Holiday Preparation

Spence and Em came to visit from Reno - which is always fun, and totally exhausting because it means we party ALL the time.Josh worked Thursday and Friday, which I spent with my family. Thursday I was barfy-sick. Friday I was tired-sick. Saturday morning when Josh was with me at my mom's I passed out, then had a breathing/heart episode that lasted just shy of an hour while the adults in the family watched/listened to me gasp for breath for 45 minutes on the couch and Josh held my hand and told me to stop it. Which is all they would have done in the ER, but I think everybody wondered at what point you take a person to the hospital when everything seems to be going wrong. I'm glad I didn't go, because the breathing thing passed, and really they couldn't drug me in the ER anyway. So. There's that. My mom is now finally on the "get out Grace!" bandwagon, which she hasn't been on until now. 

Sunday I was determined to go to church. I've been wondering if this would be my last week at church for a while. Will Grace really come this week? We sat in the short bench where we always sit and I thought about how huge her carseat is and how much space we'll take up at church. The morning getting ready for church was remarkably peaceful, but Tommy kept telling us he was too sick for church - I told him to come to sacrament meeting with me and we'd see how we felt at primary time. For both of us. Because the truth is that sitting up for that long is hard for me too. Only all through sacrament meeting he kept coughing this awful cough and he sounded miserable and everybody around us must have been convinced that we were spreading the plague. So I took him home just after the sacrament in the middle of a sick-nasty coughing fit. And when we stood up to leave, John just followed us. So I took both boys home and Josh stayed at church. At home we finished putting up Christmas (Fontanini!!!) and balls on the tree and snuggled and snuggled. It was lovely. But I tried hard to make sure we weren't skipping church so we could watch a show or play video games. We need to fix that being home is so much more fun than being at church. So there was no screen time until after church. When we had family movie day. Also lovely. It was the right amount of productive, and helpful and relaxing and fun. And it only took 4 days of holiday to do it! Miraculous.

Letting Tom decorate the tree is my favorite thing ever.

"I know it looks dangerous - because it is, but Santa's really gonna love this surprise."

In between the passing out and the not breathing on Saturday, Josh and I were trying to motivate ourselves to go home from the party at my mom's and I kept saying "we just really need to run the errands before we can't..." and it was starting to look like people were starting to talk about what fun thing to do, so Josh stood up and said "I bet I can run to the store and back before we figure out what we're doing" so I started to hand him my list. But in those 2 minutes, the guys got out a fun new game (which was a dude game, Josh would love and I would not) and the afternoon was decided. I whined about not being able to do the shopping, because I have seriously missed being able to do it by myself. Really. Truly. But I really really don't trust myself to stay vertical that long, or to be able to take that many steps in a row, or to reach the things on the bottom or top shelves. But honestly, I miss it. I was mourning the loss and appreciating the free time I now have and Wendy suggested she take me and we go to Walmart and ride in a riding cart and she'd take care of me if I passed out and we'd just be able to drive around shopping. The idea was thrilling! So we went. I've never even driven one of those cart things (holy slow.) and we shopped and shopped and shopped. I got some Christmas items taken care of (something to wear, a few stocking stuffers) and we went through the fun Chrsitmassy things, and shopped the regular old boring things, and it. was. lovely. And totally exhausting. 

This morning I unpacked the remaining totes in Grace's room, and now it's ready for Josh to haul bins up and down the stairs again. And then we're there! There's a space for The Chair and her clothes are hung in the closet, and Em gave me a bow board which Josh hung on the wall and the crib has bedding and the package of newborn diapers is opened and in the diaper changing station and aside from relabeling some bins, we have all the things taken care of! I need to pack my hospital bag, pick a "come home from the hospital" outfit from her closet and the snuggliest blanket in the whole world to take to the hospital. Dare I say we'll be ready before Josh goes back to work on Wednesday? Because then he'll work Wed-Tuesday and on Tuesday the hospital will call to schedule a time to go in and be induced. How's THAT for insane? Unless of course these contractions are doing things, and the swelling in my hands and feet and size of my nose are accurate in which case I'll burst at any second and it won't matter when they want to schedule my induction.