Friday, April 5, 2013

Super Quick Takes


-1-
I'm timing myself today.  I've never actually tried to do the quick takes ... quickly. So, here goes.

-2-
My husband introduced me to the Pomodoro technique over a year ago and I fell in love.  I think I even wrote about it here a while ago.  I use it when I'm tired, whiny about having to work, or my son is down for a nap.  But this week, at a writing conference, we used the method for writing. Wow! I felt pretty ridiculous because I had never thought to use it for writing.  I'm a convert.  It's an incredible tool for writing. [For any kind of work!] Check it out.

-3-
This pregnancy has been so different than my pregnancy with Thomas. Hmm. I wonder why?! Ha! Anywho, the crazy mind-blowing fatigue that took hold of my 1st trimester is mirrored by a crazy mind-blowing weepiness of my third trimester.  I. Cry. All. The. Time. The other day I swore to myself I had to cut myself off from all commercials, photos and videos of military personnel separated from their families.  Dangerous grounds for this tearful mommy.  I've heard people talk about a roller coaster of emotions.  Right.  It's like that.  Only the roller coaster I'm on is rickety and has no brakes and I'm blindfolded and crying during the whole ride.  

-4-
I had a memorable April fools day.  I woke at 5 something with an intense contraction.  I grabbed Paul's hand and breathed and breathed and breathed and shushed him when he asked what in the heck was going on.  Other than feeling like someone had wrapped a band around my waist and was trying to pull the life out of me, I felt particular pain on my right side, Baby A's apartment.  I confided in close ones I really secretly hoped and felt it [and the two other contractions which followed] coincided with Baby A flipping himself from his upright position to head down.  Yesterday afternoon, my detailed ultrasound confirmed my suspicion. Another picture of the babies' heads together, once again, made me happy.  And as #3 made public info, weepy too.

Baby A @ 2.1 lbs & Baby B @ 2.4 lbs


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Wanna read an awesome birth story? Check out Katie's Part I & Part II-IV.  Very cool to see women have such unique and beautiful stories with each child.  

-6-
A surprising number of students have asked to touch my belly during this pregnancy.  I've chucked any fears that doing so will have principals kick in the door for inappropriate behavior.  Today, two students felt the babies kick.  Maybe, just maybe, that moment of very much being kicked by two active babies will help just one of my curious students somehow, some day sense the fallacy presented in those who declare abortion as a means to terminate something which isn't a viable life.  I had an incredible transformation, when I carried Thomas and felt life so loudly within me, of compassion, horror, and sadness for every woman and man whose lives have touched the darkness of abortion.  

-7-
Tomorrow is the beginning of my Freezathon! I've got a pretty long list of different items I plan on freezing for this postpartum because my goodness---I was NOT ready last time. If you have any suggestions on your favorite items to freeze [or warnings on what not to freeze] I would be happy to hear!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Btw, turns out even the quickest quick takes aren't so quick.  Mine took 28 minutes. Fail.

2 comments:

  1. SO SO SO glad Baby A flipped!!! My Baby B was breech and flipped pretty late and it was SO exciting when I saw that they were both head-down!

    I didn't get as much frozen as I had hoped, since I was in denial about how early the babies were actually going to come...

    But some of my favorite freezer meals were shepherd's pie, stuffed shells (I did a cheese & spinach mixture and added sauce before baking), Rachael Ray's florentine meatballs, and chili. I was seriously craving acidic, protein-rich meals in the weeks after the babies were born, mainly because stupid heartburn made it impossible to eat anything remotely acidic and I was so happy to be able to eat it again!!!

    If you can buy a bunch of disposable baking dishes from Costco, those were a huge help to me, since I could bake the meals and then just toss the dishes and not have to worry about clean-up. I froze soup in bags and canned a ton of tomato sauce beforehand, too.

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  2. Yay for being head down!

    Thanks for the shout out.

    And I had a lot of success this time around cooking soups every other night for two weeks or so. I just made huge batches each time and then froze everything we didn't eat in ziplocks (so hard not to eat it for leftovers the next day!)

    If you have a favorite cookie or something you can try to make some dough to freeze to. Not a necessity, but a treat!

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