Fruit, Despite the Drought

We've been back to school for about 10 weeks.  We had such a great summer, did so many fun things, and had generally a really positive time with each other.  But the last 10 weeks, man... they've been beating me down.  I feel like I've been putting out one fire after another, as a child (or multiple children, all at once) will have an issue with school that needs to be dealt with.  This morning, after dragging everyone to school 20 minutes early so that Jacob could do homework that he had neglected to bring home, I sat and discussed Jacob's progress with his teacher while he worked quietly at his desk.  He's making improvements compared to the beginning of the year, but every day brings some sort of struggle for him. 

After our impromptu parent-teacher conference, I said goodbye to Jacob and started walking home.  It was a very quiet walk, despite 3-year old Malcolm trotting beside me, and little Charlie sitting in the stroller as I pushed it along.  I was lost in thought, quite morosely.  I've just had this nearly overwhelming sense of weariness surrounding the process of school, how unrelenting the problems have been, how much time it sucks out of our lives, how frustrated we've all been getting.  This morning, even with words of encouragement and a positive attitude from Jacob's teacher, I was still feeling like a failure, like there was just so much work to do to help him and the other kids along, and that there's no way I'd be able to do it right.  I'll admit to my eyes filling with tears and my throat burning with the effort to hold them back, more than once while I walked.  Beat down, feeling like a failure, running out of energy and determination to dig deep and deal with it. 

I didn't have much in the way of anything planned for my day today, so I ended up in the back yard with a ladder and clippers, and I started picking persimmons off the tree.  Now, I had no real idea what a persimmon was before we moved here and they started growing.  I had certainly never eaten one before.  But this tree is kind of amazing.  I stood almost in one spot down on the ground, and had nearly filled a large box from just the fruit I could reach from that spot.  When I had too much trouble reaching, I got up on the steps of the ladder and continued.  Persimmon after persimmon, I snipped the stems and put them in a box.  There are so many of them on this tree.  And in the process of filling up that box, and looking at the beautiful orange color of the fruit, I started to marvel about that.  Here we are in the middle of quite a serious drought in California, and we certainly got extremely little rain at our house these last 6 months.  We pretty much forgot to water the trees until recently, too, so it definitely wasn't getting much help from us!  And yet, despite all that difficulty and strain on the tree, it still managed to produce all these persimmons.  So many.  So, so many.  Good, healthy, strong fruit, pulling down the branches of the tree and just begging to be used for something good.

And suddenly, I found such a profound comfort in that.  I want to try to put it into words, but I'm finding it difficult to convey the way it feels in my heart.  I felt as though truth pierced straight to my heart, that if this tree can produce such goodness despite the challenges it has faced this year and years previous, that maybe I'm not a failure. Not that I really *believe* I'm a failure, but sometimes it sure feels like it, you know?  When the problems come one after another and never seem to let up?  Maybe it's hard right now, maybe I'm weary, maybe we're all struggling mightily to get things right.  But despite that, maybe my kids will turn out to be good fruit in their own time, just like those drought-resistant persimmons.  Just a little more growing and nurturing and hanging in there, day after day, just a little bit at a time.  And one sunny day, the growing season will suddenly be over, and there they will be, grown and matured and delightful.

Doctrine and Covenants 64:33-34
      Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

      Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days.

Overwhelming

Things have been so busy.  Once I finally got the kids in school, things didn't slow down.  We just added homework into the mix, you know?  And a rigid daily schedule to follow.  We've had house organizing to do, new furniture and toys to assemble, and the daily busyness of laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning, which is typically enough to keep me busy all on its own.  We got a small breather for our (second) Spring Break, but even that wasn't laid back and relaxing.  We ended up discovering that -- ack!! -- the big kids all had lice.  I don't know how we escaped any lice infestations for as long as we did, but there were were, on Spring Break, away from family, Jesse still at work, me still dealing with an infant, and now lice chewing on four of my kids' heads.  Ugh.  I jumped into internet research  for how to deal with it, both looking at websites and asking for help on Facebook.  I was overwhelmed with information.  In the end, I think I might have gone slightly overboard in how zealous I was with laundry, but at the time I felt like I needed to be extremely thorough in order to make sure I wasn't simply repeating everything in a couple weeks.  I was overwhelmed with the need to do - RIGHT NOW - all the kids' bedding laundry, as well as washing anything fabric in the front room (I've accumulated quite a few decorative pillows), treating all of their hair, and coming through for nits.  7pm rolled around, Jesse got home, and I hadn't even had a chance to even think about dinner.  I was an exhausted mess.  Overwhelmed.

But then I became overwhelmed in a different way, as help started rolling in.  Jesse stepped up to pitch in every way he could.  A new friend from church emailed to ask if she could do anything to help, and I happily gave her all my front room laundry, which she returned the next morning (after doing laundry all day, it was so nice not to have that much more to do!).  Another new friend randomly dropped by with dinner in her hands.  Another left a plate of homemade chocolate mint cookies on our doorstep. I got a call from the Relief Society president the next day to check on me and see how I was doing.  All these people?  I've known them barely long enough to remember their names.  And yet they're going out of their way to help me, to ease the burden a little bit.  I can't even explain how overwhelmed I was with gratitude, and how overwhelmed I felt by their example of loving kindness.  It is a hard thing to move to a new place, away from your family and support system, but I tell you, all the little bits of service and kind words have added up to making me feel so welcome and loved and taken care of.  Like the chaos can come, but there are people who won't let me drown in it.  I sincerely can't wait to get to know them better, and take a lesson from their examples and try to reciprocate the kindness.

The good news is that we have recovered from the lice, and we've had some time to do fun things, like go to the beach down at Santa Cruz, attend some park days, check out the library.  Things slowed down enough now that I occasionally get a day at home where I suddenly realize there's nothing I absolutely have to do, and I can just sit and relax with Malcolm and Charlie while the older kids are at school for a few hours.  Of course, it's usually not that simple - Malcolm is 2 1/2, after all, and Charlie is learning to get really insistent when I'm not immediately responsive, and I still have to do the laundry sometime, of course - but there's room to breathe.

