*** Guest post by Jon ***

Tonight I removed 2 eye liners, 1 lipstick, a pen, and 14 barbie shoes from the girls’ toilet. It took about 12 seconds to put them there, and about 35 minutes to remove. The first toilet that only had 1 well placed pen took about and hour and a half, but now I am experienced at removing toilets, dumping the excess water out, flushing them out upside-down, resealing and replacing them, and then disinfecting the lavatory. Only 2 more toilets to fix…

Hopefully the 2 yr old will find a new hobby soon.

Good times.

*** Guest Post by Jon ***

As Patti is consumed with prego related stuff, I thought I would jump on here and record some of the fun little things that have been going on here that I will want to come back and read one day later. You know the saying “One day you’ll look back and laugh”… That saying means that you are not laughing now and yet you need the presence of mind to record the events, ’cause you know that one day you might just snicker a little.

File these under 2 yr old experiments…
1) Both boys stayed home sick today and I got the short straw and Patti went into the office. I was helping J with some overdue homework (and working at passing another level of his video game) and Siah got into Patti’s makeup. He poured an entire bottle of foundation makeup on his hair and then covered that with a liberal helping of baby powder. Then he applied the same mixture to the new flooring in the bathroom and skated in it. Turns out that the foundation is oil based and took eight wash and rinse cycles with our not-so-cheep-hippie shampoo to get out (and he still had a nice skin-tone hue in his hair for the rest of the day).

2) Tonight, Siah found a tube of antibiotic cream and dosed his hair one more time (in case you are counting, this is the same day as #1). This effectively used up the rest of the shampoo. I will say that he has had a life-long aversion to getting his hair washed. He got soap in the eyes once and since then, he freaks and goes into the fetal position whenever I go to rinse his hair. When he has a good lather on, the fetal position does an effective job of getting more soap in his eye, thus proving again that shampoo is bad. Today we cured that. The last shampoo (I think this is lather and rinse cycle #15) he managed to stay looking up through the whole rinsing cycle. Attaboy!

3) OK, this is the one that I really need to record so that I can look back and laugh… I now own three new wax rings for my toilets. These are nifty little seals that connect your toilet to your floor/plumbing. You see, you need these whenever you have to remove your toilet, because they are not reusable. I have four toilets in my home, and Siah has become fascinated with the flusher knob / spinning water / gurgling sounds / filling up again thing. He has a particular interest in watching his precious movements go round and round and round and down. Because he cannot repeat the movements often enough for his interest level to be satisfied, he has gone through our house in search of poo-sized objects that he can use instead. Right now, I have three toilets that will not flush at all. I own an industrial toilet plumbing snake (He is our forth kid and we have learned a few things), but no dice! The snake does not move the water one bit. I mentioned that we have four kids, and it seems that non-flushing toilets are fine to use for nasty, disgusting colon cleansings, or at least they are fine until you realise that THEY DON’T FLUSH… OMG! ITS FLOODING!!! HEEEELLLLLLPPPPPP! (I’m keeping a good supply of grade 3 towels on hand).

So I have to 1) convince Siah not to flush anything else down the drain, 2) scoop brown water from the bowls into some bucket that will never get used again for ANYTHING! 3) remove toilets and find and remove blockages (this requires grade 3 towels as well) 4) use the nice new wax rings and replace the toilets.

I Kid You Not… My eldest just came in while I am typing this and told me that toilet #4 is blocked.

one day I’ll laugh.

We were sent for an early scan under the guise of dating the pregnancy, BUT….seeing as we knew the exact date of conception – I knew exactly how old this baby was.

I realize just how much in shock I was because as conflicted as I felt – I really wasn’t processing things on a certain level.

It wasn’t until we walked into the Ultrasound Clinic that I realized just how fragile I was emotionally and it also hit me again so hard that LIFE is so fragile.

When the technician called my name and I walked with her back to the room, we were talking and I thought, “You have no idea what you are in for, lady!”

She closed that door and I turned to her and asked that regardless of the outcome of the scan, could she please bring Jon in to see the baby – even if it was not alive.

And then I cried!

I tried to pull myself together and she looked at me with a very concerned/stressed look and asked if I had any reason to think the worst.

No, there had been no bleeding, but then again, there never was with any of the other 4 babies that we lost.

I figured that she was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t wreck her morning by having things turn out badly.

I climbed up on the table and she put the wand to my stomach and you could feel the tension and then…….she smirked.

