Maternity leave is over

Henny and Papa, who rented a small house nearby for a month, left two weeks ago and Grammie swiftly took their place. She actually stayed with us and pretty much had zero breathing room from her adoring brood of grandchildren. I admire her stamina. A lot.

Yet, all good things must come to an end, including this stay-at-home-mom's version of maternity leave. Grammie left yesterday and our "new normal" begins tomorrow when Matt leaves for work. I'm hoping our new normal won't include an uptick in meltdowns, timeouts and general domestic disorder but let's be real -- it will.

It's a good thing there's ice cream in the freezer, wine in the pantry and an Internet connection. As far as I know, there's nothing a little dairy, Cabernet or Berenstain Bears on YouTube can't ameliorate, right?

Nocturnal comic relief

Last night was rough. Jamison was up constantly and difficult to settle back down. Icing on the cake was that Emery, who rarely wakes us up in the night, hollered out on four different occasions with four different dilemmas. One of which was that her "foot wrists" hurt.

So I guess she doesn't know the word ankle yet. Taking solace in the fact that I was able to laugh at this despite my ever increasing sleep deficit.

Four weeks and counting

Jamison is now four weeks old and thus far we've gotten quite a taste of life with three kids. I say "taste" because Henny and Papa have been here, Matt's mom comes next week and the meals from church have been a'flowin. So I'd say we've been sampling reality in spurts so far and from what I can tell, much about life with three is great (or, let's be honest, will be great when we get through this rocky, needy newborn phase) and lots of it is hard. Case in point - Jamison has his first cold. Emery didn't get a cold until she was seven months old. But, every time I turned my back this week, snotty-nosed Anna Kimball would snag an opportunity to put her face right up close to his and just stare. So be it.

It's no fun seeing your newborn sick, but he's hanging in there and has promised to sleep tonight.

He's growing rapidly and has already jumped from a birth weight of 7 lb. 6 oz to somewhere in the low 9 lb. range. And I swear he's been smiling for the past few weeks even though that's not supposed to happen until 6 weeks. 

Jamison spends his nights snug as a bug in the carseat in the living room. Doesn't he look regal there? We're holding off giving him Anna Kimball's room until he learns to sleep on his own ... and I am counting down the days. Even caught myself Googling "cry it out four weeks" the other day. But I'm not that heartless. We'll give it a few more days ... ok, weeks.

Night, night Jamison - remember your promise about tonight? Love, Mom.

Love this

Now that Henny and Papa are here, the girls can resume much of their normal routine, including a weekly trip to the produce market. The two women who work behind the counter and always give Emery free grapes, me a helping hand out to the car and Anna Kimball lots of oohing and ahhing (not that they wouldn't give her grapes, too - she just doesn't want them) got to find out about Jamison this week and the girls got to giggle under the peppers. After the whirlwind that was last week and weekend, we sure do need some normalcy around here and this fits the bill. And makes me smile.

Welcome to the world, Jamison Matthew Doescher!

Going into the birth of our third child, I had a little list of prayers/worries/hopes. For instance, I've never had my actual doctor deliver any of the girls, so I was kind of hoping that might work out this time. I've also had epidurals for the last two deliveries and not regretted them at all ... but have had this nagging curiosity about what it would be like to go natural, could I really do it, would it actually be better, help me experience it "more" (YES), etc. etc. But my convictions were so weak and I knew that without a doula or large sums of money invested in natural child birthing classes I'd quickly cave to the temptation of an epidural if it was an option. So my only hope was for there to not be enough time to get one.

And then of course there's the question of when will labor happen, will it be in the middle of the night, will help for the girls arrive in time, will Matt be able to leave work easily, will it happen on Emery's birthday (March 20, day after due date), etc. etc.

Well, looking back, it's easy to see how each of these items was so clearly taken care of and I'm still kind of amazed at how it all worked out. On Wednesday night I went to bed not feeling so hot, but didn't think much of it. I woke up at 12:45am with a backache that came and went, suspiciously like early contractions. It was hard to grasp that this could actually be "it" since the girls have both been late ... plus, Henny and Papa weren't even here yet!

Around 2:30 I decided this really was "it" and called our angel neighbor who was actually lying in bed awake! She hustled down to stay with the girls and we left for the hospital, checking in at 3:25. My doctor arrived at 4:15 and at 4:25, Jamison Matthew was in my arms. No time for an epidural and even better, only about 20 minutes of pain that made me beg for an epidural. 

I need to sear this experience in my mind for whenever I doubt that the Lord will provide and that he knows what's best. In all of these ways and many more it's so evident he orchestrated every single detail of Jamison's arrival. 

Now that we're home and settling into a new normal, things feel pretty crazy. Maybe because they are. Emery is turning four in a few days and had her first real birthday party yesterday. Henny and Papa are here, we had a surprise visit from Uncle Craig, presents are everywhere, mealtime rules are laxing, the house looks like a tornado blew through (well, until Henny puts things back in order), and everyone's moods are swinging like chandeliers. Except mine. I'm perfectly balanced and calm ... riiiighht. But maybe there is one real exception - Matt, who remains unflappable.

But it's OK. I'm not complaining. Jamison Matthew, anything for you. We love you!!!

Dinners on the deck

The weather's getting warmer and we're rediscovering the deck at dinnertime. This evening, I commented to Matt that a year ago today, Anna Kimball could have been walking and tromping around the deck making mischief as she has been this week with Emery, but the poor thing was still scooting. And this made having fun outside more tricky. Oh, how grateful I am that that season is behind us ... and oh how I pray this baby due to make his/her arrival any day now will outpace his/her sisters when it comes to walking. If not, well, oh well, We know no other way!

Last night Anna Kimball snagged my napkin and I sort of wondered why, but got distracted. Then, minutes later she started trying to drag the heavy cast aluminum chairs across the deck and I got frustrated. But then, Matt told me to turn around because bless her heart, she was just trying to "set the table" for her and Emery to have a second dinner. Melt me.

Last week Matt mentioned we hadn't had fish much lately and I then explained my fish frustrations - we can't get good fresh fish here, the mediocre stuff is still expensive, who really looks forward to fish for dinner, what nutritional value other than a ton of protein does the cheapest fish, tilapia, really have, etc. etc. etc. 

But then I went and bought a bag of frozen tilapia at Target and lo and behold the girls love it. So as much as I loathe being trapped into "we always have 'X' to eat on such and such a night," pan-fried tilapia might become a regular rotation in the dinner diary now.

I've tried this before

A dinner diary. Nothing fancy, just jotting down what we ate each night, if for no other reason than to give myself the satisfaction of looking back and seeing that even if it feels like I can get nothing done in a day, I did make dinner.

I tried doing this a year or so ago and it lasted about a month. This Christmas Matt gave me a gift card to create a custom journal and since my current personal journal is gathering dust, I didn't see any reason to make a new one with the wishful thinking it might actually get written in. So I made a new dinner diary and have been faithfully recording our meals since mid-January.

For the past week or so, I've been in a huge cooking rut, though maybe it's more of a grocery shopping rut. I'm thoroughly exhausted by trying to plot out when to go to which store for what, how to plan within our budget and dietary preferences, how to think on the fly when something I didn't know was on sale actually is, or when "x" item of produce or meat isn't available/looks pathetic, etc. etc. etc.

I haven't come up with any great solutions yet, but one thing I know is this - we eat ground turkey once a week. So why am I not buying four pounds of it on the first of the month and freezing three of them? That would at least solve one night's dinner dilemma each week.

On that note, here's February 24th's turkey dinner - turkey sloppy joes. Enjoy! We did.