And last night I was laying in bed and I realized, oh my goodness, the last 3 months have gone So. Insanely. Fast.  I cannot think of another 3-month period in my life that has just come and gone as quickly as this one has.  So much has happened in these 3 months, from Charlie being born, to house hunting, preparing to put our condo up for sale, moving, unpacking, doctor appointments and registration of all sorts, learning a new town and school, meeting new people, and it's all just happened one thing right after another, with a lot of little stuff in between, so there was never really any time to realize what was happening.  It's a pace of life completely unfamiliar to me, and I'm a little shell-shocked by it.

As I realized how fast the time has gone- somehow we're a whole quarter of the way through this year!- it dawned on me what an incredible blessing January was.  I wish I had seen it with more clarity at the time.  But right now, from where I'm sitting, it was a clear gift from God that I should have taken advantage of.  Between the busy time of the holidays and the overwhelmingly busy 3 months we've just been through, January was a big breath of quiet, calm days.  Like the eye of the storm.  Just quiet, nothing going on, but waiting between the different stages of our life.  And all that happened was that I got supremely impatient and worried about when that waiting would be over.  That quiet, frozen lake, with not a care in the world?  I wish I would have seen it even more clearly than I did, and really appreciated the quietness and the calm.  Just space to breathe.  To be.  To exist without worry and concern.  Because that's what I should have been focused on in January, instead of latching on to worry and impatience about Charlie being born.  Heavenly Father gave us that extended period of quiet to balance out the insanity and fast pace of these last 3 months.  The lake thaws, the spring snows melt, and the water becomes a fast-moving river moving on to the next stage downstream.  And so we've moved along, carried by the river of life at a swift pace, and only looking back do we see how far we've come and how much we've done in so short a time.  I feel like I just stood up, turned around, and have wide, wondering eyes as I look back.  That calm, quiet, frozen January seems at once so recent and so long ago.  I think if I had been grateful for it in the moment, it would have been so enjoyable and lovely, instead of something I'm just recognizing in hindsight. 

I hope that our time moving forward will perhaps slow down a little bit, but even if it doesn't, I'm so glad for the blessings we have, and the new people in our lives who make the craziness tolerable.  Like I told the kids very recently when they asked, "Why did we have to move to California?!", life is one big adventure.  And if we never went any place new or tried new things or opened ourselves up to new experiences, we'd have a pretty boring story.  So here we are in a new chapter of our family's adventure, with our move to California.  It won't always be easy and exciting, but it will be good.  And already, I've learned some amazing lessons.

The Chaos of Moving

The end of February, all of March, and the beginning of April has been such a whirlwind.

Charlie was born on February 10th.  I had 2 weeks of fairly blissful, quiet recovery, where meals were taken care of for me, children were carted to and from school so I could stay home, and I mostly just stayed in bed and cared for my new baby.  When I ventured back into real life, I looked at the calendar, now near the very end of February, and about died of shock.  How on earth could February be practically over?!?  There was so much to do, now!  Wasn't it just barely the new year a couple days ago??  Because, of course, we have known all along that we were going to try to move at the end of March, during the kids' spring break.  But somehow, March always seemed so very far away.  How could it suddenly be so close I could practically touch it?

So at 2 weeks and 1 day postpartum, things started getting crazy pretty darn quickly.  We had the moving company come and survey the home to gauge how much space they needed on a truck.  A couple days later we had real estate people come and look at our home so they could assess the value and give us a bid.  (You can imagine the frenzied cleaning that went into the days before that, having just come out of a postpartum fog, with Jesse in charge of both life and cleaning for two whole weeks.)  In the middle of all this, we had learned that Charlie definitely had a tongue tie, so I was now squeezing in lactation consultant visits, and went to an ENT for an only halfway successful tongue tie release.  Then I was doing parent/teacher conferences at school, taking Charlie in for a doctor checkup, and the very next day packing up and leaving for a house-hunting trip to California.  Jesse, myself, Malcolm and Charlie went on that trip - the older kids all stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Newson and Aunt Rachel, for 6 whole nights - their longest time away from mom and dad ever!  But everyone did great. 

House hunting itself was crazy.  Our first full day in California, we had a relocation specialist, provided by the company, drive around with us at places she had found within our specifications.  It was incredibly helpful to have her with us, so we could get a feel for the area, what might be normal for a rental in our price range, and how to interact with the homeowners who met us on site.  We really loved a big 4br house we saw with her on that day (lots of extra rooms, amazing back yard!), but when we called to ask about it, we found that it was already in the process of getting a lease with another family.  They said we could call back in a few days to see if it had fallen through, but that was too close to our last day - we didn't want to risk it.  So we kept on hunting on our own.  It was a lot harder without our relocation specialist.  There just weren't as many homes available as I had seen while browsing online in months past, and we could tell from pictures and prices that a lot of them just weren't really something we wanted to pay for.  We toured a few, and were just in the mode of "we could make this work..." instead of "yes, this would be great!"  We finally toured one that was going to have an open house in a couple days - as soon as we stepped in, I loved it!  It was all original/redone hardwood floors, open layout, everything updated... the only issue I had with it was the back yard, which was covered in woodchips, but Jesse and I decided that even that was fine, because it just made it more "kid proof" for a rental.  We quickly sent in an application, which was readily accepted.  But then curveballs kept coming our way.  First, the owners wanted an extra large deposit because of our family size.  It was unexpected, but not unreasonable, so we agreed.  Then the big one: When we got the email of the lease agreement, there was a methamphetamine disclosure attached.  As in, the paperwork you get when a house used to be a meth house, but got cleaned up.  We were suddenly thrown for a loop with that one.  It's sort of a long story, but the shortened version is that the owners and real estate agent working for the owners to rent out the property are all Japanese, with English being a secondary language for them.  When Keiko (the real estate agent) printed out the forms, she correctly added the "Megan's Law" addendum, and because of its proximity alphabetically, mis-clicked the meth addendum.  When she skimmed over everything after printing, she saw the meth addendum, wasn't familiar with the word, and thought it had something to do with methane from a neighborhood gas station, so didn't correct it.  When we started asking questions and thinking about backing out, she couldn't find the word in her translation dictionary, and asked a neighbor, who explained it was a drug.  She panicked, thinking she had just really messed up the whole transaction for the owners, too, and quickly got back to us to explain her mistake, and that the house belonged to an elderly woman who lived out her life in the home, and after she passed, the property was sold and "flipped", which is when the owners purchased it and then we came along.  So with it all worked out, we began the paperwork, and finished up the day before we flew back home.  We were so grateful to find a beautiful home to live in, and have it all wrapped up during that trip, so we wouldn't be left with any uncertainty about our move.

