My life with boys

Although I feel that, somehow, I should have seen this coming, I find that I am taken aback at my sons' recent obsession with their "junk" (not to put too fine a point on it). With Jeran I can see the natural obsession as he was just recently potty trained and, let's face it, James and I spent a lot of time directing his attention to that area of his body. I just didn't realize he would become SO enamored with it. To the point that I find myself uttering, dozens of times a day, phrases like, "Hands out!" or "Keep it in your pants!" and then liberally squirting hand sanitizer and/or chasing him to the bathroom to wash his hands. I know this is all very normal, but, not being able to relate, it also is a tad disturbing to me. Especially when he is exposing himself to family members (thank goodness it's ONLY been family members so far). We've had to sternly have the talk about which body parts stay private. Ben, to a much lesser degree, also seems to have picked up on this curiosity about his anatomy, but he has much more limited access at this point, so it's not as big of an issue. Lest any of you should be squeamish from here on out about having my boys around and touching you or your things, rest assured we remain vigilant about sanitary procedures following these "fondling" episodes.

The boys and I enjoyed a week of "spring break" last week . It doesn't totally count when you don't have a full time job outside the home, I don't think, but the fact that I essentially have 3 part-time jobs and that I got a break from all of them last week, made it count for me. We had LOTS of fun meeting up with friends and just in general enjoying a break from some of the normal routines. The weekend was a different story. I nearly put myself into pre-term labor getting all crazy and obsessive about cleaning and organizing the house. I've been taking care of these types of things slooooowly over the past month or so but for some reason, Saturday was THE day that I had to get it all taken care of. Which I did, and it only took me about 12 hours. Ridiculous. A big project that got taken care of a couple of weeks ago, thanks to 5 friends and 2 chainsaws, was the removal of a huge dead evergreen in our front yard. Pics below. It was a precarious process being planted so close to the house and all, but luckily there were some experienced men in the crew that had an inkling what to do. I still can't decide if the beer involved was helpful or contributed to the precariousness. With all that said and done, I do feel ready for baby and whatever else may come our way.

Speaking of baby, we are in countdown mode. 4 weeks to go! I have watched way too many friends suffer in the past year as they convinced themselves they would give birth early, so I'm trying not to go there mentally. However, after having Ben two weeks early, feeling the way I do (which is REALLLLY low on energy and tight/heavy in the belly), having the doc say that baby is already in position (I know this really doesn't mean anything - I'm not totally delusional), and just in general really HOPING that I go a little bit early, well, I'm no mathematical genius, but I really hope this all adds up to an early baby. Time will tell. It's definitely tough to keep up with the boys these days so, even though I know I'll be totally low in the sleep department, I'm anxious to get some of my normal energy level back.



36 weeks!

While we're on the topic of sleep, it's once again escaping us in our household. For the past week or so we've had one or both boys waking up several times a night. For Ben we blame it on teeth although I don't know if that's really the case. With Jeran I don't really know what's going on . We seem to go through spurts of really long periods of great sleep and then weeks like this past one where it feels as if we'll never sleep again. I understand that it's good preparation for having a newborn again, but quite frankly, keep the preparation. I'd rather just have my sleep while I can. :-)