Vitafamiliae

We lost a special member of the family today.  Back when we found out we were having twins, we knew we would need an actual couch for our home.  So we started shopping.  Then, I got put on bed rest.  From the hospital, I sent Andrew off to “go buy me a couch to lay on.”  Fortunately, he remembered the one I liked and I had a cozy place to perch while I grew those babies.

I sat on that couch while my mother-in-law cooked me meals of macaroni and cheese and hot buttered rolls.  I ate my weight and then some in peppermint patties to help with the nausea.  We were still finding those silver wrappers years after.

And then the twins were born.  And I pretty much lived on that couch for another year.  That’s where we napped.

We ate.

And we cuddled.

Our family grew.  And so did the usefulness of the couch.  It was perfect for reading time…

…and for parties.

We continued to add to the kid pile.

Then I did another round of bed rest, and Old Faithful was there for me.

The couch has been a tent…

…a highway

…and an art and pilates studio in one.

It’s held the next generation

…and lots of generations all at once.

But we hit a point where the couch didn’t fit in our house or our lives any more.  We replaced it with a smaller, cozier little number that fits the way we live now.  And today, our old couch found a new home at my folks’ new house.  It’s nice to know we’re keeping it “in the family.”  And I can go visit whenever I want.

And should I ever get put on bed rest again, I want it back.  There’s no better place to store my remote, my phone, my water bottle, and my peppermint patties than the crevices of that brown couch.

Enjoy your new home, Old Faithful.

My landscaping needs are pretty basic.  I want a bed of lilies.  Always.  Some herbs for the kitchen.  I wouldn’t mind some cucumbers, but only if I’m not solely responsible for all the gardening.  Fortunately, Andrew loves outside work and is always fiddling with the yard in some way.  So I guess when I showed him a picture in a magazine of a backyard fountain, he was happy to have a project that I would be excited about.

He started digging the hole a few weeks ago, but then several weeks of rain reduced the hole to a mud pit for my Little Piggies.  When we finally had a dry weekend, Andrew worked hard to get the hole more laundry-friendly.

Adam was terribly helpful, as you can see.  We did have Sam and Ian help out by dragging the dirt off in buckets.

This wasn’t fun for very long, but we encouraged them to be diligent and they bore up well.

Andrew could certainly have done it faster on his own, but when they were finished, they had a whole new pile of dirt/mud to play in.

Ellen was the cheerleader from her perch on the trampoline.

Once the hole was dug, Andrew dug a deeper, smaller circle in the middle for the pump.

Then he lined the deeper pit to make it hold water.

Ellen was as helpful as ever, of course.

And the boys used the left-over liner to make some Zorro capes so they could swoop around the yard.

Next came bags upon bags of gravel.  It didn’t seem like a big hole at first.  Sixty-five bags of gravel later, we’d changed our minds.  Here’s what the van looked like after Andrew’s FIRST trip to the rock store.  This was with only thirty bags of gravel and some river stone in it.

Andrew was pretty close to having his nose in the air there, don’t you think?  We certainly exceeded our budget on this project, but once we had the hole dug, there wasn’t any turning back.  Once he had the gravel in the hole, Andrew had to wash it so the water wouldn’t be too dirty to play in.  He wet the rock and then vacuumed up the excess with a shop-vac.  It took awhile, but the gravel was nice and shiny.  And now that I’ve seen Ellen try to drink the water on more than one occasion, I’m awfully glad he took the time.

It took several trips to the store to get the right amount of gravel so that it was level with the ground.  Once we had it level, Andrew installed the pump.  The pump shoots the water up out of the rocks and then recycles the water as it trickles back down through the rocks.  With the exception of what evaporates or gets tossed by the kids, we shouldn’t have to refill it much.

Then we covered the pump and leveled the gravel again.  Next came loads and loads of river rock.  We transferred them from the van to the backyard in the dark after the kids went to bed.  We never cease to find ways to entertain our neighbors (or annoy them).

We still have some work to do, the actual fountain isn’t quite center, but Andrew swears it’s easily fixable.  And I’m glad.  Because the lack of symmetry makes me twitch.  In the meantime, the kids L.O.V.E. this thing.  Yes, I’m still doing extra laundry because of all the wet clothes, but it is literally hours of entertainment.  From the living room, I can hear the soothing sounds of water running and watch my children laugh and splash and play.

My one complaint is the plumber’s crack I am forced to endure when the bottoms of the boys’ pants get wet and heavy.

All of this to say, my husband rocks. Pun oh-so-very-much intended.