Photo of our new home when we toured it

We flew home, and immediately upon arriving, went to pick up Jacob and take him to his Pinewood Derby weigh-in.  While we were gone, he did almost all of the work on his car on his own.  The next day was the race, and he came in 2nd fastest overall!!  What a great thing for his self-esteem!  We were sad we couldn't help him more with his first car, but with a result like that, I'm sort of glad it worked out that way!

Jacob cheers at his car's good race.

2nd fastest overall!  Way to go!

We had a few calm days with just normal school things going on, during which time I had put an ad on Craigslist for my blue piano - we had determined we didn't want to move it with us.  We were able to arrange for it to be taken away by a grateful family, and we also slowly decluttered other areas of the home as we could, and had the energy for it.  We blessed Charlie at church, I made gifts for a baby shower and attended it, we had a lot of last-minute playdates, Charlie went to a dentist for a laser procedure to release the remainder of his tongue tie (and lip tie, while we were at it!) and Alex even got a birthday party when Grandma and Rachel volunteered to throw one for him - all I had to do was send out invites and provide some food.  Almost all his friends were able to come, which was such a good thing for him.  Then we had movers come and pack up all our belongings, and we started spending our nights at Grandma's house - life was officially crazy.  The day after the packing was the loading of the moving truck.  I was surprised that they slated 2 different days for it, and both times took much longer than I thought ... but they had only 2 or 3 men working on each day.  Even at their fastest, it's not as quick as a big group of church friends helping you move!

Melinda and her best friend Emerson in front of the school.

Charlie in his blessing outfit.  <3 br="">

Alex requested a cake like the moon with minions on top.  Rachel pulled it off fantastically!

Laser obstacles to rescue the minions at the end of the hall!

Opening gifts with his friends.

Balloon popping game of tag

My living room wrapped up in boxes

Malcolm in the dining room full of boxes

One of the first boxes being loaded onto the truck in front of our condo

The day after everything was empty, we organized a small "cleaning party", where unfortunately most people who had signed up weren't able to make it at the last minute.  But we had our friend Andrea volunteer to take the oldest kids to the park, which was a huge help - it freed up myself, Grandma and Rachel to help with the cleaning instead of the babysitting.  We worked steadily for a couple hours and got a lot done.  But then the kids came back, and we had to pause for lunch and playdates (so many goodbyes to say!), so Jesse kept working on his own for a bit.  The rest of that day and the next were very very busy with cleaning - we wanted to leave it in the absolute best condition we could.  Jesse did the majority of the work, and Rachel helped quite a bit, too.  I tried to help a lot, but especially on the last day, Charlie wasn't very cooperative with letting me work, so I had to keep stopping so I could tend to him.  Eventually, though, it did all get done.  In the midst of all that work, we were also trying to fill out papers and get them to the appropriate people (we sold our condo without it ever really opening up on the market (woohoo!) to family friends who go to church with us, who are now going to use it as an income property), and also find and schedule hotels for our drive across country, and set up utilities for our new house, and all those other mundane tasks that just have to get squeezed in there somehow.  It was exhausting.  So when we were finally finished on Thursday early afternoon, I felt absolutely dead, and like I could sleep for a solid week if I only had the chance.  I kept wondering why on earth I was feeling so tired when it seemed like I had done so little work, and it would always surprise me when I realized - Oh yeah, I'm still pretty early postpartum!  I'm usually nowhere near working that hard only a month after I have had a baby.  No wonder I was feeling exhausted, right?

All clean and pristine, ready for new owners

I'm still so proud of how nicely my bathroom remodel turned out.  Hope to repeat it someday!

Saying goodbye to our condo was surprisingly bittersweet.  We had lived in it for about 3 1/2 years as newlyweds before we moved to Maryland.  When Jesse lost his job and we moved back, we didn't expect to stay squeezed into it as long as we were - over 4 years!  So combined, there was more than 7 years of my life lived in that little 2-bedroom, 900 square foot condo.  It was frustrating, a lot of times, but it was home.  It probably shouldn't have been surprising that I was a little sad to say a permanent goodbye to it.  I admit I cried a little, remembering how it was when we first moved in and only had sparse furniture.  Remembering how little my children were when we first moved back.  How 2 of my children were born right there within its walls.  How so many memories took place in that little home, and how it will be the first home most of my kids really have a solid memory of.  But we shut the doors and said goodbye.

We started our trip across country the next morning (after a final exhilaration family game of Settlers of Catan!), but it was a slow start.  I felt very unsettled and uncomfortable all morning long, so I was moving very carefully and slowly, which wasn't helping us get our car packed and ready to go very well at all.  When we finally had everything all together at 10:30am, and were just getting the kids buckled in the car, when I realized I was suddenly very nauseous, and tried to make it back inside to a toilet-- but ended up crouching down and vomiting in the front garden of Jesse's parents' house.  Lovely.  What a send-off.  We all cried when we said goodbye - we have very much enjoyed living so close to family for these past 4 years!  It's hard to move to a new place with no family and friends to look forward to.  :(

A rare picture of Grandpa Newson holding a baby Newson.  Gotta love it!

