Friday, November 29, 2013

Choices

I'm sitting in bed listening to Christmas music while I eat homemade pumpkin bread (hand delivered by a grinning Littles--he also included half of a slightly mushed banana) and balancing a cup of coffee on my gigantic belly. I've been intending to come write for about a week now, but I will just be honest: I have been a whole gigantic mess of crabby lately.

I'm tired. I miss the Man this time of year. The aforementioned gigantic belly is extremely uncomfortable. I'm in those last lovely hormone fluctuations that make me so much fun to be around. And Tiny got bronchitis this week. All that to say that I'm spending all my strength these days trying and mostly failing to be nice to the wonderful family that's stuck in this house with me 24/7 (and then working up the energy to apologize), and there just hasn't been much left for superfluous things like answering the phone (sorry) or responding to non-husband sent emails (sorry) or blogging (probably no one needs an apology for this one although it's questionable whether anyone needed an apology for the other two).

The good news is that I have only about 3 more weeks to go before a scheduled c-section and then you won't be hearing from me because I'll be juggling twins--and not because bed rest sapped the survival skills out of me. The disappointing thing, for me at any rate, is that I spent most of Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, being Queen of the Grump. It's not that I don't have a lot to be thankful for. In fact, I can give you a whole list of wonderful things that I'm rejoicing in--and I am grateful these days that joy and gratitude are choices--it's just that twinancy is exhausting, guys. And I prefer not to expose others to the unfortunate effects of that unless absolutely necessary.

But anyway, since I haven't had to expend any energy this morning by getting out of bed, I thought I would share with you a few things that have been fun in the midst of the mess.

On Sunday, it snowed! I had additional appreciation for this since it meant that the Fairy God-Aunt couldn't fly home until Wednesday. I was not sufficiently apologetic about this either, but we had a lovely day eating cinnamon raisin biscuits and playing in the snow. Well, everyone else played in the snow. I stood at the window and took pictures.

Even the Trig-dog went out. His Thanksgiving bandana kept him really warm.
The boys used socks for gloves because somehow
all their mittens disappeared between last winter and this one.
This was my failed attempt to lure them over to the window for a cute picture
And this was before Tiny realized how cold he was,
freaked out,
and came back in for snuggles with the live heater that is my pregnant belly.
Snow garden!
An improvement on our normal flower-less bed.

Then Sunday night, I had two lovely teenage girls come by to supervise my sister with the Christmas decorations.  I diligently sat on the couch while they unpacked our scraggly Christmas tree and strung lights.


The Man is hoping these two girls will follow us throughout his career
and repeat the process every Christmas.
Trigs got into the Christmas spirit
with his penguin tea cozy hat.
The nutcracker got hungry.
And yes, this is what the entire house would've looked like
if I'd let Amanda decorate the whole house on her own.

At any rate, there have been other things to rejoice over this week: a crystal clear Skype video with the Man on Thanksgiving, the little men helping fold laundry, Tiny having bronchitis but not pneumonia, fun moments with Amanda and other friends who have bopped in and out of the house, every day the twins have stayed put. You get the picture.

We choose thanksgiving even on the hard days, and that's the victory--not having everything go our way. And no, not even "feeling" great about how everything is going. So yes, I'm crabby, but I'm still grateful. Happy Thanksgiving, a little late, everyone.

1 comment:

Rachel said...

Love seeing that you're hanging in there, Marian! Bed rest is so not easy (with one baby, much less two! You're amazing, woman!) Keep those family and friends around after the babies come, you're going to welcome the extra hands! Give yourself grace then too. It takes time to recover from being on bed rest, on top of the C-section. Thinking of you and praying for you!