Much Better.

Miss Priss is back to her bubbly, sassy self.

Our little comedian, this one.

We adore this munchkin.

Three delights.

1. Nobody loves a bowl of ice cream

 more

 than

 Lundy girl.

 And nobody loves Lundy girl

 more than

 me.

{Daddy might come in for a close tie...he's pretty smitten with her too}

2.  See's Blueberry Truffles. I purchased an entire box of just these truffles.

They are like my pregnancy advent calendar. Only I don't just get one a day. Maybe two, or three...or...

3.  A good dose of inspiration.

Listen to it while folding laundry, washing dishes, or getting ready in the morning. It's what I do. I'm always on the search for the latest good podcast/devotional/debate to listen to: helps to keep my mind in high places (even while arm deep scrubbing a toilet).

Baby Shower.

This last Saturday a few friends threw me a baby shower.

Despite my protests...

It felt wrong to have people continually keep up with me having a baby every other minute.

I feel like I'm beginning to become a part of people's annual budgets:

We need to set aside for Christmas..

our family vacation...

college tuition...

retirement...

oh yes, and the Haacks will probably be having another child and require more gifts and registry requests....

But those sweet friends of mine wouldn't take no for an answer. And so we had a diaper shower.

Oh boy oh boy did I LOVE this.  Diapers, diapers diapers! Our garage is now stocked!

On the menu: Soup, Salad & Bread bar

Yummy. yummy. yummy.

White Chocolate Rasberry & Lemon Bundt Cakes.

Double YUM TO THE AY.

We sat, ate, and chatted. 

It was lovely.

 And of course too many stinka sistas went ahead and showered me with much more than diapers.

{Shout out to Mom and  Nonna: I now am the proud owner of the world's BEST AND MOST WANTED EVER BABY STROLLER: BRITAX B-READY DOUBLE STROLLER SYSTEM....heavens to betsy i am still pinching myself!!!!}

I'm sad I don't have more pictures of the ladies to show.

In all honesty I have more photos, but because I saw what I look like in them: for my sanity and self-esteem I needed to delete. No unnecessary self-deprecating here: I am grateful for my ability to grow babies...but my face looks like it's been stung by a bee. It's the crowning moment of my last weeks of pregnancy, the symptom that makes me think I will can handle any amount of labor and delivery to get this over with.

I can't go there. Not the big weird nose. Not the puffy eyes. 

I am sorry. No pictures posted if my face is in them.

Oh sweet vanity.

It was a great day. I still get emotional thinking of these ladies, who I love so. 

Women who are busier than me, work harder than me, have more stress in life than me...the ones who watch my children regularly so I can go to doctor's appointments and call just to see how I'm feeling and drop off coupons for the almond milk they know our household drinks!!....

How they find the time to insist on carving out a special day to celebrate my baby is overwhelming and unforgettable. They are my angels here on earth. I hope to pay it forward someday, to be one of the fellow friends on a gal's list who they know they can depend on. This is such a gift.

Thanks friends!

A Big Pregnant Lady on the Front Lawn, and Other Scary Tales.

I'll begin with the good news: today was almost 70 degrees.

It at least blanketed a pretty pathetic day in sunshine. What's not to like about that?

We had a rough go of it at the doctor's office. Turns out Ellie Jane, after not quite improving this week from her sniffles, has pneumonia.

And double ear infections.

And I am still crying about it.

I am not a weenie, I am not a weenie, I am not a weenie....

But, it is terribly upsetting to have your infant so distraught at a doctor's office. Ellie Jane is my child who hate hate hates going to the doctor. She accompanied Tyler and I to one of Tyler's foot appointments last week and even though she wasn't the patient, from the moment she encountered the waxy paper on the exam table, she clung to me for dear life and began crying. Today,as we entered the pediatrician's office she became paralyzed in fear. However it quickly switched to a very hysterical, uncooperative little miss drowning in tears.

We had to pin her down just to get an oxygen reading. Examine an ear. Check her heart. She screamed and thrashed with all the might her little bitty body could muster. And she was already tired and not feeling well: putting up such a fight only made her more pale and pitiful. London became equally upset watching the whole scene and had to be escorted out by a nurse. 