We spent a night with Jesse's family in Layton, Utah (and no, I didn't vomit for the rest of the trip, though it was an all-day recovery as far as it went for my stomach to feel settled).  The next day I felt back to normal, and we again made a late morning start for our trip to Reno, Nevada.  The distance for those first two days was about equal, although somehow the second day felt a lot shorter.  The third leg was just a 4 hour hop over the mountains (where we saw our last snow for the near future at Donner Pass, which was gorgeous) and then down into the Santa Clara valley to San Jose.  We were prepared to stay at a hotel several days there, but we got news that they could deliver our boxes the very next day.  We had a Sunday dinner with a lovely family from our new ward in church, where our children seemed to have dumped out every single toy on earth in their townhome.  They insisted that we not worry about helping clean up, and I have never been more mortified to agree than I was when we left that night.  They have rarely made even our own home as messy as they did this family's!  But it was nice to meet them and have a chance to talk about the area.  We spent the night in an annoyingly non-child-friendly hotel with a loft bedroom that had a wall they could lean over- so we spent a lot of time grumpily enforcing that all children stay downstairs, which meant that I was upstairs and Jesse was downstairs, and all the kids had a very long, painful time settling down and going to sleep.  It was nice that we only had to be there one night.  I will say that their breakfast was the best complimentary one I've had, though!  :)

Picture of 4 out of 5 kids in the car on the road trip

Donner Pass - hello (and goodbye!) snow!  We're on our way to California!

It was cloudy on Monday morning, when our movers showed up.  We had a short amount of time to have the house empty and to ourselves, where Jesse and I were soon deer-in-the-headlights overwhelmed with how much stomping running echoingly-loud insanity 4 children can cause in an empty hardwood house.  We soon set them up with a DVD player in a corner, and enjoyed just a small bit of calm before movers started bringing things in.  It took most of the afternoon, Jesse checking off inventory items and myself directing where the boxes should go, and by the time they were done everyone, including the movers, was starving and tired.  So we went out for a 3:30pm lunch/dinner and ate our hearts out, then came back to assemble our beds, unpack just a little (Jesse set up my computer so Comcast could install internet the next day, and I started in on the kitchen) and sleep for the night, the first time in our new home.

Running wild in the empty house

It was cloudy on Monday morning, when our movers showed up.  We had a short amount of time to have the house empty and to ourselves, where Jesse and I were soon deer-in-the-headlights overwhelmed with how much stomping running echoingly-loud insanity 4 children can cause in an empty hardwood house.  We soon set them up with a DVD player in a corner, and enjoyed just a small bit of calm before movers started bringing things in.  It took most of the afternoon, Jesse checking off inventory items and myself directing where the boxes should go, and by the time they were done everyone, including the movers, was starving and tired.  So we went out for a 3:30pm lunch/dinner and ate our hearts out, then came back to assemble our beds, unpack just a little (Jesse set up my computer so Comcast could install internet the next day, and I started in on the kitchen) and sleep for the night, the first time in our new home.

Jesse and the movers hard at work. 

And the next morning, Jesse went to work.

Yeah....

Bedroom full of boxes to unpack

Family room full of boxes to unpack.  So many boxes. 
Everywhere.

I was left with 5 kids and a house to unpack.  Surprisingly, I got a lot done on the first day.  The kitchen got completely unpacked, and I managed to get the kids bedrooms free of boxes, too.  The progress was amazing!  I quickly lost steam with unpacking, however, and the last several days have only gotten a box here or there opened up and sorted out. Instead my energy was focused on school registration, which included finding a dentist and a doctor and taking all the school kids for appointments.  The whole entire family went to the dentist together, which in retrospect, would have been better if I had just sent Jesse with them, or had Jesse watch the babies while I went, because it was absolute chaos.  But the dentist was great, and Jesse and I even have our own appointments scheduled.  (I'm afraid to see the work recommended for my mouth - it's been quickly deteriorating these last few months!)  Then we had to have 2 different days for the doctor appointments, because they can only do 2 kids at a time, and I had 3.  But we got them all seen, and I'm fairly happy with the doctor (especially the nurse).  Although I still think I prefer a family doctor to a pediatrician, and will switch if I can find a family doctor in the area.  But I don't have time to be extra choosey right now - I needed to get the kids a CA-licensed health exam, including a tuberculosis test that takes a couple days, dental exams, and all sorts of other papers and get them registered!  I thought I was going to be able to turn in all the papers and get things going on the school's side yesterday, Monday, but I showed up 2 minutes after a deadline for registration and they had to turn me away.  We went back today, and it was again looking like I might not get it all finished today, because the gas/electric company was having difficulty getting a proof of residence to the school like they said they could do.  BUT.  It finally all got done, we will be starting school in two days, on Thursday!  I'm a little bit nervous, but mostly excited, because I've had them out of school since just before our spring break, on March 21st.  I really need them to be out of my hair again! We've all had the case of the grumpies these last few days.

The weeping angel followed us to California!

Melinda pulled out her own tooth.  On April Fool's Day, our first full day in our new house, our first full day in California.  This was a super-exciting alignment of events.

So much paperwork to just get 3 kids into a new school.

Charlie's still cute, and growing faster than I can believe!

Malcolm is super grumpy today.

Things have been less than ideal around the house, because inside is all chaotic with things still in boxes and looking for new homes.  We've made trips to IKEA, ordered other furniture on the internet, and so on, and there's just been a lot of time trying to figure out how to make things in a good convenient place.  There's just one thing this house lacks, and it's storage.  (Well, yesterday and today I'd probably say it lack air conditioning, too.  SO. HOT.)  We came from having a lovely tall linen closet, a full-sized front closet by the door, and a giant walk-in storage closet.  They were both central, so we always had plenty of room to store things.  This house has no storage closet, no linen closet, and only a very tiny coat closet.  So the question of where to put things that don't belong in a bedroom or in the kitchen is a very real problem.  We've added a 4-drawer dresser to the end of the hall to act as our linen closet, and we're getting a hall tree for shoes and backpacks to put by the front door, and we've also added a standing coat rack to our furniture already.  We've also bought and assembled a hutch to store video games and extra books/etc that used to live on shelves above our computers.  The toys are still puzzling me.  Our toy storage was plenty functional when it was in the kids' big shared bedroom.  But we're now keeping them in the extra family room, and there's too many different types of storage.  I'd definitely like to "fix" it somehow, but not spend too much time doing it.  I also need to store my crafts and fabrics somewhere, and Jesse is not a fan of my original idea to do a big IKEA Expedit shelving system.  I think, instead, I will buy us a new dresser and use our old large dresser to store things, either keeping it in the garage or in one of the kids' bedroom closets, which aren't getting used very much right now.

