i had a bad day

i lost control. i got mad. i got annoyed. irritated. emotional.

i was guilt-ridden all day but yet i couldn't manage to break free of the cycle of anger. i said one honest prayer and it was that eva would stop crying and i could have a break. it took me all day even to get to that point (5:30). amazingly, she stopped and the boys played quiet enough for me to assume they'd gone outside or had seriously hurt themselves. even after this prayer was answered, i went right back to where i was the minute jackson asked me to play with him.

i dont know why.

i went on pinterest looking for some sort of inspiration to help me over the hump after the boys were in bed. it didn't help. then i went on lds.org and clicked on happiness in family life and was overcome by the feelings of love and the impact of spiritual teachings on my heart. i know these teachings to be true. i should study the family proclamation harder and seek counsel from scriptures. i know what i need to do now. i just need to implement it. pray early. seek for the spirit. when i'm frustrated, pray with the kids for help and patience and strength. i need to be calm.

eva's birth story

i tried to just write everything i could remember because i don't know what i'll be trying to remember in 25 years when i'm talking to a pregnant eva about when she was born. maybe thats dumb but i thought about that a lot when i was typing. its not well written. its just a narrative of what i thought of though.

I get so big and pregnant. This pregnancy was no different--lots of people asking if I was having twins or closer than I really was to delivering. Back in maybe october or november I was in a class at the gym and these ladies were so amazed that i was there exercising and I was so strong. After a couple of weeks of them being really impressed they asked me when I was due, when i told them march you could see the look on their face of shock and surprise. I was suddenly not so cool.

With this pregnancy I feel like I got every sickness that went through knoxville. I threw up more from different stomach flus than with pregnancy nausea. One of these bugs at the beginning of the third trimester brought on really strong contractions that really scared me. Another time I had to run to the bathroom in food city only to barely make it to the bathroom (and not the toilet.) I was so embarrassed I cried as I told the worker what I had done. When I got to the car and was going to call brent to tell him my traumatic experience he called me to tell me he had nearly passed out at work and his office had called an ambulance.

At the end of this pregnancy I was in lots of pain with my hips and lower back. I know its normal but when its happening...its the worst thing in the world. I might have been a bit dramatic about it. brent never complained but maybe thats because i never stopped.

I really like the idea of going in to labor on my own. Its just been so fun in the past. This time though I just didn't want to be pregnant anymore. I didn't want to have to wake the kids and deal with them in the middle of the night. I thought I just got lucky with sam--going into labor early in the morning, having my epidural all day, and having a baby by 3:00. These are the reasons I decided to be induced on 3/15 (Thursday) the day before my due date 3/16.

My mom came up on 3/13. We went out to dinner and were going to spend Wednesday cleaning and I'd go to the hospital early Thursday morning. Instead I got my first contraction wednesday morning at 1:30am. Now at the end of this pregnancy I was having lots of contractions. Because that didn't happen with the boys, every time I thought "this is it!" only to be disappointed that they didn't become regular. I just assumed it was the same thing. I felt dumb constantly thinking I was in labor and it not being the case. Brent woke up to some noisy dogs in the neighborhood a little after 2. I told him I was having painful contractions and he said "NO!" and then went back to sleep. I went downstairs where it was cooler and tried to sleep. By this point I started timing them and they were 15 minutes apart. They were really painful but Dr. Schroeder had told me to go in to the hospital when they were 5 minutes apart. When I went upstairs a couple hours later my mom was awake (actually she was indexing at like 4 in the morning!!). The two of us timed my contractions for anther few hours but they weren't getting closer together. I was really frustrated because they were so painful. I really wanted to get an epidural but was confused as to what I should do. At around 7 or so I told brent to get ready and I wanted to go. I wasn't really persistent with him though because I didn't want to get to the hospital and be turned away because I wasn't far enough along.

We finally got to the hospital at 8:30. I remember walking in with a contraction. I remember people looking at me giving me their supportive wow-she's-in-labor looks but i was so embarrassed. I was still afraid that it was nothing and that I just had a low tolerance for pain. That's why I was thrilled when they checked me in triage and i was 6cm!! I wasn't crazy! I could have come in earlier. I immediately wished I had. I asked several times as politely as I could when i could get my epidural. Things seemed so much slower to happen than when I went in with Sam. They poked me 3 times trying to get an iv. then the machine was turned on slow. My nurse told me once the iv was in it would be 30 minutes before i could get my iv. It turned into over an hour though because the anesthesiologist was busy. I told brent I wanted to be ignored during contractions but towards the end when they were getting worse i wanted him to hold my hand. the dr. came in around 10:30 to start my epidural and i was finally relaxed and feeling good about 11:15. When Dr. Schroeder checked me I was 8cm and he told me we'd push in 30 minutes.

Eva came at 12:05 after about 3 pushes. They put her in my arms really quickly and it was perfect. i could tell she was bigger than the boys who were both 8 lbs 12 oz. She was 9 lbs 3 oz. Nursing in the hospital was a breeze. The 2nd night there was rough though because they asked us to change rooms and then gave us these two bumbling nurses. One walked in at 1:00 to do my vitals and turned on the lights and was talking loudly, spilling my drink. We were more than ticked at that point. Now though, it seems so long ago and less of a big deal.

The boys loved her from the start. Jackson cried when he first saw me because I was shaking so much and still hooked up to ivs. i felt bad that i didn't even have the strength to comfort him. Sam always says "i wanna hold it." jackson tells me he'll watch her whenever i walk out of the room.

eva was born this week

this is some of the things the boys have said.

j-when my baby sister has a baby sister i'll be an uncle.

j-"griffin wanna see something?"

