The "One Last Post" Post

For the last two weeks I've thought, "I should do just one last post for good measure" and as each day has passed I've thought, "Fyoosh, I'm sure glad I didn't do that too soon!" It's been two weeks and one day since I last posted. Still no baby.

It has been driving me crazy not to be in control as much as I'd like to be, and as much as I like to think I am in life. I am learning about myself in this process, and it's good. At this point, I haven't really given up hope on being in control and predicting a date (even though, with each passing day, the odds are in my favor of being right) but I finally have conceded that I don't get to pick the "when". In fact, not even guaranteed the where and how, just hoping I have control over that!

I have become the regular, grumpy, overdue pregnant lady. Everything everyone says to me annoys me. If I hear the word "trampoline" again in the next 6 months, it will be too soon. I just want to say, "You aren't funny" to people. But I refrain. I'm mostly nice like that.

My kids think it's hilarious that my belly smashes up against the steering wheel when I'm driving them to school. I'd back up, but I have relatively short legs for someone my height, so I can't really. I think that right there should be proof enough that I'm done!

Every day Avee dashes off to school saying, "Goodbye, I love you, I hope you aren't here when I get home from school today!" This waiting is driving her crazy. I love that. I love how excited she is about having a new baby. It makes me SO happy that she is getting a sister.

Okay, let's see if I can talk about anything else...

Bo got a lead part in the school musical. He brought the script home yesterday and it's quite a big undertaking. What thrills me is that he got the part based on his ability to sing and perform, and his music teacher has no idea what extraordinary memorization skills he has. I'm mostly excited that now his memorization skills will go toward memorizing lines and songs, and less on learning every word that Weird Al has ever uttered.

His part is big and I am SO excited to help him learn it and ultimately to see it performed. I am so proud of him for putting himself out there and auditioning for a lead like that. He's just a little guy and he's gotten little to no encouragement from us on the matter. We didn't even know he'd auditioned until he told us he got a callback. Then we basically prepped him for not getting the part since he was the youngest in the group and would have 2 more years to play the part if he didn't get it this year. I think his teacher was a little put off by my incredulity when she called to tell us he got the part and make sure we had his support on getting him to school early FIVE DAYS A WEEK. I happily committed for J. I'll be busy with a newborn...

I don't know if I've put it on here, Bo wants to be an actor. He's said that for about a year now. Being an actor and a karate expert were two of his New Years resolutions this past year. He takes it quite seriously. The other day he told me he'd like to be a substitute teacher and an actor. I told him the combination was excellent since neither of them guaranteed full-time employment. I would sure love to know what goes on in that brain of his sometimes. He had complained that he didn't like "guest teachers" and I explained to him how hard it was to be a substitute teacher when you don't know the kids, or the routine, and kids tend to be naughty for subs, even if they aren't naughty usually (ie, 8 year old Nobody), etc, etc. I don't know how he went from complaining about substitutes to wanting to be one. S'all good. That's my boy.

He also told me yesterday that he was pretty sure pomegranates evolved from blueberries because of their similarities in shape. I wrote it on Flacebook, but I should probably record it here too because it's just too good. After he found out he got the part for the play he commented, "This must be how Superman felt when he got the part for Superman." I loved his statement so much, I didn't dare dissect it, like my brain wanted to. I really wanted to know if he meant the actor or if he really thought Superman was Superman. I just didn't want to ruin the goodness of his statement.

Later, about 3 hours after we'd heard the news, he casually said, "Ever since I found out I got the part, I've just been under so much pressure of happiness." I seriously wanted to pick him up and throw him for how cute that statement was. Maybe I have emotional expression issues, I don't know. He sure doesn't!

My sister is coming up here today. Initially it was to see the baby. I haven't got the heart to tell her there's no baby to see yet. Heh. I just can't believe she's getting here before I have the baby. She's bringing me my little, (okay, she's not little) college Freshman niece, Erica. I'm pretty excited to see her. Even though she has lived in England for the past 11 years, she chose a stateside college and I couldn't be more thrilled about the easier access to her. I will be rewarding her decision to go to college in the states, with a lot of chocolate and a newborn baby to squish and love. I don't think it's easy to go that far from home for college. Everything she does, she makes it look easy though. Actually, now that I think about it, all of my nieces are kind of amazing like that. You know, for having such a wacky family (and I do) my siblings sure have amazing kids. They probably all get it from me....

Yesterday at Danyo's little Catholic Preschool they had a birthday party for baby Jesus. I love that he goes to a church preschool. Every time he referred to it, I thought of the prayer scene from Talladega Nights. I don't know why a birthday party for baby Jesus is so funny to me. But it is.

I am so looking forward to this Christmas Break and having the kids home for a couple of weeks. They are long overdue for a break. I hope my grouchiness dissipates once I'm not a disgruntled 9+ months pregnant mama. I feel bad for my kids how grouchy I am to them, but I seriously can't stop myself even when I try. The other night I apologized to Bo for being such a grouch to him all evening (the dude whistles constantly and I yelled at him at least 5 times to stop, plus he persists in eating ALL foods with his hands---seriously, even stew---and he got his knuckles rapped with a fork for it, and, and....I was not nice). He answered, "It's okay, you're always like that." He knows he's funny---that's his problem.

