Monday Morning Haze or Works for Me not just Wednesday but Every Day

I haven't completely fallen off the internet earth. I've actually been reading and reading politics online for a week and a half in morbid fascination. But I haven't had anything particular to say due to feeling basically very under the weather (me and Gladys, so far everyone else seems robustly healthy).

Also, the baby is eating A Lot. She gained 1/2 a pound in the first nine days which may not seem like much to any of you, but has never happened to any of my babies in all my recollection. In fact, since the moment of starting to write this post, I have had to stop three times to feed her.

But I thought, in view of keeping track for my own self of how the time is passing, to make a short list of things that are working right now, in a household of 5 children.

What's Working
1. Having Nonni (that's my mom) here through Thanksgiving is SO WONDERFUL. Not only has she kept the ball rolling on school while I've had this baby, she's teaching the two oldest to play the piano, keeping the laundry going in order, beauty and peace, and been playing the organ at church. If she weren't here, we would have devolved into chaos and hysteria. (The above list was in no way exhaustive.)
2. Clinging desperately to the CC Memory Work for school and letting all the extras fall by the wayside. In so doing we have kept up with At Least One Thing that becomes impossible to recover if you fall behind, and has provided some structure and normalcy. We are basically back on track already with a school routine and adding everything else back in.
3. Potty Training Romulus. He's FINALLY getting it. In my own mind I thought it would be so much less complicated to do this Before the baby was born, but it didn't happen. And now, frankly, we're all more relaxed and tired and its happening more easily.
4. Nursing is working, basically. I say this, as always, with pained reservations. I've read every possible website about pain in nursing being a sign that you're doing it wrong. In other words, if you're doing it right, it won't hurt. The only thing that comes to my mind when I read this is profanity so I won't even go there. Nursing this baby (and all my other babies) hurts, very very very much, AND I do have a correct latch. I have worked on it diligently and unrelentingly and I know I'm doing it right. Actually, two weeks in, its starting to be bearable. But you cannot convince me that nursing a baby is in any way 'natural' except in the way that a sin nature is 'natural'. That I would, by the exercising of my will over my body, repeatedly (as in many many times a day and all through the night) put what amounts to a steel trap onto a very vulnerable part of my body is not 'natural' its miraculous. However, from Marigold's perspective, it is working very well. She is the first baby to latch on and eat everything in sight without unlatching repeatedly and gasping in large amounts of air. And because she's so good at it, she barely cries, sleeps well and is gaining lots of weight. For that I am very grateful.
5. The house is functioning very well. Matt, in the days before the baby was born, cleaned the entire garage out and parked the cars IN IT (A Huge Job) and unpacked so much of the basement that the children are able to play down there as loudly and as volitally as they like. To have this done before the first frost is amazing and I didn't think it would be possible. So, less than one year in to living in this house, with a new baby in hand and a seemingly endless number of funerals and weddings, we are moved in, for real.
6. Our routine seems to be working pretty well. See above to the presence of my mother as the reason for this. I've been able to concentrate on nursing and school and take it slow like a sloth. A baby at 33 is SO different from a baby at 25. I'm so grateful to have the time to recover.
7. The amazing and lovely Nursing Apron from Matt's mom and sister. I wish I had this 4 babies ago. If you are looking for something nice for someone nursing, This is the thing.

That's the short list. I am inspired, due to a lovely commenter, to post something soon about what we've been eating. I've been eating everything in sight trying to keep up with this baby. In the meantime, Thank You for all the comments and well wishes and prayers.