I don’t want to sound like I’m whining, but it’s raining again.  Our backyard is one big mudhole.  And since most everyone is feeling better, there were some walls being climbed.  Once the kids got me to come down off the chair rail, I tried to come up with something different to do.

I cleaned out my kitchen sink and filled both sides with warm water and bubbles.  Then I put Ellen and Adam on buckets, gave them some toys, and let ‘em loose in the water.  Here are my “youngers” in preschool heaven.

This gave me a chance to get some time with the “biggers.”  We counted coins, sorted them, and practiced writing.  I even got to teach Sam how to play “go fish” (something I will no doubt regret at some point in my tenure as “mom”).

Adam got tired after awhile (he still spends most of his days on the couch thanks to that stomach bug), so Ian got a few minutes on a bucket next to Ellen.  Then Sam ran into the kitchen for his turn.  I heard a louder “spelunk” than normal, so I went in to investigate.  Sam was sitting on the edge of the sink with both of his feet dunked in the water.  He was wearing jeans.

How do they think of these things?  Seriously, how was that the first thing he thought to do?

Eventually, after an hour and a half of water play, Ellen decided she was done.  She, like all the others, was soaked from head to toe.  I pulled her off her bucket and got her dry.  All of the sudden, she looked down at her wrinkled, pruney hands.  “Aaaaagghhhhh!  Ow, Mommy, ow, hanns, ow!”

I’ve no idea where she gets that dramatic streak from.

Ian hopped back up on a bucket and joined Sam at the sink.  I rounded the corner into the kitchen to fix lunch and saw this:

The weight of all the water had completely pulled Sam’s pants down.  And he played on with them still around his ankles.

Now that’s some kind of fun morning, isn’t it?

This morning we woke up to an Ellen who was still throwing up after four days.  We decided a trip to the doctor was in order, so Andrew got to do the honors of carting her off to the closest ER.  The doctor assured us that she was hydrated (by some miracle) and that we would just have to hang in there.  And that this was most definitely NOT Fifth’s Disease.  Crud.  That meant she had The Mother of All Stomach Bugs, and she’s a very giving sort of person, if you know what I mean.

When Andrew got home, he put Ellen down for a nap, and I loaded the guys and Willa into the van.  Grammy has been here for the week and Aunt Anita came down to get her.  They wanted to go to the mall (a trip I had promised Grammy all week) and this was my last chance to take them.  On the way to the mall, Adam started coughing.  Lots.  My awareness level to coughing has gone up astronomically this week.  I sent my cup back there for him to have a sip.  And I told him to quit coughing, because I’m sensitive and compassionate as a mother.

Just as I was turning into the mall, his cough “made the change.”  I whipped into a parking lot while Aunt Anita tried to catch what she could with a diaper.  We cleaned him up a bit and headed on over to the store of their choosing.  It’s an open air mall, so I dropped them off and then pulled into a parking place.  I put a book on tape in for the kids to listen to and got Willa out of her seat so she could eat.  Before I fed her, I made sure Adam had a cup “just in case.”

He waited until I’d finished feeding Willa, otherwise I would have been in quite  a predicament.  As it was, I quickly jumped out of my seat, opened her door and threw her in her car seat, closed her door, ran around the van, and opened his door, just in time to catch most of his offering in his cup.  Ian was sitting next to him and started a gagging fit of his own.  I told him to turn his head and close his eyes.

Once Adam was finished, I pulled him out of the car.  I took his shirt off of him.  But I didn’t have a change of clothes in the car.  I also didn’t have any baby wipes.  I usually do, but we had them in a different location because of all the wipes usage with Ellen.  I grabbed an extra baby blanket and a random coat I found in the back seat and cleaned him up.  Then I used some antibacterial spray that smells like peppermint for his hands.  I also generously sprayed his car seat, just to make things a bit more bearable for my other children, who were trapped in a hot van with that odor.

Once I had Adam back in his seat, I was left with a pile of random laundry and a full cup.  And I was stuck in the middle of the parking lot.  I couldn’t leave the kids to find a trash can or a bag.  And I couldn’t move the van out of the sunbeam it was bathed in because I couldn’t leave my putrid pile.  So, we waited.  I tried to shield any passersby from my little barf nest and I kept an eye out for my Grammy and Aunt Anita.

Eventually they reappeared.  I ran into a Gymboree and asked for a bag.  The woman supplied me with the flimsiest trash bag I have ever seen.  It tore in two places while I gingerly tried to bag all of the stuff without actually touching it.  I opened the back of the van to toss the bag in and found a gigantic box of baby wipes I’d purchased and never removed from the van.  I handed one to Adam (albeit a little late) and used one for my own hands.

