jodified

So as if an earthquake isn’t exciting enough for an early Friday morning, contractions certainly are!

From about 7am-10am I had minor contractions about 3-5 minutes apart.  I knew it was false labor, or at least I hoped, but I’ve never had Braxton Hicks that were so regular.  So a call to my doctor and I was on my way to her office to be monitored.  By the time I got there they had slowed down considerably and then basically stopped.  Thank goodness b/c at 31 weeks it is way too early to welcome this little guy into our lives!  When she checked me I was not dilated, which is GOOD, but I am 60% effaced which just means things are starting down there already.  If I start having 4+ an hour again I have to go back in for them to do some tests to determine if I’m going into early labor.  There are medications that can help early labor and partial bed rest (my mother and husband’s nightmare!) which would possibly happen if I do end up in early labor.

Anyway, I’m sure I’m fine and everything will go back to normal.  So the official pregnancy update is…

31 weeks
9 pounds gained
measuring at 30 weeks
60% effaced

All good!

Prayers would be amazing and very welcome at this point!  Not only do I not want him early for his sake, we are also completely unprepared to have him come this early!  I have shoots scheduled and his room is a corner of a room right now and laundry is backed up and the bathroom needs cleaning and the list goes on!

So hang in there Grayson!

I can’t believe I forgot to write about the highlight of the week!

This morning the girls and I were playing doctor, which means I was sitting on the floor being poked and prodded by numerous "doctor" utensils.  Bailey had the stethescope and listened to my heart, then put it on my belly and listened to Grayson’s heart. 

"Mommy, what Gwayson doing?"

"I think he’s sleeping because he’s not moving around right now."

"Maybe Gwayson need batries."

"He needs batteries?"

"Then he move again."

"Good thinking Bails!"

"After wunch we go store and buy batries for Gwayson."

I seriously love that kid.

The smile she put on my face made the entire week better.

In a nutshell. My day.

8am I was on the phone with Adobe trying to get Illustrator fixed. By 1pm they said it must be my hard drive. 2pm on the phone with Apple. System failure. Hard drive crashed. Erase entire hard drive. Reinstall. Failure. Hard drive still crashing. 8pm at Apple store. New hard drive ordered. Pay for ProCare and faster repair time.

8:35pm in Apple store, checking email for the first time, blogging to let you know I won’t be blogging until my baby F@#&%*#*@# computer comes home.

This has been one of the longest days of my life.

I backed up some things, wondering what I missed. Did the 5700 photos get saved? Are all of my client photos saved? Design work? Videos? Lord, what did I miss?

I will be officially missing my deadlines this week but hopefully by tomorrow night I will have a new hard drive, a happy computer, and can begin work again.

Couldn’t be sadder right now as my computer is my life only way to work.

Guess I’ll get a lot of laundry done tomorrow.

Is it sad that I’m glad it’s Friday night b/c I know I can work late, work tomorrow while Chris helps with the girls, work Sunday and maybe start to catch up? 

Yes. It is sad.

The reason I popped on here, however, is b/c I just had to share some great photos!  There is a woman at my church, Peg Cooper, who has been the resident parish photographer since I was a baby and she’s amazing.  I asked her for some photos for the capital campaign print items I’m working on and tonight as I was editing them a little I found some really great shots!

Because there are Emmanuel parishioners that read this blog I thought they might like to see a few…

*photos taken by Peg Cooper, edited by me

Aren’t those beautiful?  I love playing with the color in photos without people!  You have so much more flexibility b/c you don’t have to worry about skin tones. 

The weather is supposed to be horrible this weekend but I would love to go walk around church and take some photographs of my own, it really is a beautiful church.

Ok, back to work! 

As I was emailing my blogger friend, Fern, this morning about her comment on yesterday’s post I came to a sort of realization.  So of course I felt the need to share.

Parker is hard to love.

I actually remember my mom saying that to me as a kid.  I would be acting like a brat or acting out or whatever and she would say, "you are making it hard to love you."  Of course I didn’t get it at the time and haven’t thought about it since, but as I was writing my thoughts it came to me.

Bailey was just born with a sweet heart.  She is kind and empathetic and just good 99% of the time.  And the times she is not so good it is easy to get her to stop what she’s doing or calm down.  She very rarely has breakdowns and never throws tantrums.  And even at a very early age she listened… at 1 she would hold your hand calmly while you waited in line at a store for example. 

So then Parker came along and has a spunkiness about her that Bailey doesn’t and definitely has more of an opinion about things.  She is quick tempered, hard to settle when she’s mad, energetic and unreasonable.  Of course there are also a million wonderful things I could list also, but most days those things are smothered by the not so great qualities.  And on a daily basis I have to remind myself of those good qualities just to not kill her by bedtime.

But I’d never thought of it in terms of "she’s just hard to love" until this morning and I think that sort of hits the nail on the head.  Bailey is easy to love and Parker is just harder.  I love them both of course and I’m not saying I love Bailey more, she just makes it easy.

So that is my new challenge I guess. Teaching myself to find it easier to love Parker each day.  And just as I’m typing this, Bailey is laying quietly on the couch watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Parker is running around chasing a bouncy ball.  It is easy for me to love the fact that Bailey can sit for a while and watch tv so that I can blog or answer emails in the morning.  Parker, who is running around throwing/chasing a ball which is of course knocking into things and making a mess, is harder.  But how great that she is actually entertaining herself for a few minutes!  So see, I just have to overlook the mess and destruction to appreciate the fact that she’s giving me this time right now.

Are anyone else’s kids like this?  One is easy, the other hard?  How two kids born into the same family can be so drastically different amazes me!

Just to share a moment I loved from the other day:

i love watching the girls play together!

On a side note this morning, please keep little Weston in your prayers.  Kurt and Beth had to take him to Children’s Hospital last night b/c he was rapidly breathing for over 2 hours last night.  They have now admitted him and are doing tests/observing him to figure out what’s happening.  That’s all we know at this point, I will update the blog if we hear anything else, just be praying for them today.  And here is an AMAZING photo that my friend Erin Duggin took of little Weston:

Isn’t that simply awesome?  I am in love with it!  Erin took my maternity photos yesterday so when I get them from her of course I will share them also.  Erin is working on a new website and will have her own blog soon so watch for that!

Ok, off to shower, do laundry, straighten up, hit the OB, work at KCCI, yaddah yaddah yaddah! Let’s hit this day running!