A Day in the Life -- Heidi

Well, the ultrasound was good news! The baby is the right size, and we got a strong, healthy heartbeat so I am feeling much more relaxed about the pregnancy. In its own way it has made the nausea easier to bear because I don't have this horrible fear that all this feeling sick is for nothing. Hooray for that! Anything that makes this queasiness easier to deal with is welcome. I'm sorry that I didn't post sooner-- I've been feeling rotten for days now and it's much harder to sit and write when I feel like that. (Well, I've had my good moments, but I've been so busy trying to catch up during the good moments that blogging was the last thing on my mind.)

Remember back in January when I talked about giving a rundown on a random day for each member of my family? Well, April 8th was my day so join me for a journey back to last Friday for a peek at what my day was like.

My day began at about 5:30am. It's funny because this used to be sleeping in for me, back in the days when I could still exercise. But 5:30 feels way too early now so I hit the snooze button a couple of times. By the time I finally dragged myself out of bed, I didn't really have much time to read my scriptures, which was the whole point of getting up before the kids. After some toast and hot ginger water I felt well enough to tackle the morning getting the kids ready for school stuff, but it didn't go so well. They didn't want to get up either, and in the end I ended up yelling at them and chasing them out the front door for their ride to school when they were only half ready. (M was still trying to put her shoes on.) We didn't even manage to have family prayers, which we're pretty good at in the morning. I felt awful about how things went and in my supercharged emotional state was drowning in guilt before too long. ("I'm such a bad mom" and on and on and on.) Eventually I decided that the nausea was getting unbearable again, and that a little food and some time with my scriptures might help me get my day back on track.

I munched some taquitos and cheese soup and saltines (that's what sounded good at the moment) while I read my scriptures, and then spent a good hour or so doing some arbitration for Familysearch Indexing. Afterwards I felt much better, enough so that I decided to tackle the grocery shopping. Terence had court to attend that morning, so I loaded up B and K and tackled Walmart.

It was just awful. Grocery shopping always is when I feel like this. There were too many smells that made me gag, and it was way too long of a process without any food to settle my tummy. The only thing in my favor was that K and B were on their best behavior. Perhaps they could sense that mommy just couldn't handle anything more than trying to keep down the contents of her stomach.

By the time I got home, I wanted to crawl into bed. That's all I felt up to handling, but of course, the groceries had to be unloaded and put away. B helped me get all the bags out of the van, I put the perishables in the fridge, and then crashed (after telling B and K to eat as many Doritos and strawberries as they wanted, as long as they left me alone for a little while). M and J showed up not too long after that, and fortunately, B unlocked the front door and let them in.

Lunch pretty much consisted of Doritos and strawberries for everyone that day. Oh well. (I think some of the kids might have eaten yogurt too. I'm not sure. I pretty much left them to their own devices for awhile.)

Eventually I pulled myself together enough to read a book on the couch while the kids played. I managed to get two loads of laundry done (but not folded) so that felt like a serious accomplishment. By early evening I had recovered enough to tackle the main event of the day-- the kids' Spring Spectacular at school. It's basically their spring carnival, and we had plans to meet my sister and her kids there. My kids had been anxiously awaiting this for a long time-- there are bouncy houses galore and lots of games to play. It sounded a little overwhelming to me, but I figured I'd make the effort this year just for the kids. After all, they love it so much.

Well, the only problem was that I didn't count on it feeling like it was 20 below outside. I forgot to bring jackets for the kids or myself. Camie got stuck in a traffic jam that made her 45 minutes late, and poor K was shivering and his teeth were chattering the whole time. He was so cold that he didn't want to play at all-- he only wanted to be held. Plus, dinner at the shindig was hot dogs, chips, and soda, and this was not exactly settle my tummy food, so after about an hour I was starting to feel horribly sick.

(Doesn't this sound like so much fun????)

Eventually I managed to track down all my kids at the same time and tell them it was time to go. Fortunately they had spent all their tickets and they were starting to freeze themselves, so they didn't give me too much grief. We made the trek back to the van and got everybody loaded and the heater on. Brrrr! Something is just not right when you need to run your heater in Phoenix in April. Especially since we hit 100 degrees just a week and a half ago!

The drive home was a battle of wills between my mind and my stomach. At home I had to run to the bathroom-- fortunately, M took over herding everyone out of the car. After that, I was completely, one hundred percent spent. I bribed the kids to get ready for bed with watching a movie, and then afterwards we all curled together on the couch and watched Shrek: Forever After. Somehow after that I put K down and the other kids put themselves to bed-- I think. (At least Terence didn't say they were still up when he got home.)

My day ended at last with me crawling into bed and desperately hoping I would feel better in the morning. Just a normal day in a pregnant mommy's life!