I desperately hoped that the smirk was an indicator of a positive outcome, but I was mentally prepared for the worst.

She mentioned that our little one was “Alive and Kickin” and that things looked really, really good.

She took a few measurements, and let me see the baby, then went to go and get Jon.

She brought him in and let us see a little bit more and even let us hear the heart beat. That is such an amazing, AMAZING sound.

We got a few pics……..

I walked out of that Clinic feeling cautiously optimistic. If only time would speed up and I were holding this precious little one in my arms…….it’ll come soon enough, won’t it?

We had talked about taking the kids into Vancouver to “experience” the Olympic Spirit first hand, but I was really hoping that we wouldn’t have to.

I’m not really “into” the Olympics and I’m even less into the massive crowds and craziness that events like this create.

But, after we woke up and crawled outta bed on Monday morning, the kids still really wanted to go into town and so…..off we went.

We drove into the Joyce Street Sky Train Station and from there bussed down to Granville Street.

Siah was SO excited to be going on the Sky Train. His excitement alone, made the day worth it.

Here he is sitting with his Papa. Jon’s parents joined us for the trip.

The crowds were not as bad as I had imagined them to be, but then again, I like to imagine worst case scenarios and then I’m typically NOT as stressed as I could be.

We walked up Granville Street to Robson and that’s where the fun began. One thing that cracked me up was that Jeremy was SO disappointed that we weren’t going shopping. He pointed out the Sears on Robson and was desperate that we go in to check things out. He LOVES to shop. Funny Boy!

We saw a Paper Lantern Forest. I imagine that it would look AMAZING at night.

Remarkably, this dude didn’t really stand out as being terribly crazy and wierd…..he was just one of the entertainers. Gotta love Vancouver!

Jeremy LOVED this fish, and seeing as he was having the hardest time coping….I was just thrilled that he was showing any sort of an interest in anything. It wasn’t until his Nana explained to him that this could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience and that she had never seen the Olympics firsthand in her whole life, that he started to perk up a little. I guess he figured that he could just go to the next Olympics when they came around again.

I thought that my dad (a fisherman) would love this eagle, as well.

It’s hard to believe that this young lady was my very first baby…

We walked down to Waterfront to get the obligatory Olympic Torch Shots….

Then we took the Waterfront Skytrain back to Joyce and called it a day.

It was a bit much with the 4 kids, BUT……we can look back now and say that we were there. We went. We saw. We experienced……and now we can cross that one off our list.

Yah, I know that I’m still not sounding all that enthused about it all, but Jon walked away feeling the “Olympic Spirit” a bit stronger. That’s gotta count for something, eh?

There are lots more pics to see and you can click through and see them all HERE!

I have spent the day baking and now my feet feel like the bones are trying to poke through the skin. Yah, they hurt!

The kids have been wanting snacks and treats and we’ve been buying way too much “garbage” from the store.

By garbage, I mean, cookies and crackers and other colorful, chemical-filled crap. I cringe every time I put a box into my shopping cart. I hate the cost. I hate the chemicals. I hate the massive amounts of sugar. I hate the excessive packaging. I just hate buying it, and yet recently….I’ve been tired and busy and busy and tired and well…….enough is enough.

This weekend has worked out nicely that the kids got both Friday and Monday off AND we had nothing planned for today and we are not having anyone over for lunch tomorrow and so aside from a roasted chicken dinner with potatoes, carrots, gravy and salad (I’m already drooling over tomorrow’s lunch) we have a pretty quiet, normal day tomorrow.

All of that adds up to a mostly relaxing weekend.

I had thought that I’d get the house a bit tidier than it currently is, but between tomorrow afternoon and Monday morning – it should be back into shape.

Yesterday the girls and I planned out that we’d bake like crazy today, in the hopes of stocking the freezer with enough goodies to keep us going for a while. Our list was WAY longer than what was actually possible to accomplish in one day, but it helped to have something to pick through while we were working our way throughout the day.

I managed to bake 4 loaves of Spelt bread, and 4 loaves of Kamut bread.

The Spelt Loaves rose amazingly, but the Kamut was a bit of a flop. The dough didn’t feel right while I was working with it, so I’ll try again and might even look for a Kamut Flour recipe. We ate one of the Spelt loaves for dinner and the kids LOVED it. We’ll slice them all up with our slicer and then keep one out to use, and freeze the rest.

