No, no, no, no, no!

Over the past couple of weeks, I have thought about all sorts of things to write about, and for each, I would compose a brilliant postings in my head. (Since there is no proof that they weren't brilliant, I feel free to claim this! Not to mention, it's only 6:42 on a Sunday morning and I've been up with all the "children" for awhile, so perhaps my judgment is a little cloudy.) But back to the postings. They were great, but I never got around to writing them down. And now that I am making the time to write, they have all slipped my mind. When I think about the past couple of weeks, all I can remember is, "I was tired."

I have a girlfriend who is worried about me and thinks this pregnancy is really taking a toll on me. Without even thinking, which can be a challenge for me even when not pregnant, I told her that it wasn't the two kiddos that are still incubating that are wearing me out, it's the ones that are here.

R is being fantastic this morning. There is a futon in the computer room, and she is sitting on it reading Sesame Street books. Every now and then I hear the name of a character and "Oh no!" which is clearly her favorite phrase these days. She loves disasters, at least when they are someone else's disaster. Even more than she loves her favorite phrase, she loves her favorite word which is, "no," and she practices saying it quite frequently. In fact, she practices saying "no" so often, that this is probably the biggest reason for my exhaustion. She will not do anything unless it is her idea. Ya know how I've written on our nice little bedtime routine? It can now stretch for hours (no exaggeration) as she stalls every step of the way and we get her to pick up her toys and put her clothes in the hamper. Of course, then there are other nights in which we sail through it smoothly, and there is never any way to tell what kind of night we will have.

Meals are completely unpredictable as well. Although we always said our goal was to get as much good food into her while we could, we never actually thought she would stop eating healthy food. And she hasn't, really, we just never know what food she will want to eat. A favorite one day can be rejected the next. Wednesday night we had black beans and rice for dinner and she demanded more, more, more beans. (She also likes to pick out the sauteed onions. The girl is a sauteed onion freak. Sometimes.) On Friday night, we had baked beans for dinner. Normally she loves them because not only are they beans, they are coated with sugar. How great is that? But on Friday she refused to eat them and claimed she did not like beans. At all. Ever. As she repeated this, it was hard not to get a little Green Eggs and Ham chant going in my head, and that's probably what got me through the meal.

The other challenge in my life is also laying on the futon right now. Poor Max, one of our canine companions, has had a couple of rough weeks, and they are taking a toll on all of us. The current stress phase began on Wednesday night, a week ago. There was a crazy tropical (sub-tropical?) system that moved through the area, and we had strong sustained winds all night. We also had occassional stronger gusts around 45-50 mph that shook the house. He woke me up during the night out for an emergency trip out to relieve himself. (Feel free to insert standard joke about the storm scaring the crap out of him.) He was awake all night. On Thursday night we had torrential downpours all night, so he was awake all night again and had to traipse out to the bathroom again at 3:00 a.m. To deal with his stress, Max decided to eat the towels that we keep by the doors to wipe the dogs' paws. This set up a vicious cycle in which Max would not feel good because he ate a chunk of towel, so he would eat some more towel to deal with the pain. Needless to say, he has had a rough couple of weeks as he and the towels have battled.

But last night was a good night. Both of my "children" slept through the night, and I only had the two belly-dwellers to contend with. For the most part, the belly dwellers were good and Stinkpot even refrained from his crazy usual position shifting in the middle of the night. (If I didn't have ultrasounds as proof otherwise, I would swear this baby had 12 elbows and 16 knees.) So for now I will enjoy the calm. It is a lovely way to start the day.