kids, because their child is their "normal."
•    Doctors only see the child briefly, intermittently, and under strange and sometimes scary (to the child) circumstances, so they're unlikely to really see the whole child as he/she is.
•    Studies have demonstrated over and over that kids who do have true delays are identified much earlier when objective milestone questionnaires/evaluations are used, rather than the parent/teacher/doctor/etc relying on their general impression.

It's also important to note that even if a child does have a true delay in some area, it doesn't necessarily mean there is some terrible scary underlying problem that will make their life super difficult. They would probably be fine eventually anyway. My oldest daughter, Faith, had speech delay as a toddler; at 17 months old she really didn't say any words at all. She didn't have any other delays. We got speech therapy through Early Intervention and by the time she was 2, her speech was normal for her age. Would it have normalized if we didn't get therapy? Probably, yeah-- though it probably would've happened later (and it was frustrating to her to be unable to communicate well). But we also know that, on average, outcomes are better if kids get treatment for whatever delay they have earlier rather than later. There's no benefit to waiting.

"Missing" a true delay, on the other hand, can be downright harmful. So if doctors express concern about a certain milestone, they're not trying to scare you. It's just one piece of evidence that they don't want to miss, because while one piece may not mean anything, enough pieces of evidence put together can. Imagine one of those old-fashioned balance scales, with one side being "concerning," and the other side "not concerning." If you have thirty pebbles in the "not concerning" side and move one to the "concerning" side... well, who cares. But if you move ten to the "concerning" side, well then the scale starts to tilt. And if you paid no attention to each individual pebble, you would never realize they were adding up.

I also see a lot of fear when it comes to diagnoses like developmental delay-- not just among parents, but among doctors too. Everyone is so hesitant to "label" a child with a diagnosis, and would prefer to just call him/her a "late bloomer" and "keep an eye on things." But what everyone forgets is that the label doesn't change the child. Whether or not Faith was given the diagnosis of "speech delay," she still wasn't talking. What the label does do is make the child eligible for services that can help. Even if the diagnosis is later found to be inaccurate, the only concrete thing that has changed is that the child was given the opportunity to have occupational therapy or classroom modifications or whatever. (Maybe parents are worried that the "label" will cause others to treat their child differently... but here's the kicker:  you don't have to tell anyone if you don't want to.)

So basically:

1- If you're concerned, don't let your doctor blow you off. (Really.)
2- If your doctor is concerned, don't blow him/her off either. It can't hurt to look into it.
3- Even if everything turns out to be fine-- and in most cases it will!-- it doesn't mean either one of you was wrong to be concerned.

answer me this: tiny babies and sleeping in public

The Answer Me This linkup is back for the summer! Go join Kendra's linkup!

1. Any big plans for the summer?

Yes! I'm going to the Edel Gathering next month (my Christmas gift from Jack!)... which is slightly insane, considering that the amount of time I'll be in the air will be approximately equal to the amount of time I'll be in Charleston. But... still, I'm excited! Besides, traveling with an under-3-month-old baby is practically like traveling alone, just with, y'know, diapers and nursing and stuff. But it is NOT like traveling with a toddler. So that alone makes it practically heaven.


2. What is the strangest thing you believed as a child?

In my parents' home is a largish copy of a famous portrait of Jesus:

image source

When my childhood best friend Stacy and I were in 3rd grade or so, we convinced ourselves that if we stared at this painting long enough, it would move. And then, being 8-year-old girls, we would run shrieking and giggling out of the room and hide in the closet. And then come back two minutes later to do it again.


3. What is your favorite amusement park ride? (can be a specific one at a specific park or just a type of ride)

I'm totally a roller coaster person. And being from Ohio, we went to Cedar Point every summer of my growing-up years, so I've been on a lot of roller coasters. And I can say with confidence that the Magnum is my thing. It may not be the fanciest or flashiest coaster anymore-- though when it was built it was the tallest in the world-- but it's just plain fun. (Click the link for a POV video!)


