When the kids are in bed, you eat chocolate pudding and write a blog post.

With the arrival of baby #3 getting closer, I haven't felt like doing much of anything. If you actually look forward to reading either of my blogs, I apologize that they will be few and far between for the next while. If you hate my writing, then you probably aren't reading this anyway.
    My due date is exactly 4 weeks from today- Feb 21. I'm feeling relatively good, considering that I'm over 8 months pregnant. Eating pretty much whatever I feel like, mostly because I have horrendous acid reflux that is ever present and constant no matter what I do or eat. Pepcid no longer works and sometimes makes it work. Tums have surprisingly been more effective. I really do not like being pregnant, and have been pleased to see articles popping up around the place written by other women who also hate being pregnant. I love the results, which is why I'm doing this for the third time, but the idea of doing this after this little guy makes his appearance sounds horrendous. The putting on weight and getting a huge belly doesn't really bother me so much; it's everything that goes along with it that I don't like. I decided to make my own list of what I hate about being pregnant:
-the pelvic pain: not everyone experiences this, but for me, it's pretty much like someone is taking a jackhammer to my pelvis constantly. It got nearly unbearable a few weeks ago, and I could hardly walk for a few days. I almost though I was going into labor early with as bad as it hurt, but fortunately it improved slightly after a few days. It's worse at night- getting out of bed to pee every 2 hours (or less) is quite the painful ordeal.
-having to pee CONSTANTLY- ever before you get very big, you have to pee a ton more, but when I get toward the last couple months, I have to pee sometimes every 30 minutes. I can usually hold off longer at night, provided that I can get to sleep before the urge hits, but then it's a contest to see if I can make it to the bathroom before I lose bladder control. So far I have always won..... except for one morning when I was sick and coughing really hard...... fortunately I hadn't showered yet.
-acid reflux: I've tried being careful about what I eat before I go to bed, not eating before going to bed, avoiding certain foods, and it doesn't matter. I basically am constantly walking around (or lying down) with the feeling of a pool of vomit sitting in the back of my throat, which makes for an unpleasant sore throat in the morning. So, bring on the Sriracha, it doesn't make a difference! Fortunately, it immediately goes way once baby comes out and my stomach moves from the back of my throat to where it belong. But going 3/4 of a year with constant heartburn really blows.
-belly is in the way of everything: I accidentally ram my kids with it all the time. I try to help Madelynn with her hair- BAM! oops, sorry I knocked you off the stool or caused you to run into the wall. Gotta be careful when cooking over the stove- don't want to light myself on fire. I knock things over all the time, run into walls and doors.
-immune system surpressed, but you can't take anything! This is the one irony that drives me crazy- being sick when pregnant is significantly more unpleasant than when not being pregnant, and my immune system is already suppressed, so I catch something every 2-3 weeks. And there are so many things I can't take! Oh, if I could just take ibuprofen for some of the pain, it would be heavenly! Even alternative remedies you have to be careful with- there are essential oils and other natural remedies that you have to avoid as well, so it can be difficult to find alternatives to the more traditional go-to remedies. Like Kava- oh, if I could take kava, sleeping would be so much easier. It just seems cruel that you feel exponentially crappier, and have less options for dealing with it.

