2 weeks ago tomorrow

Baby G was born.  Beautiful delivery.  Favorite quote from the midwives who were there, after it was over:
“You really didn’t need us.” 

Yep.  I agree.  Glad they were there anyway, and grateful (so grateful!) that they read my mind in terms of their involvement.  After the initial monitoring and the barbaric waking of the baby with a loud buzzer on my tummy (Oh look!  Now that he’s awake his heart rate looks wonderful.  Go figure!  Sorry, baby - I would be trying to sleep through labor if I were you, too.)  they left me alone and let me do my own thing.  It was exactly what I wanted. 

My favorite:  During that initial monitoring — the one where the stuff is strapped around your tummy — the nurse in L&D let me undo the obnoxicity that is an elastic-strap-around-a-contracting-uterus …

And I didn’t put it back up.  (The first red curtain story is here.)  Instead, I finally gutted & reorganized the laundry room.

I actually never thought this would happen.

No, really, I didn’t.

That room has been an absolute disaster for a long time.  Like, since we moved in three years ago.

Where’s the “before” picture?

On the stolen laptop’s hard-drive, of course!

Bummer.

I know.

You could look through your blog’s photo archives and see if you saved it here, you know.

Oh, I could!  Let’s see if I find anything.

Wow, that’s pretty bad.

Yes, it was.  And *that* was already after the tackle-the-project was underway.

Why was the laundry room such a mess, though?

I don’t know.  I’m a lazy procrastinator and I don’t like to tackle big projects?

Nu-uh.

Oh, wait, you’re right.  That was the old …

I wrote a nice little post.  It took me a while.  And then the connection dropped, autosave failed me, and all I have left are the pictures I’d uploaded.

GRRR.

Here’s the short version.  Not that I can ever be brief, you know, but I’ll try.

The kids invited me to play in the kiddie pool.

I accepted.

They were happy.

I still can’t believe I played out there in my swim suit, but it was everything that is good and wonderful to be there with them, just being happy at being alive.

And there you have it.  More or less what I wrote and lost.

I need to play more often.  Like, every day.  I mean, I do expect them to work with me daily, right?  I need to stop with the never ending, “Not right now”s and the “I’m too busy”s.  Something tells me they’ll be more happy …

And so has her two-year-old brother.  Nothing like straight protein powder while mom nurses the baby.

Doodle, on the other hand, has been strong.  Super strong!

He was a little bit happy about splitting that board.  I’ll have to load the video of him telling us the story.  Someday.

Freedom has been learning to crawl.  It’s still in the very beginning stages, but it is indeed official.  He can do it.  The army crawl business is on it’s way out before he even gets it down. I’m seeing my life in the near future consisting of a LOT of sweeping and vacuuming.

And there was much rejoicing.
Yay.

(And see? I told you my laundry room was a disaster.  I’ve been working on it.  Slowly.  It does indeed look better than that now.  Sort of.  Kind of… That red-curtain is still firmly in place.)

Hope you’re …

My posts have been a little more rambling, a little less family journal lately, so I shall try to balance the scale a bit here.

Baby F – 8 months now.  Just two teeth still, sweet little baby.  He’s just beginning to army-crawl, and he will pull himself to standing.  Mobility, here we come!  He’s in the gottabewithmommyeverysinglemoment stage… And I’m trying to remember that it doesn’t last forever.  Nothing with kids ever does, except for the cuteness.  Cute lasts forever, for sure.

Mr.E is two and a half and showing it.  It’s a blast – until he doesn’t get something he wants, and then it really is a blast as he blows his top.  KA-BOOM!  Ah, the tantrums of a two year old.  That’s just a stage, too, and it doesn’t bother me near as much now as it used to.  Tantrums aside, he’s an absolute doll.

Doodle, 4.5, …

The parents kids have enjoyed them to no end, as you will see.

Yes, Eagle won the binky war. For now, anyway. He started searching out small choking hazards and putting them in his mouth in absence of the pacifier… You understand.

Added note: The “pirates” are sailing the seven seas currently, with a “ship” built from every cusion off the play room couch (sigh) and a great big parachute tied to the tops of 5 chairs.

You know, I’m beginning to see that not only do children not *need* toys — they don’t even really *want* them. My kids, at any rate, are perfectly happy just being creative. Maybe I got lucky and happened to get creative genius children. Or maybe I just have three pretty normal kids (albeit abnormally cute, according to my biased opinion) who don’t have commercials …

In fact, he’s only really cried in the bath once, which is pretty amazing to me.

(Can’t blame him.  It was -ahem- slightly less than room temperature water.  Whoops!)

All my other babies hated baths when they were new.

Water birthing side-effects?  Maybe?…

Binkies:  Almost all M.I.A.  Only one — you read that right, ONE — located.

One binky.  Two binky-lovers.  Most nights the 2y.o. thinks he needs twoof them to get to sleep, actually, as ALL binkies are HIS binkies, but lately he’s been willing to nap with just one.

Great.

Binky: with the toddler. 
Baby: still crying, presumably from binky-withdrawals.

Totally vintage.  Totally special.  And new to Eagle, which was the important part.  Maybe it’ll work.

Holding it concealed in my hand, I went back to his crib. 

“Guess what, Eagle.  I found something for you!”
<a little grin began to replace the frowny eyebrows>
“This is a special little dude, just for you.”
<bigger grin>

And he spent the next hour snuggling and talking …

We had my Uncle Greg here w/ cousin Paige & her two darlings, and then for Easter week we had lots of John’s family up from out of town.

It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO fun (How’s that for descriptive?  Pretty good, huh.) to have lots of the Smith kids together.  Not 100%, but pretty close.

Oh huzzah, it worked.  You know, I think my previous “theme” here had lots of bugs.  Hooray for new themes. …