4. What's on your summer reading list?

I've got three books that I'm in the midst of reading currently:
- Kristin Lavransdatter-- I'm about 1/3 of the way through. LOVE.
- On Food and Cooking-- a nonfiction book on why and how different foods are cooked the way they are... not so much from a historical/cultural standpoint, but more from a literal, chemical standpoint. Like, you can't just replace cream in a recipe with milk to make it lower-calorie, because the protein composition is different and it won't cook the same way. d I'm also intermittently reading On Food and Cooking. Also on my started-but-not-yet-finished list is The Paris Wife.
- The Paris Wife-- a historical novel about Ernest Hemingway's wife, recommended to me by my sister-in-law and mother-in-law. Pretty good so far.


5. Have you ever fallen asleep in public?

Sure. Let me count the ways:
- in college lecture halls (yep) 
- on the train 
- on airplanes 
- at work in the hospital (not just in my call room, but like... at the nurses' station and in the ER) 
I'm sure there are others, but I'm too sleep-deprived to think of them right now.


6. What is your favorite smell?

Newborn baby head. The amazingness of this smell is scientifically proven.

{p/h/f/r} - tropical weirdness & silly babies

Linking up with Like Mother, Like Daughter for {pretty, happy, funny, real}!

Pretty:

A strange thing about living close to the equator is the way the days are pretty much the same length year-round (not to mention the lack of seasonal variation in weather). It really weirded me out when we first moved here; it felt like summer, it was JULY for goodness' sake-- not that that makes much difference here-- and yet the sun was setting before 7pm. It also rises by around 6am every day... which tends to lead to early-rising toddlers as well. But one benefit of being up with the sun is getting to walk into your back yard and see this:

Happy:

I mentioned in my last post about the free printable high-contrast images for newborns that I love. I claimed newborns love them too, and here I present Video Proof! Soak in the excited baby limb-flailing and fast breathing! (Oh, and a cameo from Josie.)

Funny:

These are Faith's favorite socks. She wears them year-round. I've considered taking them out of her drawer and putting them away (on the closet shelf? with the seasonal decor? in the trash?), but I mean... if jack-o-lantern socks made ME that happy, I'd wear them too.

Real:

Having three little kids who are reasonably close in age is great. They love each other dearly. Faith and Josie play fantastically together (or, well, as fantastically as one could expect a toddler and preschooler to play). But then there are also times like these:

Sigh.

To the linkup with you!

five favorites - newborn baby edition

With things how they are, 'round here we've been all about that baby, 'bout that baby. You know how it is. So now that I'm three kids in, I'm getting a pretty good idea of which newborn baby products I love and which I'm kinda just "meh" about. Here are five that I love!

1. Fisher Price Newborn Rock 'n Play Sleeper

Love this thing. It's portable and lightweight, doesn't take up much space, and gives me somewhere convenient to set the baby down during the day without worrying about him accidentally rolling off a piece of furniture, or getting stepped on by the dog. Plus it looks comfy. I kind of want a grown-up sized version.

We actually have a simpler version that doesn't vibrate, which is fine with me... I don't love the battery-operated kid-stuffs, myself. AND it was given to us by a friend, so.... free! Even better!

2. Free printable newborn infant visual stimuli

Twenty free high-contrast black-and-white images to print. I laminated some and hung them by the changing table. Jackson loves looking at them... he gets all quiet and alert, and his breathing gets fast and excited, and his eyes make little darting saccades all over them.

3. MoBoleez Breastfeeding Hat

So I know nursing covers are one of those topics that tend to spark Mommy Wars... so let me start by clearing the air: I do NOT think moms should be required to cover up when nursing their babies. But I personally feel more comfortable using a cover when I nurse in public. So I do.

This nursing cover was given to me at my most recent baby shower. I'd never seen one like this (I previously used one of those apron-style ones)... and I. LOVE. IT. It's so much quicker and easier and more unobtrusive. And smaller to carry around in my bag. And reversible and machine-washable. What's not to love?

3. Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper

This is one of those sidecar (a.k.a. attaches to my bed) co-sleepers. Again, we have an older, simpler version of this. But it's great for the first few months of life for breastfed babies. You have somewhere to put them down that's Not The Adult Bed, but you don't actually have to get out of bed to grab them for middle-of-the-night feedings. (I want to have baby to have a separate sleeping space because I'm a pediatrician and, y'know, SIDS risks. Though if there's any breastfeeding mom who claims she's NEVER slept with the baby in her own bed... I don't believe her. Even pediatrician moms.)

