Happy 87th Birthday Grandpa!!!

Last Sunday Grandpa Faulkner turned 87 years old! We had a nice birthday celebration at Don and Joan's on Saturday. It is important to Craig and I to celebrate these momentous birthdays with his wonderful grandparents. We feel blessed to have them in our lives. We love you Grandpa!

87 years young

Blowing out the candles

From the left: Doug, Grandpa, Don, Grandma and Craig

Irritable Uterus = Irritable Mama

I have had a rough day here and I am feeling kind of low.  Fortunately I invited Rich and Mel over to watch Survivor with me tonight and some friend time has done wonders to improve my mood.  The reason for my melancholy: irritable uterus.  Jen Longcor was the first person that I described my pains/discomfort too who had not only heard of it, but put a name to it.  90% of doctors, midwifes, nurses and other pregnant ladies I have talked to about it have never heard of such symptoms.  Tonight I googled the term and found a web-site, http://www.irritable-uterus.com/, which assured me that other women have had this problem too.  There is some comfort in knowing I am not alone.  I actually started bawling when I read the following passage from the web-site: "We have suffered from IU, some of us through multiple pregnancies, so we know how difficult life can really be when living with an IU or when living with someone who has an IU." 

I know my tears were due to a combination of things:  LOTS of cramping today, no help with the kids, exhaustion and hormones.  It was still nice to feel validated in reading someone say, "what you are going through is hard."  But mainly I was crying because I am a mere 25 weeks pregnant and have 15 more long weeks to go.  I know from experience that it will get much worse before the end.  I have a TON of contractions to look forward to before I actually go into labor.  The personal stories posted on the web-site made me more nervous about going into pre-term labor than I think I need to be, so I stopped reading.  I am grateful that I have carried both girls full term and because of that I have no doubt that this pregnancy will go full term too.  But having an IU does make recognizing pre-term labor much more tricky so I need to be aware.  This is because I experience several of the signs of pre-term labor on a daily basis.  Already.  Menstrual-like cramping, lower back pain, 4 contractions (painless) an hour.  I started feeling Braxton-Hicks (BH) contractions just after 20 weeks, same as with Reagan, and get them every evening.  During the day I sometimes feel my abdomen tighten and it stays tight for quite some time.  This is common of IU, according to the web-site.  The cramping comes and goes through out the day and is definitely worse than it was a few weeks ago.  This is the most painful of symptoms thus far, and boy does pain wear a person out. 

I am glad that I have a midwife appointment on Monday.  It will be good to discuss all my symptoms with a professional.  I am just hoping the person I see has had some experience with this.  The worst is when I get a blank look or a really concerned look.  I know this is my normal.  But of course I want them to be aware and I want to take precautions when necessary.  I am going to need to work hard on not overdoing it these next 3.5 months.  Ending up on bed rest and or medication would be terrible.  Today I felt like I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other and that is not the way I want to feel at only 25 weeks along.  I am incrediably thankful for my beautiful girls who brighten my every single day.  Even though they are a lot of work, it is nice to have the evidence of how worth being pregnant is, right before my eyes.  I wouldn't say it makes it easier, but makes it more tolerable.         

Katya sayings

Some cute things Katya has said lately:

• After Reagan sneezed on her (in a very annoyed voice), "Mom!  Reagan blessed me!!"
• (sing-song-y) "Holy Redeemer, Holy Redeemer!" We had been talking about her school earlier that day.  "That's my school.  Holy Redeemer.  You can't go there yet Reagan, your too little."
• "We can help parents get ready.  Then we can go to Grandma's house!"
• Katya, "Reagan, are you eating dog food?"  Reagan, "Yes."
• In her best Dora the Explorer voice, "Do you see the letter D?  Yes!  There is the D!"
• Katya, "What are you doing Mommy?"  Me, "Putting clothes away."  Katya, "You're putting Daddy's clothes away?  For safe keeping?"  Me, "Sure."  Katya, "So that monsters don't get them?"

We got an acceptance letter to the part-time pre-K program at Holy Redeemer today!  Yeah!  It is so nice to not have to stress over that anymore.  She will start next Fall and is so excited. 