Now we’re all home again and the puke-fest is on.  Adam is offically down for the count.  Ian is feverish and only ate half his dinner, so I suspect he is next.  I’m off to bed to recharge for the marathon that is ahead, but I needed to blog about this, if only to try and find some humor in the whole situation.

I’m still looking.

Pray hard, y’all.  And if you don’t hear from me for awhile, someone please deposit a large bag of popsicles, saltines, and Pediatalyte on our door step, ring the door bell, and run away quickly.

On Tuesday night, I had the Mother of All Migraines and went to bed, clinically dead.  Adam woke up screaming in the middle of the night with a fever.  I found out about it the next morning.  I didn’t even know Andrew got up out of the bed.  Never heard a thing.

We chalked it up to the headache and had a good laugh the next morning.  Normally, I can hear a child whimper from two miles away.  I’m usually the first one up and out of the bed before Andrew even realizes he has children.  So for me to completely miss some midnight kid drama was completely out of character.I joked, “My Mommy-Radar must be broken.”

Until it happened again last night.  I woke up to see a weary Andrew crawling back into bed around 12:30.  “Where did you go?” I croaked.

“Adam was screaming again.  I told you.  I even nudged you.  Why didn’t you come up?”

I had to admit I hadn’t heard a thing.  I moaned that maybe I really was broken and rolled over to go back to sleep.  Fifteen minutes later, we both flew out of the bed when Adam took up his wailing again.  When we made the third trip (oh, alright, my second, Andrew’s third trip) up the stairs, we decided to haul Adam down to sleep in our room.

He waltzed right into our room, crawled up in the bed, and laid his head on my pillow.  This is only funny if you understand how we never let our kids in our bed.  But Adam was just certain he’d gotten away with it this time.  We booted him down to the floor in a sleeping bag where he belonged and tried to settle ourselves for some sleep.

I had just dozed off when I thought I heard a noise somewhere in the house.  I couldn’t identify it, so I got up and wandered around, listening.  I heard Ellen coughing, but no other sounds alerted me, so after a proper check of the windows and doors, I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.

Until the Weather Alert Radio went off.  There was thirty seconds of mass confusion while I tried to shove Andrew out of the bed and make him understand what the noise was.  He fumbled around in the dark and managed to find the radio and shut the noise off.  Then I fumbled for the remote so we could turn the TV on to check the Status of Things.  Nothing but a tornado watch.  Back to bed…

By this point, we were both so wired and strung out, it took a bit to settle us down.  Not to mention there was a wiggly boy making lots of noises down in his sleeping bag and since we don’t usually have children in the bedroom, this took some adjusting.  We were both up once more each, Andrew to stretch his achy muscles and me to check on the baby (because I’m neurotic that way).

By the time the Weather Alert went off the second time, nobody was surprised.  We were all dead asleep by then, but at the rate our night had gone, it was to be expected.  More shoving, more fumbling, more reassurance by the weather man that the warnings had nothing to do with us.   Then, at last, peaceful sleep…

And then our little alarm clock (AKA Willa) went off and it was time to start our morning.

Oh, and that coughing I heard Ellen do?  She threw up in her bed and slept in it all night.  Now we’ve got a virus, some colds, and the stomach bug in the House of Vitafam.  Plague and pestilence are upon us.

Who wants to come for a visit?

Now that all the cake-making is over for our “birthday season,” I think I have enough perspective on things to write coherently about how we do birthdays around here.  Ali requested this post a few weeks ago but all I could type was fondant…. blah, blah…. grey whales… blah, blah… eat more cake.

Which may very accurately sum up this post, too.

I hardly feel equipped to talk about this because truly, my kids haven’t been old enough to have any input into how we do their birthdays until recently.  But though the practicalities may change, our general philosophy probably won’t.  We view a birthday as a celebration of the child and their milestone, not necessarily “their day to do whatever they want.”

We usually sing “Happy Birthday” in the morning when the child wakes up.  My mother raised me to believe that cake for breakfast on your birthday is an imperative, so for a few years, I tried to hold fast to that rule.  It was cute when I only had two kids.  Now the idea of everybody running around hopped up on sugar all day makes me cringe.  Sam and Ian settled for a finger full of icing and a bowl of cereal.  (Please note:  this does NOT mean that I don’t still insist on cake for breakfast on my birthday.  I can change the rules for my kids, but this is a non-negotiable in my book.  And if it’s cake batter, well, that’s even better.)