5. Muslin Swaddle Blanket

I don't know if this is the exact one I have, because I got mine for 50 cents at a rummage sale. (Score!) But any kind of muslin blanket would do. They're great because not only are they easy to swaddle with (more give than flannel or cotton receiving blankets, but less than jersey or waffle-weave), but they're also multi-purpose. You can use them as sun shades, nursing covers, changing surfaces, etc. Especially nice in hot weather since the muslin is so light and breathable.

Head back over to the linkup at Call Her Happy and read more favorites!

seven quick takes - ed. 29

1. I'm probably the last person to jump on this boat, but I've been trying One-Pot Meals lately, and they are AWESOME. (In case you've been living under a rock even more than I have, one-pot meals are just that... dinners that are all cooked completely in one pot, including the pasta/rice/whatever.) We just tried this one last night, and we all devoured it: Spicy Lemon Chicken Pasta with Tomatoes. Soooo yummy. (The commissary was out of grape and cherry tomatoes this week, so I just used a can of diced tomatoes. Worked fine.)

2. The definition of terrible: going to Guam's Department of Vital Statistics and Social Security Office... in the same day... with a 4-year-old, a 23-month-old, and a newborn... and waiting for 4 hours in total. I may have PTSD. I'll let you know.

3. In case you missed it, I'm sharing a free printable baby book with you. (I posted about it here.) Share with anyone who might enjoy!

4. It's a bit of a long read, but this article does a terrific job outlining the history of medical training and summarizing why it's so messed up. I'm sure the book that the article cites does an even better job... but I haven't read it. So I can't say.

Training Young Doctors: The Current Crisis

5. This video made me laugh. A lot. It's only 15 seconds, so you should watch it too.

6. This is really cool: Step Into a Van Gogh with a Virtual Reality Tribute to his Famous Paintings

7. Finally, here, have a picture of an adorable one-month-old boy-child. Enjoy.

Head over to link up with Kelly at This Ain't The Lyceum and read more quick takes!

not dead, news, and a present for you

So, not that many people noticed my absence (that's what I get for being an intermittent blogger), but I'm back! And not dead! And decidedly less pregnant!

Meet sweet baby Jackson, born Monday, April 27 at 5:59pm. He's pretty cute. I think we'll keep him.

AND! I have a gift for you, which I meant to share months ago but didn't get around to until now. I was hunting around the internet for a printable baby book (preferably free, because, y'know... free). But I didn't really love any of the options I found. So I decided to make my own. And then I figured, with all that effort put into it, why should I be the only one who gets to enjoy it?

Click to view and download, and please tell me if you have trouble: Woodland Boy Baby Book.

I made it using PicMonkey and this user's fabulous digital scrapbook pack "In The Woods." (Don't worry, according to her terms of use, it's okay to share projects created with her stuff.) And I guess it could work for a baby girl too, if you don't mind a lot of blues and greens. I inserted the pages into sheet protectors and used a 3-ring binder (which I plan on cute-i-fying at some point).

The thing I love about printables for things like this is you can pick and choose which pages you want. I did design it so that, if all the pages are used in the order given, opposing pages will match or coordinate, but it's all from the same scrapbook pack, so it all coordinates, really. So if you rearrange things, it won't make much difference in aesthetics.

So if you or anyone you know is in the market for a free baby book, please share!

seven quick takes - ed. 28

1. This normal pregnancy shortness of breath (aka physiologic dyspnea of pregnancy) is killing me. Okay, not literally... obviously. Otherwise it wouldn't be normal/physiologic. I don't know if Jackson is sitting higher than the girls did, or if I just notice it more since I'm not working full-time, but when it hits hard I feel like I'm dying or something. Luckily it comes and goes, so I have periods of time where I can breathe comfortably, but man... I will not be sorry when this baby drops, even if I do start having to pee twenty times a day.

my poor internal organs, haphazardly shoved aside.

