What You Need to Make a Baby
I was taking Reagan to a birthday party when this conversation started out of nowhere (as most do with her).
Reagan: Could Boo-Boo {my mom} still have a baby?
Me: No.
Reagan: Can people over 40 not have babies anymore?
Me: They can, but Boo-Boo’s a little older than that.
Reagan: But could she?
Me: No. She actually had a surgery a long time ago {hysterectomy} so she doesn’t have all the parts you need to have a baby anymore.
Reagan: What’d she have removed? You only need three parts to have a baby.
Me: Um, what?
Reagan: You need B-O-O-B-S to feed the baby, girl parts, and a stomach. So what did she have removed?
Me: A specific girl part.
Fortunately we arrived at our destination and she forgot by the time I picked her up.
Ready for a Cell Phone
Last week, Jenny heard me and Lee talking about potentially getting rid of the monthly service for his cell phone and just getting him a prepaid phone instead. He honestly never uses the phone and would only use it if his car broke down or he was in a wreck. And he only drives once a week at the most. So it’s pointless to pay for it, right? That all makes sense, so that’s what we’re going to do. It’s always good to save money, right? But Jenny had other plans. She brought us this note:
I know you can’t read it, so I’ll type it out for you:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am responsible enough for a phone, and you can trust me with a phone. Please. We are already paying for it for daddy to use it. I will use it responsibly and not call too late at night.
Please.
P.S. I am talking about daddy’s old phone.
She followed it up with further pitches about how much she needs wants a phone. All of her other friends have one. I asked her to name friends who have one since I can’t think of one of her friends’ parents who’s mentioned giving them a phone at the age of 10 in 5th grade. She named several random acquaintances who aren’t even really her friends. We also asked her what exactly she wants to do with a cell phone that she can’t do with her iPod Touch or our regular phone. The answer was mostly that she could text. She stomped off, angry with us for not giving into her.
She came back with this:
She’s really pulled out all the stops now. What kind of mean parent would still say no? Answer: Me. We decided years ago that there’s no reason for her to have a phone before the age of 11 and middle school at the earliest. She just doesn’t need a phone at this point in life. And I’m stubborn enough to not go back on that decision now. And really there’s no reason to.
I did make the kind offer of allowing her to put a texting app on her iPod Touch, which would basically give her the ability to text, for free, with all of her friends, when she’s on a wireless network. She generally doesn’t take her iPod Touch out of the house anyway, and certainly can’t have it at school. Of course, to her, this sounded like the stupidest offer ever. She knew it wouldn’t work and claimed she’d tried it before. But I went through with it anyway. (And if your child has an iPod Touch and you weren’t aware of the Text Plus app that allows them to text for free, it is very cool.) And I have to say, she may not be as happy as she drew herself in this picture, but she’s very excited that she can now text.
When do you plan to let your kids have cell phones? Or have you already?
Linking up with Yeah Write:
One Year Ago
One year ago today, I felt past ready to have my third baby. Even though he wasn’t due until Christmas Eve, I’d been convinced for weeks due to lots of contractions that he would arrive early, and I wouldn’t have to worry about being in the hospital on Christmas day. Weren’t third babies supposed to arrive earlier? But when he still wasn’t here by the 20th, no matter what I tried to do to make it happen, mostly walking even though it hurt and trying to dance him out by playing Just Dance on the Wii, I was getting worried that he would never come. There’s no real reason I should have expected him to be early. Both my girls were born a couple days after their due dates. But I really, really wanted him to be here, and to be home for the actual holiday.
So last year, on this day, I went for my weekly doctor visit. I was dilated about 3 centimeters. Just like I was the week before. But I finally had hope because they told me they would induce me in two days if he wasn’t here. That would put him in our arms on December 22 and most likely home on Christmas Eve. I’ve generally not been a fan of induction because I figure babies will come when they’re ready, but I have to say, I felt so much less stressed knowing that I wouldn’t have to worry about a holiday in the hospital, and knowing that I would have him in two days time if not before then.
So like any other day, I headed to work from the doctor’s office. I had a fun meeting scheduled late morning for a company twitter party. And I really wanted to make it through that even though I’d reached the point that I was ready at the end of every day to not return to work the next day. During that meeting, I noticed my contractions were coming more frequently and started timing them. And then I decided to head home and see if they went away like they had every other time they’d started up. We were all anxious for Brinkley to be born. My girls were home from school for the holiday. Lee’s brother Justin was visiting and on kid duty so I didn’t have to worry about who would watch the girls when we went to the hospital. My mom was on standby nearby, and ready to join us at the hospital the moment we called her. So basically, we were all ready except for Brinkley. After a couple hours at home, we decided to go ahead to the hospital.