I'm sure the staff took one look at my ginormous pregnant self wrassling this agitated infant, ordering my distraught four year-old out of the exam room, and thought: I'm so glad she is propagating more of this. The world could really use a few more baby-mamas with maniacal children roaming the halls of doctors' offices.

She had to have an in-office nebulizer treatment to get her oxygen levels up. I had no choice but to hold her tight as she screamed and screamed and sssscreamed as I forced that darn mask over her mouth and nose, watching the steam work its way to calm her lungs. For fifteen minutes. Fifteen eternal minutes!!! I was at least glad they allowed me to do it myself in the room unaccompanied, so that I could privately cry like a baby right along with her.

Then, after all that trauma, the icing on the cake was when the nurse returned with the antibiotic shot the doctor prescribed to get a jump-start on fighting her illness.

Which once again led to another:

Pin down, pants down, rip my very soul to shreds. 

I'm rrrreally good at this stuff, as you can tell.

She has been sleeping all afternoon.

My sweet girl, she needs the rest.

And so do I. 

Just look at that belly!!!!!!!

Here's to a happier weekend,

RAERAE

Sick, tired, housebound, and as ready as I'm ever gonna be.

Ellie Janerboo is sick today. Poor baby.

A rambunctious child who usually refuses to sit still for more than three quarters of a second, suddenly tired and voluntarily lying on any surface in the house just breaks yer heart.

Even if it's just a cold.

My heart never ceases to ache for the Mommas out there who are dealing with something much more difficult than the standard cold or flu bugs with their little ones. I always find myself squeezing in a prayer during these times.

Tyler came through the door last night and saw her lying on the floor in blankets surrounded by her sisters. She was too tired to get up and run to him, flushed with fever and fatigue. He exclaimed in sadness, "Aww! My Ellie! What's wrong with my girl?!" He scooped her right up and took her back to our room to gently rock her to sleep. 

Later that night I finished folding piles of freshly cleaned clothing for the new baby. I held up little onesies and sleepers for Tyler to see and we both laughed at the insanity of how little they are. You always forget. There are a few articles that have managed to survive clear back from the time Lily wore them, and I think I will never be able to fully wrap my head around how fast it all goes. How just yesterday she was the peanut. 

I'm trying to get it all ready, trying to keep my head above water a bit longer. We had a family night this week where we discussed the upcoming baby and the new need for the big girls to be extra responsible in their chores. They have been so good lately, marking their "chore charts" regularly and following our routine with enthusiasm. My little stinkers may be stinkers, but they are good stinkers. 

I've had to think through ways to simplify life, better ways to organize and involve them in an effort to avoid our home dissolving into total chaos and anarchy. Things like getting themselves dressed, making their beds without having to be told, tying their own shoes, brushing their teeth properly, helping to unload the car, etc. I think it is good for them, this gradual process leading to independence. And heck, if I wasn't forced into requiring these measures, I could seriously see it getting a little nutty. I like mothering them. The possibility definitely exists for a downward spiral that would result in me showing up at school daily to deliver them each customized lunch baskets and doing their grocery shopping during their college years. It's a good thing when I have no choice but to let them start taking care of themselves. In fact, I am beginning to think that the perfect formula to raise an independent and self-sufficient child may be to give them a mother who borders on collapse at any moment.

Today Ellie is doing better, but we're still on the mend and consequently will be housebound another day. It feels like this household has been sick a lot lately. Between Tyler's arthritis pain and the flu plaguing the girls one by one and a massive bout of pink eye and me on the last leg of this achy pregnancy, it gets overwhelming. I am so ready for this baby to be out. And yet, as our sick Ellie rolled around in our bed at 11pm, uncomfortable and refusing to take any tylenol, I thought about a newborn added to the mix and couldn't help but say to Tyler:

 I am scared. How am I going to do this?!

