Today

I had a rather glamourous Thursday a while back, and I was going to tell you about it. I even took pictures. I'll tell you about it next time.

Today I cleaned, swept and mopped our dining room for the first time since Alexander was born!! (Sanna came over and did it right before Christmas, but this is the first attention it has had from me.) I can't tell you the billowing piles of dog hair I've been stepping over for WEEKS!

I made a gargantuan triple recipe of this chicken chili: some for us, some for our freezer, and some for a family at Steve's work who just had a baby.

I went to mom's group at church. Before I left, I needed to nurse Alexander and also really wanted to take a little bath, and thought that Alexander could stand a bath too, since he hadn't had one since Saturday. So I did all three of those things at the same time! It didn't quite go much faster than doing them each separately though. Apparently Alexander doesn't nurse well in the tub because he is obsessed with looking at the faucet. It doesn't have to be running, it just has to be there, and then he looks at it. Every time.

Since I was out, I went to Taco Bell and ordered a mexican pizza in the drive-through, only to realize that my credit card was at home in the dryer. No junk food today!

I nursed Alexander a bunch of times, and he loved it.

Steve came home from work and ate chicken chili with me and then did the dishes while I fed Alexander.

It was a really good day.

How hard is my life?

Alexander nurses for 2 hours every time he nurses. My nipples feel like they're being hammered through with red hot nails every time he nurses. And when he nurses shorter, I'm in a horrible, stressful dilemma of whether to pump, or see if he needs more milk right now. My emotions are all messed up and I miss my husband when he's at work almost to the point where I can't function.

I was just texting with one of my sisters who's reading a diary of someone who was on the Oregon trail. She had her first baby in a covered wagon at the age of 16. Like many other women, she probably got pregnant again right away and was that way all during the many months hard journey. And then, when the journey ended, life was probably still pretty much just as hard. Those women didn't have hot baths, or perfume bottles surrounding them to make them happy, and all they had to put on their excruciatingly sore nipples was a probably literally starving baby. No tea, no hot chocolate, no bottle for their husband to feed to their baby when they were too tired.

My life is really easy and when I think about these women, I think I can handle this.

Alexander Jake Hansen

Born Monday, December 5 at 3:56pm
9lbs, 9oz
21 1/2 inches long

After birth he spent many hours awake and looking intently at everyone. When he does that he has the same little frown-y face his mother had when she was a baby. (It's so funny to see! He looked at me like that right when he came out and they handed him to me!)

His favorite music is the John Rutter Christmas album. He calms right down when he hears it, no matter what is wrong. I'm thrilled for him to hear and enjoy so many well-crafted suspensions so early in life!

Everyone is doing well and the birth story will follow eventually. (after the nursing story gets worked out!)

a date on the calendar

Today is my due date! :)

I never realized how silly I thought it was for a doctor to pick a due date until last Wednesday, when my doctor told me that we'd be doing a sonogram at my next appointment to check fluids and the baby's safety, since it will then be past my due date. If you're going to check on my baby, why not do it this week, today, while I'm here? It just seems so primitive to be so bound to a date on the calendar like that, especially when you're a highly trained, experienced doctor with astounding research and technology in your brain and at your fingertips. And you're hung up on a calendar date?

With all the knowledge available in modern medicine, it amazes me that they still actually assign specific days as due dates to expectant mothers, since one thing they do know is that they can't accurately predict when labor will start for anybody! Maybe they assign dates because it makes it easier to pigeon-hole you into a category of some kind. As far as I'm concerned, my "due date" is between the middle of November and the middle of December, and that's all anyone really knows.

So then, since about the week before Thanksgiving, I've been trying to stay ready, with a clean house and bags (sort of) packed and all that. The Christmas tree is up, the baby's room is all finished, the cloth diapers are all set up and ready, my mind is all peaceful about labor now and, the biggest relief of all, as of yesterday George is so clean that I don't have to follow her from room to room with a strongly scented candle anymore to cover up her smell.

I finally chose the baby's going home outfit, which was kind of hard for me. I was glad it was hard, it sort of assured me that I'm still me, even just shy of 200 pounds now, not wearing anything but sweats (me?!) and going through ten different personalities a day. Here's his outfit:


I am totally obsessed with the pears!! It's from a Japanese company called Sckoon Organics.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is a boring post or not. Too many words, not enough pictures, probably. Here is quick cell phone picture of our Christmas tree from where I sit. (No, I'm not moving to get a better angle, you'll just have to know that I have moccasins and a TV. And that it's all wonderful and GRAY outside today!!!)