I also made a ton of Soda Crackers using the Spelt flour.

They are a little fluffier than a soda cracker from the store, but that was also eating them fresh and hot. I added some garlic powder to the mix and then sprinkled salt on top of them before cooking, so they have some flavor. We tried some tonight with meat and cheese and pickles and again…..they were a big hit. I think the kids will enjoy them in their lunches or as snacks and they were so SO easy to make.

Xandra and I whipped up 3 batches of cookies. We made gingersnaps, oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

The gingersnaps were the only thing today that were not vegan. I used honey instead of sugar. Everything else was made with Earth Balance Spread instead of butter, Ener-G Egg Replacer instead of eggs and Oat Milk where it called for milk. This is to accomodate Siah’s egg and dairy allergy. Everything still tastes amazing and turned out fabulously (minus the Kamut bread, but that has nothing to do with the substitutes and all to do with the flour being a heavier/denser weight. AND….it’ll still make great toasted garlic bread.).

Each batch of cookies made over 4 dozen cookies and I froze 3 dozen and baked the rest. Here they are ready for the freezer.

I love them like this because now when we want cookies…..we just have to pull out a dozen, let them sit on the cookie tray for about 5-10 minutes while the oven is pre-heating and VOILA! Fresh delicious cookies!

I also made a Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf (my FAVORITE!) but I didn’t get a picture of it…it was cooking and I uploaded these before it was finished cooking.

I also made one more batch of bread (4 loaves worth), BUT…..this time, instead of regular bread – I made one loaf of Cinnamon Bread. I also made 16 Cinnamon Buns. Here they are rising. They were about twice this size when they were finished……….

We’ll probably have some for breakfast tomorrow. I also made a bunch of regular buns. I figured I could freeze half of them and with the rest, the kids could use them for lunches. They are on the smaller side so a perfect kid lunch size. Here they are in the prep stage…….

I love my apron. I don’t often wear it, but on “messy, flour-y days” it does a great job of keeping me from being an absolute mess as I tend to fluff a lot of flour around and also to wipe my hands all over myself.

Any guesses as to how far along I am? If ya know…..then don’t spoil it for others! M’Kay? Thanks! You could always throw out a guess to try and throw others off? Or not?!?

Here are some facts for you. This is pregnancy #9. I have just recently stopped barfing all day. This will be our 5th child that we bring home. I’m up 5 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. I do still feel a bit queasy throughout the day and am still barfing most mornings.

Does that make it any easier or more confusing? Oh well, happy guessing!

We had an amazing day yesterday.

We wanted to spend some time together as a family and well……everyone needs to eat, and I figured that we could plan a fun lunch to have with the kids and to make it a fun and memorable time for all.

The kids love it when we have a “fancy” meal and so we decided to set up the dining room table and have a party. Jon and I threw a few ideas around and decided to make pizza for lunch.

We figured that we could make heart shaped pizza shells….

We also cut up heart shaped pieces of ham and red peppers.

I set up plates of strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes and watermelon balls to snack on.

The kids thought the table looked so fun. In reality it looked a bit like Valentine’s had thrown up all over the table. Hearts, and red and white overload…….

The kids, hyped up on sugar, brought their larger than life personalities to the table….

Geli forced this smile on but in between having a MASSIVE sugar low and having stayed up past midnight babysitting the night before……well, she was a joy to have around. We eventually sent her to bed for an afternoon nap – which miraculously worked wonders for her attitude and disposition. It’s amazing what a little sleep can do, eh?

Jon……….

……………got me some flowers and a card. While I think roses are lovely…..I LOVE tulips.

Aren’t they beautiful?

For once, we remembered to actually take a picture of me…..thereby proving that I actually was here.

And not to be left out, here is my sweet girl, Xandra……..

We laughed and talked and laughed some more. I love when we do things like this because the kids bring these times up later and I love helping to create these special memories for the kids.

Did you do anything special or fun for Valentine’s Day?

I know that I’m blessed.

I know that I’m in a position that some other women would give anything to be in.

I was one of those who would have given anything to be pregnant.

But, I hold firmly to the belief that I’m allowed to be shocked by something that was not organized by us and that we had not planned on.

I believe its possible to be both in shock that you’re pregnant with your 5 child and that this was something you’d not planned on, and at the same time terrified that you might lose another child.

It’s horrid to know that you are “strong enough” to handle loss and specifically another loss, but to desperately with everything in you hope that you don’t lose this one.