2. Vignettes from a house with two small girls:

Faith: "Mama, can put your cereal bowl in the sink?"
Me (thinking she is making a sweet offer to help): "Sure, baby!"
Faith (after a pause): "So, do it!!"

At 4:30am, I was woken by the following:
Faith: "Josie! JOSIE! Wake up! It's time to get up!"
Josie (sleepily): "Dawa? Uh?"
Me (jumping out of bed and rushing to the girls' room): "Faith! Stop!! It is not morning time!!!"
My thoughts: "WTF WHYYYYY"


3. If you haven't read this yet, do it. It is high-larious. The Presidents of the United States: In Order of Hotness. A few choice (spoiler-free!) quotes:

Here is a man whose appearance would be radically improved with the simple addition of a neck tattoo.

Nothing is sexier than a man giving a speech while covered in blood.

What’s not to love about a corrupt bad boy who plays by his own rules? He’s like the James Dean of presidents!


4. Honest Toddler makes me laugh every time.

5. Did you know you can download Facebook videos (without also downloading scammy-looking freeware)? I just figured this out. It actually works-- this was how I downloaded Faith's birthday video from earlier this week. Here's how you do it:

6. Ugh. The commissary on base has had pretty slim pickings lately, and it appears it'll be awhile before it gets better. DeCA expects several more months before Pacific commissaries return to normal. On Guam, there aren't really any civilian grocery stores in the same way we think of grocery stores in the states-- and the prices are absurd (think $8 for a gallon of milk), so we're kind of in a tight spot.

Shipments of staples are delayed often enough that it's not unusual to find shelves looking like this (photos from this past Monday, courtesy of my friend Katie):

bread selection

chicken selection

Thanks a lot, West Coast dockworkers!



7. Aaaaand I don't have a seventh take, so head back over to This Ain't the Lyceum!

seven quick takes - ed. 27

AKA Nesting Insanity Edition!

It's funny, with each of my three pregnancies, my "nesting instinct" has taken on very different forms. With Faith, my first baby, it was all about the Baby Stuff. Set up the crib, decorate the room, sort and fold the eensy weensy clothes, research car seats, etc. 

With Josie, I knew we would be moving to Guam a month after her birth, so there was no point in preparing the house. Instead, I threw all my energy into preparing literally dozens of freezer meals so that, with all the insanity of New Baby and Finishing Residency and International Move, at least we wouldn't have to stress about what to have for dinner.

This time around, I've got a little of the "get baby stuff ready" urge, but we mostly have all that stuff already. So mostly I've been going crazy preparing the REST of the house, especially as Josie is going to be moving into Faith's room (actually she moved in last night).

So here's what I've been working on so far!

1- Painting of furniture. The furniture in Faith's room (now the girls' room) is a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs, found-on-the-curb, and IKEA. 

No before pics because I'm a bad blogger, but the table was stained in that orangey honey-oak and was from my childhood living room. The rocking chair was painted black with a gold metallic floral design, and I found it on the curb a few months ago with two spindles out of place and one split. Easy to fix with elbow grease and gorilla glue, and white gloss paint covers a multitude of sins.

2. Making of wall decor. Before I moved in the now-white table, there was a tall old table-floor-lamp combo in its place (purchased at a garage sale years ago to furnish Jack's med school apartment). The lamp part stopped working, so out it went and in came the oval side table... but it was a lot shorter and left an awkward-looking blank expanse of wall. So I made this:

A bunch of hearts paper-punched out of vellum I had on hand, stitched together on the sewing machine, and hung from an accommodating strip of foam board. Not fancy at all, but turned out cute.

3. Assembling of bunk beds: 

Excuse the sagging diaper.

Okay, it's a pseudo bunk bed. It's actually a low loft, and I stuck a bunky board and mattress on the floor beneath it. It's the IKEA Kura bed, and I love it. Oh, and no, IKEA doesn't ship to Guam; I paid for a third-party cargo company to ship it. It would've been nice to find something on-island, but not many places sell bunks/lofts that are low enough to make me feel comfortable with a 4-year-old on the top. And the room is small enough that while side-by-side twin beds would fit, they would make it pretty crowded.