Since I had had a few hours of more painful contractions, I was hoping I’d progressed, but of course, I hadn’t. We were sent for the fun walk around the halls of the hospital to see if that helped any. I was a giant uncomfortable pregnant person, and walking became too painful after awhile, so we returned to the triage room. The nurse checked me once more and said I’d made no progress, so it was time to go home. We were told to wait just a little bit longer so the baby could be monitored for a little bit before we left. I was not happy that I was going to leave the hospital without a baby again. It happened twice with Reagan, and I was bound and determined that it wouldn’t happen with this baby. I’d hoped that once I made it to the hospital so close to my due date with a third baby, they’d just go ahead and help me along. So while we were making our plans to head on home, my now favorite doctor ever popped in to tell me we had one more option. He said we could stay at the hospital and have a baby if we wanted! Apparently he was just hanging out watching ESPN and thought it would be more interesting to deliver a baby. I was so, so happy. He said that since it was our third, he thought labor would move along at a pretty quick pace if they got us settled into a labor and delivery room and broke my water. We said, “Yes, please!”
We called our girls to tell them the news and called my mom to tell her she could come on over to the hospital. Then we waited somewhat patiently to be moved over to our new room. A nurse stopped by to let me know I’d be able to get my epidural as soon as we moved to the other room. Again, I said, “Yes, please!” They talked to me about pain management and asked me what level of pain I’d like to experience. Are you kidding me? On a scale of 1-10, I said I’d prefer a pain level of zero.
You know what? Even though Brinkley’s birth occurred on December 21, it was just after 1:00 a.m., so almost the same as the 20th. So I’ll go ahead and tell the rest of the story now because I may not have another chance the rest of this busy week.
I received my epidural and the doctor broke my water around 8:30. I was starting to feel a lot more than a zero level of pain, which I believe causes me to look uncomfortable and say “Ow” over and over again. By 10:00, I still hadn’t really progressed more, which surprised me with all the pain I was experiencing. I had my epidural re-dosed, and suddenly at 11:00, I’d progressed to a 7, and after midnight, I felt like I needed to push that baby out. The doctor was with another mom who was a first-timer and seemed to need him more than I did. I had an awesome nurse who helped us get all set up, and then I tried to wait patiently for the doctor. That’s a bit difficult when you have a baby who’s finally ready to come out. The way I remember it, I was trying not to push him out, and he practically fell out right as the doctor was walking in to catch him.
The doctor and nurses immediately started talking about what a big boy he was, and when they weighed him, we discovered he was a whopping 9 lbs. 14 oz. and 23 ½ inches long. I kind of couldn’t believe I’d just delivered an almost 10 pound baby. He was just staring around wondering what happened.
We called our house at 2:00 a.m. in case anyone was waiting up for news. Jenny immediately answered the phone because she’d been too excited to sleep. We told her she had a baby brother, and I told her I thought they’d have to wait until morning to visit, but the nurse was still in there and said they could come on over if they wanted to, so wonderful Uncle Justin drove my girls over at 2:45 a.m. to meet their baby brother.
And like I’d hoped way back when we found out his due date, we went home on December 22, and were home in plenty of time to celebrate the holiday in our home instead of in the hospital.
I’m linking up with lovelinks because I know everyone likes to read a birth story, right?
Oh, Christmas Trees!
We really struggled with what we should do about our Christmas tree this year with a soon to be one year old walking around the house and wanting to get everything he sees. We always get a real tree, and we wanted to stick close to our normal traditions, but I felt pretty certain Brinky would try to grab at the tree, and it would fall over and crush him. Or at least cover him in broken glass when all the ornaments broke.
So we came up with a plan! We would get two smaller real trees and put them on top of a table that he couldn’t reach. Each of the girls could decorate one of the trees, so that makes it fun for them, too. Sounds great, right?
Here they are happy while decorating their beautiful trees:
I felt like it was a success. And I guess it was. If we’d properly tethered the trees to anything at all! The tree on the left is Reagan’s, Mr. Tree. And the tree on the right is Jenny’s, Mrs. Tree. Mrs. Tree is a little too fat and her weight isn’t evenly distributed. So two nights ago when I was downstairs in the middle of the night working on sleep training Brinky, Mrs. Tree fell down. Hard. All the way to the ground from up on that table. Some ornaments broke. There was a lot of glass and water from the stand and needles from the tree. It wasn’t cool. I was able to clean it up and get the tree back up, but I removed the ornaments that didn’t fall off in case it fell down again.
So now our once beautiful trees look like this:
When Jenny came down yesterday morning, I said, “Before you go look in the other room, I want to let you know that your tree fell down in the middle of the night. There weren’t too many broken ornaments, and I’ve cleaned it up and put it back up. The good news is we get to decorate it again!”
Her response: “Nice try, mommy.”
So we’ll be decorating the tree again this weekend.
A couple other Christmas related pictures:
Brinky was trying to figure out what the tree was and why it was on our floor (before we put it up, not after the fall when there was glass all over the place).
Both girls holding their bags of candy and waving and hoping for more at the Christmas parade this weekend.
Reagan’s note she had to add to her morning checklist last week.
Linking up (a little later than usual for me) with #iPPP:
Wordless Wednesday: Hands
Wanna see something crazy? Jenny’s hands are as big as mine now! Lee noticed it the other day for some reason.
I know my hands are pretty small, but I didn’t expect my 10-year-old to have hands the same size as mine yet. She’s growing up.
If you’re not sure whose hand is whose, mine’s the old lady paler hand on the right.
And if these hands are kind of boring to you, here’s your daily dose of cuteness: sibling hug.
Linking up with KLZ and Liz for #iPPP again this week since it was so much fun last week!
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