Flashbacks of pregnancies past

Contractions for weeks at a time. Every ten minutes. Every day.

I don't think I've been dry for a solid week now! It's driving me nuts! Wait, that may not make sense; I'm having these contractions that make me break out in an instant sweat. ALL the time. I feel like I have a low grade fever ALL the time when in reality my temperature is perfectly fine. I remember this quite well from when I was expecting Lauren.

Is there any question as to why I have such short labors? No?

So I'm now down to, hmm, my counter says 2 weeks, 6 days. Yeah!!! Most likely sometime in the next 20 days I'll no longer be pregnant!!! And I'll have my sweet little boy to hold, too! I promise that's what I'm most excited about... um, well, close enough anyway. I've got my bags all packed and this little dude's clothes are ready for him. I've got two of the cutest hats for him! One is a Baby Gap creamy white hat with a pom on top, it's oh so sweet! I keep holding it and wondering if it will fit him right off. I scored it from Other Mother last week for a few cents. And I love the knitted look. I'm thinking that will go perfect with his blessing day outfit. The other hat is this little stud cap from Old navy. It was one of those "can't help myself" impulse buys. Oh, well.

I had my 37 weeks doc appointment a few days ago. All is well, but he's afraid I may have colistasis of pregnancy, which means my liver is overproducing bile and causing severe itching on my legs. Then I got a notice from Ethan's teacher that a kid in his class has Fifths Disease. Nothing to worry about, unless you're pregnant. It can cause severe anemia in the fetus and even death in a little under 10% of cases. Great. So I had to have blood drawn to check for infection and to make sure my liver is functioning well. He also let me know I'm like 1-2 cm dilated and about 40% effaced. Pretty typical for me at this point but it's still nice to know that a small amount of the work is getting done before I actually go into hard core labor. Of course I have to deal with these stinking contractions all the time. And sweat, gross.

As for all baby preparations, I think I'm pretty much done. I just got my pretty new nursing cover in the mail.
I love this thing! The stiff neck that allows me to see the baby is genius. They would come up with these for my last baby. Everything else I could want would be just more diapers, nursing pads, and cute clothes. I can't get enough of those things though. I scored size one diapers for 12 cents a diaper the other day! I bought a ton.

And to end, here is a picture of my girls. I keep finding Lily asleep in Lauren's bed at night. I never really noticed how different their hair color is until I looked at this picture. Lily is so blond!
Okay, two more. I've finally implimented a chore chart. I've tried different things in the past, but so far this is working out very well. I make the kids earn 20 stars during the week to do camp out night like we do every Friday night. This is enough encouragement that they don't whine half as much when I make them clean up after themselves.
Believe me when I say I wish I had done this a few years ago.