Anyway, beyond the chaos of trying to get inside the house settled, the outside has been in chaos, too.  That one drawback I saw initially, of a woodchip-covered yard, was thrown into remodel.  We arrived to find that they had completely dug up the yard, several inches down till it was mud, and had taken down the gate of the fence for the ease of the contractors.  Oh, and chopped out a few trees, too, including the avocado that I was really looking forward to. They were installing a concrete patio, but quite a lot behind schedule because of rain (which is good - California needs the rain!).  So I couldn't send the kids outside to play and get out of my hair, because there was no gate to keep them safely inside the yard, there was no yard, and there were also contractors tools, supplies, and scraps everywhere.  Ugh.  They finally poured the concrete on Sunday, and it's now hard enough to walk on, but still no gate, and still contractors' things everywhere, so still no playing outside in the backyard.  While I've had 5 kids at home all day every day for more than a week.  I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to using that yard while I unpacked and tried to get settled in!!!  How much I just looked forward to having it to use at all, after years of being in a condo with not even a porch to send them out on!  But it has to wait.  Hopefully not terribly longer.  But I think they're sticking with wood chips for the rest of the yard, for now.  But the patio will be great - they can ride their scooters back and forth around the back of the house, now!  Well, soon, anyway.

We also had sick kids over the weekend.  Alex got sick Thursday afternoon (fever and one episode of vomiting) but was fine by Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, however, Malcolm came down with a fever, and had that fever for 2 days, poor guy.  And poor mom.  It's hard to unpack at all (ha, ha!) when you've got a sick toddler wanting to be held constantly, and a baby who is also wanting a lot of attention at the same time.  By the time Malcolm was in bed those two sick nights, Charlie had gone into full blown witching hour, and wouldn't let me do anything at all even if I had wanted to, and raged even more if Jesse dare try to help. So thank goodness those sick days were short lived, but my progress with unpacking and organizing has basically come to a screeching halt. And shopping, UGH.  With Jesse at work I am essentially forced to do all the shopping with FIVE CHILDREN.  I must look like a walking advertisement for birth control.  (So you can imagine how excited I am that school registration is finally done, and I can have some relatively calm hours with only a toddler and a baby soon!)

Malcolm has been doing really well with a lot of big changes.  Not only did we throw him a major wrench by taking away his status as baby of the family (and he really didn't adjust well to that change!!), but now we moved him away from home, and simultaneously decided to move him straight into sharing a room with Melinda instead of sharing our room.  So, new family status, new home, new sleeping arrangements - and somehow he's still managed to go to sleep really easily most nights, without complaint or fuss, and he seems really well adjusted and happy, rolling with the changes like a pro.  Except today, when he's been in full Two Year Old mode, and everything, absolutely everything is causing him to have meltdowns.  He's been really off schedule - we all have - because of moving and having no daily rhythm, so today was our first enforced quiet/nap time.  He seems much better now, after waking up from his nap.  Thank goodness!

Overall we're still really excited and happy about this new life change, but there's definitely been some bumps and complications making the right-here-and-now feel extra crazy.  Miss my family and friends and routine, all of which would normally add a good level of sanity to the mix.  Still, we're headed in the right direction, and hopefully things will be attain a new level of normal pretty soon.  Because, ready or not, California is going to be our home for a long time!

Charlie's Arrival

A day makes all the difference in the world sometimes, doesn't it?  I ended my Sunday evening with a whole lot of tear-spilling angst as I talked to Jesse about how I was feeling about everything.  He gave me another blessing, in which I was admonished to simply "Be patient."  I did my best to take comfort in that, and I felt like I was ready to take the next couple of days with a sense of one step at a time, not worrying about speeding things along, no matter how hard it might feel in the moment.

But I woke up just a few hours later, around 2:30 in the morning on Monday the 10th.  I had a fairly strong contraction while I laid in bed awake.  Yay, exciting!  But I was determined not to get my hopes up, just yet.  I had already done that too many times to count in the last week or so.  But at 2:45am, I started tracking contractions on my phone app.  Between 2:45 and 4am, contractions were reliably between 13 and 9 minutes apart, all with nice intensity.  Real contractions - not painful enough to feel like crunch time, but carrying enough pain that you know it's not just a Braxton Hicks.

Jesse rolled over and saw me playing on my phone around 4am, so I filled him in, feeling pretty sure I was in early labor.  I still wasn't 100% convinced, however - there was a chance it could still go away! I hadn't had any additional symptoms yet, like loose bowel movements or mucous discharge.  Those have always been standard markers for me - if those show up along with contractions, baby will be there soon.

I was, however, tired of laying in bed babysitting those contractions, and I felt wide awake, despite having only a few hours of sleep so far that night.  So, thinking it might finally be the day, and it might go faster than I anticipated, I got out of bed with the purpose of doing some last-minute cleaning.  We have a bad habit of not picking up after ourselves on Sundays, so the kitchen was a mess, and other little things around the house had been bothering me in the back of my mind.  So I picked up the kitchen, wiped down the table and counters, straightened things up.  I cleaned up the entry way (which is permanently clogged with a disarray of coats, boots, and backpacks at this time of year), picked a few things up in the hallway and bathroom, and sat down at my desk a while later.  Things were still moving along, although around 4:30am I had a lot of very short, non-intense contractions that were only a few minutes apart from each other.  I liked that they were closer together, but the duration and intensity going down did confuse me.  I didn't have another really strong contraction until after 5am, and then the interval jumped back up, ranging between 10 and 17 minutes apart.  At 6am, I decided to call my midwife and tell her what was going on, knowing that things could change in a matter of minutes and I might need her to rush over.  I also called Rachel, who was going to be watching our kids, and asked her to come over in an hour or so.  I was worried about the kids getting up at 7am, in just an hour, and getting ready for school and out the door on time.  It sounded like there was a high potential for things to get really chaotic and happen all at once, although Amy (my midwife) thought it was likely that labor would slow down when the morning activity kicked in.  While I waited, I talked to friends on Facebook about my early labor, and made a schedule for Rachel for the school morning, in case Jesse and I weren't able to help out.  Contractions continued, although now they were varying between intense and not intense, long and short, larger or smaller intervals.  But I had also used the bathroom and found some very light pink mucous, which is a great sign that cervical changes were happening!  It was confusing.