The fact that within seconds of seeing the positive pregnancy test, that I was filled with terror that I might lose this baby was a huge indicator to me that I needn’t worry that I wouldn’t love or that I might resent this baby.

I don’t think it’s possible to want something so badly and to be resentful of it at the same time…..at least it’s not possible for me.

I really didn’t want to have to deal with the fear and out of control feelings ever again.

I know that I can, but I don’t want to have to.

I’ve had moments when I was certain that this pregnancy was over and I was just waiting for confirmation of that, and on the opposite side of that – I’ve had great and amazing moments of certainty and hope and joy.

I’m barfing every morning and dry heaving a ton throughout the day and this is with being on Liquid Vitamin B complex and a ton of other vitamins and potions to help me…….apparently I just barf my way through pregnancy…..welcome to my life.

With Angelica, I barfed for 6 months straight had a slight reprieve in month 7 and then barfed my way through the last 2 months.

With Alexandra, I barfed for 5 months, had months 6 & 7 off and then continued on barfing in months 8 & 9

With Jeremy, it was the same as with Xandra.

With Nathaniel, I barfed until I lost him and then continued to barf while the hormones abated after I lost him…that was rough.

I barfed my way through the 3 years of losses – again with the not fun….it’s harder when you don’t get anything to show for it at the end of it all..

With Josiah, I barfed for 4 months, then had months 5-8 off and barfed again in the last month. (best pregnancy EVER)

And….we’ll just have to see how this one goes – won’t we?

Yes, I cried.

And being totally and completely honest…..these were not happy tears, but rather tears of confusion. They were tears that held a whole lot of questions within them.

Jon had come upstairs at this point and when I showed him the test……well, to say that we were both in a state of shock is putting it mildly.

And then I started counting!

I was 13 days late starting and had just gotten a faint positive. Counting backwards – this puts conception sometime around when I was actually due to start….which coincides with ONE “incident” where we assumed that we were safe.

I understand that all it takes in one time, but the thing that really baffled me was that I was 2 weeks off my normal schedule. That – THAT – is very strange. I do realize that unless you take the necessary precautions that things like this can happen, but here is a little history on me……

14.5 years of marriage and NEVER ONCE have I gotten pregnant without “ACTIVELY TRYING” and I have never gotten pregnant the first month that we tried. With Geli we tried for 9 months before I got pregnant. Xani was 2 months of trying. Jermey was 4 months. Nathaniel was 2. I have no idea about all the losses, but it never happened the first month and Siah was about 3-4 months…….

So, this business of getting pregnant is not something that has come terribly easy for us and now SHAZAM! Here we are with a pregnancy that we did not plan for.

And, in all honesty – I was quite shaken by the whole 5 kids thing.

I already have 4 kids and loads of people that we meet are already shocked by how big our family is….and now……..AND NOW WE ARE PREGNANT WITH NUMBER 5.

Now, that being said, I am the oldest of 5 kids. My mother’s family had 5 kids. My father’s family had 4 kids. So the concept of a large family is not foreign to me, but……well…….it’s just a lot of kids.

We had been talking for the past year about the possibility of having another child. Jeremy and Josiah have a 7 year age difference between them and as much as Siah has older siblings, in some ways it’s been like he’s an only child.

But, our conversations regarding another child always went something like this…

ME: I think that we could totally handle another kid. Seriously, what’s one more.

JON: Are you kidding me? I am so tired and this baby that we currently have NEVER SLEEPS. NO WAY!

ME: Yah, you’re right, I’m really tired too. But wouldn’t it be nice for Siah to have a sibling close in age?

JON: NO! It’s not happening. We already have 4 and that’s enough.

ME: Yah, you’re totally right – but I still think that we could do it.

That was about a third of the time…….Another conversation that we had on a fairly regular basis went like this…

JON: Siah would be so cute with a little brother or sister

ME: Are you insane? Maybe you should sleep in the TV room tonight. It’s not happening.

JON: Seriously, I’ve been thinking about it and I think that we could make it work…

ME: That’s just the crazy talking and the fact that we’ve not slept through the night in over 2 years…..NO!

JON: Come on! It would be fun to see Siah and a brother or sister grow up together….

ME: NOT ON YOUR LIFE, BABY! AIN’T HAPPENING!

JON: I guess you’re right, but I still think that it could be a good idea.

The other third of the conversation went something along the lines of….

