Butt-whooping...followed by some whining and worrying

That's what I feel like I'm in the middle of right now - a butt-whooping.  3 kids is even harder than I thought it would be.  I'm sure a lot of it is because Matthew's lack of any kind of consistent schedule makes it hard for me to get in a shower or a meal or sleep, let alone take care of anything else...including the older two kids.  And they are masters at waiting until I've got my arms full feeding Matthew to start fighting and misbehaving.  I am overwhelmed and can't help but wonder how in the world I'm going to get through summer break when Andrew doesn't even have school a couple of mornings a week to keep him busy and give me a break.

I had an awful Mother's day also.  I know it seems selfish, but the whole day revolved around my mom and mother-in-law.  I didn't get my favorite breakfast (church is too early) or lunch (we just munched on stuff at my mom's) or dinner (SIL made dinner catered to her mom).  I didn't get a card or flowers or even really a thanks for being my mom.  And right now, I feel like that's all I am is mom.  It was hard to read friends blogs and facebook posts about their wonderful Mother's day.  Mine didn't happen this year.  Not that I didn't want to spend time with the moms in our lives, but it would have been nice to have my contributions to my family recognized.  And this is not meant to be a guilt trip for anyone involved.  It's just the way it worked out this year.

And our anniversary and my birthday are pretty well shot, too.  Clayton's work is going into a "no-fly" zone starting next Monday (the day after his birthday) and lasting until the 4th of July.  Intel is moving one of the factories to a new process.  He can't take any time off of work and isn't supposed to go out of town at all in case they need him to come in.  This time also takes up almost all of Andrew's summer vacation.  So much for hoping we could go somewhere or at least have Clayton take a couple of days off.  He is taking this Friday off to take the two older boys on Fathers and Sons campout with his brother's ward since he can't take them to our ward's.

And as if all that weren't enough, my brother has been dealing with severe abdominal pain for the past couple of weeks.  He's had ultrasounds and CT scans and finally had an MRI yesterday.  The doctor called him at 6:30pm...never a good sign.  He's got a spot on his pancreas.  They can't (not sure if it's can't or don't want to wait) to do a biopsy and are hoping to get him into surgery in the next week or two.  The doctor said he doesn't know what it is and won't until surgery, but if it's cancer and has spread at all, gave my brother 3-6 months to live.  I'm trying not to be too pessimistic right now because they don't know what it is or how bad it is, but it's a little scary.  I have a half sister than I rarely speak to and have very little relationship with and since my grandma's death will probably never see again and my brother.  He is, for all intents and purposes, my only sibling.  And to think that he may not live to see his next birthday or even meet his newest nephew ...  Let's just say I'm feeling completely helpless.  He's terrified.  My mom is freaking out.  And I can't even keep my head above water with my own family, let alone feel like I can do anything to help them.

So, I just have to put one foot in front of the other and try to do what I can.  I just feel like it's not good enough and that there just isn't enough of me to go around.  I can't wait for things to mellow out and calm down...  And hopefully turn out for the best.

Introducing....

Okay, so I'm a little slow getting this up.  The adjustment to having three kids is kicking me in the behind right now.

Matthew Thomas Myers

Born April 14, 2011 at 5:05pm

8lbs. 12 oz., 21 1/4 inches long

I went in for induction at 9am on the 14th.  Started at 3cm dialated so I had a good start.  I've always responded well to induction (this is my 3rd).  Got me going and things progressed nicely.  At 4pm, I was at 6cm.  They let my Dr. know it was probably going to be a couple of hours.  At 4:45pm, they decided to check me again and I was fully transitioned and ready to push.  She had me do one small push to help get the baby down since he was still riding high.  Worked great.  The nurse was going to hold off and let my Dr. finish his afternoon appointments.  No big deal here.  I'd hate to be the one with a 4:45pm appointment that had to wait until 6pm to see the Dr. because he ran off to the hospital when he didn't really have to.  Around 5pm, the nurse came in and wanted to have me push once to see where I was.  When my next contraction started, I took a deep breath to push and just when I was going to start pushing, the nurse yelled, "Stop!  Don't push!!"  Uh, okay!?  There she was with only one glove on and the baby's head halfway out.  She was going to hold him in until the Dr. got there, but the baby's heartrate disappeared from the monitor.  She called for help.  Three other nurses came running in.  Kelleigh (my nurse) put on a second glove and let the baby come on out.  Yep, that's right.  He arrived without me doing any real pushing.  Guess he was in a hurry.  Good thing they didn't wait either.  He was just a tad on the blue side when he arrived.  Within 5 minutes, he was perfectly pink and healthy though.  The good Dr. arrived about 10-15 minutes after the baby did...flushed and embarassed that he hadn't gotten there in time.  Not that any of us could have imagined the baby coming on his own like he did.  He was a little embarassed about misjudging the baby's size, too.  He didn't figure Matthew was going to be as big as my other two.  He missed being the biggest by .5 oz. 