At 7am I decided not to risk the chaos if I could help it, and asked Jesse to help Rachel get the kids ready, and I laid down in bed for a rest, and stopped timing contractions.  I dozed in and out of sleep, but don't recall any very intense contractions while I laid there.  After the kids had gone to school, I got back up and chatted with Rachel, and planned the day.  I mostly sat down while we talked, and realized that those contractions were still fairly regular, but definitely less intense than they were in the early morning.  But I still forged ahead and planned on labor happening.  Rachel would take Alex and Malcolm to her house, get Alex to school, and even plan on getting Malcolm to nap at her house, checking in on us occasionally, in case things changed and we might need to adjust plans.

So around 8:30, she and the boys left the house, and Jesse was officially staying home from work.  I kind of wandered aimlessly around the house for a while, waiting to see if things would pick back up again.  They didn't, really.  So Jesse and I bundled up and went for a walk out in the frigid cold.  It was another "freezing fog" day - only around 20 degrees outside, and fog thick enough to layer everything in thick, flaky frost.

We set off with the intention of heading towards the nearby lake like I did the day before, but by the time we got to the end of the parking lot, a pretty darn strong contraction hit me, and I definitely felt some downward pressure along with it.  "Uhh, maybe we better just walk around the block so we don't end up too far from home, just in case," I said to Jesse.  He agreed, because he didn't think he could manage to carry me home, and he needed his coat and couldn't use it as a sled to pull me home, either.  Goof.  So we walked around our little block several times.  We must have walked about 20 or 30 minutes, but another contraction like it never came!  I felt some occasional tightening, but even the walk I took when I was in early labor with Malcolm (after my water had broken and things were having trouble getting started) was more productive than this walk.  I was getting tired of walking (and cold), so we made one last loop and went back inside.  I sat down on the exercise ball to rest, hoping at least to keep my pelvic bones in a good position for baby.  We decided to watch a TV show, and turned on New Girl.  I started timing contractions again, after another one finally showed up while we sat.

Again, they were irregular.  Everything about them.  But I started to realize that every time I got up from sitting, I would get a major contraction pretty instantly.  And then it would hurt so much that I would sit back down.  Nothing would really happen while I sat.  Stand up again, boom. There's another one that nearly cripples me with the intensity.  At 10:20am I talked to Amy on the phone, and she was planning on driving into town to deliver her taxes, anyway, so she wanted to stop by and check on me in person.  We agreed.  It might be about an hour from then.  After I got off the phone with her, I walked back to my bedroom to put something away in dresser, and had to stop everything to lean against my bed during another hard contraction.  And when it eased off, I felt like I needed to use the bathroom, so off I went.  And had another contraction there on the toilet, just a couple minutes later.  They were both so hard that I didn't think I could wait an entire hour for Amy to get here.  They were the kind of contractions that made me sure that I would be pushing before very long, and I had no idea how much time would pass before they were closer together.  I made Jesse call Amy back.  I didn't want to talk on the phone.  I knew in my head because of that decision that I had moved past excitement and into the intense transition phase, even if the numbers weren't crunching right.  Amy was nearly to our house, and was there only about 5 minutes later, perhaps.  I was already on my bed, curled up and trying to avoid more contractions by the time she walked in.  I was vocalizing through each of them, and I had stopped timing them, because there was no longer any point.  They were the real deal, and there was NO going back at this point.

I was very aware of Amy and Jesse prepping the room around me, laying out the ground cover, pulling out towels.  I received a hushed word or two of encouragement as I moaned through contractions while they were busy.  I warned them that I was going to be pushing pretty soon.  I could feel it threatening with the last few contractions.  I kept trying to mentally remind myself of how grateful I was that labor was finally here, that I wouldn't have to go be induced at the hospital, and that I finally didn't have to wait any longer.  But those intense contractions... they make it really hard to feel grateful.  But I had promised myself to accept them with gratitude, to feel as happy as possible that I was able to take this journey.  So I had a warring conversation with myself every time a contraction hit:  "Be grateful this is here, so glad this is here" and "PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!"

Within minutes, I assumed my position kneeling against the bed, as that had worked well for me in the past two home births.  Pushing had begun with little grunts on the bed, but once I was down on the ground, every contraction brought a full urge to push, but oh, how they hurt so badly.  I was no longer even able to remind myself to be grateful.  It was everything I could do to simply get through each contraction.  They were so powerful and forceful, and I had little capacity to meet them with any sort of calm or composure.  I eventually began vocalizing quite loudly.  This was already going on longer than it ever had before, I knew that, without ever looking at a clock.  I could tell there was much less progress than normal for me at this point, and it was extremely discouraging, because it felt so much harder than my previous births, already.  How much longer was I going to have to hang on and push through??  I tried to tell myself to take it one contraction at a time, but they were so intense I could barely recover myself between them before another one took me over. I wanted to cry so badly.  But there was no energy to be spared for crying.  I screamed and growled so loudly with each pushing contraction that I hardly felt like I was within my own body - more like I was watching from afar (but not watching, because my eyes were tightly sealed off from the world), incredulous at this wild woman on the floor by her bed, reacting in such a foreign way to birth.  Jesse rubbed my back and gave me fresh cold washcloths (which were amazingly helpful, as I was sweating buckets from every pore of my body at this point), Amy and her assistant Dona (who arrived about 10 minutes into pushing) hung around the room quietly observing and occasionally checking on the baby or offering hushed support.  Jesse would tell me with every contraction, "You're doing great, Becky.  Keep going, you're doing it."  And I had no ability to reply, but my brain was screaming, "I am not doing great!  This is going horribly bad!!  I should be done by now, and I can tell I'm hardly getting anywhere, and it hurts awfully and I can't stop screaming every time I push!!"  No, in my mind, doing great would have been low moans and a baby coming out in a handful of pushes.  This was torture.  With all the focus on my spiritual and emotional state I had put on myself over the last few weeks, I ended up having a number of very conscious thoughts during contractions along the lines of "This is what the Savior felt like when he atoned for us.  I want this to stop so badly.  I would beg for it to be over!!  Please, just let it be over!!!  But I know the only way out is to get through it.  I can't get through it!  It's unbearable!"  I suddenly understood very tangibly all the symbolism I had been reading about only weeks before.  Not that it was any comfort, in the moment.  But this pregnancy has taught me more in the  way of leaning on my Heavenly Father than anything in my life ever has before.

