Emotional Preggy Lady

Yup. That's me. Maybe this post should be entitled over-emotional pregnant lady. My poor husband has to deal with his worst nightmare-an overly sensitive female who cries for seemingly no reason. This month has been quite a ride. I've found about a thousand reasons to cry. Anything anyone says to me makes me cry. I cry after every doctors visit. I had such a bad day. Of course speaking to my hubby about this wouldn't yield any results because I really need a female to listen. He just isn't playing the part. My day started off with me getting my kids out of the house late. Then I didn't get enough done during the day. I layed down to rest and only after I woke up realized that I was supposed to pick my son up early because today is a fast day. I drove like a maniac to pick him up and like the good boy that he is, he was waiting for me patiently near his gan. He had been crying but wasn't crying when I picked him up. I apologized profusely and asked him if anyone saw that he was waiting there. One girl asked him where he lived and what his name is and said she would call me. I never received any calls. I don't understand how only one girl could see my son crying. Aren't any mothers walking their kids to and from gan? Aren't there any adults around? Apparently not. So my hubby suggested that I go and buy him a treat to make it up to him. I bought him one and me one. Only after getting home did I realize that mine wasn't mehadrin. So I didn't get to eat anything.

When I picked up my daughter her ganenet told me how she started off the day so nicely until it was time to try to make on the toilet. From that point on she was the enemy of the ganenet. So we got home and my son asked if he could clip thorns in the yard. He's been patiently waiting til after shmita to do that. I gave him the clippers. This meant though that neither he nor his sister ate a normal lunch. Then the repairman came over to repair our leaky sink.

I had noticed before Rosh Hashana that there was a lot of water on the floor near the sink but I figured that it was b/c my hubby was washing dishes. On Rosh Hashana I had the brains to open up the closet under the sink and there I found a wonderful flood. I removed all of the plastic bags and spilled out the water in the ones that were full. Fun Fun! After the chag we called our owner and the repair man. The repair man came over and said that he thinks he needs to replace a thin pipe. Today he came over in the early afternoon to replace it only to find out that no, it's not the pipe. It's the faucet. So he spoke to the owner who said that the faucet is still under warantee. The owner wanted us to drive to Jlm to give them the faucet so that they can utilize the warantee. Never mind that we don't have a faucet in our kitchen. Never mind that we never did the dishes from Rosh Hashana. So now we made up that tomorrow, Friday, my hubby will go in Jlm at 11:45 or so and will give the faucet to the owner. The owner will get it replaced and then the repair man will magically replace it all before Shabbat. All this of course means that we will have a very hard time cooking. I told my hubby that I'm sure I'm having the baby because of all of this. I tried not to get stressed out but let's face it, I'm stressed.

So my hubby has to go to Jlm tomorrow. My house is a mess and my hubby resents me saying so. I'm not sure why though because it's not like he's tried to clean it. If you ask me, he's still not recovered fromt he fast. Anyway, after the whole thing with the repair man, I had to go to the OB/GYN. I got there early because I know that in the past when I don't there is a huge line and everyone and their five or ten kids is there. I did the blood pressure, weighing, pish in a cup thing and then waited for the doc. My kids however didn't wait so patiently. Well my daughter woke up suddenly and realized that she hadn't eaten lunch, not at the babysitter and not at home. She was starving and cranky. This allowed for some nice temper tantrums and screaming. All in public of course. My son was actually much better behaved. He took a sefer tehillim to read and I showed him some perakim that were good to read. The doc came about 45 minutes late. Some lady asked to go in front of me and stupidly I let her. She had no kids with her. I had two cranky hungry ones. Luckily b/4 I went in my hubby called to say that he would be there in a few minutes. While I was inside with the doc my hubby came and took care of the kiddies. yay!

So how did the dr. visit go? Well I gained weight and so did the babe. It's now 3.3 kilos. The doc checked it's size and said it was a good size-belly, head, leg. Then he checked the liquid and said it wasn't so much. He told me that I should go to Jlm next Tuesday to have an ultrasound in case I'm losing fluid. He also told me to be careful to count the fetal movements. I need to feel 3 a day. That shouldn't be a problem. I'm feeling way more than that. I asked if there's anything I can do to speed up the due date. He told me to drink caster oil and O.J. We'll see what happens but boy do I want to give birth within 72 hours of Yom Kippur. I was reading in a book about the halachos and basically within 72 hours she can eat on Y.K. but if the baby is born before the 72 hour mark she can only eat in shiurim. That's not fun! That's why I'm hoping to hold out until early next week and then to go into labor naturally. I hope the One Above is listening to my requests and answering in the affirmative. Anyway, so that's why I keep saying to my hubby that I think I'll be giving birth really really soon.