4. Making of quilts! I'm actually super-excited about this. Currently the girls are using old family quilts, which are lovely, but aren't really sized for twin beds, and are kind of fragile... and being wary to wash something is not a good mix with toddlers. So I'm making them my first quilts ever! I have all the pieces cut out and all the triangles stitched into their proper squares, and Faith's quilt top is about half done (not including the border).

It's not perfect, but it's so fun seeing it come together! Josie's will have the same fabrics but a different pattern, so they'll match but won't be matchy-matchy.

5. Sewing of slipcovers. I was bored/annoyed with our two black office chairs... which are actually in our living room, since we don't have a separate office. Plus the fabric wasn't really washable and it was covered in yogurt smears. So I adapted this tutorial with some cute fabric, and now I no longer have boring office chairs, but adorable office chairs! And the covers are extremely easy to remove for washing purposes.

6. Making of a baby mobile! Faith and Josie's mobile was also handmade but was kind of girly, with ribbons and butterflies and such. So I wanted to make something more gender-neutral, so I followed this tutorial (which I only just this second realized is from the same blog as the office chair tutorial) and I loooove how it turned out!

7. Knitting of the baby blanket. I started this months ago (before we knew Jackson was a boy), but I've taken a few extended breaks. It's not quite half done yet, but I usually get an hour or two of knitting done in the evenings after the kids go to bed, so I'm hopeful that it'll be finished by the time the baby's born. (The pattern is Arabesque-- though I'm making the border as I go to avoid having to pick up thousands of stitches at the end-- and the yarn is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in Lime.)

Next on my list, other than finishing the unfinished blankets, are non-girly curtains for Jackson's room (I'll probably use the leftover green dot fabric from the office chairs), making his name from fabric for his wall (like you see attached to the girls' bed above), sorting & purging everyone's wardrobes, and organizing the garage. Let's see how far I get!

Head over (or back) to This Ain't The Lyceum for more quick takes!

excuses, in pictures

This week's lack of posts has been brought to you by an adorable but crazy toddler...

...who seemed to more of her waking hours over the weekend screaming than not...

...who insisted on being held pretty much all day Monday (her favorite phrase is "dee dah Doh-dee" = "get up Josie")...

...and who decided to give herself an impressive black eye on Tuesday (it's even more awesome now)...

We hope to return to our regularly scheduled programming soon!

did I forget to mention this?

Baby #3 is officially our first boy!

I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of excited. Baby girl clothes are cute and all with their ruffles and bows, but I'm ready for trucks and dinosaurs and robots. (Not that girls don't like trucks and dinosaurs and robots, but you know what I mean.) I had a feeling he was a boy, though I'm sure that feeling was just based on the notion that we were "due for" a boy, which of course doesn't make any logical or statistical sense, but whatever. Jack was convinced (equally illogically, I might add) that we were fated to have only girls, so of course when the ultrasound revealed the truth, I turned to him and very maturely exclaimed, "I TOLD YOU SO!!"

I took a Facebook poll, and everyone agreed that there's nothing weird about posting grainy sonogram pictures of my fetal son's nether-regions on the Internet. So that makes it officially okay, right? So here's proof.

I knew since before we were married that my firstborn son's name was pretty much decided already-- my husband being "the fourth" of his name and all. But the nickname was all ours! But... there are surprisingly few nicknames for John, so my list of options was actually fairly short.

So this is John C. McDonnell V, aka baby Jackson. 

He's a cutie, inn'e? 

Also, here's kind of a funny thing: pediatricians are weird about what week of pregnancy we're in. For the first half, we're pretty much like everyone else. But speaking from a medical perspective, fetal viability begins at 24 weeks... or maaaaaybe 23. So at like 22 weeks, pregnant peds people start to get all nervous. Not like a baby born prematurely at 22 weeks is worse than a baby born at 19 weeks... they're both "nonviable." But it just feels like, so close! But then the anxiety doesn't really lessen significantly at 24 weeks, because 24 week preemies are sick as crap and a lot of them die or have severe brain damage, so you're all like, "STAY IN THERE BABY." And then with each passing week you breathe slightly easier. Because while a lot of babies born at 29 weeks will need to be on a ventilator and stuff, mostly they end up okay. And babies born at 32 weeks need to stay in the NICU for awhile, but their lungs are reasonably well-developed and they can breathe pretty well. And most babies born at 35 weeks are basically the same as term babies except maybe they'll be more jaundiced and have a little trouble eating, but they're really totally no big deal. Except there's some evidence that babies born at 37 weeks have a higher risk of like, neurobehavioral issues than babies born at 40 weeks, even though 37 weeks is technically term.

