Down for the count, but at least we have a gigantic Christmas tree

Poor Sacha has been struck down again by those things for which Prepara.tion H was invented, and yet is not nearly enough to help in this case. This happened to her when she was pregnant with Natalia and we were really hoping she'd avoid it this time, but things have gone south again, with no pun intended!

The poor thing - she's in a ton of pain and there isn't much to be done except lie down and wait for things to calm down. She saw a surgeon today to see about getting the problem removed, after spending 4 hours last night in urgent care only to have them decide the situation was too complicated to handle there, and he decided that going in and removing the intruder would cause more harm than good. He was incredibly nice, though, especially for what you hear about surgeons, and gave her his personal number to call and check in on Monday.

He said something to the effect of "I've only seen a few cases this bad in my whole career," which was actually comforting to Sacha in a way, because she was worried that she was making it sound worse than it was. Anyway, so she is on a strict regimen of sitz baths and medicines and bedrest. As in, no standing, as little sitting as possible, and lying down all the time for the next week or so. Luckily, this coincides with winter break, so she only had to use two sick days and then she'll have two weeks off.

We're all hoping that this will clear up sooner rather than later, because she is miserable. Drugged, but miserable. I find it so strange that no one will let her take anti-inflammatory drugs, which are a big no-no while pregnant, but they are happy to prescribe narcotics instead. Not only is this making Sacha extremely sleepy, but I'm sure Drizzle is feeling extremely relaxed as well.

This is what she's been up to all day...

...except without the kids, for the most part. They really want to be with her, but they just can't help themselves from crawling all over her, which just makes her hurt more. Both of them are vacillating between a delightful phase of playing together and having adorable little conversations and a tremendously frustrating phase of melodrama, in which every little thing provokes whining, crying, tussling, complaining, feet-dragging, or just outright defiance. It's amazing how they can be so adorable and yet so infuriating at the same time, as well as the other way around!

Sacha's mom is coming down tomorrow to offer comfort and help. I think having her mom here will do Sacha a lot of good, and we'll all be glad to see her! The kids and I have a pretty full day tomorrow and we have some weekend plans, so hopefully I'll be able to keep the kids busy and Sacha's mom can do her mom thing with her own daughter.

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Anyway, we were planning to get our Christmas tree this weekend, but since Sacha wasn't going to be able to go in any case, the kids and I decided to go today. It was a good thing we went, because the place was closing for the season after Saturday! I know everyone is getting their trees earlier and earlier, but seriously? Closing on the 18th? Criminal, I tell you.

Regardless, the kids mostly channeled their better angels and, despite my worries that I was a bit loco to be taking two small children out by myself to cut down a tree, drag it back to the car, and get it home, it actually went just fine. In fact, it went great! They're way too young to get into the fighting over which tree is the perfect one (which I remember so well from my own childhood, and I'm sure Auntie E and Uncle G do, too), so we wandered for about a minute and then found our perfect tree.

And, even better, for the first time in my life, I got to get a big tree! When we were little, our ceilings weren't high enough, and as an adult, Sacha has always preferred smaller trees....but she wasn't there to talk me out of it, so we ended up with an 8-footer. It is awesome. I am in love with it. I cut it down halfway with Natalia on my back in the Ergo, leaning way over in the mud because she refused to get down. I finally got her to stand on her own two feet and cut it the rest of the way, and then Mateo actually helped with guiding it back to be shaken and baled and, for a great tip, put on our car by the guy at the cash register. It's drinking up lots of water from a bucket right now and we're planning to decorate it tomorrow and/or the next day.

Here are some photos of our adventure. I was SO proud of the kids. They were troopers and Mateo especially was quite the little helper. It was a big change in him from last year!

The tree farm, which also has u-pick fruit and such in the summer (not among the xmas trees, of course!)

Kids getting ready for action!

Our intrepid tree-hunter

Seriously, how could we not photograph this piece of heavy machinery?

Our tree! Check out how nice and TALL it is. Perfect for our 10-foot ceilings.

Not only is the tree down, but neither kid is attached to me! Double bonus.

And that, my friends, is the way it is tonight.

Elders

Our kids take a weekly music class for most of the year and have since Mateo was about 10 months old.  Just about every Portland family we know has tried it at some point and the majority of them are still taking classes.  It's not very complicated - just lots of singing and dancing and having fun with your kid.  Or kids.  Due to the expense, there are vastly more parents with one kid at the classes than with two kids.  However, both of ours love it so much that we just keep signing up. 

Well, at least Mateo loves it.  Natalia loves it after the fact, or possibly she just loves to listen to the cd we get every semester.  During the class itself, she clings to me like a little koala bear and refuses to get down.  I was getting frustrated with this recently and then I realized that I hadn't given her any credit for the baby steps she is making.  She now wants to walk to get her own instrument during the play-along time, albeit holding my hand, and she also helps put things away now, still holding my hand.  So, I guess we're making progress.

I digress.  The music program is starting an intergenerational pilot project.  It's going to be a class held at a local low-income senior living facility that just happens to be within walking distance of our house.  They offered current students the chance to try out a demonstration class, so I took Talia to one today while Te Te was at preschool.  It was awesome.  The room was filled with elders, moms and dads, and babies and toddlers.  The older people sat in a big circle in chairs or wheelchairs and the parents and kids sat on the floor in a circle like usual. 

