A Little Life Update

I had fully intended to blog all throughout February… I even had a great posting schedule all set up.

And then life happened, guys. Some good, mostly hard.

At the end of January, Theo started a new work shift. It’s actually a good shift- day shift! Which has taken us five full years to reach this privelage. However, the days off are just total crap for our family. Theo has his days off on the three days the kids and I are at school, and he works his 12+ hour days on the four days we are home. It is exhausting for me because I effectively don’t have a single day of the week where both adults are home at the same time. Once the baby comes and we have maternity/paternity leave, this will not be as much of an issue for me, but right now it is a real struggle!

I am 36 weeks pregnant now and feeling it every single day. I am going to teach all the way through my 39th week, Lord willing, but it is a daily challenge to have a good attitude and muster up the strength/energy to do it all. The biggest stressor for me is honestly making sure that I have all my maternity leave plans set up for my substitute. It feels like I need to be four steps ahead but I’m really two steps behind. For all the sweet people who noted how cute and tiny I was for the first 30 or so weeks- you should see me now! Everyone has comments on how much I’ve grown lately and I am suspecting that this little dude is going to be a not so little dude!

I am also having a lot of mental blocks and hang-ups towards labor. I have given birth three times “naturally” (I hate that term, because there are so many different kinds of birth and any way the baby comes out can be natural- but I simply mean without any medical intervention). I guess I didn’t realize how traumatized I was by Ezra’s difficult labor and delivery because I am really struggling with fear and can remember all the really hard moment’s of all my previous labors, and don’t remember anything else about them at all. Instead of fear, I want to feel really strong and empowered during labor so I am praying over this and really trying to fight the mental blocks that I have. I also really, really want his birthday to be a beautiful, sunny, early spring day. I don’t know why I’m set on that desire, but it’s my heart’s desire!

And then….the wheels on our homestead wagon all fell apart about a week ago. Our piglets caught some kind of swine virus and all three slowly and painfully died over the course of a week. It was AWFUL watching them die and knowing that we really couldn’t do anything for them. Still, we tried so hard to save them. We were up and caring for them through the night, all through the days, and tried every thing we could think of to save them. And yet they all died. The piglets that we hand raised for 7 weeks (since their birth) all died.

The same week as all that happened, our dog learned that she is tall enough to hop over the fence. She hops herself right out and runs around our acreage until she catches a chicken and then eats it for a snack. We are at our wit’s end. Either we keep the chickens locked up all day every day so the dog can’t get to them, or we tie up the dog. Neither option sits well with me. Obviously, the dog will eventually be trained and grow up to not be so destructive, but at the present moment in time, that will take months and at 36 weeks pregnant with all the above mentioned struggles, we are just struggling so much with the dog.

There was one day this past week that was the day from hell- trust me when I say that. Around noon, we lost our first piglet. This was after three days of almost continuous seizures, not being able to feed her, and watching her suffer. She finally passed away and I honestly felt more relieved than sad. An hour or so later, one of my children went to the bathroom and the toilet got clogged. Not only did the toilet clog, but it overflowed. There was poop and toilet paper water flowing EVERYWHERE in my bathroom. I was yelling at the kids to get towels and trying to turn off the water valve. I couldn’t even hardly reach the valve behind the toilet because I’m so pregnant! I turned the valve, but the water continued to run!!! By this point there was at least an inch of water on the bathroom floor and it was making it’s way into the hallway. I panic called Theo as the water continued to pour on the floor. I finally got the valve to turn all the way off and got the water stopped, but at this point there was two inches of water on my bathroom floor, the water had gone all the way into the hallway and was starting to hit all three of our bedrooms. The kids and I had used every single towel in our house just to kind of contain the water. At that moment, I looked out the window and saw the dog jump over the fence and take off after the chickens. Tera and I race outside and chase the dog down before she killed any chickens. I get her back in the backyard and tie her up this time so I can finish mopping up the flood inside. As I mop the flood, I look up and what do I see but the dog racing across the bag pasture with a chicken!!! What in the world?! She had broken her collar AND hopped the fence. This time she was much harder to catch since she had no collar! I had to hold her while the kids dragged a dog crate out to her and we put her inside. Then we went back in and had to spend nearly an hour mopping up all the flooded poop toilet water, then washing and sanitizing all the towels and the bathroom.

One day I bet I will laugh about it all, but that day was not the day.

So, that is pretty much where I have been for the past month. It feels like I am somewhere in between treading water and drowning. It’s one of those situations where I’m stressed, but then I’m even more stressed that I’m stressed because I need to CALM DOWN AND REST. Anyone else ever feel like you are in a season like this?

Anyways, this blog post feels like way too much complaining, doesn’t it? So here are some things that I am so very thankful for on this day:

• Sunshine!
• Two good jobs for both Theo and I
• Healthy kids (mostly ha)
• Healthy adult pigs
• Fresh chicken eggs
• Sweet, cuddly cats
• A healthy baby still growing away
• A super supportive school community
• Doing life with Theo and our kids… even if I would maybe change some of the circumstances, I wouldn’t change the people I get to do it with!