Wanted: One Sunny Day
Oh Lord how I would like to have a sunny day. Just one. Sunny. Day. Fall has come with a vengeance to Stuttgart. For weeks, every day was sunny and warm. Every day we went outside to the playground after lunch and soaked up the rays. And then overnight, it was fall. Let me tell you, fall in Stuttgart is not very pretty. For every one day of sun, brightly colored leaves and Oktoberfest, we have 12 days of gray, blah, cool but extremely humid weather. It's as if God put a pewter-colored bowl over our world. Dark, dank, looming, gray in a way that makes everything look dirty and depressed.
I am so affected by the weather. I'm not saying I'm 100% always in a happy mood when the sun is out. It's just so much harder to be grouchy when it's bright, right? This gray weather seems to actually suck the energy from my veins, the joy from my life, the patience from my backbone. I try and try to keep busy all day, find little errands that we can run to make the day pass a little more quickly and get us some interaction with other human beings. But after six days of a sunless, gray existence, I'm out of love for the world.
Add to this weather the fact that I'm 36 weeks pregnant and feeling it more than I ever did with Josiah and Annika. I truly don't understand how women in their 40s have babies without staying in bed the entire time! Is it awful awful? No. But it's definitely more uncomfortable this time around. I have the physical discomforts that come with pregnancy and the mental worries that always occur around this time...like remembering that delivering a baby isn't exactly pain free, and my favorite ever-present concern of making it to the hospital on time. There's the scale that keeps creeping up (gray weather and boredom + late pregnancy = compulsive overeating). Also: will he be healthy? How will his siblings react? How will having a third baby change all of the relationship dynamics of this family? Will he have colic? Do people notice that I've been wearing the same pair of pants for the last two weeks?
All right, that last one isn't that important...but the sudden advent of fall means that all of my summer maternity clothing suddenly seems inappropriate, leaving me with two pairs of jeans and three shirts. Which can crush one's soul at the end of pregnancy...sniff. I know that you all are feeling just SO sorry for me, right?
I have been holding it together pretty well over these gray days, but today I am just so unbearably worn out and poor Josiah and Annika are seeing a crabbier side of Rachel...I keep trying to explain that I am feeling tired and uncomfortable and probably will feel worse before I feel better. We talk about the baby a lot. They are so excited to meet him. Last night we put his little bouncer together and Annika said "I'm going to LOVE the baby!"
Right now, they are "adding on" to the Roman house that Josiah made in school today. All of the students in his class were asked to bring in a shoebox to make houses. They have been talking about Ancient Rome...Josiah told me yesterday that they were building arches. So far, school has been going well. Josiah still seems eager to go every day and full of energy and information when he gets home. We quiz him every evening on what he did during the day. Hans has been working with him on his weekly spelling words. I'm very glad that their education has become such a family affair. Annika and I continue to work on Kumon and BrainQuest books in the morning...she has lately been writing X, F, E, T, I. She's got her phonics down pretty well and is starting to recognize a few three-letter words, so I think she'll probably be reading in the next six months or thereabouts.
Anyway--they're adding on to the Roman house and Annika's talking about "Hannah Montana"...not very historically accurate AND I have no idea how she knows about that show, having never seen it!
Thank you for putting up with this stream of conciousness that is half gripe/half newsy...I'm off to check the weather reports. I hope that life is sunny wherever you are!
I am so affected by the weather. I'm not saying I'm 100% always in a happy mood when the sun is out. It's just so much harder to be grouchy when it's bright, right? This gray weather seems to actually suck the energy from my veins, the joy from my life, the patience from my backbone. I try and try to keep busy all day, find little errands that we can run to make the day pass a little more quickly and get us some interaction with other human beings. But after six days of a sunless, gray existence, I'm out of love for the world.
Add to this weather the fact that I'm 36 weeks pregnant and feeling it more than I ever did with Josiah and Annika. I truly don't understand how women in their 40s have babies without staying in bed the entire time! Is it awful awful? No. But it's definitely more uncomfortable this time around. I have the physical discomforts that come with pregnancy and the mental worries that always occur around this time...like remembering that delivering a baby isn't exactly pain free, and my favorite ever-present concern of making it to the hospital on time. There's the scale that keeps creeping up (gray weather and boredom + late pregnancy = compulsive overeating). Also: will he be healthy? How will his siblings react? How will having a third baby change all of the relationship dynamics of this family? Will he have colic? Do people notice that I've been wearing the same pair of pants for the last two weeks?
All right, that last one isn't that important...but the sudden advent of fall means that all of my summer maternity clothing suddenly seems inappropriate, leaving me with two pairs of jeans and three shirts. Which can crush one's soul at the end of pregnancy...sniff. I know that you all are feeling just SO sorry for me, right?
I have been holding it together pretty well over these gray days, but today I am just so unbearably worn out and poor Josiah and Annika are seeing a crabbier side of Rachel...I keep trying to explain that I am feeling tired and uncomfortable and probably will feel worse before I feel better. We talk about the baby a lot. They are so excited to meet him. Last night we put his little bouncer together and Annika said "I'm going to LOVE the baby!"
Right now, they are "adding on" to the Roman house that Josiah made in school today. All of the students in his class were asked to bring in a shoebox to make houses. They have been talking about Ancient Rome...Josiah told me yesterday that they were building arches. So far, school has been going well. Josiah still seems eager to go every day and full of energy and information when he gets home. We quiz him every evening on what he did during the day. Hans has been working with him on his weekly spelling words. I'm very glad that their education has become such a family affair. Annika and I continue to work on Kumon and BrainQuest books in the morning...she has lately been writing X, F, E, T, I. She's got her phonics down pretty well and is starting to recognize a few three-letter words, so I think she'll probably be reading in the next six months or thereabouts.
Anyway--they're adding on to the Roman house and Annika's talking about "Hannah Montana"...not very historically accurate AND I have no idea how she knows about that show, having never seen it!
Thank you for putting up with this stream of conciousness that is half gripe/half newsy...I'm off to check the weather reports. I hope that life is sunny wherever you are!