Obviously, I do make a cake.  This is something else my mother did.  She let me pick whatever character or creature I wanted and she would draw it on a 9 x 13 sheet cake.  She was still doing that for me on my 23rd birthday.  Sometimes, she’d even do it when she wasn’t with me on my birthday and send me pictures.  I may have complicated things with my own kids’ cakes over time, but I love the challenge.  And the kids spend all year trying to pick what sort of cake to have.

As far as parties, we do family parties.  We define family as “anybody we know who loves our children,” so it’s a pretty big crowd.  Back when the twins turned one, we hosted a gigantic party to thank all of the many people who helped us get through a difficult pregnancy and our first year with twins so far away from family.  We squeezed about 40 people into our house and fed them barbecue and cake (probably the only birthday cake I DIDN’T make, but she did a great job).  Everyone signed a scrapbook page for each boy and they made a video of birthday messages.  Those messages, left by some people who are no longer with us, are such a treasure and are a testament to how loved and blessed our guys were.

Now that we’re closer to “real” family, we invite any family that can come and include any of our local friends who want some free food.  I let the child pick what meal they want me to serve (or I pick their favorite foods) and we eat and have cake.

As far as gifts go, we use Christmas for gifts everybody shares and birthdays for more individual gifts.  We try to keep it simple, and, to be honest, we are trending toward just buying share-able gifts for everyone on birthdays, too.  Since the boys play with the same stuff and we want them to share anyway, it just makes sense.

Which brings me to our current complication.  Ellen has a pretty easy birthday.  She gets girl stuff, which she will have to learn to share with Willa.  But Adam still doesn’t understand that he isn’t a triplet.  So Sam and Ian’s birthday is especially hard on him.  We gave the twins new N3rf swords and we did actually buy a third sword for Adam.  And we gave it to him at the same time.  No reason to make him miserable.  Hopefully, in another year or two, he’ll start to understand that his birthday is his own special day and that we are not punishing him for being born in August.  Until then, we walk this fine line between giving the twins a special day and helping them include their brother in the fun.

One final tradition: we pull out any videos or scrapbooks we’ve made for the kids and look them over.  This year was the first time I’d told the twins all of the story that is written in their scrapbooks.  They didn’t understand it all, but they got the point that we give God all the glory for our boys.  And Adam looks at his scrapbook and says that the pictures of him in the NICU make him sad.  “But I all better now, Mommy.”

And that’s our goal for birthdays.  Each of our children has been given a unique story.  Birthdays are days meant for re-telling those stories and marvelling at all the extra chapters God added in the past year.  And if we happen to eat cake, well, that’s just a yummy bonus!

Alright, enlighten me.  How do you do birthdays?

Our baby-sitter has been out of town for awhile. So as soon as she set foot on Birmingham soil, we had her booked for a date. Our date was this afternoon: a pre-Thanksgiving sanity check for us. (Because, why, yes, we are hosting Thanksgiving for various and sundry family this year. All I’m providing food-wise is ingredients and a ham, though, I promise. I will not lay a hand on the stove, I do so solemnly swear.)

Anyway, we decided to take a quick power walk around the mall after lunch, just to see if we could convince Willa to come out and go shopping. There is a Baby Gap, after all. When we entered the main mall area on the second floor, a small child came careening up from the floor on the first level, turned a flip, and then disappeared back down to the first floor. She was hooked to a various array of bungee cords and jumping on a trampoline.

I watched for a minute and my eyes lit up as I imagined myself skinny and light, flying through the air with the greatest of ease. Then I pictured our fellas flinging themselves around mid-air and turned to Andrew grinning.

He was frowning. “No, absolutely not.”

“What?” I said innocently.

“You MAY NOT get on that today.”

Then it hit me. He thought I wanted to use the bungee/trampoline to induce labor. Do you think it would have worked?

Because I am nothing if not a submissive wife, we’ll never know now, will we?

Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll!

Yea, I know. You’re probably about as sick of seeing pictures of me and my belly as I am of posting them. I promise, there will be no postpartum belly pictures. You have my word. But, seriously, this has to be documented. The child that tried to come too early has now decided to arrive to her party fashionably late. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Willa and Mommy at 40 Weeks.

I got a question in the comments today about whether or not we could start praying her out. Uh… yea. NOW WOULD BE THE TIME. All my over-zealous prayer warriors who did such a good job at praying for Willa to turn head down, for her placenta to move, and for her to stay put? You can stop with the “stay-put” praying now. She’s good and cooked. The button on this turkey has POPPED. She’s been given notice.