So we have all this stuff running through our heads whenever we think about what week we're in (26 currently for me, FYI), and it's kind of weird and maybe a little morbid, and mostly it all amounts to "STAY IN THERE BABY" even when we're sick and tired of being pregnant. 

seven quick takes - ed. 26

1. You guys! YOU GUYS! I know it's been, um... awhile... ok, 3 months ...since I last posted, but I'm not dead! I just felt like life was getting a little out of control, and I needed to take a bit of a break to get things back in hand.

Awkward introverts unite!
(I mean in spirit. Not in person. That would be, well, awkward.)

2. In fact, not only am I not dead, but mathematically speaking, I'm kind of the OPPOSITE of dead. I mean, if regular = 1 life, and dead = 0 lives... well...

Two lives = extra-alive? Anyway, Miss or Mister Extra Life will be arriving late April 2015. :o)

("Two lives" meaning mine and baby's. Not twins, thank goodness. I don't have anything against twins, but I'd be shipped off Guam for medical reasons if there were twins. Like, by myself, without my family, to waste away in a hospital in Japan from 24 weeks until delivery. Which would, to put it mildly, be really crappy.)

Possibly this was part of the reason things felt like they were getting so out of hand. First Trimester Terribleness-- you know what I'm talkin' 'bout. But now we're 19 weeks so everything is happy.

3. We had fun hosting Thanksgiving for a bunch of friends this year. No family nearby means Friendsgiving, which is exactly what we did. Sixteen people total, counting babies. (There were rather a lot of babies.) And I kind of... forgot to take pictures. But I was busy with turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and rolls and salad and gravy and all kinds of goodness, so I think that's fairly excusable, right? Also, PREGNANT. ULTIMATE EXCUSE FOR EVERYTHING.

4. How's your Advent going? We're trying to be mindful that It's Not Christmas Yet, while still being festive and fun, because being completely un-Christmasy all month makes us a little depressed. So here's what we've got going on:

- Our Christmas tree is up, but only has lights (and a star) on it. We'll add the garlands on Gaudete Sunday, but won't put the ornaments up until Christmas Eve. Last year we tried waiting until later to set up our tree, but Guam only gets a couple of shipments of live Christmas trees, and they tend to get them bizarrely early (bizarre especially considering they're not super-fresh when they get here).

- We're lighting the candles on our Advent wreath every night at dinner, and Faith adds an ornament to the Jesse Tree.

- We're listening, at least mostly, to Advent music rather than Christmas music (but we're not totally against a few carols now and then).

- We've got a purple-and-pink garland hanging in our dining room... which we'll replace on Christmas Eve with a holly-leaf garland and mistletoe.

5. Faith is 3-1/2 this year, so it's the first year she's actually excited and anticipating things. However, she also has a hilarious 3-year-old perspective on everything. I told her that St. Nicholas was coming to leave her a present tonight, and showed her the St. Nicholas prayer card, and she got SUPER weirded out. "Why he coming to my house?! I no want him! He's not my best friend!!" (That's her current way of saying, "I'm not a fan of you/him/her right now." As in, "Mommy, I don't want to clean up! You're not my best friend!!" However, when I specified what St. Nicholas would bring (a book and chocolate), and clarified that she wouldn't actually have to see him (she's quite shy), she was mollified. Somewhat.

6. She's also been paying unexpectedly close attention to the lyrics in the Advent music, and asking for rather difficult definitions. "Mommy, what means 'rejoice'?" "What means 'gloria'?" "What means 'forever'?" Hmm. Parenting is hard.

7. You may have seen this already, but I laughed.

Head over to Conversion Diary This Ain't the Lyceum for more Quick Takes! And Happy Advent!