7 Quick Takes: Baby Edition

-1-
This baby just slept through the night so I'm surprisingly awake at this time of the morning. I know this won't happen again for many many many many days but I'm really grateful just this moment.
-2-
In two weeks we will have had two funerals. The down side of this is that its really sad and awful. The upside is that my house is full of beautiful white funeral flowers that my mother and I have been coaxing along and hoping to put on the altar for All Saints. There's something sort of bittersweet about bringing a baby into a house full of funeral flowers.
-3-
We've temporarily solved the trouble of Halloween being the same day as Reformation Day. Last night, as a means of welcoming home this lovely new baby (who shares, by the way, a birthday with my dear cousin, Erasmus And John Cleese) we carved a pumpkin and ate Reformation sausages cooked in beer. Said Matt to the children, "Do you know why we're cleaning out this pumpkin?"
"No!" they all shouted.
"Because," he said, "on this day Martin Luther began the Reformation whereby all the gunk was cleaned out from the church."
So Saturday we will go trick or treating without feeling like we're missing the Reformation and later we'll invite friends over (hopefully) for fondue to celebrate John Calvin. And I need to seriously think of some food for the English Reformation. hmmm.
-4-
Continuing vaguely with the subject of Halloween, Elphine, this year, has determined to dress up as Queen Victoria. This is a direct result of Classical Conversations Week 9 History Sentence which begins 'During the age of Imperialism...' and was So catchy that my mother and I discovered ourselves both to be reading Kim in the hospital while I was in labor. The whole week has been taken up with volleys of emails between me, Matt and my mom comprising pictures and information of Queen Victoria and debates about whether Elphine should go as a Young Victoria, or Old Victoria or a Bride Victoria. Anyway you look at it, I don't know how we're going to make a crown.
-5-
Romulus and Alouicious are going as knights. Gladys will be the proverbial Bee. New baby, hopefully, will be a chili pepper. It really saves time to have a standard set in this matter. Every child starts out in the nice soft felt chili pepper, graduates (hopefully angrily) to the bee which has a really fine stinger. And after that some choice may be exercised but we encourage the use of some favorite already existing costume.
-6-
Speaking of Imperialism, we're also reading the Jungle Book and the Just So Stories for school. Can you tell the Kipling is one my three all time favorite authors? Except that I've never actually read the Jungle Book as one who really hates suspense in any form. If my dad hadn't read Kim to me as a child I never would have read it. So I'm pulling myself together and reading the Jungle Book out loud. It is So Exciting. When we get to the CC history sentences about Africa we're going to read The Long Grass Whispers.
-7-
So far, my favorite part about having 5 kids (besides the children themselves, which, obviously, is Joy Enough) is the look of horror when people, having asked 'Is this your first baby?'
hear 'well, no, its my 5th'.
AND then, usually, whoever it is will say something charming like
'Wow, you don't look it!'
By this they could mean that I look Way Too Young or that I'm Way Too Skinny. Either is just fine. Of course, I haven't actually gone anywhere yet with all five, so who knows if the love will keep flowing.

Go check out Jen and have a lovely weekend.

It seriously looks very much like a baby

Matt managed finally this morning to run home and pick up the device to get pictures off our camera. So I thought I'd post a few.




I gave birth to our newest baby girl last night at 10:01. Despite an ultra sound that afternoon that she was 7lbs 1oz, she weighed in at birth at 6lbs 10oz, only one oz more than Elphine 7 years ago. She is 18 inches long with some darkish hair and a mushed chin from having tried to come face first. For the purposes of this blog I'll be calling her Marigold, but if you'd like to find out her real name you can head over to Stand Firm.

After fretting all day that maybe we were inducing too early etc. etc. (and then feeling bad about worrying after listening to an Outstanding sermon by Marc Driscoll on the subject of Mary while labor was bearable enough to concentrate), I'm really grateful that we Did induce. This baby is a peanut and the cord was all the way around her neck and she was super hungry at the moment of birth. She's been eating and eating and eating and looking cuter and cuter.

We're so grateful for a really healthy baby and an excellent and clued in doctor and such excellent care. I'm delighted to meet this latest edition and wondering quietly to myself whether yet we will get one laid back child or whether she will be as intense and complicated as all the other ones....I already have my suspicions.

The end is in sight

I am up at an unusual hour because Matt was called out at something like 5 this morning for a pastoral emergency. He wildly made tea and found his phone and collar and was out the door in a matter of minutes. I've been trying to stay awake since then because Romulus has been up singing 'Pharaoh, Pharaoh OH BABY LET MY people go' loudly in my ear as well as 'AND ONE WAS A DOCTOR and one was a QUEEN and one was a Spiderman and one was a bad guy and I WANT TO BE ONE TOO'.

I've been contracting regularly and irregularly since Tuesday, thinking all the time that I'm about to go into full blown labor but never actually doing it. I have another ultra sound tomorrow, and if this baby isn't any bigger, the doctor intends that I go in on Monday or Tuesday and be helped along a little. In other words, the baby isn't really packing on weight the way we would all like and I'm beginning to loose weight, and all these contractions are doing something. So for everybody's health and safety, she would like this baby to be here with us now rather than waiting till Nov. 2. I'm really grateful to have such a wonderful doctor, even after whining at the beginning of the week. And I'm longing to meet this baby who, in every ultrasound picture, has the most amazing pouty flower like lips, rivaled only by her big sister, Gladys.

