And now, my grandmother is dying.

One thing I didn't include in my last post was that my brother and his wife had their twins early. H wasn't due until the first week of January, but her water broke about two weeks ago now. She remained on bed rest in hospital for a week before spiking a fever, so in they went to take the babies. Two sweet, tiny little girls. One just over three pounds, one just under. They were intubated but mostly stable, for about four days.

Then, the tinier girl suddenly wasn't doing so well. A bacterial infection, they said, and she was put on life support. Not two full days later and she slipped away. They finally got to hold her, for the first time, for her last twenty minutes of life.

This is their story, and I hope my brother wouldn't be upset at me writing this here. My mother called me with the news, just hours after she died, and I spent a full day crying before I could even call him.

Thank God, thank God, the surviving girlie is doing well and can hopefully be going home within a couple of weeks. I haven't seen pictures yet, and I didn't want to ask if there were any taken of baby C before she left...

Needless to say I'm being hit with tears periodically throughout the day, yet we had a good weekend nonetheless. Ian felt well enough Sunday to go on an outing with us to a little learning farm (llamas, "Oreo" cows, all manner of odd fowl, goats, and more), then to an incredible village-sized kiddie playground and out to dinner. He's back to work today and feeling alright other than lingering cough.

I have nothing profound to say about anything today. I'm just sad, and grateful for my luck and blessings, and really very emotionally vulnerable.

Hi! Sorry! Totally didn't mean to disappear, but you know how a hiatus starts to feel all awkward when it wasn't intentional and it becomes really difficult to know where to begin when you want to break the silence. So, instead of trying to catch up on the last month and our move and settling in, I'ma tell you a few things about the here and now, first. Then we catch up over many little posts in the days to come, ok.

1) My birthday is in a few weeks and all of a sudden I'm all jewelry. Not fancy stuff, etsy stuff. The thing is, I wear my white gold/diamonds wedding set and same/same stud earrings all the time. Never change them. Okay once in a blue moon I change to white gold hoops but that feels all WHOA. Even more WHOA is when I put on my little silver disc necklace from Superhero Designs, which I do love but things around my neck distract me. Anyway, suddenly I have earring wants and maybe a few funky ring wants. I emailed Many Links to Ian at work one day. Next day, I tried to surf Etsy some more and got a message that "This site has been blocked by an administrator." HAHA! Shhh, accidentally I discovered that Ian made a few purchases through PayPal so yay for birthday jewelry! in a few weeks.

2) Ian feels crap today and thinks he gots the Swine. A coworker had it fo'sho very recently. I dropped a king's ransom at the natural health store tonight. (For the record, my new doc/OB advised me not to get vaccine, which I probably wasn't, and anyway it's not available here yet, and anyway Ian's not high risk so he wouldn't have been getting it anyway, prolly) Already we were all doing daily vitamin D (liquid, D3) and an antioxidant formula in general. Now, here's what we are doing to kill whatever virus Ian brought home: still the vitD drops, extra vit C, shotglasses of colloidal silver, SambuGuard (black elderberry and echinacea syrup - elderberry SUPER KILLS the flu, so expensive though), oscillococcinum for Ian (with more on reserve for anyone else symptomatic), oregano oil, neti pot, warm gargles, lots of sleep, water, etc.

3)This house is smaller and open concept and makes my ADD really problematic. But we're in a decent daily rhythm and Ewan's on this math frenzy binge lately while Seth goes all artiste on me. That said, I've almost seriously contemplated a stint in public school for them over the time we're here; I'll talk more about it later but it's only a musing for now.

Ok! I'm tapped out and now I'm off to bed, immunity care and all of that.

Less than a week until moving day! We're in the stretch now where some of the fix-ups we'd wanted to finish before leaving are being moved to the "yeah right" column on the list. We did have our bedroom, the boys' shared room and the back stairwell painted. Tomorrow new basement windows will be installed and then the auditor returns in the evening to evaluate our home energy updates (come onnnnn rebates!)

The packing is going decently. I think. I have palpitations when I look around but once I dig in and move some piles it looks like progress rather quickly and so I am encouraged. I have more energy in the evenings so end up staying up later than I should, drag through the days, lather rinse repeat. The kids... I keep promising them they'll have much more attention once we get to the new house. :S We've changed our original plan of loading up the two vehicles and buying everything at IKEA and the like once there. Most of what I wanted from IKEA isn't available online so that mucks things up a bit! Anyway I found myself really wanting my own bedroom set to be with us, so now we are renting a U-Haul and towing Ian's car with it. I'm happy about this because we have a ton of boxes of our books and homeschool materials, games etc. that will take up a LOT more room than I'd expected! But ask me to edit the load and I laugh. :D

Oh! The ultrasound. It was fine, I've had the results at my last midwife app't already and all is well, measuring on dates etc. We did not find out, for anyone still wondering. Though at the u/s and at my app't the heart rate was 150-160, still. :) I think this time I am not crazy to think odds of a girl are higher, but then I keep thinking I'm receiving little signs about my boy name. Either way I am feeling peaceful and just plain excited about this baby. (No midwife yet but I'm not fretting until we get to SC on that, either.)

