Family Time

Even now three weeks out from delivery, everything seems quiet. I don't do much of anything because of pain and so this inability is the conductor of my day.

The girls delight my days and nights by what they are doing. Grace lost her first front top tooth and now when she talks I don't even recognize her with the "th" where her "s" sounds should be. Her grin is so wonderful, I love to find a reason to make her smile. She loves to lose control and scream at the top of her pitch-potential, just like... a little girl. She learned in a couple hours flat how to tie her shoes, and loves to practice all day long.

Lizzy has finally graduated from her "repeat-after-me" prayers at bedtime, to now praying all by herself. Each night she prays a prayer that goes something like this, in her sweet high-pitched baby but booger-congested voice:

"Dear Heavenly Father, thank-you for today, thank-you for helping me go on the toilet, and I call mommy and I say, "Mommy, I have to go poo-poo!" and I get spankings, and when I go pee pee I get my chocolate candies back and my dress back and my clip-clops back. Thank-you for Jesus for dying on the cross, thank-you for mommy, thank-you for daddy, thank-you for sister, thank-you for baby brother, help Grammy to feel better, in Jesus name I pray, aaaamen."

Elijah loves to move when he eats, which always is five minutes after I do. He is a peaceful little one. He loves to sleep-in more than when he was younger. It used to be that when I rolled from one side to the other he'd become awake, but now he's so used to our routein that he doesn't mind my readjustments. Occasionally, after the morning has come and I've been walking around for awhile without any of his movement, I sit down and try to wake him up. (Babies at this gestation need to be moving every day... every hour, and if they don't then you ought to rush to the hospital.) So I rub my hands over his little cage. And if that doesn't work, I find a corner of his body that is protruding out and give it love pats. Last resort: to shake the whole thing and start telling him it's time to wake up.

I'm feeling a little sorry that I don't do anything anymore. Something as little as giving the girls a bath is enough to guarantee that by nightfall, the pressure pushing outward from my pelvic cavity busts all my joints enough to make even standing, precarious. Thinking of grocery shopping, especially with the girls, intimidates me. Thank goodness I have a compassionate husband, who wants to do my normal things like these after a long day at work.