So, today and through the weekend, I am going to try to be 'restful' as instructed (whatever that means). I'd like to finish up some math lessons with Elphine, organize all the school work into some kind order so they can keep busy next week, and maybe make a pie. And hopefully Matt will help me rearrange some more furniture to make room for the cradle which is currently made up beautifully, covered with a sheet and then a board so as to keep cats and children out. But I have to figure out where to put it.

Meanwhile, I hope you will pray for the people Matt is with now. My impression, as he ran out the door, is that some lives have been turned upside down during the night and that Good Shepherd will be called upon to rally around in the next few days. And prayer is the best place to start.

Why Confinement is a Good Idea; or a blog post of complaint and woe

In a few minutes I have to dash around and try to get myself out the door for yet another doctor's appointment. At this stage of the game, the more pregnant you are, the more your doctor likes to see you (or at least me), Which, it has occurred to me more than once, is Entirely Backwards.

In the beginning weeks of expecting a baby, sitting in a doctor's office is comfortable, comforting and relaxing. For one thing, its possible to sit in a chair. And for another, its really nice to know that everything is ok and that the baby is growing charmingly and healthily. But towards the last weeks of a pregnancy, going every three minutes to the doctor and being asked 'is the baby moving?' as you have your breath kicked out of you makes it hard to respond in Christian charity.

OF COURSE, I say that as someone who is pathetically grateful that everything is healthy and on track, and that week by week there is a good strong galloping heartbeat on this baby and that I am being kicked and kicked.

But with the measure of gratitude is the equal measure of weariness and hope that Maybe I'll miss Something by having this baby--another doctor's appointment? the Harvest Dinner? another day freaking out that apparently we are no longer allowed to receive mail at this address?

But this is the nature of human inconsistency and fickleness. The second I'm in the hospital having this baby, I will begin to fret about all the things I'm missing at home, and start hassling the nurses to let me out as soon as is reasonably possible.

Moving in, and the floor...and you thought I had moved on from this subject

We had marked off 10:30 as the moment to blast through the garage and basement in a last final push to completely unpack and be moved into this house. But I hear Matt still working out so I will take a quiet moment to write. The tree outside our living room window is so golden and beautiful in the sun, we Will Have to go outside for a few minutes today at some point.

I'm thoroughly surprised to be so enjoying this house. The cat smell is COMPLETELY gone. The cleanness just permeates my being and settles my spirit. Here are the new floors, with children.


Here they were being put in,

with children.

Certainly there is work to be done. We need to paint the children's rooms, our room, the hallways. The kitchen cabinets need to be painted and a new floor put in that somehow matches the beautiful floor everywhere else, but none of it is urgent in the way these cat laden floors were.

Matt's weights have stopped clanking, so I will rouse myself. I have boxes and boxes of beautiful crystal to unpack and dust, and books, and little tiny baby shoes.

Happy Birthday (updated)

I've started three or four posts over the last week, wandered away from them and on return discovered that I had No Idea what I was talking about. Every moment that I haven't been doing something else I've been imploring God to send me into labor. The trouble is, I think, is that I'm praying without belief. I don't really expect ever to have this baby...Ever.

Anyway, today is Gladys' birthday.
She is Two Years Old.
And totally delightful. When asked by tricky and irritating adults where the 'New Baby' is she purses her lips and says 'I can't find her!'
When you open the door for her she says 'Pank you berry buch'.
When Matt is heading out the door in the morning without her she wails 'I NEED TO GO TO Church WITH DADDY!'
And when she's in trouble, she categorically blames it on Romulus regardless of whatever it is, without fail.

Already I've gotten into hot water by trying to engage the older children in a lie. They, of course, know that they are not to lie--NOT EVER. God hates lying.
'Yes, but', I said this morning, 'she doesn't know that its her birthday and it will confuse her if we celebrate it tomorrow, which we are going to do, and tell her that its her birthday today.'
'But tomorrow's not her birthday,' pointed out Elphine.
'I know, I know. I'll try to explain again in a few minutes!' But of course, there is no good way to explain breaking the ten commandments which they have all finally mastered from CC week One.

Today, besides school, and not telling Gladys its her birthday, we're going to finish rearranging the furniture. The floors in the living, dining and hallway have been REDONE. They are beautiful, clean, echoing, golden.

update: Is it possible that Gladys shares a birthday with the estimable and brilliant PG Wodehouse? Yes! Indeed it is!!!!!. Seriously considering changing her blog name to 'Honoria'. Hmmmmmm.