Sunday

Quite an emphasis on keeping the sabbath day holy has been prevalent in church the last couple of months. I love it. Not because I'm doing it well but because I need the reminder to do so. Our family has gotten into the routine where we lounge about on Sunday morning until noon, rush to get ready for church, deal with the chaos at church with our callings, rush back home to prepare something for the dinner we will share with extended family, mingle and socialize while kids are making messes everywhere, and go to bed late. There is no room for feeling the Spirit, embracing the serenity of the sabbath, or doing service for anyone. No room for feasting on the scriptures, reading the Ensign, or doing family history work. It's a far cry from "Day of Rest" in my book. I would love to change up some wonderful but abused traditions, but how do I bring that up to the rest of the family? And how could I get my kids on board with appropriate Sunday activities? I think I'll mull it over.....

Anaïs Lizet Chavez

With all the projects winding down, I was starting to feel anxious again for this baby to come. I had previously felt too nervous because I wasn't sure I was ready to handle another child. How would I get anything done? How would each Chavezloco get the attention they need? How could I be the wife I wanted to be with so many responsibilities to juggle? It was overwhelming. However, once we finished the downstairs room and set up the crib and changing table, I started to calm down with the worrying and the anxious feeling returned. I was ready. We were ready.

Well, almost.

We still hadn't decided on a name. This name was a really hard one to decide on. Nothing seemed to really pop out as "perfect" enough.

So we started with a name we liked and expounded from there : 

Ani. Perfect nickname.

Lizet. Perfect middle name.

Anaïs. Perfect first name.

The cherry on top was when we discovered that Anaïs was Siena and Qiana's names smashed together (Siana) and spelled backwards. It was perfect for our final child.

Anaïs Lizet Chavez it would be. Finally, we were ready.

Heavenly Father was very patient with us getting to that point because that night I woke up around 1:50 with contractions. They were strong enough I didn't wait too long to call Sierra to have her come watch the kids. I was very worried that it would end up being a false alarm and that I would have put Sierra and Juan out, but an even greater fear was that of not getting an epidural on time. Yep, that fear trumped the others by a long shot.

We pulled into the hospital parking lot around 3:15. They checked me and said I was 3 cm dilated. Bummer! I was 3 cm dilated at my last appointment the week before. I wanted to cry. But they told me to wait an hour and if I had progressed enough then they could admit me. Luckily, the hour flew by and I progressed to 4 cm. They admitted me, called the nurse anesthetist who came in around 5:30 to give me the epidural, started a growing and rigorous round of pitocin, broke my water and told me to start pushing around 9:15 am. Around 8 contractions later, our beautiful baby girl was born. I was so grateful we didn't have any complications. Her Apgars were 8,9 and she was perfect. Born at 9:38 am, 7 lbs 3 oz, 18"long. It was a beautiful and surreal moment, just like the other children's births had been. I felt and still feel so incredibly blessed to have them here with us, healthy and strong.

Since her birth, Anaïs has been a dream baby. She's is a great eater (painfully so; I have to mostly pump because of the damage she's left with her strong suck.) She's a normal baby in the sense that she's asleep most of the time. She's a regular little gal, keeping Pampers well in business. She's got two dimples that just light up her whole face when she gives us those unintentional smiles. Lots of hair. And pretty much Qiana's exact baby copy. She's ruling the house and everyone in the family is convinced that she absolutely should. Gosh, we love her.

. After the epidural kicked in. Crazy thing.

My rock solid support system.

Love LOVE love at first sight.

Selfie. 

Looks just like Baby Qiana did.

Day Two.

So tiny! Her first day home.

After her first bath.

With Tia Sierra 

With Grandma 

Loves her sis.

Full car now! Siena loves sitting by her so she can sing lullaby songs to her.

Ezra is surprisingly handling the transition from Baby of the family to Big brother very well.

It's The Hardest Part

Well, it's 4:30 on the morning and I've  been up for two hours with contractions. They were very regular at first (every 5 minutes) and lasted over a minute so all the textbooks say to check in to the hospital around that point. However, because of our experience with Ezra being born an entire week after I had contractions like this, I've been holding off. And true to form, they've been starting to get more irregular. It's hard to know for sure though because my heartburn is so, so debilitatingly painful right now, my focus has not been on the contractions so much as it has been on my searing lower left ribs.

So to pass the time with a good distraction, I'm blogging and just  keeping it real.

.......... 

