Oh phew, it’s only been a week or so.  I feel like it’s been ages since I blogged.  A lot has gone on, kinda sorta.  Lots of work still going on in the backyard, and it’s spilling into our kitchen.  No, not really; it just feels that way when I’m waddling around in there in the mornings in my night-gowned, bra-less glory, rinsing bowls at the sink only to glance out the window and meet the eyes of a casually smoking construction worker two feet away.  But!  Progress is worth the wearing of appropriate undergarments even before lunch, I suppose.

I got my Mother’s Day request last week, when we got family/maternity pictures taken to commemorate what is probably our last pregnancy.  Nothing worthy of Awkward Family Photos or anything, fortunately, and in fact I think they turned out really really well, all things (read: non smiling toddler and restless, camera shy preschooler) considered.  I was thrilled, and I cannot WAIT to see how they turned out!

I also had my baby shower last Saturday, and it was just the loveliest party.  I must remember to post a picture of the cake; it was so pretty I could hardly bear for it be cut.  And oh is it fun to look through my growing stack of tiny baby girl things!  I feel prepared finally for the baby’s arrival (stuff-wise, anyways!) and so thankful to my family and friends.  Several of the gifts were for me, or for the whole family- a massage gift certificate, hours of prepaid “nanny care” from our babysitter, etc.- and those were especially thrilling.

Because yes, we now have an official babysitter/house helper person coming a few days a week.  Today was her fourth time here and it’s already been so helpful.  She stays with Jameson on the mornings Eli has swim/gym class so  I don’t have to carry and chase him around the whole time we wait, but can instead read a book and sip some coffee, in a relaxed, non contracting, non round ligament pain experiencing manner.  Heaven!  She also stays with the boys when I go to my doctor’s appointments and NST’s, which are both weekly now (my doctor does them frequently during third trimester for her patients with MTHFR, apparently, especially when those patients are contracting quite a lot.)  She loads the dishwasher and puts dinners in the crock pot, or bakes up muffins with my old bananas.  She’s helped me with the laundry and mopping the floor.  She picks up toys when she’s here so I don’t have to bend over myself.  These things have been the difference between one of the worst weeks ever (the first week in May) and one of the best weeks I’ve had so far since being pregnant.  I am so, so grateful.

The first couple of times she came I just felt guilty and indulgent and foolish, PAYING a babysitter when half the time I’m here in the house with her.  But then I realized what it actually was was pride: I hated admitting that things had begun slipping beyond what I could keep up with.  Either I was obeying my partial bed rest orders and the house was falling apart around me while the kids watched way too much TV, or I was ignoring the doctor and my own body’s wisdom, trying to keep up with my normal routines, and then physically and mentally suffering because of it- and of course being crabby and harsh with my family as a result.  So while we certainly could survive without Stephanie, it has made a huge and pleasant difference having her around, once I swallowed my pride and accepted her presence as a gift and not a sign of my own failure.  I feel like this whole pregnancy, right from the start, has been a lesson in humility for me.

Mother’s Day was very nice, with cinnamon raisin French toast and new books and a nap, and visits with both our moms.  And today is our eighth anniversary, which we celebrated by very nearly forgetting it completely after our busy weekend and the fact that we kind of already celebrated it about a month ago with our trip to Michigan.  But we didn’t forget, after all, and so despite the fact that it was a very normal and uneventful day, it was started with being extra sweet to one another during the usual morning rush, and one of us (guess who, ahem) remembering a card.  So not a total bust.

And there you have it.  A week during which I was so busy being happy I couldn’t be bothered to post!  A girl could get used to this.

I don’t like to commit one hundred percent to a baby’s name until I see their face.  We didn’t with Addy since we didn’t know her gender, and with Eli we tried to (his name was going to be Beckett Jameson) but once I saw him, both those names were out the window because I just didn’t think they fit him.  Eli/Elias hadn’t even been on our list at all, it was just the name that seemed right.  So I know even having a list of two or three to choose from doesn’t guarantee that one of those names will be the one on the birth certificate.  Still.  A list of two or three is what I’m aiming for: it seems the best middle ground between a) going to the hospital just hoping that the perfect name will strike or b) being so committed to a name that you’ve already got it written in the baby book and hung in wooden letters above the crib.  I know some people can do that and be happy, I just can’t personally.