So! There's that. I'm hoping to update once more quickly before we leave (computers go dark on Tuesday afternoon) and then probably not until the following week once we're settled and hooked up to services. Meanwhile we have a family early-Thanksgiving-slash-bon voyage dinner on Saturday, boys' portraits with a photographer friend on Sunday, carpet and sofas cleaning on Monday plus our final homeschool group field trip, a haircut for me on Tuesday, picking up my new glasses at some point before Wednesday, and probably fourteen other errands I'm missing right now! Whew.

Here I am, due for my periodic complaint-posting. Click away, peoples! Anyhoo. The word of today is an expletive, because today sucked. I have another bladder infection, which is brutal, plus some stomach bug on top of an already uncomfortable middle-section. Okeyfine. I cried, today, over kids and packing and frustration and stabbing stomach pains and dizziness and sleepiness. Sure. Then Ian comes home and says somebody has effed up big at his workplace and guess what? We might not be going, now.

Excuse me? When we've paid deposits and done work to this house we expect rent to pay for and I'm half-packed and....

He'll find out tomorrow if somebody is straightening this out. Of course I'll be somewhat relieved if we don't go anywhere but it also screws us (and our friends) in a number of ways and I'm really just done with how his workplace bungles so many things and we pay for it.

Otherwise, you know. Life is Really Good. Beautiful, even. We have our ultrasound tomorrow morning, and no. I'm not going to try and find out what this baby is. Other than cute and healthy. :)

I'm in need of some good vibes and encouragement on the midwifery care front, my friends. Back in mid-July I sent out several email inquiries to some of the SC midwives I was interested in. Some I'd found on the 'net and liked their sites, some were recommended on email lists I'd joined. I have only heard back from one, and that was just a few days ago. Grumble. I know, email is unreliable. I'm suspicious of my own provider, as Ian mentioned last week he'd sent me an e-card and I'd never seen anything of it. So I know it can be spotty. But.

So I'm sending them out again, trying. I will make phone calls and I will definitely seek in-person interviews when I arrive in SC. I just don't want to leave it until then, you know? And I don't have the wherewithal these days to spend that kind of time and energy (and long distance dollahs) on the phone doing this, only to have to really ask all the same stuff in October. But I'm nervous I'll end up in the proverbial creek by then.

Yes, I relax and say it'll work out... I'll get the one I'm meant to have care for us... maybe. Breathing in... and out....

(and no, this doesn't make me EVER consider unassisted birthing... whole other blahblahbbhkjsdkal;fjkld;j)

I find myself popping into so many blogs daily and wishing they would update...then I remember mine and go, "Oh." We've been kicking it into high gear with getting the house ready to move. Little things like packing up most of my doula books (sold to a friend who is a new doula), re-organizing my bins of decorations, homeschool curricula, bedding, off-season clothing. Then, we're doing some Big Stuff to the house to add to the frenzy...

We've basically gone with some big upgrades, last minute - got an energy audit, having a friend install a new furnace and a/c for cheap, and now having insulation blown into the exterior walls. As it turns out, the rebate on the insulation is minimal, but if you're having it done on top of a bigger change like the furnace, the rebate suddenly becomes huge. Once we get all the rebates back the furnace might only cost us about $600. My bills alone should reduce by that much in one year, and our unit is over forty years old (yes, really) so I'm happy with having a new, reliable furnace in place for our tenants while we're out of country this winter.

Also we are having the boys' room painted because the plaster walls are quite damaged and I'm not up for repairing and painting them myself. We're also having the back stairway done; this is huge because the ceiling is SO high and full of holes (some previous owner/nimrod had hung a drop ceiling so there are a dozen holes from its' anchors) and one wall has had wallpaper remains stripped off only to reveal some 1940s nasty green (lead-loaded?) paint....

The rough part is, my house is once again getting more TLC and looking cute and tidy and I'm loathe to leave it. Add to this my nervousness about the move (and a nightmare re: finding the right midwife, whole 'nother post!) and I'm clenching my jaw a bit too much lately.

And then... I breathe, and I pray, and I meditate and I list out loud all the positive and exciting things we have to look forward to! The happy anticipation comes back.

I'll try to update more frequently, truly. I've been on the fence about posting more personal stuff (oh I know I've waffled on this for over a year) but I'm thinking I need to just go ahead for sanity's sake. More regular posting takes time I should probably using elsewhere but the payoff is good. :)