The class was mostly the same as normal, but everyone was encouraged to interact, and the joy on the faces of the seniors was just about enough to make me burst into tears.  They were SO happy to see all these babies, and the babies were generally thrilled to see them!  Talia did her part to encourage intergenerational communication, helping bring instruments to the seniors and waving to them and smiling and such (while being carried by me or holding my hand, of course).   There was so much joy there that it was contagious. 

I wish we could take the actual class when it starts, but we normally have stuff going on on Tuesday mornings and plus, the kids are really happy in their Monday morning class that they take together.  It might be something to consider for the future, though.  The oldest person there was nearly 105 and she was grinning and participating with all her might.  She and Talia had a couple of really sweet interactions. 

It really made me think about how fast everything goes - how the seniors there had once been babies and then young adults and then new parents themselves, and then had eventually ended up needing care toward the end of their lives.  People aren't kidding when they say to "enjoy this time," as cliched as it may sound.  I'm sure it will go by in the blink of an eye.  In any case, I felt honored to participate in the class today and I think everyone there felt the same.  It was awesome. 

24 weeks

Here's my lovely wife at just over 24 weeks.  I think she wins the hottest pregnant woman of the year competition hands down.

Fabulous

We're back and we had a fabulous time at the beach.  It was pretty awesome to have two days just to ourselves and get to do whatever we wanted!   It was a little bit surreal just how much it was like our pre-kid days, and I think it might have been like that for Apa, too, except the other way around.  We'd like to send out a HUGE thank you to Apa for making this happen!

We stayed at a cushy resort on the coast and we had a fireplace in our room.  It rained torrentially for most of the time we were there, but that was okay.  Sacha had a massage at the spa, I tried out their fitness center, we saw the Harry Potter movie, we went swimming, ate some good food, and just generally really enjoyed being together.  It's amazing how fast the last 10 years have flashed by!  We talked some about what we hope the next decade will bring, but mostly we just celebrated the decade that we've spent together.  It's been amazing and we both feel incredibly lucky.

Now we're back home and right back into normal life, but here are some photos to remember the weekend by...

Happy to be on our own for two whole days!

The view from our room...

The fireplace - ahhhhh.....

Happy even in the rain

The sea was crazy with lots of crashing waves

We wrote and photographed her real name, too, but that will have to wait until the spring :)  It was, by the way, drizzling as we wrote this, and soon turned to a full downpour.  We were glad we got to the beach and then left when we did!

Getaway!

Sacha and I are heading to the coast tonight to celebrate ten years of being together!  Our real first-meeting anniversary is December 28th, but we feel confident in celebrating a bit early :)  Apa is babysitting for us for two nights and gets the biggest gold star in the world for taking on the kids for that long.

We're sooooo excited about our mini-vacation and plan to do a lot of relaxing and not much else.  (Well, we will write the name of our unborn daughter in the sand, for tradition's sake, but no one else will get to see it for a few more months!)  Sacha has no idea where we're going, so hopefully she won't see this before we leave!

Regular blogging will resume after we get back.   And, a proper anniversary post will be forthcoming on the actual day.  Have a great weekend!   

Facebook

Below are all my facebook status updates for 2010.  Since this was my year of facebook obsession, I think it's only fitting to put this up.  I didn't post too many statuses, but I sure was on facebook a lot.  I feel like I know half the things I know about friends via that site.  Crazy.  Anyway, here it is.  I wonder what next year will bring!

Hello, reality

Last night, I woke up to find Sacha squirming behind me.   I blearily asked what was wrong and she said her back was hurting and had been periodically for the last hour.  In my mind, I saw the pre-term labor posters at Kaiser and periodic back pain is one of the items on the checklist.  Kaiser is on this campaign to prevent preterm labor, so they have information about it everywhere in the OB offices.  Was she having contractions?  Was her back just hurting at regular intervals?  We decided to have her drink a lot of water and see what happened.

After a little while, things settled down and we both fell back asleep, although there was a lot of nervous tossing and turning going on.  It never even occurred to us to call the doctor or labor and delivery in the middle of the night, but it turns out that that's what we should have done.  Sacha called this morning and they were like, if this ever happens again, you call the hospital right away.

Luckily for everyone, they checked her out this morning and pronounced everything, inside and out, perfectly normal.  Happy baby inside a nice happy and closed uterus.  What a relief!  It did give us some pause though, and not just at the idea of preterm labor on the verrrrry cusp of viability and the question of what we would do (which is a huge question and we have no idea what we would decide), but at the thought of having to rush off to the hospital at 2 am with two small kids sleeping in our house.

We probably would have called Apa, who assured us tonight that we could always do that if necessary, or started calling relatives and friends, but wow, it wasn't anything I had even thought to consider yet.  I figured we'd figure out some kind of phone tree sometime close to the due date, but not now!

Anyway, we think Sacha just overdid it yesterday and for some reason her uterus got irritated.  She took the day off of work today and slept almost all day, and we'll go back to making it a priority for her to rest when she gets home from work.  And, we'll be extremely, exceedingly grateful that last night was just a false alarm and that our Drizzle is still exactly where she should be.