Unexpected Baby

Well, I did it. I had a baby on my own. No induction, no intervention. And what a surprise it was.

Yesterday morning I woke up with mild contractions. No biggie.

Got Samantha ready and on the bus.

Then Trevor woke up the other kids. That's when I realized these babies weren't stopping no matter what.

But I was in denial since they were short and even though they were starting to hurt, I didn't want to have a baby anyway, so I knew they would go away.

It wasn't until I started to shake that I knew things were real. We finished getting the kids ready for school and I packed a bag for myself. Meanwhile Trevor packed a bag for the kids and decided it was a good time to wash dishes!!

At that point I knew we needed to hurry ("Trevor!! What are you doing? We need to go!!")

So the kids got on the bus, and we jumped in the car. We dropped Carter off at a friends house, and drove to the hospital.

The drive is about 30ish minutes. Do you know that it's not fun having contractions in a car? I don't remember much of the drive, but apparently Trevor was speeding and sped past an officer and waved at him.

He's cheeky.

We got to the hospital and after stopping for numerous contractions, made it to a room. (Trevor was quizzing the nurse on the walk to a room about how good she was at delivering babies)

The nurse started freaking out when she found out my medical history (fast labors, low platelets, hemorrhage, fifth baby) and called what seemed like everyone in the hospital to come. She also called my midwife.

I had a few contractions in bed and felt that awful pressure feeling. My midwife had promised me I wouldn't have to labor this time with my water intact. I started begging for them to break my water.

My midwife showed up just then and hey, she remembered, and broke my water. Then she got in my face "alyson. There is poop in your fluid. Let's get this baby out"

So one and a half pushes and baby Will was born... 17 minutes after we arrived at the hospital. Haha.

Everything turned out okay with the meconium, and he passed all the tests. Thank heavens. So glad to be done. I hate labor. I hate being in that much pain. I hate not having pain meds.

Three Thirty AM

Hey everyone,

It's 3:30 am and I'm wide awake.

Why?

Because my whole body hurts so much that I can't sleep.

Why?

I'll give you one hint...

My dad left earlier this evening.

Yeah, you guessed it. Another round of pushing hard through the weekend and killing ourselves on the house.

A very unusual feeling for me, my RIGHT shoulder is throbbing with pain.

I  am so sick of saying the word stucco.

Who knew we'd have so much to do?

My dad and I pushed through and did the second coat of stucco on the last three windows on Friday, and then today I did the final coat by myself on the rest of the house.

What were the men doing you ask?

Oh just up on the roof taking down the chimney.

No biggie.

What a big day for projects.

We all worked our tails off.

Trevor was exhausted when we got home tonight.

I'm sure my dad is probably sleeping well right now too.

Thanks Dad!!

We would be nowhere close to the progress we've made without your help!!

And guess what?

Monday is the final dumb stucco day.

I get to put the final coat on the last three windows, and then the house is sealed!!!

And then I never have to say that word again.

Stucco.

No time for paint

Last night I dreamt of stucco ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Do you know what a nightmare it was? Horrible.

But since it was literally all my brain could think about, I woke up at 5:30 and Googled the forecast as far out as I could get it. The weather is changing rapidly, and weather has everything to do with stucco and paint.

It's not looking good.

We had hoped to be able to finish with enough time for paint, but even after the final coat of stucco is up, you have to wait a week for paint. Urgh!

The problem is, we have two sets of stucco going right now. One is scheduled to be finished Friday, and the other is set to be finished Tuesday. That is just when the final coat will be applied. Then we wait a week. By that time the weather will be solidly in a freezing pattern at night. Isn't that too cold for paint? Or does it just have to be a certain daytime temp?

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure paint is just a certain daytime temp. Whew!

Now, would anyone like to jaunt up here for a painting party? It will be in November, and just a daytime party. I think we can get it done in one day.

Progress

This weekend we have been finishing up the last corner of windows.

Last night we finished installing the last three windows, and then today we trimmed them up and put up felt paper and wire mesh. Then I mixed up a batch of stucco and slapped it on top of everything. Yep. I am now to the point where I am slapping things up instead of nicely putting them up.

Just kidding there.

But man am I tired. My hands and arms and wrists ache. And you know what else? My legs hurt. Weird huh?

Trevor crawled up on the roof to patch up the water leak around the chimney, and found that a side of the chimney had colapsed since the last time he was up there last week. Oh brother. Anyone want to come help tear down a chimney? It involves throwing bricks off the roof. I hear it's therapeutic.

So Maybe...

I was told by many people I have a bad attitude about Mr. Inspector, so I am going to try very hard to think nice thoughts about him. Plus he came yesterday and inspected our work and didn't make us change anything. That was a nice thing, I guess. I'm still trying to think nice thoughts about the extra money he is making us pay in permits. I'm sure he will grow on me. Maybe.

