Happy 4th 'n stuff

I know this is a lot of blog entries in one day, but I'm trying to get all caught up before our baby arrives and things fall apart even more. It's been a super busy couple of weeks. On the positive side, Chloe had a great birthday, our bathroom is almost done (pictures to follow upon total completion of the project, so maybe in a couple years or so), and I have an induction scheduled. On the negative, our house has been an absolute disaster, Addie has achieved new levels of mess making, we've all had colds, my carpal tunnel has prevented me from sleeping most of the time, and yesterday I got a stomach/intestinal bug.

We went to our church 4th of July breakfast, and all morning I'd been having intermittent painful contractions. I'd been awake since about 3, just not feeling well. I kept thinking, is this what labor really feels like, because I just feel gross? I tried to power through, though, and got the bathroom caulked while trying to ignore the errors I'd made with the grout (I know I'm a novice and shouldn't expect perfection the first time I do something, but I don't want to have to redo it.) By mid afternoon, though, it became obvious that this was not labor, it was just sick, and I gave the new toilet a thorough workout. Thankfully, I was able get some good sleep last night, and haven't had any more unusual visits to the toilet today.

I was bummed (literally) last night, though, that I didn't get to go to the fireworks with the girls. They'd had a pretty uneventful 4th since it mostly consisted of working on the bathroom or Mom groaning on some flat surface, and Chloe, as always was very excited about seeing fireworks. (For reference on Chloe's struggle to see fireworks, check out the end of this blog entry.) Here are the girls waiting for the show to start.
Chloe starting to curl up into fetal position.
One last peek out, and . . .
once again, she didn't make it. Bracken tried and tried to wake her up, but it was no use. She was out for the night. Addie, who'd had a late nap, was full of energy and refused to be contained so Bracken gave up and came home. Maybe next year, Chloe.