What have we been up to lately? The Junk Room! It has taken us about three weeks to completely remodel it, but it was totally worth it. Took out carpet, spackled, sanded, and painted walls, mudded corners closed with corner tape, installed new light fixtures, patched ceiling, caulked practically everything, primed and sprayed shelving and baseboards three times, painted ceiling and walls a few times, new electrical outlets, sanded and painted door, designed, built, painted and installed sliding doors for a "closet", installed flooring, installed, patched and painted baseboards, installed curtain rod and installed a light dimmer just outside for a nightlight. It's been exhausting and rewarding. The girls moved into their room the beginning of this week and love it. Ezra is loving his own room too. It's a huge room for such a small boy!  Juan and I just barely set up the baby's room in Siena's old room. We are officially ready for Bebe!

Before :

During :

Ta Da!

35.5 Weeks Into This Journey

 Crazy pregnant lady update:

I've been relying on morning prayer more to get me through the day. It's working.

Baby is sitting so low that the burning and heavy feeling is sometimes overwhelming.  It has been causing the signature "pregnant waddle" that some ladies get but I never had understood until now.

Not really any new symptoms to report, which is a good thing, right?

Heartburn is ever-present, which can be good because when I'm busier I don't even notice it. All I'm saying is that this Bebe better have a head chock-full of hair.

It's impossible to get a good night's rest these days.

...........

Case in point. I fell asleep writing all of that at around 12:30 last night. At 4-ish Ezra woke up because his hand had fallen asleep from laying on it in a weird way. After taking care of him and getting him tucked back in bed, I fell back asleep only to wake up again an hour and half later because of contractions. Yes, contractions.  I'm only 35 1/2 weeks along so I wasn't expecting real pain. But oh boy, was it horrible pain.  I didn't feel the need to call a doctor because the pain from the contractions was only in my lower abdomen and thighs, not in my back like I have experienced with the others. They were frequent enough that the second I fell back asleep another one started up again. Blah! Quite annoyed, I decided to throw in the towel (literally) and take a shower. Might as well get on with my day, right? Luckily, I feel out of the woods at this moment with the prospect of preterm labor.  The contractions finally have subsided and the baby is back to moving like crazy inside me, a feeling I know I will miss forever after she's born.

The main purpose for writing all of this is so that one day when I have that feeling of excitement over having another child, I will have a reality check waiting for me, tsk-tsking my hasty enthusiasm. I can not let myself forget how hard this was on my body, emotions and family this time around! But if another baby is in our future (highly unlikely as it may be,) that would just mean that the priority of kids wins over prolonged pain and discomfort on an aging body.

Mother Doesn't Know Best

...but I'm learning.

(WARNING! This is a part all about my pregnancy hormones, uh... I mean... Feelings.)

Lately I've been irritable, impatient, controlling, scatterbrained, lazy, and yet still find time to sneak in some apathy. Who is this woman?! I can't seem to find the will to clean or discipline all the time, let alone be a "fun mom". I try still and though I'm not excelling at any of those things, I haven't altogether fallen off the horse. HOWEVER, I will say that I'm pretty sure this new-ish state of mind is due to the fact that I've been stressed out more than usual. From the 26th of June up until now I've have things to prepare that usually I don't stick  my nose into. On the list of offenders are:

Hosting a work party at our house for all of the employees and their families.

Hosting (expectedly) Juan's entire extended family Fourth of July family bbq. Margo's  accident denied the actuality of that taking place at our house.

A very large wedding flower order in June. Luckily it was only one though.

The addition of five new piano students. I didn't even want one more lesson on my schedule, but I'm starting to get used to use it.

The looming Reflections competition at Siena's school that I'm in charge of. It's just a couple of weeks after I have my baby and I'm kinda freaking out!

A host of house projects that still need to be finished.

A stressful calling at church to attend to. (Primary is one of my fave callings but only when you have enough support. Most of the teachers ditch us without notice and we have an abnormally large population of kids with mental /emotional /social issues. It's rough every Sunday.)

Preparing Siena to be baptized. She's on the brink of becoming accountable and I'm feeling the stress of that culpability.

...and of course, having a BABY! 

I don't  know how to keep my sanity,the kids safe AND a clean house. It's an impossible task. Aaaaahhhh!

More Summer Fun

Ez is a fan of Grandma's dress up box 

The girls are fans of Uncle Harpers rudimentary fort kit.

We took a drive along Squaw Peak Road down to Hobble Creek last Saturday. It was only made possible because we had a truck. Beautiful drive, even if it did take 3 hours.

Harper gets us out on the lake more often than we normally would go... Which is a really good thing.

I can't even stand being out there on the choppy water seven months pregnant. I'm out for the rest of the year.

This guy loves it though.

Remember The Year of the Yard? We're almost done with our started projects. Yay! We've just got the fence to finish.

Cousins! I love that we can all hang with Grandma Camp.

I'm failing at the Mom Thing still. But every once in a while I'll catch a break... Like when the kids stop fighting and start giggling because they realize how ridiculous the punishment is. I'll take it!