Katya caught Reagan's cold, no surprise, and had a rough night last night.  Tonight she is worse; she is running a fever and has a barking cough.  I know that nights are usually the worst so I am trying to stay positive.  But it makes me really unsure about heading out of town tomorrow.  I guess if worse came to worse, Craig could drive Grandma and Grandpa up without me and the girls.  Exposing the old folks to a cold is bad enough but when you add a fever in, that is bad news for people their age.  We will have to see how Katya is doing in the morning:-(  Love to all!  

Back to routines

My first week home after vacation was pretty good. After a lot of resting, I was ready to be active and busy again. I got a lot of housework done but unfortunately, no workouts. I started one workout but got a weird pain and stopped. Yesterday I got some cycling in on the stationary bike; only 20 mins but better than nothing.  I have been motivated, mentally at least, to do some home improvement projects.  I have lots of fun ideas: adding bead board wainscoting to the bathrooms and new mirrors; extending our fence to be flush with the front of the house; make-over in the kitchen.  Our home value has continued to drop which means we are going to stay here much longer than we once thought.  We do love our house and now that we feel we will be here for another 10-15 years we can put a little time and money into those special touches.  I probably won't start anything big for a while but it is fun to plan and come up with ideas. 

I ordered a couple yards of fabric to do a little redecorating in Elsie's room.  I wasn't planning on changing anything until I saw the darling fabric my mom bought to incorporate into a baby quilt.  I decided to use it to replace the barn animal valence on the drapes and cover the canvas artwork by the door.  The barn yard paintings I did that were above R's crib will go in R room above her big girl bed (not up yet).  It will be fun to have a little project to make Elsie's room special for her.

Reagan has a yucky head cold.  I had a feeling it was coming on and sure enough, Sunday night was a rough one.  I am SO bummed because this puts a wrench in our plans to meet the Ross twins this Saturday.  She obviously can't be around them and I am worried that the rest of us will come down with it.  Our main priority for a trip up this spring was to meet those special boys!!:0(   But we are looking forward to celebrating Grandpa's birthday this weekend in Duval.  We are driving the Grand's up and it is going to be a very full van with 4 adults,  our 2 huge car seats, luggage and Levi!  I wish we had a roof rack so we could use the storage box we were given by a friend; we may need to add one eventually.  The car salesman offered to look into adding a factory rack on the day we purchased but I felt we were spending enough already and we could always add one later.

I do have a few more pictures from our time in California that I will work on posting.  Not sure if I will get to it before our trip this weekend.  Love to all! ~ Brenda

Last of the pictures from the Smith visit

Grandma and Grandpa Thompson's four adorable granddaughters:

Make your own pizza at the Smith house; so fun!

Grandma Dana reading to her girls:

Thanks for a great visit Smith's!!

Smith sisters

Here are some cute pictures of my beautiful neices! The flash really ruined the color on a few of these, but they are still cute.

Miss Laney

Sisters

Miss Charlie

Visit with the Smith's

I have been having trouble uploading pictures to blogspot this week. Sorry for the delay. I have a lot of pictures to share so I am going to post them over several days. Here are the first few:

On the way to Hanford, In-and-Out lunch.

Yum!!! Sisters enjoying their shakes.

Checking out the spa...is it warm enough?

Reagan playing in the Smith's yard.

Peek-a-boo Charlie!! I love this picture, just wish the color was better:-) The sun was high which made picture taking tricky.

Miss Laney and I. She is SUCH a happy baby! I was thrilled that she let me hold her and didn't cry!

More to come...

Home sweet home

We had a wonderful visit with my parents but even after a fun vacation, it is always nice to come home.  Yesterday I was very productive and got a ton of housework done.  We just got back from a nice walk; the girls pushing their doll strollers.  After naps we are going to Kennedy School for a 'family matinee' showing of Disney's Tangled.  Katya has already seen it but the rest of us have not and I have been waiting for it to come to the cheap theaters for a fun family outing.  I will post pictures from my trip next week sometime!

Sunny California

We are enjoying our visit here in California.  The weather has been pretty good.  One or two days were cold and we did get some rain but yesterday and today are perfect.  Sunny and high 60s.  We had a great visit in Hanford with the Smith's; so much fun!  I will post pictures when I get home (I don't want to edit them twice).  I have been very tired, a bit nauseated and had a few bad headaches since we've been here.  I am taking advantage of being on vacation and my parents helping with the kids.  It has been really nice for me to have lots of down time.  Craig flew home to cold, rainy Portland yesterday evening and he is looking forward to picking us up from the airport on Thursday.  In the meantime, the girls and I are soaking up the vitamin D!