Gotta Love Neighbors!

Since I've been gone from the neighborhood I've been missing my "peeps" big time. I often roam the block aimlessly hoping that someone will wander out of their house and one day it totally payed off. We had an awesome impromptu playtime with most of the boys on the block as everyone was coming home from work. Eventually everyone had to go in for dinner and I was already thinking of the next time I could hang with them all. I - oh so subtly - asked one of my neighbors if she wanted to get the boys together again over the weekend to hang out again and she generously offered up her house and set up the OH SO COOL BOUNCE HOUSE. Everyone on the block turned up and we had an absolute blast. Here are some of the pics from the day.


Nolan & Grayson going down the Bounce House slide

Nolan rolling around on the grass

Daredevil Dixon showing the 2yr olds how to really scare their parents

Mama Drama

Well, the past month has been a wee bit stressful for all of us. The novelty of grandma's house has worn off for Nolan and he now cries, "Back Daddy's house! No daddy, no work, stay here. Daddy broke house." Martin is now the rockstar whenever he is around, Nolan really misses him. And so do I.

Martin really is getting close to having all the floors layed and he's doing a beautiful job. He's turning the corner and seeing real progress and feeling very good about all his hard work. On the other hand, I'm turning the corner into the last 29 days of pregnancy and seeing empty closets, no furniture in the house and filthy EVERYTHING. Oh yeah, that's a recipe for a brewing storm if we've ever seen one.

Well, I've decided to deal with the stress of displacement and total loss of control by freaking out about labor. Because, well... that's so much more within my control! HA! Recent local news about nursing errors resulting in a ruptured uterus & dead baby and a baby stolen straight from the hospital helped to send me into a tailspin.

I started looking into Doula's (a women hired to help laboring moms) and scheduling interviews during Martin's lunch breaks. Then I started to freak out about about our choices for hospitals even though we had been pre-registered for months. So in the last week I went and flipped it on it's head. No Doula and switching hospital's from French to Sierra Vista. Amazingly, once I made those decisions I felt a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders. After speaking with our Dr. he said enough for us to start to reconsider Sierra Vista. Then, a couple of neighbors reminded me how they had unexpectantly needed the NICU unit at Sierra Vista and how horrible it would have been if they had to be seperated from their babies.

That's when it hit me. Labor is not really about me at all ... it's about Gabrielle. When I stopped focusing on me and started focusing on her I felt SO much better! The poor thing, we've been so wrapped up in getting the house finished before she arrives we stopped being excited about her and started getting stressed out at the thought of her. How SAD! I'm just going to try to focus on all the cute baby things from here on out. Whatever happens with the house happens. Big deal, people have had to struggle with much more real issues than this.