In case you missed the memo: Ya’ll feel free to pray her out.

Everyone is feeling the “wait” around here. After an attempt to make granola today resulted in a trashed kitchen and a tearful fit (by me), Andrew has consigned me to my chair for the duration. For his sake, more than mine.

The kids are clingy and need a bit of reassuring. We may have overdone it a bit on the words of reassurance, though. The other day on the way to the grocery store, Sam informed me that when he and Ian grew up to be Zorro and Tonto, they would still be my sons.

I agreed. “Yes, boys. No matter where you go, you will always be my sons.”

Sam was quick to point out, “We just goin’ into the woods, Mommy.”

Was that supposed to make me feel better?

You know how you always hear rumors and see forwards about funny things caught on security camera? Well, there’s a guy at our local Whole Foods who is shopping around a new tape. Courtesy of yours truly.

I loaded up the gang this morning and took them to the grocery store. We all needed a change of scenery and having food in the house is never a bad thing, either. Plus, I thought maybe if I took Willa back to the scene of the crime, she’d remember what she was supposed to do and vacate my premises.

I’ve told you before how we shop. Two kids in the car in the front, two kids in the cart. I push all four of ‘em. Plus whatever food I can squeeze in around the bodies. We were moving right along, everyone was in good spirits, and we made it to the middle of the store. Suddenly Adam yelled in a panicked voice, “Mommy, I haffa go to a baffwoom!”

And mothers all over the world felt an internal shudder.

Usually, it’s too late by the time Adam informs me. But this time, he was ahead of the game. I yelled out, “Hold it!”

And then promptly tried to run over a lady with my heavy cart. I barely grated out an “excuse me” as we pushed past her. At that point, all the defensive driving I’d learned in DC, and the attitude to match, came back to me. We went careening to the front of the store and then took the turn to the left on about a wheel and a half. Adam and Ian (who were in the front) were squealing in sheer delight. And probably a bit of healthy fear.

Meanwhile, I’m yelling around my gritted teeth, “Hold it, Adam. Don’t you go in your pants! Mommy will get you there!”

We sped through the restaurant section of the store which was mercifully empty. I say “mercifully” because I’m pretty sure we took out a table when I bumped it with the cart. I never looked back, but I heard a thump and then a loud crash as we flew to the bathroom. And I have a vague memory of a table wobbling in my peripheral vision.

We pulled up in front of the bathroom and I used the wall in front of me to crash us to a stop. I yanked Adam out of the car and carried him to the bathroom door. And here is the dilemma of every mother in the world: do you take the time to unload all the people in the cart and risk the accident, or do you hope that Child Protective Services isn’t watching that day?

I chose the middle ground. I yanked Adam’s pants down and shoved him through the door. Then I used my body as a prop so I could watch him waddle with his pants around his ankles to a stall while I kept an eye on the kids in my cart. I yelled into the bathroom, “I’m coming, Adam!”

Then I wrestled the cart into the small hallway outside the bathroom door and told Sam and Ian to “Sing Mommy a song really loud!”

I ran into the bathroom and helped a yelling Adam onto the potty. Where his bowels promptly exploded. But that little genius made it to the potty! Since he needed a little help with his aim, I had to stand in the stall pointing him down into the potty while I continued yelling at my other children. “Sing! Sing louder!”

Once Adam could finish on his own, I raced over to the bathroom door and checked on the kids in the cart. All still there. I wrangled the large metal trash can over to the door to prop it open so I could keep an eye on everyone. Sam and Ian kept up a steady chatter, if not a healthy round of chorus like I suggested.

Once Adam’s needs were all met, we left the bathroom and returned to our shopping. I guess we were there two hours. I think I may have passed out somewhere in the meat department.

The children were a dream, really. I mean, besides the usual off-the-wallery. The only child on my bad list when we left was Willa, who made nary a peep. Not even with all the running and wrestling and reckless driving I did. I even stood in the frozen foods section and talked to her, right in front of the ice cream. “Remember this, honey? You were very interested in this section about 16 weeks ago. Come on out and Mommy will buy you some of this ice cream…”

Which is just further proof that I’m not above bribery in a grocery store.

So, Mr. Security Guy. I hope you enjoyed your laugh. I can imagine that the site of a pregnant, determined, mother of four single-handedly taking out a cafe table is pretty funny. Just don’t sell your precious little tape to CPS, okay?