    There's more than that, but I want to write about dancing now. Madelynn had  her winter dance review at Kearns High today. Considering their reputation for being an uber ghetto school, they had a pretty amazing auditorium, and actual dance studios in the school. I would have loved to be able to take dance classes as part of my schedule during high school! I felt like I had taken Madelynn to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant times a thousand walking around, and there were some pretty obnoxious dance moms there. Like the one a few rows ahead of us that screamed "GO MACY!" throughout the ENTIRE performance of her daughter's dance. I'm glad that Madelynn wasn't in the class, and feel bad that all the parents who attempted to record that dance have to hear a crazy woman screaming constantly and not the music. Most parents chose to get their screaming out as the dancers were taking the stage and shut their mouths as soon as the music started. Except for the occasional random scream. The exception was the 6-7 year old breakdance class- I have no idea what music was actually playing because it was constant screaming and whistling. It was so bad I had to cover Ian's ears so he wouldn't freak out, and I think I may have some noise induced hearing loss from the shrill whistling from the people behind me. Yeah, real classy, guys. Madelynn's class was great, and I was able to record the entire dance with no random interruptions of screaming throughout the dance so I could send it to Nate and my mom and others who were unable to attend. A dad sitting in the row in front of us even made his daughter scrunch down in her seat while I was filming it so that she wouldn't get in the way of the video (she was really squirmy and standing up a lot, sitting on top of the flipped up seat, but her awesome dad made her cut it out just so I could get a good shot, which was awesome. The rest of the time I didn't care, because I could see fine over her.) Madelynn was the best dancer in her class- honestly. I can say that, because none of the other parents of the kids in her class read this blog or even know my name. She was perfectly on rhythm and remembered all the moves. I definitely want to keep her going in dance, but maybe at a less sparkly foofy insane costume weird dance moms studio, if that's even possible to avoid in Utah. Plus, the cost of the costumes are insane, and what the crap am I supposed to do with a bunch of sequined leotards and feathered boa skirts (to make it's appearance at the spring review, at least the feathers that don't end up all over the carpet).

     Ian was very excited to see his big sister dance, and was a delightful audience member. I am apparently a horrible mother, though, because I didn't get her a giant bouquet of flowers to present her with at the end of the performance like all the other girls got, so she pouted for about an hour afterwards. Apparently taking her to get donuts and cinnamon rolls afterwards isn't good enough. It brought me back to Valentines when I lived in Utah when I was younger and girls in THIRD GRADE were getting boxes of chocolates from boys. Multiple boxes. And by middle school, it was bouquets of flowers, balloons, and teddy bears delivered to you in the middle of class by the boy you were "going out with" and then you carried it around the rest of the day so the rest of us would feel like crap and go home and cry because we were losers for not having boyfriends at the age of 11. I would hope that's been reigned in by now- it was getting so bad that parents were having flowers and chocolates delivered to their daughters so they wouldn't feel like crap on Valentines Day. And if the boys in Madelynn's kindergarten class bring her boxes of chocolates and flowers on Valentine's Day, I will hunt them down! Well, more like their parents, because Madelynn is SIX. And the boys already are smitten with her- I watch them when I take her to school. She is everything I wasn't socially at that age- friendly, outgoing, and socially competent. And blonde. Fortunately extremely nice as well, but I still have that fear in the back of my mind that she will grow up to be a "mean girl." She's pretty sensitive to when others are mean, though, and it really bothers her, so at least for now we're good.
    Nate unfortunately had to miss her dance recital because he was in Oregon at his Grandma's funeral, which was actually happening at the exact same time Madelynn was dancing on stage. His Grandma passed away on Monday of complications from pneumonia (went into septic shock and caused kidney failure). It wasn't exactly expected, but not unexpected, either. She did live to the ripe old age of 92 and has been looking forward to being reunited with Nate's grandpa for a long time, and also Nate's mom since she passed away 18 months ago. He drove to Medford with his cousin on Thursday after work, and will be home tomorrow evening. I'm making a high-end dinner of hot dogs when he gets home. (Well, I did get good stuff- brats and kielbasa). I was really nervous about him leaving when I'm this far along in the pregnancy because I wasn't sure how I would be able to handle everything on my own, and also a teensy worried that my body would decide to go into labor while he was gone, but the kids have been mostly great, with only a few meltdowns (mostly from Ian- I swear 3 is a much harder age than 2. My kids are easy when they're 2- it's when they turn 3 that they get difficult.) And so far, no indications that baby is going to make a slightly early appearance, so I think we're good. (knock on wood that my water doesn't break tonight). I've even been able to sneak naps in, which I basically can't survive without at this point- turn on the movie "Hairspray" and my kids are hypnotized for a good chunk of time and Mommy can pass out on the recliner just a few feet away. This is probably the only time I've been anxiously looking forward to the weekend being over.
Oh whoops, my water just broke. Off to the hospital! Okay, not really. I probably won't be posting anything on here until I've got a new baby in my arms, because I don't know how much longer I will be able to write a coherent sentence between now and then, and also because I pretty much want to nap all the time and eat oranges.