In other news, I stopped working at the house for the past few days in order to get Halloween costumes done. My children decided they wanted to go with a group theme this year. They are all going to be circus performers. Logan is the Ringmaster. I made his jacket yesterday (red satin with gold trim accents and tails). I figured it would be good to get the hardest project out of the way. I just need to make him a top hat and bow tie. Then I made a pair of wooden stilts thinking that Phoebe would be the stilt walker, but it turns out that Phoebe is afraid of heights, so Samantha will be the stilt walker. Phoebe will be the tight rope walker/trapeze artist. Plus, funny story, I made the costume for the trapeze lady while she was at school, and it didn't fit Samantha. This was before we found out that Phoebe is afraid of heights. So everything worked out! The too small for Sami costume fits Phoebe perfectly and now I don't need to make a new one! Yay! Today my finishing projects will be stilt walker pants, and a world's strongest man costume for Carter. How fun!

In any event, sewing stops this afternoon, and it's back to working at the house tonight.

The past week I've been having some major swelling in my legs and feet. I honestly don't want to do anything but lay in bed with my feet up.

Sigh.

I can't take a break though. Got to finish up the house! I will try to remember to take pictures tonight.

He shall be known as Inspector Ruins My Plans

Today brought elephantitis of my ankles and legs and feet. Weird. It was a frustrating day for me because my dang body is really holding me back. It was hot out and we were trying to get more stucco on the house, but I just felt breathless and dizzy. Not a good combo when you are up on a ladder.

We worked through it though and managed to trim up a window, take out and reinstall a window, and still do the stucco we had planned.

You know what is heavy work? Holding a huge cement trowel in one hand, and a board thingy in the other (the thing you scoop the cement onto before you scoop it up with the trowel). It is heeeeaaavy! Especially while standing on a ladder.

So anyway, it really was a light day despite all we did. Because of the dumb inspector dude who stopped by yesterday, we changed a lot of plans. That's why we took a window out today, to fix the header which we thought he might have a hissy  fit about, and then we reinstalled it and the trim around it, and the stucco too. What a pain this guy is.

And all I could think about as we were talking about this inspector guy was Danny Kaye in The Inspector General movie and how he didn't know what he was inspecting, he just kind of made it up as he went and tried to sound official. Also, all the songs from that movie were playing over and over all day in my head.

Turns out this guy would be in our ward too, so the evil looks I've been planning on giving him when he comes back are just going to have to be kept to myself.

As soon as they are "inspected", we will be able to finish stucco on the last two areas of windows. It's looking like a house again...kind of. Then we will throw some paint on everything, and get back to the inside business. The house will be tan with white trim and I'm thinking I better paint the doors too which look like they are still in primer. I'm thinking a dark grey door. Maybe almost black.

I hope the weather holds just a bit longer.

A "back in the day" pic as per request

Inspector Smeckter

Today was a hard day. It was just...I don't know, I'm so exhausted! We worked our tails off and it feels like we didn't accomplish much. Still, we got another window in, and three small windows framed, and four windows sealed up and ready for stucco, and we took some old bunk bed rails which are meant to keep you from falling out of bed that my dad picked up, and ripped them down and primed them for window trim. It seems like a longish list when I type it all out!

Here's the kicker though; the gooding building inspector stopped by. He told us we have to have a permit to be changing the windows out. So we went and picked up a permit which really made me frustrated.  Why should we have to pay 55 bucks to replace windows which are already expensive? Dumb.

Enough complaining. I'm going to bed now.

spinning heads

Ya'all, life is going so fast. It's just that we don't really get down time right now and that's weird. Our poor kids are being neglected, I'll admit it. We are just trying to keep our heads out of the water, you know, to keep from drowning.

Someone asked me what we will do with the step outside the door we took out. We will rent a jackhammer and get rid of it. We have a few other concrete items to get rid of while we are at it.

I cannot wait to get this outside business sealed up so we can get back to the inside of the house. I'm particularly excited to get into the kitchen. I have some pretty cool plans for that.

Stucco

Today Trevor came home with an exciting story. He said he talked with someone who told him about how the left hand side of our house was a beauty parlor back in the day. Now the door and large window make sense! But what doesn't make sense is who in their right mind would have stepped foot in that yucky house to get their hair done. People have low standards.

In home news, we put another window in tonight. We are going to work on getting the rest of the house ready for more stucco the rest of the week. We've got to get this stucco done before the weather gets too cold for it. I am now a stucco expert you know...

This is after one coat of stucco. Two more to go.

Too Tired to Sleep

I'm tired. Tired.

We got home at about 9:30 this evening, and ate dinner and went to bed. This is no exaggeration.  We are all tired.

My most amazing and talented dad has been driving up on the weekends to help us fix this house. I am simply amazed at how much we accomplish when he is here. He does the work of 20 of me. Okay, maybe more like 30. We have worked ourselves ragged this week though trying to seal up the outside of this house. I am amazed that Trevor and my dad were able to take out every window that needed to come out. That was a lot of windows!! Let me count... 8 windows? I think. Yes, I think it was 8 that I wanted out.

It may seem like a lot, but we are redoing the floor plan on this junker, and it had a lot of tiny, ridiculous windows.

Tonight we tried our hands at stucco. What an experience. Moral of tonight's stucco episode? Don't mix too much! On the bright side, we have a new step on the outside of our garage. Get it? We mixed too much, so the excess got poured into a sidewalk!

So anyway, it's late and I was asleep, but then I was brutally awakened by acid reflux which choked me pretty good and shook me up enough that now I can't sleep. That's why you shouldn't eat and then go to sleep. Duh. Bad choice.