From induction start time to delivery was just over 6 1/2 hours.  Not too shabby, I'd say.  Luke was just over 10 hours and Andrew was just over 12 hours. 

The boys are excited for a baby brother, but have been thwarted in their attempts to bond with the baby.  Luke had some kind of respiratory infection and Clayton had to take him to the Dr. while I was still in the hospital.  Then Andrew developed pink eye.  It's probably not a bad thing in the grand scheme of things.  They are both awfully rough and this will give Matthew a little more time to gain some strength before he gets mauled.  :o)

Matthew had been doing his best sleeping during the day and was up most of the night the first week.  Thank goodness Clayton was home to help me out.  But he's been sleeping better at night this week...thank goodness.  He's a pretty happy baby.  He only cries when he's cold, wet, or hungry - of course, he's hungry a LOT!  He LOVES having his hair washed under the faucet.  And he's got a headfull, let me tell you. 

I'll post more pictures...hopefully this weekend while Clayton is home to help wrangle the boys.

Scared....

I don't often admit out loud when I'm scared, let alone put it in writing so it lasts forever.  But I'm scared. 

I went to the OB yesterday for my weekly check up.  I joked that I was ready to serve an eviction notice to this baby.  I'm tired of my back, hips and other things being in constant pain.  I'm tired of sleeping on the couch.  I'm tired of the swelling and the inability to comfortably reach my feet.  I'm tired of being tired and winded all the time.  And honestly, I'm tired of sharing my body with another human being.  I want to get healthy and having a baby in my body doesn't help that quest any.

I wasn't expecting him to even consider induction since he doesn't think this baby is as big as my other two were.  But he offered to schedule me a week from my due date, which is the 22nd.  So, he looked at the calendar and said he'd call and see if he could get me in on the 15th.  I'll find out for sure at my appointment next week what's going on.  I was really excited to finally see the light at the end of this pregnancy...until I talked to Clayton about it.  His response, "That's a week from this Friday!"  Holy Cow!  That's only 9 days from now.

And to make things just a little more freaky...I'm already dialated to 3cm.  I've never been this far dialated this early in my pregnancy.  When I went in to be induced with Andrew, I wasn't anything...not dialated, not effaced.  With Luke I was 2cm dialated and 50% effaced.  They both came a week and a half early thanks to induction because they were both measuring on the big side.  And they were.  8lbs 13oz for Andrew and 8lbs 9oz for Luke.  The Dr. told me that I may go into labor on my own before he can have me induced.

Am I ready?  I have the baby's bag packed for the hospital.  The car seat is ready to go in the car.  I have all the baby's stuff put away and the bed ready.  I still need to pack me a bag.  I'm a little worried about going into labor on my own.  I'm on my 3rd pregnancy and am not sure I'll know when it's time.  Even if I do, will I make it to the hospital on time?  Andrew was born 12 hours after my water broke.  Luke was only 2 1/2 hours.  If my water breaks, I'm a solid 45 minutes from the hospital - not including loading up the kids, etc.  What if I can't drive myself and Clayton is at work?  I know there are people I can call, but it still kind of freaks me out.

I'm terrified that I'm not going to be able to handle three kids.  Two already try my patience to its limits.  And everyone I talk to tells me how hard the transition from 2 to 3 was.  It doesn't help that when I'm stressed out I tend to take it out on my kids.  The poor kids probably think I'm some kind of monster right now.

I'm sure it will all work out fine.  I'm trying to take a deep breath and just realize that I just have to have faith that it will all work out. 

Blessings

It's amazing when you look back over your life to see the blessings you've been given.  This week I've been contemplating the financial blessings that Clayton and I have had in our life together.  When we first met and started dating, I was working full-time and had finished my Masters degree just a few months prior.  Clayton was in his last semester at ASU.  We were still dating when he graduated.  He had a hard time finding a full-time job, but was blessed to find a temporary job that wasn't too horrible.  He had already decided that he wanted to ask me to marry him, but kept putting it off because he had been raised that the man is to financially provide for the family and he couldn't do that on his temp pay.  After a couple of months, he finally took the leap of faith and asked me anyway.  About the same time, he received an email from a career advisor at ASU about a job at Intel for recent graduates - the last email sent from the advisor as he was quitting to take a new positon elsewhere.  Clayton sent in his resume and didn't hear anything.  A month later, he was called for an interview.  We were both shocked to hear from Intel as it had been so long.  He had a phone interview and then an in-person interview.  Then we didn't hear anything for a while again.  We were out to dinner with his grandpa and siblings when he got a call offering him the job.  At first we were hesitant about him taking the job as it was an unconventional work schedule and would make our time together very limited.  But when we heard what the salary was, we couldn't turn it down.  It was far more than we both expected him to be able to make in his first "real" job after graduation.

