American Sunday Morning

(I wrote this last Sunday but I seemed to have a little time and a lot to say that day so I have been slowly dishing out my words all week.  I am currently purging all of our remaining worldly belongings and hope to have another chunck of time to document this process over the holiday weekend.  Thanks for bearing with me and being interested if you are one of my readers.)

I like to watch two shows on television.  It used to be three but I really only liked to watch Jeopardy! because JJ liked it, and once residency began there was no way we could continue our nightly tradition so it has been placed on what I hope is a long sabbatical.  Now I enjoy Parenthood and CBS Sunday Morning.  I tell myself I'm not getting old but there is some pretty good evidence I am lying to myself.

Parenthood comes on at 10PM.  It is rare that my kids are all asleep at 10PM (bad, bad mamma!).  I usually watch Parenthood on the internet and I am very grateful for the opportunity for a little me time whenever I can fit it in.  I loved to watch Thirty Something as a kid so I tell myself I would like Parenthood even if it didn't fully line up with my current season of life, but again, probably a lie.

CBS Sunday Morning I only appreciate on Sunday morning.  In my twenties I would watch it from bed with the first "God, save me cup of coffee" often after a night of shenanigans.  When AJ1 came I would still watch from bed but I wouldn't drink coffee, what if it spilled on the baby?!, and I would be tired from his overnight shenanigans, not mine!  Now that we have three AJs bed isn't the best place to watch TV and kids so I moved to the couch and reinstated the cup of coffee (I like to think I'm not as cautious with things like coffee and kids because I am more adept at parenting but this too may be another lie, I may just need the coffee more now) and I am no longer tired from the night before, I now think tired may be a way of life (but very, very worth it).

Well, the couch is gone (as well as almost ALL of our furniture and other belongings) and I had to relax the coffee intake because the stress level is too high (I learned this when I had Lyme Disease and was pregnant with AJ3 -- no, it's not a heart attack Amy, it's too much stress and coffee!).  Therefore, here I sit drinking a Diet Coke (a little caffeine I can handle) at a folding table borrowed from a friend on a lawn-chair.

Soon CBS Sunday Morning will not be an option on Sunday mornings (okay, I realize that I may be able to watch it on the internet but it's just not the same) and I have to tell you that in this moment I cannot wait!  I have spent a lot of time on this blog working out my demons with the move to Auckland but I must say I am becoming very, very excited to settle in to our new segment of life and share it all with you!

Goodbye old friend!

My Miracle at (Almost) Two

Please tell me where the times goes...

Next week while we are traveling my sweet little miracle baby, AJ2, will be two years old.  When my water broke at 3:00 am with AJ2, JJ convinced me that it hadn't happened (why, oh why I listened, I'll never know).  I proceeded to wait until 3:30pm to head over to Labor & Delivery.  It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and JJ was on shift at the hospital.

The hospital was a ghost town.  I came in, got the epidural, had two veins blown out in an attempt to get an IV started and waited for Jesse's shift to be over while the pitocin did it's business.  Jesse showed up after his shift (7 pm).  Everything seemed fine.

Fast forward several hours.  The epidural stopped working.  I knew something was wrong.  I was frantic that the nurse come into the room immediately...

The baby was crowning! Anesthesiology was at capacity and couldn't come back!  What should we do about the pitocin drip (not the nurses best moment)!?!

The next thing I remember was seeing about thirty people in my delivery room.  The NICU team had arrived for my healthy, full term baby and the C-section threats had begun.  Thankfully, the resident was wise enough to know that the situation shouldn't be handled alone, even on a holiday weekend.  She was young in her residency and I am so very thankful for that now, by the grace of God, our attending physician was a maternal fetal medicine specialist.  He informed me of the situation (finally) and told me he needed my attention - done!

The umbilical cord that was wrapped around AJ2s neck twice was quickly cut and removed and he was born into this world without another hitch.  He began breathing quickly enough that his second APGAR was an 8.  Everyone was so relieved that they forgot and left us in the delivery room until morning (true story)!

Two years later, my sweet, smart, ornery little boy is exploding with words.  He has learned to skip, to hop and to jump.  He has catch phrases that he uses to exhaustion but doesn't seem to exhaust the cuteness!  He is AJ1's bestest friend in the whole wide world and one of the four lights of his mamma's life.

Happy birthday sweet, sweet boy!!

Voyage Through the Shenandoah

One of JJs favorite things to do is have a picnic and hike off Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park.  We have done this more times than I can count since moving to Charlottesville but recently we took Grandma, Junie and my new camera up for a spell.  

On the way up...

Oh, stop!

Testing my boundaries

Look boys a well pump

Weapon!

Really focused on learning what this can do

Soaked

AJ2 needs a belt for his birthday!

Dry clothes

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails (and maybe little lizard things too)

I have found my toes, aren't they grand!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

 One of my absolutely favorite things about living in Charlottesville is going to the U-pick farms.  Spring time and the strawberry fields at Chile's are in fact, my very, very favorite of them all.  We took a break from my visa application dither, work and all that jazz and went out to the farm to pick strawberries in the fields!! It was a ball!  We left with so many strawberries that we had to distribute some along the way and I made a homemade strawberry rhubarb pie just like I remember eating as a child, mmmm!

Do You Remember That Movie Beaches?

My best friend and I have six kids three and under between us.  We live (currently) 600 miles (soon to be 8100 miles) away from one another but she is still my best friend.  

She doesn't text message, only email so we have these random one line emails that go between the two of us on a regular basis.  We might see things like, "I am so sick of cleaning up poo from the crib!  -A", or "At ED, no one dying -- tell you more later.".  The other day I said to her (in one of those same emails) "Do you remember that movie Beaches?  I always think of that when I read and write these".  We have witnessed so many struggles and miracles together through our twenties and into our thirties; Oh, and serious illness, we kicked ass on that front so no one is dying young at the end of our movie.

Indiana, Our Indiana...

It has been a while, sorry about that.  I have been giving up precious sleep these day to accomplish life so blogging has gone by the wayside, more on that later though...

We took what we thought at the time would be our last Indiana trip, before the move, a few weeks ago.  It was a bustling trip through the mountains and into cornfields.  I was a little sad that the boys wouldn't get to see corn and soybeans because it was a little too early so I am excited to report that we will be stopping back by home en route to Auckland.

When we hit the Indiana state line AJ1 began singing the IU fight song and then it hit me...he though we were headed to a game!  He was a bit disappointed at first and then he saw the cousins!  Cousins are always the most fun!!

I have a lot of ideas about what might be different when we get back to the states, I sure hope that most of Indiana and the people there stay the same.