My sweet guy has sensed my low-fuel attitude lately. Last week after work he arrived home and surprised me with a bubble bath surrounded in candlelight, with the order to take the night off. He fed the girls dinner, got them to bed, cleaned the house, all while I soaked and read my book. 

He never lets me forget that with him as my teammate, 

I believe I can handle anything.

Thoughts on why.

(Mandatory afternoon reading time: popsicles provided. I check out EVERY SINGLE book with an accompanying read-along CD I can get my hands on at the library.... bedtime stories are narrated by the one and only Mommy or Daddy...)

Any person who has blogged for more than a year is bound to, at one point or another, ask themselves the question:

"Why am I doing this?"

There is a strange sense of obligation that comes with blogging. Readers or no readers, you know you are putting something out there. In psychology, I remember studying a particular phase of adolescent development in which a teenager lives life with a strange sense of an "imaginary audience". Hence the reason they become mortified over the slightest mishap, plead for death rather than have their dorky parent accompany them to a high school game, or obsess over the pimple on the center of their forehead. Because to them, everyone...everyone...is watching. Always always watching!

I think that phenomena translates into a blogger's mentality to a certain extent. It suddenly becomes important to define exactly what it is that you are doing and why you are doing it.

Am I trying to earn money?

Become famous?

Document a journey?

Make a statement?

Journal thoughts?

Share information with out-of-town relatives?

Scrapbook my life?

Build a career?

Develop a cookbook?

What exactly is...this?

For me, after a couple years in, I figured out my niche. My thang.

I just enjoy this outlet.

It's pretty basic. I've never been consistent at anything really, other than what is mandatory and required for basic survival. I have always had trouble sticking with one "thing". 

What I have loved about logging in and posting a few times a week has been this: whatever is on my mind, whatever mood I'm in, whatever I feel like doing: I can do. I can share!

Some days I pretend I'm a writer.

Other days a baker.

I might try my hand at designing.

Or crafting a new creation.

Mostly, I am an ordinary online scrap-booker for family history's sake.

Or for just my sake.

And my favorite, most favorite and self indulgent thing to do is to comb my own archives and examine life as it has unfolded. Oh what a good life, I think...I'm so glad I was able to put it under the microscope in this way. I may not have noticed it so much. After just a couple of years Tyler and I can also say, "Hey, what did we do that one Valentine's Day?" And by gosh golly, I can pull out the old bloggaroo and find out! This is cool.

It is very liberating to not hold myself to a standard, or think I have to pin down exactly what I am doing. I am doing whatever the heck i feel like doing! And as a woman, a wife, and a momma of {almost} four: this is a great and very much needed thing!

I also LOVE other bloggers. Oh my, I have learned so much from ordinary people doing extraordinary things. At first it was overwhelming. I think you can sucked into the blog world just as badly as the facebook abyss. I've learned my balance over time, and when it is necessary to shut. my. computer. off. (which for me, is most of the day...morning and evenings are my best times for updating myself on the world outside...the rest of the day belongs to my children). 

And to my small handful of readers, my little corner of the world: I sincerely thank you for your kind comments and emails over time. Life feels fuller being shared, so thank you for making me feel like a random thought or a post meant something to you, because that sure means a lot to me.

Now, if you'll please excuse me, my children have given up reading after 7 minutes and are now pouring some sort of weird soap and lotion concoction into our bathtub. I had best get going.

EXTREMELY long and INCREDIBLY ranty.

Last week I took the girls to the mall to pick up a new down comforter that our bed was desperately in need of. I had decided it was the last morning I would tolerate waking up to a massive clump of down alternative stuck in my hair, leaking from the torn seams of our lifeless bedspread. Afterwards, we stopped into the food court for lunch and, after carefully examining the nutrition content on every brochure from each corresponding vendor, I made a conscious and completely well-balanced motherly decision: Hot Dog on a Stick and Wetzel's Pretzels.
We sat and eagerly devoured our pickings at a table within the court, surrounded by 97 flat screens mounted at every possible visual angle blasting music videos. The conversation was slim, as Lily and London happily stuffed almond crunch pretzel bites into their mouths and stared...stared...wide-eyed at the screens. I looked up to examine the footage. Awwww, Rihanna: sporting her usual variation on string-wear, gyrating her hips and jiggling her ample breasts, surrounded by multiple men reaching for her torso while licking her lips and insinuating some sort of bodily euphoria that I can only assume is characteristic of a condition known as spontaneous orgasmus. Sweet. Girl. 