As I see it, it's the perfect time for me to give birth. My house is a mess. I have no faucet in the kitchen. I haven't cooked for Shabbos. It would so be the ideal time in terms of stress to give birth. If I survive this Shabbos then I guess I can survive anything. I'm supermom! Ok, so now I'm going to talk to my hubby only to have him say something that I will perceive as insensitive and cry. Yay! So fun having an overabundance of hormones.

Rosh Hashana Menu

Since I am nine months pregnant I feel entitled to post this after Rosh Hashana. Hope everyone had a good holiday. I for one spent a lot of time preparing with the "help" of my kiddies. Then once the chag came I didn't have a very restful time. I put my daughter to sleep before my hubby got home from shul and then let my son stay up with us. This proved to be a challenge since he was overtired. He did enjoy the simanim but refused to sleep before the meal was over. The next day we all woke up late and had to eat and get to shul to hear shofar. We just made it b"H. In the afternoon I didn't get to rest due to an overabundance of youngins inspiring to be baalei tekiya. I wasn't too happy about the lack of sleep. The second night, I decided to try to keep both kids up. We put them to bed right after the simanim. Then we ate the rest of the meal alone. That was particularly nice. It's probably one of the last times we'll be able to do that. Soon we'll be changing the clocks and then the kids will be up for the meal with us. Fun fun. So I went to sleep as soon as I could after the meal. Then I forced myself to get out of bed at 7 knowing that the kids would sleep late and that it would give me enough time to get everything together so that we could get to shul on time to hear the shofar again. I ate breakfast by myself and got the snacks ready. Then the kids woke up and I dressed them. We walked to shul and they were actually running late. The kids ate their breakfast bags nicely while I listened to Torah reading and the haftorah. Then we heard the shofar and were free to go play. We had a little preggy pow wow on one of the benches outside the shul. There are a lot of us due around the same time, b"H.

And now, for the main reason of this post.............. our Rosh Hashana Menu:
We made brisket in a tomato and cranberry sauce, baked breaded shnitzel, carrot kugel, cranberry crisp, veggie soup with matzah balls, gefilte fish, chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter squares. Out of all of that food we have a tiny bit of soup left. We have some fish left for Shabbos, no brisket, a few pieces of shnitzel, 3 pieces of carrot kugel, a few cookies and three p.b. squares. I'm so not looking foward to cooking for shabbos. My hubby ususally does the chicken b/c I can't stand the look and smell of it when I'm preggy. I'll probably make some sort of rice and be done with it.

Music

For our anniversary my husband and I went out to a great steakhouse in Yerushalayim. We had been there once before and one thing I loved (besides the yummy food) was the wonderful music they played. I never asked them what it was but today when I dropped my daughter at her babysitter, she had the same music playing and I immediately got the name of the musician. His name is Eliezer Rosenfeld and he plays popular Jewish music songs mostly on the flute. His music is beautiful. Being someone who played the flute for many years his music speaks to me. The greatest part is that he's playing songs that I know. Some are upbeat and some are slow. So this is going to be my new obsession. I must get my hands on some of his CDs.

Since we moved into our house about half a year ago, we haven't hooked up our stereo. This is because the place we'd like to put it has no outlet. The only other piece of furniture where we could put it is right opposite the door and I felt that it wouldn't be nice to see that right when you walk in. So, our stereo is sitting in the box in our living room. Hopefully we'll find a satisfactory solution. For the time being, I've been listening to Radio Kol Chai like all day every day. I love their shows and their taste in music (mostly). Now that we have our new computer maybe I could buy E.R.'s CDs and play them on the computer. Woo Hoo! I'm so excited.

Shana Tova to all!