After what seemed like an eternity, Amy suggested that I should turn over into a squat when I could... it might be more productive with the pushing.  It seemed a monumental thing to ask.  I could barely support myself against the bed.  How could I possibly turn over??  But I did.  Very awkwardly.  Jesse caught me under my arms as I flopped back towards him, and later told me that he was hoping desperately that he was holding me high enough off the ground to be useful.  I'm amazed he could hold me up at all, between the weight of my body and the awkward way I leaned against him.  My feet were planted on the ground in front of me, and the next contraction brought a blood-curdling scream from me, and pushing with all my might.  But I felt that baby move down.  It was an awful, terrible feeling, but also such a relief that I could finally feel some progress.  And a reminder that an end was in sight, and a baby to enjoy from all that work.  Amy thinks he was probably just a bit stuck behind my pubic bone, all that time I was on my knees.

Just another push or two later, after nearly an hour of the most intense pushing contractions of my life, he was finally crowning.  Jesse tried to tell me I could see it in the mirror off to the side, but my eyes couldn't focus on anything for more than a half second or so.  I saw the mirror, I saw a reflection, but I couldn't make sense of it.  And I didn't want to expend the energy to try, so my eyes closed again.  All my focus was inward, it had to be.  I was still going through the most physically difficult thing of my life.  I was just doing everything I could to get through it in one piece.  Another couple contractions.  He was crowning much longer than I anticipated.  I expected the pain and burning of crowning during one contraction, but he stayed there through maybe 3, despite my efforts with pushing.  Again, it was terrible.  I have no recollection of any pain of crowning even remotely nearing the pain of this baby crowning.  I felt sure I was going to rip in two if I pushed anymore, but I couldn't possibly bear that pain for any longer, so I pushed again, as hard as I could.  His head moved out, and there was momentary relief.  But I had to push again to get the rest of him out, and it took another colossal contraction and more screaming, if not quite as intensely.

Half a second after he was out, he was swiftly wrapped in a towel and put on my chest.  I was still wrapped up in the pain and effort, and it took me a few seconds to even be able to open my eyes and look at him, or move my hands to hold him.  It was all so intense, more intense than anything I had ever experienced in my life, and I did not transition from "get me out of this!" to "yay, it's finally over!!" for a couple minutes.

As I sat there and tried to catch my breath and take in what had just happened to me, my favorite thing of the entire experience was happening just behind me:  Jesse was laughing breathily, I think maybe even wiping tears from his eyes, and he kissed me lightly a few times on the side of my face.  I could tell he was just absolutely overcome and amazed by what he had just taken part in and witnessed.   His amazement eventually made me appreciate the moment more clearly, and I looked at the sweet "little" baby in my arms incredulously.  It really was finally over.  And look at this angel resting on me!!

He took a few gurgly moments to give his first cry, but when he did, it was nice and strong.  I remained on the floor, leaning against Jesse, but no longer off the ground.  Amy had me work on pushing the placenta out, which did not come as readily as she expected.  It took a few tries, and then there were some skin-like membranes that were being stubborn about detaching.  But it all finally came out just fine (and honestly, it was pretty soon after birth - for my past homebirths, we haven't worried about the placenta for at least 30 minutes, and I'm tucked in bed).  Then I got some help getting up into bed, and was pleasantly surprised when Charlie wanted to nurse very soon after.  He figured it out with no trouble at all, and didn't want to stop for about the next couple hours.

The next part all sort of blends together in my head, but we rested for a bit, made sure I had some Recharge to drink, and Jesse started some lunch for me (Brazilian beans frozen ahead of time, and rice).  Amy and Dona cleaned up a bit, we all ate some food, and Charlie kept nursing.  Finally, I was examined (just a little tear that didn't need a suture! Even though I felt like I was ripping apart!!), and everything looked good.  I passed Charlie off to Jesse while I was escorted to the bathroom to get the standard observed urination and a quick rinse in the shower.

Dona started the newborn exam while I rinsed off, and when I rejoined them, I took a few pictures of the process, and got to cut my very first cord - Jesse said he had had enough turns over the years.

Finally the big moment came, where we learned his stats.  Everyone was saying what a big baby he looked like.  Honest to goodness, I cannot remember for the life of me from one baby to the next.  I lose all frame of reference!!  They had estimated maybe 9ish pounds at my last prenatal appointment, and I had been measuring a whopping 45 weeks.  Perhaps that should have clued me in, as it was about the same story when I was still expecting Alex.  We measured him at 21.25in long, and a 15.25in head.  Oh my!  Amy said that Charlie broke her personal record for deliveries she's attended.  She's had some maybe reach 15in, but never 15.25in.  And, she added to Jesse, it had looked like his head came down a bit crooked, probably adding the sensation of extra size.  Yay me?  And then we get to weighing him...

10lb 8oz!  Way bigger than I was expecting.  I didn't think we'd near Alex's record of 10lb 10oz, but we almost did!  I honestly wish I knew why 3 of my babies were 8.5lbs, and 2 of them were 10.5lbs.  What makes the difference?? It's crazy.  And a little sad.  I really wanted my last baby to be on the smaller side, so I could enjoy the tiny baby stage a little big longer.  Instead, Charlie decided he needed to make for a very memorable experience and grand entrance into the world. My throat was raw and painful from all my insane vocalizing, and the next day my abdominal muscles felt tortured enough to have been in a boxing match, rather than a birth.