Technorati Tags: family, laughter, potty training, Whole Foods

Some of you know that we like to keep our kids with us during church services. We’ve got a myriad of reasons, and if you ever want to know, remind me sometime and I’ll tell you. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Last Sunday, for a different myriad of reasons, we put Ellen in the nursery for the first time ever. This is temporary, but it works for the current situation. Stay with me here, folks…

So, me and my 39 week pregnant self waddled into the buzzing nursery area carrying Ellen on my hip. I filled out the paperwork and was pointed down a certain hallway to a certain room. I was very, very nervous about how my daughter was going to handle being deserted by her mama. I walked into the room, announced to all various and sundry adults that “this is her first time in a nursery EVER,” and then tried to act calm as I got ready to leave. I showed Ellen a toy. She responded with a chipper, “Ooooo!” and sat down to play with it. I situated her blanket and pig close by so she’d have them when she went postal and slipped out the door.

Then I hid around a corner and waited for the screaming and gnashing of teeth.

There wasn’t any. I raced away before she could get started and then convinced myself that my nose was just runny and I did NOT need a Kleenex for any other reason.

So I made it through the whole church service, anxiously checking for any flashing lights with Ellen’s number or a harried nursery worker hunting me down. At the very end, the choir had one more BIG EMOTIONAL number to close us out with. The music was swelling, there was a touching video on the Jumbro-tron (is that what they call them in church now?), and then I became aware of a sound that seemed more like a siren than an organ. But over the drums it was sort of hard to tell. As the siren swelled to a loudness greater than the choir, for a brief moment, I decided that it was Jesus, coming to get us. (Because I’m pretty sure He’ll tell Gabriel to use something more modern than a trumpet in this day and age.)

And then I noticed the flashing emergency lights in the sanctuary. Sweet mercy, there was a fire somewhere and I didn’t have my baby handy to clutch to my chest as we dashed for safety.

I started looking around to see if anyone else was running from the room. No one was moving. Until the next round of sirens drowned out the choir completely and the music came to a clanging halt. Everyone looked around the large room and tried to figure out what was next. In my head I was screaming, What’s Next? Go get Ellen, that’s what’s next!!!

But I didn’t see a slew of mothers jumping from their seats to retrieve their children from burning buildings, so I stayed put. Plus, I could see Ellen’s building through the window and there was no smoke. I did know from my days as a nursery worker, though, that they would evacuate the kids. And I had NO IDEA where they would take them. It’s just not standard protocol to brief parents’ on emergency procedures on the very first Sunday they drop their kid off, you know?

Eventually someone pastoral and leader-like appeared on stage and reassured everyone that the alarm was a mechanical issue and there was no fire. We finished the service and I stayed glued in my seat, trying not to come un-hinged. My baby, my baby, must get to my baby…

Some nice lady recognized me and spoke up to say hi. Which was comforting, as we’re very new to this church and get overwhelmed in the sea of humanity. But I was a bit distracted what with the “trying not to cry” bit I was doing. I’ll be friendlier next time, B., I promise.

Eventually, Andrew and I split up. He took the boys for a bathroom break and I had to hoof it to the other side of the church to get Ellen. And you all know what happens to a pregnant woman when she walks any distance over… well, two feet. She has to pee. I was NOT standing in some gosh-awful line when I needed to go rescue my child from flames-unknown, but I also knew I couldn’t carry her in my condition. I remembered a small bathroom in the nursery.

And after an unfortunate incident with a toilet about two inches off the ground in which I thought I would either have to be rescued or just stay there until Willa was born, I made it safely to Ellen’s room. Where I discovered my girl was fine. I picked her up and she said, “Guys?”

So glad she missed me.

The nursery worker told me that they had indeed evacuated the kids twice. She was very apologetic because she couldn’t find Ellen’s coat and had let her wear someone else’s. She hoped that was okay. I cut my eyes sheepishly over at her and said, “Yes, that’s fine, because she didn’t have a coat.”

The coldest day we’d had so far and none of my kids (not even the Pansy Boys) had coats. I informed the lady that I was indeed Mother of the Year. I said I had four kids four and under and if they all had shoes and pants on when we left, we considered that a success.

Then I scooped up Ellen and what was left of my mangled dignity and went to go meet the rest of the family. I’m curious to see how she does next time, now that not everything is new and different, but I’m proud that there was no drama.

I mean, no drama from Ellen. I, obviously, had all the drama I could stand in my very own prenatal head.

And that is just one scary place to be right now, people, trust me. Betcha can’t wait to meet my postpartum head, can you?