I think we have settled on two names we could all be happy with, so far: Talia, as I said before, and Annika: both are sweet, steady contenders that have been brought up every time I’ve been pregnant but always seemed initially overshadowed by louder, more exciting choices (Magnolia, anyone?) Both have a few little nitpicky issues, at least for me, but I think I’ve realized that there is NO perfect name that isn’t going to have a single drawback, especially once you have sibling and last names to contend with, not to mention the preferences of your child’s other parent and the opinions of your family, if you choose to include them too.  We do not name in a bubble, so to speak.  If we did, my girls would be named Felicity and Genevieve, probably.  And Jim’s boys would be named Roland and Maximus.  We all have our dreams we must release when our fellow parent looks at us and says,  “Sorry.  Can’t do it.”

My nitpicky issues with Annika and Talia, for the record, are as follows: firstly, both names are likely to require frequent correction/explanation of both pronunciation and spelling.  The way we decided WE would say Talia is TAL-ee-uh, with the middle syllable a little blurred but not completely skipped over.  It’s just the way we’re most familiar with, so it feels the most natural, and the other pronunciations feel a little forced.  But I think many people would look at it and say TAHL-ee-uh, which is the more traditional Hebrew pronunciation, I believe, or would think it’s a modern creation type name and would say it Ta-LEE-uh.

And it’s no big deal; I often have to help people pronounce Adelay at first, even though we spelled it as phonetically as possible in hopes of avoiding this.  The easiest explanation has been to say, “Like Adelaide, but -lay at the end.”  Even Elias gets mispronounced a lot- people look at it wrong and say Silas, or they see”Elia-”, assume it’s a girl’s name, and say Eliana before they even finish reading it.  And Jameson’s name is often misspelled as Jamison.  So I’ve come to the conclusion that unless you name your child something extremely plain and extremely familiar, like Jane or Kate (or Sarah!) it will probably get mispronounced or misspelled sometimes, and it’s not the end of the world.  To me, it’s worth it for the fun of choosing slightly more unusual and interesting names.

With Annika, we would pronounce it like all the other Annika’s I’ve ever met: rhyming with Hannukah.  But apparently a lot of people say ANN-ika too, and admittedly that is how it looks.  But one of the things I like about it is it’s German origin (both our families have German background) so I prefer the more Slavic pronunciation.  And I like the idea of calling her Ani or Ana for short, instead of the broader sounding Ann or Annie.  Would it be better to spell it Anika?  Or is that just adding confusion, since Annika is the accepted spelling?

The other slight issue I have is that Annika would be yet another vowel initial, AND a repeat first initial, both things I wanted to avoid, ideally.  However, at least it’s another A- somehow in my head it’s slightly more acceptable since it would be both girls sharing the initial, and also since the A names would be bookends, if you will, at the beginning and the end of the List of Children’s Names.  I know, I’m weird and fussypants.  But those things DO occur to me.

Anyone else out there over-analyze names as much as I do?  It just seems so important, and one of the most fun parts of having a baby, but the reality is something more complicated.  Sigh.  So, if you feel like leaving a comment, you can share your own baby naming woes, or weird little hang ups that prevented you from using otherwise perfect names.  Or give middle name suggestions for either of the two first names we have so far!  (For Talia, I really favor an “E” name so that her initials would be TES, thereby giving me Tess as another nickname option.  Again, yes, I know, I’m a little OCD.)

Or you can tell me to shut up about it for the love of all that is holy and not speak of names anymore until I am actually ANNOUNCING one.  I would understand.  I really wish, in fact, that babies came out with name tags attached, to spare my obsessive little brain the trouble of agonizing over finding THE perfect name.

