mid-September

Well, hubby's been gone to Europe since last Tuesday, and won't be back until Wednesday night.  It's been 4.5 days so far, and long days for sure.  We've had so much going on, first fall swim meet on Friday, soccer practices, first soccer games on Saturday, violin concert on Saturday, and tons of housework cleaning, and real work that's falling behind.  Plus interviewing our final two choices for au pair.

To top it off, last weekend we discovered the kids and myself had lice.  LICE!!!!!  It's been rough.  We treated all of us, and I spent several days washing everything in the house I could think of that might need it.  The day hubby left, I started panicking, wondering how I would manage if we hadn't gotten them all (which we almost certainly hadn't, or at least not the eggs), so I found out about professional lice removal services.  I called someone and they came out that day and combed all of our heads with their own products.  It took hours, but they found several more live lice and lots of eggs.  I've been combing every day since, and still doing lots of laundry, and I'm crossing my fingers that we're lice-free.  At least, I really hope so.  I can't take too much more of this.

I'm 32 weeks 5 days pregnant with Gecko (otherwise known as Nameless Baby), and my ticker says I have only 51 days to go.  Sometimes it seems like it's still ages away.  Other times it seems like there's no time left and I REALLY need to get life under better control.  Luckily we should have our au pair here before the birth, but we still need coverage to make sure the au pair doesn't work more than 10 hours per day ... i.e. he or she can't stay with our kids for more than that amount of time while I'm in the hospital.  To that end, I'm really hoping for an easy VBAC and very short hospital stay.

I have another prenatal appointment this week, which will include a birthing center tour.  Next week, I have my VBAC consult.  I think at some point soon I'l have to find out if the baby is head down, so I know if a VBAC is even in the cards.  I hope that these next two visits will answer a lot of my questions about VBAC procedures at our birthing center.

I have almost everything we need for our new little bean.  The main things I'm missing at this point are swaddling blankets, formula (I plan to have some on hand just in case), and a pump, plus some prep work for the things we do have, like washing bottles and bedding, etc.  I don't have a ton of diapers either.  Actually, I need to call my friend to see if I can get my cloth diapers back, and I need to review how to wash them.  I don't actually know if I'll manage to pull that off this time around, and I do have some newborn diapers already, but only enough for a couple days.

As for Turtle and Tadpole, in addition to all the sports and extracurricular activities, they've started learning to read, and I'm really enjoying it.  It's so much fun reading with them!  I'm also volunteering in their class, and the disparity between kids is really shocking.  Some kids are almost 6 already (or just turned 6!) and are way ahead of the other kids.  Some kids clearly never went to preschool  Not to mention there are a lot of English language learners, who are even farther behind.  I feel grateful my kids learned a foreign language but know English like natives, and went to preschool, too.  And have pretty involved, encouraging parents.  I wish all kids could have that, and I feel so fortunate.

Last notes - I live in Northern California, and it is burning.  Things are looking really bad.  Today in my town it is really smoky from some huge fires, one of which has burned several towns and as of earlier today was 0% contained.  I'm sending out thoughts and prayers for the people who live in those areas, and the firefighters fighting the fires ... and I'm worried about the future if we don't get any rain again this winter.