Just after 2pm, all the exams and cleanup were finished, Amy and Dona left, and Jesse and I had a few minutes of quiet before the kids arrived home from school to meet their new little brother.  He was just starting to finally settle down and getting ready to sleep, so we kept the visit brief, and they all went to Grandma's house for the rest of the evening so I could get some rest.  After only a few hours of sleep and the most difficult birth I'd ever imagined, I needed the rest pretty badly.  I had been shaking from the adrenaline for a very long time, and I was just now starting to feel more collected.  Even still, when the quiet wrapped around me, the intensity of the birth was brought right back to the front of my mind, and I still felt overwhelmed and on the brink of crying, a mix between horrified at what I had been through, and relief that I had made it.  It was a raw, intense experience.  If it had been my first homebirth, I may not have opted for future homebirths.  But the love and care I received from my midwives and from my husband, and the learning experience of it for myself - those things make it worth it.  

And most of all, this precious little boy is the best thing of all.  A little baby I never intended to have, but one who is beautiful and perfect and soft and round and smells like heaven.  We love him, and are so glad to have him here with us, finally!

Winter is a Time for Waiting

My last post was all about how anxious and afraid I was of impending labor.  I'm happy to say that in a matter of a few days after that, I was able to adjust my attitude and perspective.  Jesse had given me a blessing that I would be able to "look forward" to the birth.  I didn't realize at the time of the blessing how very desperately I would actually look forward to it.  I am now 10 days past my due date, the longest I've ever been pregnant, and I've now been feeling very anxious about things needing to start moving along!  I'm sure I would be feeling impatient regardless, but the fact that we need to start planning a move to California, along with traveling out there in just a few weeks to house-hunt, is putting really worry in my head about every passing day.  And now I'm also approaching the mandatory hospital/OB transfer (i.e., automatic hospital induction) if I reach 42 weeks without going into labor.  4 days away.  I would normally say, "Anything can happen in 4 days!  Don't worry!"  But the reality is that 7 days ago, I never ONCE imagined that an entire week would slip by without me having the baby.  It isn't a stretch of my imagination, anymore, to think that 4 more days could just as easily slip by with nothing happening.  And it's really stressing me out.  I have tried every trick available to me - Chiropractic, positioning tricks, acupuncture, cervical stretching, black and blue cohosh herbs, castor oil, reflexology points, prayers and blessings, my tried-and-true tactic of vigorous physical activity (jumping on the trampoline nice and high, long brisk walks, swimming for 1.5 hours), and yeah, less internet-friendly things ("You get the baby out the same way you get the baby in!").   Only castor oil had much effect, but it was never labor, and it fizzled out and left me with very unpleasant side effects that I'm still dealing with a week later.  Swimming yesterday had me hopeful, too.  I felt like I probably did a lot of good with baby's position, while the physical activity probably encouraged things.  I had fairly steady (but still completely mild) contractions all evening/night/morning.  But once I got out of bed, even those started fading away.  It's hard for me to know that there is such a deadline hanging over my head, and the pressure of an upcoming move on top of it, and seeing other babies who were due at the same time or even later than mine already coming into the world.  Why isn't my own baby coming?  What's the hold up?  Why do I have to wait?  Will the waiting lead to a very unwanted hospital birth? 

I went for a walk this morning (hoping to encourage things along, of course).  It was very cold, and foggy - the fog was literally causing frost to form on all the tree branches, encasing them in white.  It was much quieter than normal outside.  I think the fog plus the existing snow on the ground muffled more typical noises of the town.  As I walked, all these thoughts above, and more, kept running through my head, and I was having silent conversations with Heavenly Father, trying to figure out the unknowable, trying to find peace in my heart with wherever this path in my life takes me, trying to calm myself and let go of stress and worry.  It's a very hard thing to do.  You just want answers!  You just want to understand the plan!  Why can't this all be easier??  It would be easier to hold on to sanity and patience if you could just know how everything would end up, right?  Not knowing is so hard.

As I walked along, my face freezing cold, but also soaking in the peace of the environment around me, I remembered another time that I felt very distressed and found peace and comfort in the nature around me: When I was in Girl's Camp and "ran away" to the river and sang hymns.  In particular, "How Great Thou Art" has always been a comforting hymn to me, since that day.  Today during my walk, I took a pause at the dock of the mostly frozen over lake, and just looked and listened for a few moments.  The ducks contentedly waddled along the ice, paddled away in the icy water.  A song bird here or there chirped out a few cheerful notes, despite the gray cold of the morning.  There was snow and ice everywhere, and such silence.  The whole world just seemed frozen.  But the world did not seem anxious about when it would thaw.  Rather, it seemed peaceful.  Very peaceful.  And I thought to myself, "The whole world is waiting.  I'm waiting for the birth of a baby.  The earth is waiting for warmth and the rebirth of spring."  But I have been waiting with a lot of stress and worry in my heart.  The earth and its creatures know that the season will change when it's time, and they wait contentedly, seemingly without a worry or a care at all.

I left my spot on the lake and continued walking along, following the path that runs along the creek that exits the lake.  It was frozen.  Seemingly frozen in time, just like me in this pregnancy.  But I found that if I listened very closely, I could hear the small gurgle of water running beneath the surface of ice.  Things were still moving, still changing.  Time will march forward, and eventually the lake and the creek will both thaw and move freely, and the frozen trees and bushes and grasses around them will turn green again.  Perhaps if I listen closely enough, I can feel my own body and baby moving forward as well, preparing for a time not far away where things will change and new life will be brought to this earth.  And as I walked along the creek, I started to remember the song, "How Great Thou Art".  And you know? I thought: If God can create entire worlds without number with such beauty and rhythm and foresight, how much better can He create a single life, and know when it should be brought to the point of birth?  He gave this baby to me quite unexpectedly.  Can I not trust Him to also know when the time is best for his arrival?  Can I give up my very mortal worries and stresses and wishes for answers, to accept that this baby will come when it's time? 

The world is frozen, and waits.  I wait along with it.  I am so eager for this baby to be born, and still anxious about avoiding being transferred for a hospital induction.  I definitely look forward to every contraction I feel, at this point, telling Father in Heaven how grateful I am for that contraction, how eager I am for more.  It's a disappointment when they fizzle away.  But perhaps today has given me a little more insight and hope that things will work out for the best, and in their own time.