So, uh, here’s what this week looked like: kids sick, kids sicker, me sick, kids really for real sick, kids go to see new nurse practitioner in our doctor’s office, kids have flu and ear infections and ear canals clogged with wax which require washing even to look at and swollen tonsils and, you know, general plagues of grossness all around.  New lady spends excruciatingly long amount of time looking up how to properly prescribe Tamiflu to children, two of whom are two years apart but within three pounds of each other, and one of whom didn’t actually test positive for influenza B but who was actually the first to be ill and who had been around her brothers all week soaking up their germs.

New lady finally declares she has it all set it up at the pharmacy: the antibiotics and pain drops for Addy’s ear, liquid Tamiflu for all three kids, and a prophylactic dose of Tamiflu for Jim, who was also feverish by then.  Me she doesn’t even attempt to treat, just advises me to speak with my OB that afternoon at my already scheduled appointment.  I drag my sick self and my sick yet also weirdly wound up children out of the office and home for lunch (I forget to eat) and a shower for me, leave kids with Jim and head off to OB’s office.  Good news: cervix still unchanged.  Bad news: I’m pretty droopy and pathetic by the time I am seen, so they are quite concerned and immediately prescribe the class C Tamiflu (which I nod about meekly but don’t take- I’m such a subversive) a weekend of rest and for me to drink my weight in water.

We then try to do the progesterone shot only for the nurse to realize that the vial is empty; whoever gave me my last injection (unknown nurse at satellite office) used too much, apparently, or everyone had been using just a wee bit too much the whole month or SOMETHING, because there was none left for this week and I didn’t have any due to come in until Tuesday.  I am mildly annoyed; nurses and doctor are Concerned because they are convinced that the constant stream of progesterone in my body is what is keeping my cervix as closed as it even is, and that if I walk around coughing and sneezing all weekend WITHOUT THE DRUGS that I will instantly go into labor or something.  So weekend of rest turns into weekend of bed rest, and I have to pay twenty five bucks to have my meds overnighted to me.

I finally get out of there, still having eaten nothing, and am now off to the pharmacy… where I have to wait twenty minutes, and eventually run out of purse Kleenex and have to tear into a new box off the shelf since there is no way to NOT blow my nose without my face melting into a disgusting mess.  Am rapidly turning into dizzy, thirsty, hungry, contracting mess.  Finally my turns comes, and lo, new lady at the practice has prescribed everything backwards: prophylactic doses for the positive-for-flu children and treatment doses for Addy and Jim, the not-yet-positive cases.

Pharmacist spends long time checking and double checking to confirm that yes indeed, new lady wrote it wrong, agonizes about whether to call and tell doctor’s office this or not (in the end, no- that’s on me) then spends long time explaining to me how to properly dose everyone.  I’m all rung up (four hundred and twelve dollars, in case you were curious) when pharmacist ALSO realizes that new lady wrote the weight dosing wrong, so we have to look all of that up and fuss over it again and make sure I actually have enough medicine to give the correct doses and so on.

Arrive home to find Jim quite ill and feverish- he decides to take his Tamiflu in the treatment form (twice a day for five days, fyi) since it seems pretty certain he actually does have it.  Kids are pitiful too, and eager to take any medicine I can shove at them.  You know, except Eli, who throws his usual hysterics as we attempt every method possible to get the stuff down his throat without him spitting it out and screaming bloody murder while kicking at us.  Nothing works, and everyone gets angry and sweaty and miserable as tiny, expensive drops of medicine get spat and choked out everywhere but into the kid’s stomach.  After giving up and putting him to bed to sleep it off, I  pop my head out the door to convey breezily to the workmen a general sense of Hey! Don’t be alarmed by all the shrill, tortured screaming and yelling you just heard!  Just trying to dole out some meds here, not burning anyone with cigarette butts or anything!  Ha ha!  It’s fine!

