A Missed Opportunity to Knock on Wood. And a Snowy Bear Lake Weekend.

There’s that old phrase about knocking on wood. And I should have. I should have knocked on wood. Because when my OB asked how I was feeling just a few short weeks ago, I cheerily (and prematurely) replied something along the lines of, “So great! Not any back pain or anything! Just feeling super great!”

Ha! “Fool of a Took!” 

That very night my back went to pot. Too much baby up front it seems. And then so much dizziness set in (with an accompanying feeling of overall not right. . .ness). Shortly thereafter my doctor called to tell me that, while my gestational diabetes test came back showing no signs of diabetes (hurrah), I had managed to become anemic (ah-hah!). And off I was sent to fetch iron pills. And now? Several hours of nausea and stomach cramping accost me most days. I assumed it was some type of unlucky third trimester morning sickness (trying to teach me a lesson for being so la-dee-da about first trimester nausea). And perhaps it is. But also perhaps, in a sorrowful case of the cure being worse than the disease, it is the iron pills! Also every time I roll over in bed, I wake fully — as it seems to require a massive exertion to heave my belly from one side to the other (and in doing so, I regularly get some Charlie-horse/round ligament spasm that freezes me, mid roll, in pain for a solid ten minutes). 

Anyway, there. I’ve done it. 1000 billion words of sheer whiney complaining. Where is the dignity and grace in all of that I wonder? Nowhere, that’s where. But, what can I say? (Well, besides all that I just said.) This being an old woman and seven months pregnant with a tenth baby is not, it turns out, for the faint of heart. And also, perhaps, some part of me felt eager to earn my pregnancy stripes. After all, my pregnancies have been primarily easy — and all around me, friends and family have suffered in unthinkable misery to get their babies here. I suppose I just wanted to finally give a weak little, “I hear ya’, sisters. I’m with you. Pregnancy is rough. Amen.”

But mostly I’m actually fine. As in most hours of most days. (It felt dearly comical when I showed up to help clean our church building on Saturday and the brother in charge felt so clearly appalled to suggest I exert myself in doing anything so rigorous as empty a garbage can or mop a bathroom floor with a light weight mop.) So. Keep your sympathies. Or empathies. Or whatever they might be. I see now how exaggeratedly I was trying to claim them! A few short weeks out of however many hundreds of weeks (egads!) I’ve spent pregnant in my life and suddenly I think everyone should be patting me on the back, exclaiming “poor dear”, and feeding me bon-bons. Nonsense. (Except for maybe the bon-bons part. I’ve never had those. They might be nice.)

Anyway, who cares about backaches and stomach pain when there is this:

And this!

And Goldie cheering Mette by telling “snecrets” during a weekend getaway to the cabin:

And this funny moment:

(Mike asked the boys if they wanted him to read to them. They said they did. So Mike began reading. After awhile he began making up words. No one noticed. Then he set the book down altogether and joined me in the kitchen. Again, no notice by the boys. “I had no receiver,” he told me. And I hugged him and we laughed.)

And a just-waking Daisy (with her hair somehow gorgeous even in a slept-on half-braid) entertaining Hans.

And Jesse going skiing with the older kids for the first time:

(We can’t park at our cabin in the winter as the snow is one million feet deep, so we have to load and unload our things and each other, tramp a trail across that million-foot-deep snow, and park our vehicles in a snow-plowed parking lot down below us. When I followed the skiers out to take a picture of all my little skiing folks before their departure, they were aghast that I would take a shot without Abe, but I could see what they couldn’t: Abe in the background arriving with the truck that Mike had sent him to retrieve.)

And a Sunday walk (when everyone seemed to be feeling a little cabin-fevery – despite our earlier excursion to the Garden City ward for church -- and we determined they needed to get out again) that included sledding every time the snowy roads turned steep (and a lot of work for Abe who was often left to pull the big, black sled . . . and whatever children decided to pile in it):

Blessedly I am not pictured in any of these photos. I was still wearing a mid-calf length maternity church dress, but had added large boots and some ill-fitting snow pants to my ensemble – along with a puffy, brown coat (zipped up tight and riding about half way up my pregnant belly), a big beanie I had borrowed from Mike, and some large black gloves. Mike may have said something about my looking like a bag lady, but he leaned in to kiss me as he did so, and . . . perhaps that's true love. Or possibly pity. I accepted it all the same. 

Speaking of Mike, there was this. I wanted the moment stuck fast in my mind forever:

When the wind had made Hansie’s cheeks twice as red as they were here, and he’d thrown his gloves off of his freezing and chapped little hands for the tenth time, and was sobbing wildly because we still had a long way to walk, and he was cold (and didn’t understand how gloves helped anything), and too little to pull a sled by himself, and disillusioned by the whole snowy business, Mike held him snug in his left arm, cupped Hans’s tiny hands securely and completely in his big right fist, and puffed warm air on them ‘til we got back to our cabin. It soothed and fascinated Hans completely. And I wish he’d forever have that memory of little, cold him and his rugged, strapping dad warming his hands while trudging tirelessly through the snow.

And that is all for now.