My girls are in a special phase right now, I remember it well. I call it the I-watch-The-Little-Mermaid-therefore-I-am-The-Little-Mermaid-I-watch-Cinderella-therefore-I-am-Cinderella-I-watch-My-Little-Pony-therefore-I-am a-Pink-Pony-with-a-rainbow-tail complex. From the kitchen I frequently hear them argue over the latest cartoon/movie on television:

 "I'm her! I'm her! I'm the Puwple Fairy!"

"No! I saw her first. I'm the Purple Fairy, you are Tinkerbell."

I often have to intervene {it gets pretty brutal} just as the fists and hair tugs start flying:

Girls! Enough, you BOTH are the purple fairies. It doesn't matter who saw it first!

I think you can see where I'm headed with this: simply apply said complex to the above Rihanna spectacle and you may understand why I rearranged each of their pretty mesmerized heads to face the fake foliage in the planter behind their seats. Look girls! How lovely! Leaves! And green stuff!...woooowww....notice that neat plastic stem thingy? Isn't it interesting how it is coming up out of the ground with that white flower attached at the top? 

Good job, 

last bite, 

let's go.

I thought for a moment of heading over to the mall's management to leave a comment (Seriously mall people: Rihanna? Lil Wayne? Kesha? In a public mall with children at noon...?), but in a perpetual rush and desire to avoid inconvenience I decided to just head for the car.

........................................................

Yesterday, Tyler and I called in an order for sandwiches at a local deli while waiting in the doctor's office. An older-ish sounding woman with a raspy voice answered,

"Rubicon Deli, Can I help you?"

"Hello, yes, I would like to place an order for pick-up please."

"Go ahead."

Looking at my online menu for Half versus Whole sandwich options, and attempting to deduce how satiated two starving individuals such as ourselves would be, I asked the question,

"Can you tell me what size your Half sandwiches are?"

And without the slightest hint of humor or smirky wit in her voice, she flatly responded:

"Well, if you can visualize this: it's a whole cut in two. That would be a half."

Silence. Whoa there. 

I responded: "Um, yes, I understand the theoretical definition of what it means to be a 'half'. I was thinking more along the lines of inches...like six or twelve?" 

"Um, I dunno...five, maybe six or seven."

"Okay, I guess we'll order half a Rubicon Special and half a Spicy Tuna for pick up. Thank you."

We arrived shortly thereafter at the deli and were greeted by our dear phone operator at the register. And... ahem, I would never dare be so callous or superficial as to describe her appearance (merely to build a descriptive visual of the situation) in anything less than a gracious light, so let's just leave it at: face matched voice. Our sandwiches sat, waiting by her side. Tyler and I glanced at them, and observing that each sandwich easily measured the size of Tyler's entire arm, gave each other a surprised satisfactory glance: Good call, the halves will be more than enough.

She totaled our order and stated the price. Uh oh, I suddenly understood the hefty discrepancy in price and the corresponding monstrous size of our sandwiches.

"Um maam, I'm sorry but I ordered halves."

"No. You didn't. You ordered wholes."

"Um, I am really sorry, but I can assure you with the clearest  recollection of our unique conversation that I ordered HALVES."

She squinted sarcastically and said, "Well, sure then. I'd be so happy to fix this for you."

She stomped aside, removed half of our orders and angrily returned the plates to us. At this point it was feeling like an out of body experience, I was in such shock at this colossal failure in customer service. Has Starbucks taught you nothing lady? 

I thought about getting all confrontational, pulling out my prego big guns and propping my belly on the counter while shouting....You wanna a piece of this??! You wanna a piece -a- thisss?!!! U about to see what it is like gettin yo half stuck up yo whole if you know whad im sayin!"