Because yes.  There are workmen here.  The one good thing about this whole wretched week (oh, in which besides general weeping and gnashing of teeth and wiping of snot, our air conditioner shorted out, hot pink nail polish was flung all down a carpeted hallway by the toddler, and purple play doh got melted irrevocably into Addy’s bedroom rug) was that this happened:

And then this:

And then this:

And also, my partner in all this madness turned thirty five today:

Yesterday I weepily asked him, after we finally put all the kids to bed and I trudged back to my prison couch, how I would ever manage without him around.  He answered philosophically, “Well you wouldn’t have four little kids, to start with.”  So true.  And yet I wouldn’t change it.  Happy birthday dear, such as it is.

How are my kids sick again?  Seriously, I don’t know how our home hasn’t been quarantined by local authorities.  The baby is the worst-  I think Jameson maybe had a non-runny nose for all of a week before it hit again.  And he and Addy are also running fevers, for bonus fun!  It was especially sad because this was Adelay’s week to be the Star Student in her class, complete with poster detailing how awesome she is, and she had to stay home today with her half-bed-resting mother instead.  No wonder she’s cranky.  I would be too.

Well, AM, more accurately, despite finally getting to watch the first season of Downton Abbey (though, seven episodes?  what kind of crap is that?)  I haven’t slept well for several nights because of sick kiddies, but mostly I am just so darn tired of all the contractions.  Yesterday was the worst yet.  Jim and I were both getting a little worried that I might actually be in labor, it was that frequent and that painful, but chugging a ton of Gatorade and staying on my left side finally settled them down.  Jamie’s been very clingy since he’s been sick and I think all the carrying him, lifting him, and having him climb all over me the last few days has probably been irritating the old uterus.  (And I know, I know, I shouldn’t be doing that stuff, but it’s pretty hard to ignore the uplifted arms of your pitiful, sick baby.)  I have to say, it was far easier, physically, being pregnant with an almost three year old than with a nineteen month old.

You know what else bummed me out this weekend, in an admittedly ridiculous and disproportionate-to-the-situation way?  I finally got my crazy long, hormone-thickened hair cut and thinned Saturday, and the whole time the girl just went on and on about how thick and frizzy it is, what a pain it must be to style, and yet kept telling me I “should really” flat iron to get that “bulky” hair calmed down!  In the end she didn’t do enough to thin it, either (when I asked her to keep going she said, “I can’t do as much as it needs because it will make it even more frizzy!”) so it looks basically exactly the same.  I felt like she was barely even trying because my hair is so difficult and there’s no way to make it look really good.  I know it’s a tiny, tiny thing in the grand scheme of life, but just once I’d like to have a hair stylist say SOMETHING nice about my hair (and “at least you’ll never go bald!” doesn’t count,) or at least not act like it’s a freaking handicap.  It’s hard to feel pretty with puffy pregnant face and, apparently, decidedly bad hair.

Okay, I need to end the complaining, for all our sakes!  Um, good things…  Well, my mom and sister ran a garage sale over the weekend and I got a lot of stuff cleared out!  It made me really happy- it was a lot of wall art and decor stuff that I’d been holding on to thinking I might use it again somewhere, but at the moment closet space is at a serious premium, so I finally wised up and let it go.  It was all mostly Hobby Lobby-type stuff, not so precious and expensive that it was a tragedy to let it go cheaply.  And hey, then I’ll have the fun of replacing the items if I someday find I need yet another framed print or ceramic vase or whatever to brighten up some as-yet nonexistent wall or bookshelf.

Speaking of as-yet nonexistent space, the builders are supposed to start this Wednesday, after a few inevitable delays.  Jim tore out the lower tier of the deck yesterday, which has to come out to make room for the workers and their equipment.  It was kind of sad, since he and his dad put that deck in themselves, and did a beautiful job, but it had to be done.  At least we still have some of it left.  And it’s sounding like the framework and outside stuff (doors, windows, siding, roof) will be done before the baby comes, which makes me happy.  The yard will still be a disaster, but hey, it often is anyways.

