pretty pretty princesses

happiness is...
playing dollhouse

Kathryn and Camille before the beach
Charlotte Claire with her mermaid Barbie

So here I am, day after day, thinking more and more that this pregnancy is doomed. Then I get an encouraging comment, which makes me a bit hopeful again...and believe me, I have spent more than enough time googling things like "bleeding after seeing a heartbeat"...and there are many stories of babies thriving while mama bleeds. So.

In the mean time, here I am. It is sunny and gorgeous and is going to be 88 degrees out today. The princesses have had breakfast, and now are having cocoa, thanks to Suzanne. I have walked Rosie, and eaten my oats. How can I get through this day without going in that glorious swimming pool with these guys? blah. And my nephew has graduated, and my brother and sis-in-law are throwing him a party today...can I even go? I don't feel so great, morning sickness or dread of miscarriage sickness, I can't distinguish. And then there is the dread of the Possible Big Gush.

Last night I made a huge batch of stove-top popcorn with real butter on it. The older kids were at the youth meeting, so it was only Paul and I and the five youngest. They put in an old dvd of, "Jon and Kate"...which is sad to watch now, especially because they keep saying they, "are in this together". I personally think Kate was pretty rough on Jon, I can't imagine treating Paul like that. Their kids are pretty adorable though.

Paul is looking for the permit to the dump. We can only fit so much in the two big cans that get picked up weekly by the Garbage Man Who Hates Rosie, so when we clean rooms or get rid of old fans, we put the stuff under the deck, and take it to the dump. Well...where in the world can a dump permit have gone? (he is looking everywhere for it, and there is nothing more irritating than a husband who can't find something when the wife is having a good old time on the computer, and doesn't necessarily want to stop typing and help look...but the rumpling through the drawers is driving me crazy!)

Tomorrow is Evelyn Joy's twelth birthday! She is my eleventh child, (Evelyn-Eleven), and was named after a close friend who has now passed away, some 80 years older than our Evelyn. Evelyn is the middle girl in the Five Girls In a Row, the seventh girl in the family. She has extremely curly strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes, and is spunky through and through. She has been a teenager for a long time now. I don't know what we are doing for her birthday yet. She requested burgers on the grill, so we made some and froze them, and bought the buns. She also wanted ice cream pie, so I shall have to send someone to the store.

When Evelyn was born, oh that was a crazy summer. Emily was 14 years old, Abigail 12, Benjamin 10, Mirielle 9, Joseph 8, Aaron 6 1/2, Mali 5, Sam 4, Margaret 3, and Kathryn 17 months. The month before Evelyn's birth, Benjamin fell off the front of the party boat on the boys' camping trip. He fell off the front, (boys pushing and fooling around, he got pushed in), went under the boat, and hit the motor. The driver of the boat didn't believe the kids when they started screaming that the motor hit Ben, so a few of the boys just dove in and saved him. He was bleeding horribly, the blades had ripped him up...they were on the other side of a remote lake in the Adirondacks. Paul and a few other guys got him wrapped in a sheet, and motored him across the lake in a smaller boat, found a camp with a phone, called the ambulance, and started the seven mile trip down the lake to meet the ambulance at the main dock. Paul will not speak of that night, I do believe he was in shock. It was before cell phones, which do not work well in the Adirondacks anyway, but he called me from the hospital and told me that Ben was in surgery and he did not know if he was going to live. Blah. Torture, that night was absolute torture for me. I could not just drive to Saranac Lake Hospital, I had all the other kids here...(we had just finished packing everything for a family camping trip that was supposed to start the next day)(I was really going camping up in the mountains at 8 months pregnant with all those kids)(we had to cancel)Anyway, Benjamin did survive, he had 106 stitches, battled infection from the lake water...I drove up there to visit him twice while he was in the hospital, no easy feat: five hour drive one way. (I begged and pleaded with God so much that night, I and He heard my prayers. I actually felt His presence like a warm blanket, and I fell asleep, woken by the call from Paul that Ben was out of surgery...and that the blade had hit his hip, saving his life...if it had hit his tummy, or his spine, he would have been done for...)

By the time Evelyn was born, things had settled down. Ben had taken out a lot of his stitches on his own, (under the supervision of one of our good friends who is a pediatric surgeon), and that is when he decided he wanted to be a dr., or in the medical field.

Anyway...see what happens when I just ignore Paul and sit here and type? He gave up, couldn't find the permit. I will have to call the town and get another copy. blah.

He asked me if he was going to drive me crazy this week. I said no, I decided that though I was tempted to think that, I wouldn't let him drive me crazy. I just sat here and typed. He is so funny. He just left with Jon to fix Emily and Abigail's washing machine. I am thinking this week isn't going to be very vacation-y, with him wanting to fix everything (he is working on the roof this week, and perhaps a large plumbing project), and me being so housebound...blah. But hey, life is short. As Emily said the other night, everything is "finite". These days with the kids will go by, and never come back, and I shall enjoy them as much as I can. Just because I am suffering here doesn't mean they have to. Wow, I do feel sorry for myself!