Griffin-"yeah, I know you have a baby sister."

j-"no, i got a new game."

sam came in the hospital and my mom said look there's your mom "nooooo, i wan baby!"

when jackson walked in to my room after the baby was born he started crying and said "i don't like the way my mommy looks!" ok so that was sad.

j-"hmmm... [pats my belly] do you have another baby in there because your stomach is still kinda big. i'm just [puts his hands around his waste] flatter than you."

sam keeps coming up to her saying "baby soft baby soft" and petting her hair

unrelated...my grandma hutchison came to visit and when she asked jackson what he was going to learn in kindergarten his answer was "silent letters in words." she was impressed.

jackson keeps telling me its not fair that nobody else can feed her. he wants a turn to try.

jackson keeps calling her hannah and or marsha. (ever since he found out it was a girl he's wanted to name her marsha, crying when we told her it would be eva, and then again when it wouldn't be her middle name. he says that he decided it will be her nickname.

eva and my parents dog ginger both came home on friday. i definitely think for sam, the best part is ginger. he doesn't resent eva but when my dad and grandma left today he ran down the driveway after them crying "ginja! ginja!"

when jackson saw a picture of himself holding eva he said "wow thats so pretty. i didn't know i was so cute holding eva."

jackson: mom i really think that you're a good mom but on the phone you said that you were a bad mom

frankly, his opinion is the only one that matters.

except when he tells me i'm a bad mom because I put him in time out.

on second thought maybe i shouldn't sing "i'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair" while washing the boys hair. jackson sang it the rest of the night.

i don't know if i've recorded some of sams cuter phrases recently. he doesn't say "yes" he says "i do" with the cutest southern accent on the I I've ever heard. sam do you want down? i do! sam do you want a bath? i do! he is also very funny about what names he'll say and which he won't. no matter how much i try i can't get him to say grandma or sam. he does call all of jacksons friends iris though and recognizes the neighborhood as soon as we turn in. his favorite person to point out in pictures used to be scott but brittany (nienie) has replaced him now. he can also be confusing when asking for buzz lightyear. for some reason buzz is zoom and tangled is buzz. ??? chocolate milk is chalk. bear and hair are brrr and hrrrr. he loves kerus judge (curious george) and choo choo. he has just started trying to identify colors which was a surprise to me. i was shocked when he picked up an orange lego and called it orange.

there's no way i can remember it all. it may not be the best stuff he's said but its something.

"swords are bad. except when you're going to kill somebody then they're good."

he really really wants to name the baby marsha.

(embarrassing) we were playing lil piggies and after the 5th one he said "why is home my privacy?" "no no sweetie home is under your neck!!! let's not play that anymore." we had company over.

i was looking at his preschool drawings and having him explain them to me. he drew a picture of him and a snowman shooting guns at a volcano. There was one picture he didn't color and when i asked him why he said it was because she's a girl.

sam is so cute now. he doesn't say the funny or bizarre things that jackson says but amazingly, just about every time he talks we all crack up.

last saturday we were playing in our bedroom trying to convince daddy to get up. all sam said was "jackson i want bear" which was really more like "akon i wan brrr" but we all laughed for 5 minutes and repeated it all day. i love how he calls blanket leelee or gleeglee. he loves trains and always calls them choochoo. i feel thomas making a stronger showing this time around. as I was pulling out baby clothes a friend gave me he told me with every new piece "cute." jackson does the same but with a really overly exaggerated voice "oh that is so cuuuuute. she will loooove that."

my boys are AWESOME!

he is passionate

so today jackson bargained with me that if he ate all of his sandwich we would turn our house into a restaurant. i told him today was a perfect day because we were having the missionaries over for dinner tonight. i asked him how we could make it a restaurant and he told me he really wanted to make menus and give them their food.

we named our restaurant "jackson's restaurant" because that's what he wanted. We decided he could draw a picture of all of the food i was making for dinner (after getting very upset that he couldn't make a menu of all of the foods he liked then i would just have to make whatever the missionaries ordered.) He drew a picture of meatloaf, salad, potatoes, and cake.

When I started making the salad a few minutes before they were scheduled to arrive I realized that i had accidentally bought cabbage instead of lettuce. I thought i'd improvise and cut up some oranges and cucumber to have on the side. When jackson saw me cutting up the oranges he asked why i didn't tell him that so he could put it on the menu. i told him my predicament and he was very upset about his menu having salad when we didn't have it. i told him that the cucumbers are green so it looks the same but then he pointed out that they would wonder what the red (tomatoes) was on top of the green. i told him if he wanted he could just cross out the salad and add the new items. we worked on it together and i thought it was settled but he could not get over the black scribble on his menu. he was crying that his menu had black on it and the missionaries wouldn't know why it was there. i sent him to his room to calm down and he threw his menus (i picture him doing this in a very exasperated fashion) then ran back to his room and slammed the door. he was upstairs at least 5 minutes before the missionaries arrived. When they got here he wouldn't come downstairs. i went up and explained that menus have black marks on them when the chef has to change it. he asked "do they have black marks when they accidentally draw the wrong food?"

"yes dear"

he came downstairs as happy and cute as ever. he gave them their menus. he carried their food. (he dropped some oranges but mom ate those) and was very happy with the opening night of jacksons restaurant.

in moments like those where i get exasperated thinking that i'm doing this great nice thing for my kids and they lose their temper but when it ends well i'm so incredibly thankful for hopefully a happy dinner memory we've created. i hope the positive sticks and not the negative.