Now I have to go medicate the baby’s high fever again and then lay on the couch and rest and try not to be driven crazy by the mess that I’m not supposed to clean.  Good times.

Well hey, maybe the shots are working a little bit!  I had another check up Thursday and there had been no change since the week before, which is awesome considering I had been up and doing stuff and not strictly bed resting in any real sense, just trying to do less bending over and/or lifting.  (For instance, “heavy” housework like vacuuming doesn’t really trigger much in the way of contractions, but stuff like unloading the dishwasher or switching out loads of laundry is awful because of all the up and down, to say nothing of picking up toys.  Weird, huh?)

We also did an ultrasound since I’ve been having a TON of round ligament pain still and the doc just wanted to check in and make sure it wasn’t actually some problem with a placental abruption or something.  The good news is no, placenta is fine and it’s all just complaining muscles, which is hugely relieving.  I’ve never had so much discomfort, and it was making me nervous.  We also checked cervical length, and it’s still great, almost no shorter than it was nine weeks ago, which was some more fantastic news and really encouraged the doctor that hopefully the progesterone shots are indeed doing some good.  So, you know, bedrest might still happen at some point a few weeks down the road, but at least nothing immediate, and who knows, maybe none at all if I can just stay where I’m at!

The baby is looking lovely, all round cheeked and infant-like already, over three pounds and in the seventieth percentile for overall growth!  And boy is she a thumb sucker- the kid literally never had her hands out of her face during the entire scan, and was even at times trying to LICK them.  Yes, I saw my unborn fetus’s tongue.  That was a new experience.  We saw a mound of hair already, too.  She looks so different already than her older sister’s scans at this age, which showed a tiny, delicate doll of a baby who was so small the doctor was worried about IUGR and who was always waving at us from inside my belly.  Not this little sister!  We get the stuck out tongue instead.

We have made a teensy bit of progress in the name department, in that Jim suggested one the other day that we both like, as opposed to every single other one, which one person likes and the other at best can tolerate.  So the name we have at the moment is Talia Elizabeth.  I really do love it, it meets just about all of my current name criteria, and as a plus, the initials of her name would be TES, so we could even have Tess as another nickname option! (And yes, Elizabeth is my middle name too- I just love the meaning of it, and it goes so well with Talia!  Also, Adelay’s middle is Isabelle, which is a Spanish form of Elizabeth, so we would all kind of share our middle name.)

The only issue I have with it is pronunciation.  I’ve been researching it a lot online and many people with this name complain of all the variations of spelling and pronunciation they encounter.  Some people say TAL-ee-ah, others tah-LEE-ah, some say TAL-ya, some say TAHL-ya, etc.  It can be spelled Talia, Tahlia, Talea, Taleah, and several other variations.  There also seems to be no real consensus on the “true” pronunciation, because the name has origins in many different cultures (Hebrew, Arabic, Russian) and so there are several “right” ways to say it.  There’s also the Greek Thalia, which is generally pronounced “THAYL-ya” but which some people choose just for the spelling but still say it “Talia,” just to add to the confusion.

I don’t even know which is my preferred way to say it.  Jim always says “TAL-ya,” like that actress Talia Shire.  But I’m not sure…  I AM pretty sure this was a name we considered for Jameson before we knew he was a boy, and I think I even posted about the pronunciation issue way back then!  So sorry for the redundancy, if this post is suddenly giving you de ja vu.  But the fact that it’s been in consideration with two babies now does make me think this is a name we will like long term and isn’t just a fleeting, trendy idea that struck my fancy.  So there’s that going for it, unlike names such as, say, Bellamy or Marlayna, which I’ve already cooled on.

If you have a preference, tell me which way you would pronounce the name Talia (’cause I do think we would stick with that spelling- it seems to be the most common, as well as being the only variation that didn’t tick off my spell checker.)

Oh guys.  Someone buy me this t shirt right now and I swear I’ll wear it in public.