He started at Intel the day we returned from our honeymoon.  I was still working, but things at my job had deteriorated.  I had a boss who was threatened by me, I guess, and started to pull responsibilities from me.  We decided I would quit, take a month or so to put our married life in order, and then I would look for a new job.  A week after I quit, I found out I was pregnant with Andrew.  We decided I would just stay home since I would quit when the baby was born anyway.  With the exception of a month, we have lived on one income our entire married life.

Clayton is smart and hard working and did well at his job.  A year ago he received a new position that was a pay grade higher than his current pay grade.  It put him in a great position for this year to receive a pay grade promotion, but we didn't count on getting it after what we had heard some areas were getting for pay increases.  He met with his manager this week and was given his promotion.  She's super impressed with how quickly he picks things up (I think she used the word sponge) and how he's willing to share what he learns with the rest of his group in order to better the group as a whole.  So we knew the promotion usually comes with a relatively sizable pay increase, but once again we kept our expectations low if he did get promoted.  Let's just say we were both pleasantly SHOCKED!  He got a very sizable pay increase.  What a blessing with another mouth to feed coming shortly.  We are also trying to pay off dept and increase our savings for the future.

Clayton and I have always paid tithing.  It's never been a question.  We just paid it, no questions asked.  We have always been able to pay our bills and put food on the table.  And we are continuting to see the blessings of making this a priority.  We realize that it may not always be this way, but we know that paying tithing leads to blessings.

Breaking the chains!

When Clayton and I got married, we both had student loans we were paying on.  We both had to put ourselves through college.  I also had a car payment.  Neither one of us really had any debts that were outside of what the Church has said go be "good" debt - school, a home, a car.  We've never really had any credit card debt to speak of.  We use them to buy things that we pay off right away just to keep our credit good.

We decided right from the get go, we wanted to get everything paid off as quickly as possible.  I've seen what debt can do to a person's life and I wanted nothing to do with it.  I hate having it hanging over my head.  It stresses me out.  It took us a while to develop a plan of action, but after getting a copy of "One for the Money" put out by the Church, we decided that was the program we were going to follow.  For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's very, very similar to the plan out there used by Dave Ramsey.

The premise of the program is to pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first.  Then you take the money that you were paying on that one and roll it to the next highest interest rate, etc., etc. until you have paid everything off.  You are already used to that money going to something else so you don't miss it.  It also suggests using a budget.  I had already been using one before we got married, so we just adjusted it for our current situation and we still use it to this day.

I used my mad Excel skills and made up a debt repayment calendar as suggested in the program so we could see just how long it would take for us to pay everything off.  We paid off my car loan, two student loans.  We are extraordinarily close to seeing the fruits of our labors.  We have one more payment on our final student loan.  It means we will have paid off Clayton's loans more than 4 years early.  We had a bit of a hiccup in our plan.  That payment was supposed to leave us without any debt other than our mortgage.  However, life decided to throw us a bit of a curveball with the car situation.  We weren't planning on having a car payment again for a couple of years, but couldn't find a car that met our needs in our cash budget.  So we decided to get something a little more expensive that will last us for several years and we have a car payment again.  It's nothing too huge.  We've formulated a plan that will allow us to pay it off in September.  And it will allow us to start putting some of out debt reduction money into savings also.  We could pay it off sooner if we didn't put the money in savings, but with the economy the way it is, we decided it would be smart to start using some of that to build our emergency funds up a little more.

One thing that I know has helped us out in our pursuit is that we are neither one of us BIG spenders.  We'll buy nice things every once in a while, but we don't have to have the biggest and best the second it comes out.  We often wait until something dies before replacing it.  I'm not as faithful as I could be, but I discovered the fun and savings of using coupons.  Even Clayton gets excited when we are able to save a ton of money on groceries.  After this pregnancy is over and I'm back on me feet, my plan is to go full on into it.  We have a pretty decent supply of food, etc. but we aren't where we want to be with our year's supply.  We are working on it.  A lot of our problem is due to lack of storage space in our house.  We need to do some rearranging and decluttering to make more room for our long term storage needs and reorganize the shorter term food.  I've been working on that the past couple of weeks as well as putting together a supply list of what we need to get to where we want to be.

Over the years, we have seen significant blessings because of our willingness to follow the teachings of the prophets and get out of debt.  It has also helped that we always pay our tithing.  We still have our burdens, like a house that is so far underwater that I don't know that we'll ever get out from under it, but even through these difficult economic times, we've never had to worry about where our next meal will come from.

I can't wait to enter into the light at the end of the tunnel...the one that will mean we are out of debt other than our mortgage.  The one that means more money for savings and retirement.  The one that means we will be able to help others more who are in need.  The one that means we can finally be free from the chains.