I really ought to be educating my children right now, but their bedroom floor is covered in biscuit crumbs and thousands of partially-sorted legos, and Elisha is trapped in his high chair in the middle of it all with a runny nose and sticky fingers...really, would you want to interfere with that kind of childhood utopia? Oh, and Gabe is bleeding from the knee.
I woke up with a sore throat this morning and so slept in for a bit and let the children do their own thing for awhile, and the resulting, uhm, harmony? is just a little more than I think I can tackle for the moment. So I'm escaping for a bit and writing down some random things for no particular reason. Isn't it good to know that these five precious lives are in such capable, responsible hands this morning?
Anyway, we have just about 8 weeks left of what is looking like our very last pregnancy. I imagine I'll always have conflicting feelings about ceasing to be a baby mill, but I've talked through it with my psychologically-astute husband and we've determined that 1)we're creatures of habit and have been in the baby-making business for so long that it's just going to take some adjusting to changing our pattern, 2) we're really good at this job (especially this morning, obviously!) and it's hard to mess with a good thing, like Oprah canceling her show after all this time, and 3) having kids has given us a false feeling of eternal youth, and making this our last kid is a stark admission that we're not spring chickens anymore. It's a lot to take in all at once, particularly with the wash of maternal hormones I've been high on for the last 11 years.
On the other hand, there are some strong motivations for not having any more kids, things like imagining having to spend our days in front of tv cameras on a reality show, the fear of being mistakenly called 'Mrs. Duggar' in the grocery store, and actually having been called a 'brood mare' in public at full volume. neigh. sigh. Oh, and the strongest motivator of all, of course, is the horrifying prospect of having to drive a white 10-passenger van (because white is the only color they come in, you know) for the next decade. That single thought is enough for me to line up 10 interviews with urologists for my husband this week! At least with six kids we can still cram ourselves into a Toyota Sienna, try not to breathe or fart on one another, and get ourselves from point A to point B legally.
So maybe it's denial, and maybe it's just my nature, but I've managed to completely over-commit myself for the next 8 weeks. None of this sitting-around-and-nesting-with-my-unborn-child business for me! Nope, before this is all said and done, I've managed to schedule:
*teaching a weekly childbirth education class for my kids plus 3 others
*hosting a weekly marriage class in our home every Wednesday night until Asa is at least a month old
*making a wedding cake for 200 people--in Pueblo
*helping my husband get ready to officiate that same wedding
*making Bonnie her annual dress for the father/daughter dance
*finishing the baby's quilt
*helping my local doula association with marketing materials and other such interestingness
*making a white chocolate castle for this year's chocolate contest (because I'm not going to let a little thing like 8 months of pregnant belly keep me from getting my dang ribbon this year!)
*Attending a post-secondary trauma workshop for birth professionals (hey, this could come in handy with all the post-secondary trauma I'm putting myself through with all the other stuff I have to do!)
*Oh, and somewhere in there, I expect to go into labor at just the wrong moment and have 10 or 11 pounds of baby to aid me in my adventures.
What is wrong with me?! And the worst part of it might be the fact that I just want to sit on the couch and bore my friends and relatives with incessant yammering on about all this! Well, the upshot, I guess, is that I've managed to inhale a few times now and might can trudge upstairs now and deal with what lies in the kids' bedroom.
Blood and crumbs, here I come!
--Teri.
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