This summer has been slow going for Solstice, which I'm actually very happy with. I can barely keep my act together with normal, day -to -day stuff, so I'm glad I'm not overwhelmed with weddings on top of that.

I have had a bunch of good floral practice opportunities though between one wedding, bridal picture florals, and a funeral.

On the 3rd of July, we went to see The Candy Bomber fly over the Scera Park. It was one of those experiences that you don't realize how awesome it is going to be until you're actually there. Juan and I both didn't really have words to describe how grateful we were to be able to share that experience and history lesson with our kids.

I promised the girls they could have a limeade stand sometime this summer. The perfect day arrived and they got to work juicing and making signs. 

After about an hour and a half the cousins had made $8. Not too bad considering we live on a quiet -ish street. A generous donation of a fiver from one guy probably helped a lot.

At 30 weeks. I was just starting to really feel the pain of pregnancy again. No more kids for us because I just can't handle all of my own complaining.

Every once in a while we'll be spontaneous and go to a splash pad. The summer has been good for us all.

Another Lesson in Empathy

I lead a comfortable life. Not in just the temporal aspects of having a nice home, plenty of food, and abounding opportunities, but also in the sense that I've never experienced having a disorder, major physical limitations, or complications in pregnancy, to name a few.  When it comes to the people in my life I have a lot of family and friends who I know I can count on. All this and much more contributes to my comfortable life.

In one aspect I feel abnormally blessed: none of my close loved ones have died. I know death is a part of life and that we find solace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ but I also know that loss is accompanied with grief and pain. I've never experienced that kind of suffering. 

My life has been... comfortable.

Along with the comfort of never feeling that heartache, I've never been able to really empathize with people who have experienced that for themselves. I never know what to say or how to show them my grief for their pain because I simply can't relate. Empathy is something I ALWAYS and NEVER wish to have.

Although my comfortable life continues on, there has recently been a space carved out of my heart for empathy in the loss of a pet.

Our Margo died suddenly and very unexpectedly around midnight on July 3rd. We had just taken her to get spayed the Monday before and she had been recovering quite well from what we could tell. She was back to her playful self in just two days but we kept her activity level to a minimum because they told us to wait until Day 7 to let her run around again. For reasons I'm still not ready to learn yet, her sutures opened up again on Day 6. We were not home when it happened and since we had already fed and watered her that day and it was late when we got home, we didn't check on her before going to bed. The next morning was the Fourth of July and we all woke up really early to go to a memorial service our neighbors hold in their yard for veterans. Immediately afterwards we left for the Grand Parade. When we got home around 10:45, Siena went outside to feed her dog. She came back quickly to report that Margo was covered in flies and wasn't moving. Juan knew what that meant and whisked Siena away to inside the house. He then broke the news to me.

What emotions I felt afterward were strong and confusing; it was a type of sadness and guilt I had never felt before. Sadness because I knew Margo had suffered without any consolation from her owners. We hadn't been there to help her when she needed us. Sadness from knowing that we wouldn't get to teach her more, play with her more, take her on "night walks" as the girls called them, or see her grow old. Sadness that my brother's dog, Stryker, wouldn't get to play with his best dog friend again. My heart was overflowing with guilt because just the night before I mentioned to Juan for the umpteenth time how I wish we could spend more time with Margo but that the days seemed to be jam-packed with other to-do's. She was always fed and watered and regularly walked and played with but I felt Mommy Guilt all the time from not giving her constant companionship. I joked to everybody about her being my neglected fourth child. I also blamed myself for not checking her incision more closely because I may have seen a clue that things weren't normal. I blamed myself for making the appointment to get her spayed in the first place. I felt horrible guilt over all the times she would frustrate me and I'd call her a "dumb dog" under my breath. It was torture. We were responsible for her well being and under our care she died a cruel death. I suddenly couldn't fathom caring for the new child that was coming our family. It was too much.

I sobbed, I prayed, I punched things, I felt drained. And this was just about a dog.

Juan was visibly affected too, especially since he had to take care of the disposal of her body. His dad came to help and that was the only thing that got him through it. I can't even imagine what he went through emotionally. The rest of the day we decided to fill with distractions. It was really, really hard to go to the family  bbq but we made it and ended up smiling and laughing with family. The whole day we stayed away from the house.

The next day was Fast Sunday and we all fasted for peace and comfort. It has helped significantly with the guilt I feel. Since then we've kept in the groove and made ourselves go outside to weed and water next to her empty kennel. I always catch myself looking out the window to check on her, but the reminder hurts.

Today we are spending more time in the backyard having fun with giant bubbles. It's definitely helping. We're learning that distraction until the initial edge of pain wears off is the best way for us to cope. I don't know what the future holds or when we will be faced with sorrow like this again or worse, but I hope that I'm strengthened through this experience to be able to cope with the next.

Camps Camp

This weekend we...