I feel like I need to say something about Avee or Omar is going to call me out on the inequity. Holy crap, you know how ridiculously long these posts will be once Baby #4 stops being a squishy red blob and actually gives me blog fodder? Ay yi yi.

Avee. A million things I could write. Her latest thing is to try and give us an unanswerable question. It's totally obnoxious and funny at the same time. Yesterday J was taking her seriously and answering how electricity works and she was just waiting for his last sentence so she could ask another question beyond that. It's really quite brilliant, but after listening to half of J's mind-numbing explanation, I had to break the news to him that she didn't care and was just trying to trap him into saying, "I don't know." I think he might have been sad if he didn't have another kid who was eating up every word of the explanation.

She told me last night she wants to be a cheerleader. Basically she wants to wear a cute uniform and shake her butt with purpose. I'm sure of it. I don't even know what her exposure to cheerleading is, I have actively kept it to a minimum. Ah, well. Story of our lives with Avee.

Okay, I've killed some serious time. One less hour of waiting to have this baby.

Merry Christmas!

Procrastination Post

This is obligatory. I'm doing it because I have to. I have a major assignment due in T-6 hours and 12 minutes. You see why I have to blog?

Baby is due in 9 days. There are no indications she will come early. I'm glad for this for more reasons than the discomfort of being 9 months pregnant. This is my first winter baby and I want her to come out as big as a 3 month old---having a baby in an Iowa winter just makes me nervous. Probably working in an ER doesn't help that fear...

Also, school has been kicking my butt up one side and down the other (I'm a big girl, that's a lot of ground to cover) in the last couple of weeks. Going into labor and/or having a newborn before today would really have made things difficult. After today, all I have left is one final. To take on my due date. I'm hoping for a good story on this one.

Today is our first snow. It's not sticking to the streets but powdering the ground. Danyo thinks because the snow is here, we can open "prezzies". Have I mentioned his tendency to "babify" pretty much any word he says? It's really funny and J imitates it regularly. I love it. Recently he has become obsessed with Beyblades (in a normal, 4-year-old obsessed kind of way, nothing like what Bo manages to do with a topic of his choice). On the cartoon, there is a character named "Jenga" and another little character (I've never watched the show, just hear it in the background) calls him "Jengy". Which is exactly what Danyo does with just about every noun he can think of. However, whenever this character says "Jengy" Danyo yells loudly at the TV, "HIS NAME IS JENGA, NOT JENGY!" His yelling is mean and loud, and it makes me laugh every time he does it. He's a hypocrite!

Lately Bo has been making similar complaints about school that he made in Kindergarten. If I could have done Kindergarten over again, I would have pulled him out and "home schooled" or found some other alternative. Full day was WAY too long for him, and he was not being taught anything at all. I didn't know this until after the fact though. His complaints were about being tired, or he was wetting his pants, or he talked about school being "too long". He actually learned to write incorrectly while in Kindergarten. You should see the crazy strokes that boy makes to form an "h" or an "a". It defies logic! Anyway, he's been complaining again, very similar complaints. It's hard for me to determine if he's just ready for a break, or if there are similar problems and I need to get proactive. His teacher works hard to keep him stimulated, but she has at least 4 "high need" kids in her class, that I'm aware of, and I just don't know how one person can do it all in a setting like that.

I don't really know what the answer is, but I don't want his little spirit getting squashed again because I'm not clued in or don't know what I'm doing.

I'm so glad I got to grow up and worry about crap like this. We really should have been warned about adulthood. :)

Danyo just told me I'm awesome, but he's awesomer. His logic worked like this: There's snow outside, time to open presents, mom clearly doesn't make this obvious connection even though I deliberately pointed out the stuff falling onto the ground, I can't call her a bad name because I'm trying to earn a Beyblade, I'm awesomer.

He's been earning 3 X's a day in an effort to earn a new Beyblade. I realized that it's time to get a little more proactive about his short-temper and mean mouth. He's been working really hard. First thing he said to me this morning was, "I'm probably not going to get all my X's today because I'm going to say the word poopy. Poopy!" I let "poopy" run it's course with Bo and Avee. It's not even one of the words Danyo says that I object to. My kids love that word. Avee stretched it out over about 2 years. She still loves that word and hides herself in the bathroom to say it with wild abandon. Weirdo. Anyway, Danyo's trick is brilliant. He absolutely has to say some words---the day cannot pass without him saying them. So, he's socialized himself and says, "Oh man Mom, I almost said butt cheek just now. Good sing I didn't, huh?" He knows what he's doing, he ain't no fool.

If I had a quarter for every time he did that, combined with every time I've caught him going commando, I'd be a rich woman. F'real.

Bo said something last week that has made me chuckle through out the week. He was watching a documentary on Pearl Harbor. He's been interested in military/war/soldiers/etc for some time now. I sat down for a minute to watch it with him and he casually stated: "They should make bumper stickers for the old people that says, 'I dropped the bomb on Pearl Harbor'."

I couldn't stop laughing. Methinks he may have missed a point or two. Of course, I was a good mom and explained why perhaps that might not be the best idea.

Uh-oh, I'm running out of fodder. That means I have to get back to work! So sad...

I doubt very many people read this with any regularity anymore, but if you read this in the next week, give me your two cents on the Bo/School issue and throw in a name guess/suggestion just for fun. We don't have a name picked, but we have lots of ideas. By the way, it is a girl. :)