35 weeks

The time has finally come... by the end of this week I will have less than ONE MONTH before our little one arrives. I'm excited that during my last doctor appointment I scheduled my last two week check up, then we're down to one week appointments. How exciting, and (a little) terrifying...

 In all honesty I have to admit that the idea of taking care of THREE boys is a little hard to wrap my head around. How will I manage to do ANYTHING? I often lay in bed at night having slight panic attacks about my capabilities to do all the things I need to do, but then I take a deep breath and pour out my heart to my Heavenly Father, after which I'm comforted to know that all I need to do is take one step at a time.

I've been slacking on blogging this month because we've had a lot going on:

*The beginning of this month we were ALL sick.

(Note: this picture of food has nothing to do with HOW we got sick, but while we were sick I threw everything in a crock pot, which I LOVE doing, by the way.)

* B had a horrible mystery rash, which we later determined was a cold virus. Thankfully it was nothing contagious, but it was scary for a mother to see her little one covered in horrible red splotches, hives, welts and red bumps all over. He was such a trooper.

 (Note: the first two pictures were not the worst of it, AND by 48 hours later he looked like the picture below.)

*Our downstairs neighbor has been causing all sorts of trouble for us. Not only have we been subjected to listening to his bass boom through the walls at different (and inconvenient hours) of the day; we have also had the pleasure of listening to his dogs bark; breathing in great amounts of cigarette smoke-- because he refuses to abide by the rules; and as of late he has come up to our apartment to bang on my door, practically knocking it down, to yell at me about how MY boys have been "too loud".

As a decent human being it was hard to have a civilized conversation with him as he proceeded to lecture me about my parenting skills (something he has no experience with) and call me names (none of the kindergarten ones), and swear incessantly in front of my kids. I respect his right to live how he chooses to live... in his own home.

However, when he starts harassing me and talking disrespectfully to me in front of my children, that's where I draw the line. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt in certain circumstances, though I'm not always perfect at this, but at this point all I felt was anger and sadness towards this neighbor of mine. After having a 15 minute "conversation" with him and trying to reasonable I had had enough. After shutting the door I was literally shaking and when Tyler came through it 5 minutes later I was in tears.

A pregnant woman can only be subjected to so much bullying before she breaks.

Thankfully this horrible incident might have a happy ending, as Tyler (my hero) made a phone call to our office informing them about the ugly situation we've been dealing with for months now, which apparently is only escalating. Our wonderful manager has agreed to sit down with us and help take care of this. I'm really hoping they will wave our termination fee and we will be free to leave here when an opportunity arises, should it happen before August (when our lease is technically up). The termination fee (prior to our lease date) is $1,093. Given the circumstances I'm staying optimistic that something will work out in our favor.   

*Oh, and did I mention that I've also been potty training Braxton? Yes. I've just decided to give it a whirl before Pula gets here. I figure the worst that can happen is we put him back in diapers, after all he's only just turned 2... but for the time being I've got the time to be able to help him, and honestly it would be great to only have one in diapers at a time. We will see.

The other day while driving home from church Tyler and I started talking about little Pula. Wondering if he would look like Quincy, blond hair and bright blue eyes, or like Braxton, dark brown hair and blue eyes....

I laughed and said, maybe he'll look like neither and have red hair! After all we do have some red heads in the family, Tyler's mom being one of them; although hers is more of a deep auburn than bright red. Still.... the possibility is there. I am anxious to see him, I wonder if he'll be bigger than my first two -- each one has increased in size. It's rather hard to gauge his size by my weight gain because I gained the most with Q and he was the smallest. Then I gained less with B and he was bigger... this time my weight gain has stayed in the middle of my previous pregnancies and actually at my last two Dr. appointments my weight has stayed the same. I was real happy about that.

While filling up our car with gas --can you believe the gas prices?? Yikes.--

I couldn't help but notice this beautiful tree. It stood tall and strong amongst the backdrop of the slate gray sky and it made me think about my family. All those little branches coming from one trunk. I've never had dreams about having a large family of my own, in fact as a young woman I didn't particularly like kids at all, as a young adult I vowed to work on my education rather than seek out a husband and start raising kids at a young age... have you ever heard that saying: 'How do you make God Laugh? Tell him your plans'.... yeah, that all that changed over the years. I got married at 20, had Q at 21, B at 24 and here I am having a third kid before I turn 26.

I think about how I've been blessed because of my children. I have learned while raising my kids that I could have never learned in a University. I've learned to sacrifice things, but it hasn't been too terrible because I've always been rewarded for my efforts... not always in the ways one might think, but I HAVE been rewarded.

So... as I sat staring at the three I couldn't help but acknowledge how gracious this tree really was. I started to relate it to a little bit.

 I noted how it symbolized something important to me... motherhood.

One might observe -especially a horticulture enthusiast-- that the tree needed to be pruned years ago, and perhaps one might also think that there was nothing particularly beautiful about this tree--as it lacked leaves or anything flashy on it, and I myself thought that perhaps it appeared a little weighed down by all those branches it was supporting.

None the less, it stood upright holding up all those tiny hundreds of branches, sustaining life to create new additional branches, and giving all it had.

I thought, my tree might never have that many branches on it... but surely I feel blessed to have been a mother twice and soon to repeat the experience for a third time. I suppose I feel slightly reflective with this pregnancy --everything we've been through (getting to week 32 was somewhat of a monumental week seeing as how a few months ago I was told I would never carry that far and if I managed to make it further I might never hear my baby's heart beat) and seeing as how there's a great possibility that this will be my last baby, I'm appreciating what I can. I want to be able to ignore all the hardhsips of motherhood; feeling weighed down, invinsible, a little un-kept, and relish in the importance of what I've accomplished thus far AND the things are yet to come.

29 days and counting!