The cake we baked for the birthday boy.

So, what’s up?  Where’ve I been?  Why am I losing my readers by the second?

I’m in over my head.

I’m sick.  Like I’ve never been sick before.  Yesterday my husband took off work to come home and rescue me.  By the end of the day I had kept down 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries.  That’s it.  I could not handle the kids or the day by myself.  That is disturbing to me.  I’m not good at failing at my job.  And right now I’m failing miserably.  And my incredible husband is saving me at every turn.  He went grocery shopping for me the other day – and bought instant foods.  Which I was so thankful for.  But even my oldest the other day said, “Mama, when are you gonna have another baking day?”  Remember those?  Because I barely do.  I had cut our grocery bill in half for the last 4 or 5 months.  Gone.  I can’t cook.  I can’t clean – really, the house is an embarrassment. I haven’t met any of my deadlines for Heart of the Matter.  I haven’t taken the kids out to play nearly enough.  I haven’t been posting here.  School work has come to a screeching halt.  What they learn is almost strictly from real life.  All lapbooking has stopped, all workbooks have fallen by the wayside.  Can you say delight directed?  And not in the most productive way.

Things have been going on around here that I’ve meant to tell you about.  We got a trampoline – that I almost completely assembled myself – on one of those rare productive days.  We even have cute pictures.  We got a 12 mega-pixel camera.  Love it.  Have incredible zoo pics and such that I’ve meant to put on here.  My husband has built us a bed.  Amazing.  Haven’t gotten pics, much less put them on here.  He has also built the three older kiddos a loft.  Incredible.  A double twin bed loft on top and a playhouse below.  He’s still working on the playhouse, but it’s looking more incredible everyday.  No pics of that either.  We’ve used our compost to fertilize a little bitty garden that we’ve planted.  Big stuff for us.  No pics.  We’re trying to grow bamboo – we plan to use it for a kind of fence.  We’ve had our first ever science fair.  It was awesome.  My kiddos did better than I thought they could and learned more than I thought they would.  And we had so much fun in the process.

But I’m overwhelmed.  For the first time in all my baby having I’ve asked myself, “What am I doing?”  As my husband said the other night, when the 2 year old BigMan was having a screaming bedtime fit, “I’m thrilled about having number 5, but I’m through.  I don’t want to do 2 years old for the next 10 years.”  I couldn’t have said it better.  I’m miserable, people.  Maybe I’m old.  Maybe I’m worn out, but let me tell ya, I cannot go through what I’m going through again.  I can’t see the light.  I’m sick of being sick.  I want to just cry.  A lot.  This is not me.  Maybe it’s His way of letting me be content with 5 sweet babies.  I’ll take it.  I always wanted 5 babies.  That’s the number that’s always been in my head since I was a child.  And I’ve been blessed to see that come true.  And now I just want to raise them.  Well.  Because right now I feel like a mama failure.  And I just want to go to bed.  And cry.

And the theme for this week is “Really, I’m THIS pregnant at 9 weeks?”

How can that be?  Okay, probably something to do with this being the 5th baby that my body has stretched for.  And something to do with the fact that I’m almost 32.  And something to do with I have 4 other people doing things like waking me up 7 times in any given 7 hour sleep period.

The first sign was when I outgrew my jeans last week.  Like can’t get my stretchy, smaller sized maternity jeans on anymore.  And the kiddos have been tellin’ me that my belly is getting big, but I kept thinking that they were just anticipating that and therefore imagining it.  Then my neighbor, out of the blue, yesterday said, “So are we expecting a new one?”  While touching her own belly and eyeing mine.  Well then I panicked.  It must be that I’m getting fat.  Even through the nausea I’ve managed to eat my weight in things like frozen chimis, potato soup, and cereal.  But then I went to the bathroom and weighed myself.  I’ve lost 5 pounds since I found out I was pregnant.  Lost. 5. Pounds.  And what does all this tell me?  I’m gonna be as big as a house, people, by the time this one gets here.  But then again, if you’ve seen my last pregnancies, that’s probably not such a shocker.

Onto other things..

Still sick.  Still not throwing up, just feel at any minute, every minute, that I could.  There have been a couple of mornings in there now that I haven’t felt as sick and that has lasted about an hour or two at a time.  I have hope.  Maybe it’s the beginning of the end.

Salad is now a thing of the past.  Ugh.  As are bagels, which I was eating an inordinate amount of there for awhile.  However, cereal?  Every meal if I could.  Rice Krispies, Frosted Mini Wheats, Honey Bunches of Oats, Kix.  You get it, anything kind of sweet, but kind of bland.

Still can’t eat ground beef.  Or cook it.  Ugh.  Chicken seems to be okay.  All of my normal sodas are yuck.  Dr. Pepper, Sprite .. Ugh.  But Root Beer – I could buy stock in that.  And chocolate milk.

I feel the “stretchy/pully” feeling in my belly now – makes sense after those first few paragraphs, right?  I was laying on my back the other night and rolled over and got up abruptly.  I felt the mega-pull of the belly.  Again I say, at NINE weeks?!

The baby itself is still growing like crazy.  It looks mostly like a little human now – hands, feet, facial features, body – just with a big ol’ head (already looks like you, Matthew!).  It has lost it’s tail by now – shut up, Matt, it has too.  The baby’s organs and muscles are functioning on their own.  The heart has divided into four chambers.  And just think, all within the size of a large grape.

2 1/2 weeks to my next appointment.  And to the end of the first trimester.  As with the last couple of pregnancies, I’m constantly amazed that I’m still so early in the pregnancy, fully aware of just how much longer I have to go, and simultaneously, amazed at how quickly it is moving, also aware of just how brief 9 months is in the lifetime of loving a child.

One of my friends, hi Meg!, posted this post a little while ago.  If you remember, she just had a baby and is on the other side of my mirror right now.  But how much this resonated with me.  I’ve seen snippets of this before, but never the whole thing.  And never the title.  I think there’s really something to the title.  You know by your fifth that you’ve wasted so much time trying to keep a clean house and put-together life (and I do say trying, because who can really do this, with all of them still so little and not pulling enough of their own weight yet?!)  Here it is.  For you to enjoy.  Or cry over.  Or learn from.

Song for a Fifth Child.

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.