That's all for today! My brother is coming over to do yoga with me and hang out, and then tomorrow I'm getting a pedicure at a fancy pink place with some of my sisters. Have a great weekend!

A tale of two rooms

I wish I had taken more before pictures, but you all know what junk and boxes look like. Yesterday I started out with two very junky, box-filled rooms and ended with two functional rooms instead. (Actually, I also started the day with a gross kitchen, (full of flies to boot, thanks to the heater fixer leaving the door open so much) and ended with it perfectly scrubbed and mopped for the first time in ages. And don't even ask me about the dog hair I swept up! But this isn't about that...)

I think this is the beginning of my being able to relax. I suddenly realized that if I've been tense and stressed the whole time leading up to labor, how will I suddenly be able to turn that off and have a relatively non-stressed labor? Sounds like a miracle anyway, but since I'm going to try for it, I realized that all this tension about projects is going to make it impossible! So, yeah... Relaxing, even with a few chores left, is starting NOW.

It's not quite finished, but here are some shots of the baby's room at this point.
The crib is mostly full of birthing class books and clothes that need to be washed and sorted, and I decided to leave the stack of suitcases since I needed a little table to have by the chair while I'm nursing.

Still waiting on one last piece of furniture for the corner over here,
but right now as I type, that piece of furniture looks like this:
Oh, and those things above the changing table are these sort of airy balloons made out of starched yarn. A friend from college threw me a baby shower and she made like 50 of them as decorations! I love them! Here's a better look:

You're not surprised that my baby's room has a piano in it, are you? The wall over it is going to be covered with the letters of the alphabet, all decorated differently by each of my Dallas shower guests! I like my big stack of music next to the toy shelf. Of course, that probably wont last there once he is old enough to be interested in it!

And on the toy shelf there is a special little toy that Aunt Amy brought back from Spain. It's a real carousel that spins and everything!


Wish the picture were better quality, but you get the idea. It's really beautiful and so old-fashioned!

I really like the dresser top, with the tiny little plant. (it's real!)

And finally, the office. Still not very pretty, but you could barely walk in there before yesterday and there was no bookshelf, just books all over the floor!

At long last I have a little sewing and craft corner in the office, which means, aside from work space, I have an actual place to put my sewing and craft STUFF!

Everything you see on those shelves was holding up the baby's room from looking neat and tidy.

So yeah, that's what I did with the extra hour yesterday. Thanks for listening!!

Where did I ever get the energy?

"To give truth to him who loves it not is only to give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation." ~George McDonald

It's such a relief to just stop talking when you realize the person you're talking to isn't interested in the truth about anything.

I was afraid that if I stopped making the effort to share, I would change and become completely superficial. Being superficial scares me to death. I thought that sharing truth and myself was all that kept me from becoming that way. But it turns out I'm still the same. Nothing at all has changed. Only now I am free to stop caring what they think, and to stop talking.

it's October!

We have about 7 weeks until the due date! There are still so many projects to be done, not to mention practicing, and all the family commitments we've stocked up to do "before the baby comes," that sometimes I just lie in bed all day, completely exhausted and overwhelmed. Some days I have all the energy in the world, but most days I can only eat and sleep and rest while dishes pile up and fluffs of dog hair waft around the house and the list gets longer.

But, October is the best month ever, I love it so much. I almost like it better than Christmas! My projects may not be happening, but this weekend we went to a pumpkin patch and took pictures together. Those are still on the camera (surely you weren't expecting to see them!) but here are some cell phone pics of the lovely pumpkins we got! Picking them out with my Love made me so happy!!

This one seemed magical:

Here are the others--I couldn't believe we got a white one! In person it is such a delicate, glowing white that it seems like it's made of moonlight.

Settled in their new home:

Speaking of the front porch, I got the most wonderful rag rug to go right inside the front door.

It looks and feels as if it's been made out of old t-shirts, and the colors are just what the living room needed. I thought Steve might not like it, but he did!

Here are my pumpkins riding home in my lap from the pumpkin patch. It seemed like my tummy was one of them.

Happy October!!