HA HA HA HA HA! We’re never having anymore kids. These 4 we already have are WAY TOO MUCH WORK!

YAH! I TOTALLY GET WHAT YOU’RE SAYING! WE HAVE SO MANY KIDS.

MAYBE SOMEONE SHOULD PUT THEM ALL TO BED NOW….IT’S PAST 10PM.

SURE! GO FOR IT. I’M TOO TIRED!

MAYBE, THEY’LL JUST FALL ASLEEP WHERE EVER THEY’RE AT AND WE WON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING.

I DOUBT IT.

YAH! YOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT, BUT I CAN HOPE, CAN’T I?

Yah, We’re yelling to hear ourselves over the chaos…….It’s that awesome over here, and those lines are interchangeable. Either one of us could be on either end of that conversation.

So yah, We’ve been slammed with a HUGE assault of conflicting emotions and have really been working on processing through them.

To say that it’s not been easy is an understatement.

I can say with all certainty, that I am so happy to be welcoming this baby into our lives and into our family. I am so looking forward to meeting this little one and pouring every ounce of love and care that I have into this sweet baby.

I feel like we’ve been given a gift and although it’s not something that we, on our own, had planned to appreciate and invest in and love…..now that this gift is ours…..we are waiting in joyful anticipation for the day when we get to fully embrace all the love and joy and laughter that this gift will bring with it.

But there are sometimes that the fear of past hurts and previous losses overshadows the joy and makes even breathing seem unbearable. The waiting, waiting, waiting is…well….it’s brutal.

There is the anticipation that the other shoe is about the drop or the axe is about to fall and that is such a hard place to be in. There is also the anticipation on Christmas Eve as you wait for morning to come, knowing that something great is about to happen and even though you don’t know what you’re getting, you still know that it’s going to be an awesome time. If only I could live in that anticipation for the nine months of pregnancy…..wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Wouldn’t it be, though? Nine months is a very long time.

I’m not one to get all caught up in the “Why’s” of life. Even when Nathaniel died, I hurt and I cried and I felt so sad and empty, but I did not get caught up in questioning “Why this happened?” or even “Why did this happen to me or to us?”

I’m more likely to just “feel” the moment whether that’s with joy or with pain and to continue to put one foot in front of the other. It’s carried me through some pretty dark times and helped me to keep living life.

I will admit that I had a hard time seeing the “positive” show up on the pregnancy test and the feelings and emotions that washed over me after that. It was probably the closest to a “WHY ME?” that I’ve ever gotten.

I am regular…..like you could set your clock by me regular. I cycled every 35 days before I lost Nathaniel. The years during all the losses were a bit crazy, but then I had so many hormones swirling and whirling around inside of me that at that point NOTHING was regular. About 3 months before I had Siah, I went to the Naturopath and it felt to me like my body hit a huge RESET button and I started to cycle at 28 days.

When things resumed, after Siah came along, I was right back on track within a few months.

I expected to start on a certain day and when I hadn’t started by the day’s end…..I took a test. There was no reason why I should have expected to be pregnant. There was no unsafe activity (If ya know what I mean) during any scary, dangerous or critical times of the month and so I was basically just flushing money down the toilet. It was – OF COURSE – a very blatant negative!

Alrighty!!!! So, I expected that things would start by the morning and went to bed.

So 4 days went by and NOTHING. In fact, if I were completely honest with myself….I really didn’t feel like I was about the start my period but then I really didn’t feel pregnant either. I took another test the next morning and again…..NEGATIVE. Like, it couldn’t get any more negative. Not even a hint of a line, even if I held it up to the light or to the window and squinted funny while looking out of the corner of my eyes. (Hey! I’ve peed on a lot of sticks over the past 5 years – I am a professional! Trust me!)

So, I figured that I must have nursed Siah a bit more over the past few weeks and maybe possibly the nursing had messed me up hormonally and I was having a wonky cycle. I was still nursing Siah at this point. I waited for over a week and decided that I was going to take one more test – which of course was going to be negative – and then I’d just wait it out.

I peed on the stick, set it on the counter beside me and clicked through on my blackberry to Twitter to kill some time.

After a few minutes, I glanced at the pregnancy test and then did a double take……was that a line? Are you kidding me? It’s not very dark?!? Is it really a line? It can’t be? It’s not possible?!? What? Nooooooo! NO WAY!

And then I cried…………(to be continued)

Well!?!