Toilet Learning

I'm so sick of this! My 2.5 year old daughter is in the middle of being trained. She's totally ready but because of psychological issues it's just not working. The psychological issues that I'm talking about are the fact that I'm going to give birth soon, she just started going to a new gan about two and a half weeks ago, and typical toddler toilet training issues. I'm trying to get her trained before I give birth. This is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. She's gone through a lot of ups and downs. She can totally do it but is now playing games with it. Last week she decided to hold it in at her gan. Every day I would take her to the toilet before leaving for work and then when I would pick her up the ganenet would tell me that she hadn't made all day. This week she's started to make at gan but yesterday she literally gave the ganenet hell. She did the exact opposite of whatever she was told. If the ganenet told everyone to clean up, she spread all the toys out. If she told everyone to stay inside, she openned the door for them. Now she's enjoying being in control. She wants to make when she feels like it. What this can mean is that she'll hold it in way too long and then make anywhere but the toilet. I have to count my blessings because so far we've avoided accidents on the couch B"H but that doesn't mean it won't happen sooner or later. NOT FUN! She also refuses to go when I ask her to. If I say to her: "Let's try to see if anything comes out." She throws a tantrum. She literally kicks and screams at the top of her lungs. She grabs her blanket and then puts it in her mouth, biting it like there's no tomorrow. Then she just continues to cry. If I try to get her to talk she just screams louder and regresses to babydom. She's talking less and less and throwing more and more tantrums. Really fun for me because I'm the one she spends the most time with. It's gotten to the point where I literally cry almost every day. I feel so helpless and I can't stand it. I wish she'd just do it on her own like I know she can. This is not happening however, and I'm worried what will be in a few weeks when the baby does come. How much more can we regress? Let's not answer that. So for now, I remain an extremely frustrated and depressed parent who is extremely thankful when 8 PM comes because then........the house is quiet. Only 3.5 hours to go! Yay.

Miriam Adahan

Miriam Adahan has been giving shiurim on our yishuv for the past two weeks. I love her stuff and have heard her speak before. She's just great. The only way I'd miss a class is if I either give birth on the day of a class or am too tired to attend with a two day old. She always says such great things in a new way. She breaks things down so that her methods are doable and she is very into encouragement. I hope that these shiurim will allow me to work on my middot.

Right now I'm going through a real slump. I'm in my ninth month and am exhausted all the time. My daughter is being potty trained and is having accidents about once a day. She is also regressing and decided to stop talking and start grunting and crying. I don't know if this has to do with the toilet learning or the new baby who will arrive soon enough. All I know is that it's too hard for me to deal with this in my ninth month.

So Miriam Adahan was talking about overcoming little obstacles in our daily lives. She gave tons of examples and it sounds so good. But then I get home and get lazy and although I really try to follow her guidlines I'm just too tired to do so. If this were at any other point in my life I'd probably take to it much better. I really have to force myself to get more into this avodat hamidot. It's something that I've been meaning to do for a while and that I really would like to do not just for me, but for my husband and kids.

Last year I learned Tanach in memory of my grandmother. I tried to learn one chapter every day but it didn't always work. This year maybe my focus will be more mussar and midot. I don't feel that I'm in a position to commit to anything though. I don't know what will be after I give birth. If my kiddies are acting up now, before the baby is out of my belly then what will be later. Because I am a realist let's assume that the situation will not be getting much better later on. Later I'll have to divide my attention in three. As it is I have a hard time sitting and doing homework with my oldest. My daughter needs tons of attention and she's an off the wall toddler so she really needs to be watched 100% of the time. Maybe a different time I'll detail some of the wild and crazy things she's done in her short lifetime so far. How on earth am I going to nurse a baby, do homework, and give attention to a bouncy toddler? Help! I feel like I'm already drowing and I haven't even tried to swim yet. That's basically why I feel like I can't commit to a nightly learning plan. We'll see what happens in the end.

Heat Wave

Wow. I never quite realized how hard it is to be pregnant during the summer. For the life of me I can't seem to regulate my body temperature. No matter how hot or cool it is outside I'm always about 20 degrees hotter than everyone else. All I have to do is get off the couch and I feel like I need a shower to cool off and wash off all of the sweat. I can't go anywhere or do anything without A/C. Thank goodness yesterday was a little cooler so I really enjoyed the break from the hot weather. Today however was back to the sunny and hot weather and as if that's not enough I let my hubby have the car so that he could do a massive shopping. Well what that means for me of course is that I must walk all over to pick up the kids. Walking to my son's cheider is not so fun although better than it was last year. I left extra early so I would have time to take breaks. Then we had to walk and pick up my daughter. All I wanted to do was sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes by the time I got home. Well I guess if I were to look at the bright side I would be happy that the pregnancy is almost over. I'm finally in my ninth month and hopefully the weather will be getting cooler as the chagim approach.

Updates

Wow, I haven't posted for a while so really there is so much to say. I'll start by saying Mazal Tov to my former roommate who got engaged! I'm so excited for her but since I'm almost in my 9th month I won't be going to her vort tonight. I told her that when I was 9 months preggy with my oldest, I danced at another friends wedding and then went into labor after that. I know that if I go I'll want to dance. I'll just have to wish a mazal tov from the sidelines. I really hope she gets married here so we can go to the wedding. It would be so much fun to have another friend living here in E"Y.

Also, a daughter of a family on the yishuv got engaged .... to Rav Leff's son. Mazal Tov to them. So much excitement going on around here.

Starting off the day with these two wonderful bits of news makes me so happy. I think I'll just leave it at that for now.