33 weeks and Miscellaneous

1.  Me, at 33 weeks pregnant

And here's the little Strawberry Shortcake missus.

As of today I'm 34 weeks and 6 days pregnant.  I had my doctor's appointment yesterday where I found out that I failed my stinkin' glucose test (mutter mutter squint nastily at nasty cup of nasty glucose drink), and have to repeat it with the 3 hour test, which means you get to camp out at your local lab for 3 measly ratty hours.  Yaaaaawn of boredom.  This happened with one other pregnancy, and I passed the 3 hour, no prob, and I haven't had any other symptoms of gestational diabetes, so I'm not actually concerned or anything, but I can't TELL you how much I hate and despise forcing down this large cup of supersweet drink in 5 minutes.  It makes me feel trapped and then gross from all of that sugar coursing through my system and giving me a headache.  Blech.

In other news, I have gained 27 lbs, and in doing so have outgrown all my maternity shirts. Humph. I was measuring 2 weeks small, so she wants me to come in to get a fetal weight done not this week but the next.  She wasn't concerned about it, and thought it was probably just the baby's position.

2.  "prterokrsinthehanhastuwstnite" I was lounging all gestationally-lazy back on the bed yesterday when the boys wanted to know if they could watch the Party Rock Anthem video on You Tube.  "Sure," I said.  They couldn't figure out how to get to it, so I eventually trudged out to do necessary things and found this typed in.  It made me grin.

3.  Right now I just love how Layla refers to her brothers as "my boys", and individually as "my Gabe, my Israel, my Zion".  The other day she came out of her room in the morning and sleepily asked, "Where are all my fwiends?"  I think she uses the term "friend" so readily because I have called her "Friend" since she was born.  :)

She is so friendly and affectionate and cheerful.  Her brothers all just looooove her.  She happily dispenses hugs.  The other day she ran up to me while I was working in the kitchen and asked if she could give me a kiss.  :)  It was quite dear.

I still hold her to sleep at night.  It takes about 15 minutes for her to work herself to sleep.  She wiggles all over the chair.  Sometimes she falls asleep in the crook of my arm, but often it's stretched out over my lap.  The other night she fell asleep on her stomach with her legs on her bed, her butt up over the arm of the chair, and her head in my lap.

Layla gets into searching moods where she empties out her clothes armoire thingie in search of the perfect item.  Today I was in there picking up and sorting through and refolding her clothes, and I told her "Layla, Mommy is picking up your mess, and doesn't want you to make any more messes with your clothes."

Layla looked at me apologetically and exclaimed, "I'm sorry, Mom!!"  She held up her little paws and shrugged helplessly.  "My baby hands...," she trailed off.  "My baby hands, dey dust do it!!"  :)

She is such the politest, little apologetic thing and has been ever since she could talk about around 18 months.  She has said "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" and "I'm sorry!" from the beginning, without me even coaching her.  It is so interesting how immediately she internalized this when sometimes it seems like her brother's have little politeness-instruction-resistant raincoats on, where it takes lots and lots of instruction for only a little success to filter down on through. ;)  (The best way I've found to coach them in this is to immediately reward them with an M&M for an appropriate statement.)

She also is very apologetic if she thinks I'm upset about something, to the point where I am reassuring her that I'm not upset or that something wasn't her fault.  The other day I dropped a glass and shattered it in our bathroom, and was cleaning it up and Layla came back and saw what I was doing and began to exclaim "I'm sorry, Mom!!  I'm sorry!!"

"That's ok, Layla!" I told her, "it wasn't your fault!  Mommy did it!"

She looked at my face searchingly and repeated, "I'm sorry!! I dwopped de cup!"

"No, you didn't!" I laughed at her.  "Mommy dropped it!!"

It took a bit to reassure her.  So funny and perplexing to me.  Same thing happened again when I knocked a bowl of cereal and milk over in dining room and growled grouchily.  She immediately came over and began to say "I'm sorry!! I'm sorry, Mom!! I'm sorry!!"

I can't quite tell if she is sympathizing or assuming responsibility.

4.  How am I feeling about having a fifth baby?  Honestly...so, so, so grateful.  I was getting Layla to sleep last night, holding her in the chair, watching her wiggle and squirm and sing her way to sleep, feeling her cloud puff of hair, and thinking about what an amazing surprise it is that I get to bring another of those little bundles home from the hospital, Lord willing, and that we will have another little baby around by Christmastime.  The only part that I have really felt apprehensive about from the beginning are the evenings I do alone while Tim is at meetings...at this particular thought my eyes still widen and sort of glaze over...