But, not wanting to embarrass my peace-making husband and desiring to eat in leisure at a table three feet away, I said nothing more.

...............................................................................

Today I sat in the parental viewing area of London's gymnastics class. Only not much viewing goes on, as I mostly wrangle Ellie Jane the entire time as she shrieks and struggles to run into the tumbling area.  Lily and I periodically peeked over at our squishy edible London in her tight leotard, performing somersaults and cartwheels. We would exclaim, "Good job London!" at regular intervals to cover for the fact that we weren't exactly catching all the action.

There were a total of two small classes working out in the gymnasium, both made up entirely of darling 4-6 year old girls. The gym's music playlist blasted in the background as the instructors walked the students through a variety of exercises and stretches. The musical vibe was something more along the lines of what you'd expect at a 21-and-over nightclub scene, and suddenly my ear caught the lyrics of the song rolling through the soundwaves of the arena, a popular song that I've heard played many times before, coming from a young female singer sounding not much older than 17...

I know them other guys

they been talking bout

the way i do what i do

they heard i was good

they wanna see if it's true...

Baby i'll love you all the way down

Get you right where you like it

I promise you'll like it i swear

just relax and let me make a move it's now secret....

......................................................

And suddenly it dawned on me. Bam. Full force. 

The mall. 

The sandwiches. 

The music.

The build-up......

THE INSANITY.

And Mama woke up.

Awww, hell no.

Hellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 

Nooooooooooo.

HAVE 

WE 

LOST 

OUR 

FREAKING 

MINDS!??!!!!!!!!

I grabbed Ellie, instructed Lily to follow and headed for the front desk. The kind middle-aged receptionist asked if she could be of service...

"Um yes! I am sorry and I don't want to come across as the big 'complainer', but I have to suggest that the music being played for these small children isn't appropriate in the slightest. I don't mean to cause trouble but in good conscience I have no choice here."

She responded with the utmost enthusiasm and warmth. Oh yes dear, I agree with you! Please fill out this comment card and I'll be sure to pass it on to the owner. I filled out my comment card hastily with big words like "provocative" and "highly sexualized" and "flagrantly inappropriate".

And no "anonymous" box was marked here. 

In big fat capital letters I signed the bottom,

RACHEL MOTHER FREAKING HAACK.

THAT'S DAMN RIGHT.

LONDON'S MOTHER.

HOW DARE YOU. 

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But I did sign my name. Proudly.

As I scribbled my note the receptionist shared a story in her friendly Minnesotan accent from "her day" as a mother. Her teenage son had gone out shopping with his friend and his friend's mother purchased them both a "cassette" that he later arrived home with. "I think it was...oh gash i don't remember...some guy named Vaneeella Ice. Well, anyhoo I remember I saw a parental warning sticker on the cassette and thought oh my gash! You can't have that!"

Vanilla Ice. 

Vanilla Ice?!!

I hung my head, sigh. If only it could have been stopped at Vanilla Ice.

What has happened since then?

To quote a famous singer....Where have all the cowboys gone?

Or in other words, where have all the MOTHERS GONE?

I am sure 80% of the mothers in the viewing area would have agreed with me that they didn't want their young daughters listening to such music. Or, they would have said they weren't paying attention to the lyrics. Or, they would have felt uncomfortable and just like me in my previous experiences: said nothing.

But what does this say?!!

Either

1. We endorse this type of mind-boggling, innocence robbing garbage...this cultural hijack of everything wholesome and decent in society.

Or

2. We are mindless drones, 

zombies who consume and process filth but only robotically respond with

 "Me.no. pay.attention.to.lyrics. 

sound. only.

what.is.the.big.deal.

where.is.my.iphone.

text. please."

Or

3. We are the biggest bunch of pansies known to mankind.

We don't like it, but we say nothing.

Just like the Vanilla Ice mommies.

 (minus Minnesotan receptionist, bless her cassette discriminating heart)

..................................................

I will no longer be apologizing for existing.

For speaking up.

For getting involved.

Lily, London, Ellie Jane: Be warned.

When Mama says she ordered only half a sandwich, she means it.