every time i sit down to post i just feel like there is too much to write about so i don't write anything.

i'm so freakin' tired i can't see straight.

car was found and we had to pay to get it out of the impound lot. sigh..... makes a whole lot of sense huh. get your car stolen and pay to get it back. anyway... it was returned sans car seat, maternity clothes and toys. that made me mad but for some reason the straw that broke the camels back was the fun interactive elmo book that someone stepped on and ripped with their big muddy foot. of all the downright rude things... to have no decency for a kids toys? i don't know why... that just made me so mad. but it could have been much worse... only a tire to replace and a stereo to fix. not bad comparatively.

i'm so tired.

have been sick again lately. really freaky eating patterns. nothing tastes good except the most specific and usually inconvenient items. a few days ago at 9:30pm my sweet husband ran out to get me samosa from the indian kitchen. they stayed open an extra five minutes waiting for him to pick them up. and man did they do the trick.

it's funny though how specific i get in my cravings. indian samosas? why was that the one thing?

i also have to pee every five minutes. what i wouldn't give for a second bathroom in this house. :)

emerson said, "i love you mommy." for the first time this week. he has responded to me when i have said it to him, "wuv u too". but this time he initiated it right as he was falling asleep. talk about getting on my good side.

tired.

charles made us nigerian food on sunday night. it was very good... i was queasy so i was nervous. it was a soup that had chunks of fish in it. i don't agree with fish these days. so i had to psychologically sort of forget it was fish... and once i got over it it was great. interesting thing about the meal was that they don't eat with forks or spoons... they use a really thick sticky mashed yam as a spoon of sorts. where charles is from... they don't even chew the yam... they just sort of suck the soup off of it and then swallow this ball of doughy yam whole. well... we had permission to chew it. thank goodness. but charles warned us... "the yam is not very flavorful. the soup is what you want to savor." but i disagreed. i thought the yam was great and i was attempting to tell him. i said... "hey charless... what's this called again?" he said, "pounded yam." but with his heavy accent i thought he was telling me the nigerian name and i repeated..."pondittyam?" maureen, sweetly and politely said,"um pounded yam, chels." and i started hysterically laughing. chris said, "charles, next time chels makes fun of your accent, you just let me know. i'll set her straight." i felt so bad. and silly.

oh well.

very, very tired.

night, night.

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don't have a whole lot of time... but i just want to say this. having come clean with the world about how hard life really is for us at the moment... the response that we have gotten seems enough to outweigh it. we have wonderful, loving, sacrificial people in our life. so many of them.

well... it's 1:00 am and i am wide awake. why? i was awoken an hour ago by my husband informing me that our car was gone. that's right. the police just left.

someone stole our car. along with emerson's car seat and some maternity clothes. and some of emerson's toys.

terrible thing is that we think they have the key. chris thinks he accidently left the key on the front porch while working on his vespa. the way we discovered it was that when chris went to lock the front door he noticed his vespa was knocked over. we think someone tried to steal the vespa and then dropped it when they realized it was chained and then got extremely lucky and noticed a lexus key. anyway, terrible thing is that the house key was with it. sigh..........

when it rains it pours.

chris has been so stressed out. money has been really tight. life has been tough. funny thing is that this somehow just makes me feel like laughing and cracking jokes. it's almost too weird.

i should try and sleep. chris is sleeping on the couch with a baseball bat and all kinds of makeshift door jambs to assist our locks.

say a prayer.

Arwen If I were a character in The Return of the King, I would be Arwen, an Elf and the daughter of Elrond. In the movie, I am played by Liv Tyler. Who would you be? The Return of the King Test  with Perseus Web Survey Software

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charles... maureen's fiance is staying with us for a while. i feel badly... he's in a sleeping bag on the floor of emerson's room... where emerson does not sleep. there are bare white walls and very little in the way of amenities... but he seems so genuinely grateful.

today he swept and dusted all my floors and wiped down the bathroom. i could have cried.

i've been so sick the last few days. well... let me take that back. i've been sick for the late afternoon and evening for the last three days. i was starting to really feel better and then i just took a nose dive on thursday afternoon. sigh..... oh well. i just wish i could go away for a few weeks and rest and eat and read and lay down.

i mean, don't get me wrong... this has been the easiest pregnancy i've had so far. with emerson i threw up every single day... sometimes 4 or 5 times. my last pregnancy i felt totally queasy all day, every day. this time... it's somewhat managable. most days are okay with little rough patches of nausea and mild queasiness off and on. mostly i'm just tired, hungry and sluggish all the time. that... i can deal with. but i do sometimes fantasize about just escaping to some secluded place where nobody needs me and there is no house to clean and no dinner to cook and no phone to answer and no bills to pay where i don't have to feel guilty about just laying there for the entire day. :) (who am i kidding... i'd last a half a day and then i'd miss my guys so much i'd remember that cooking and cleaning for them is a privelege.)

chris let me sleep in this morning. it was 9:45 when emerson came and woke me up with a kiss to tell me it was time to get ready for brunch with uncle paul. i was in such a deep sleep that i couldn't quite wake up though i could hear them talking. i seriously think i could have slept on till 1:00 with no trouble.

we then went to tj's where i ordered one egg, two pieces of bacon, a piece of toast and a potatoe cake and when i was finished i realized i should have ordered twice as much. ridiculous. i am so hungry all the time. if i told you what i eat in an average day you would never believe me. but i'll spare you the details.

anyhow... in spite of all these little irritations... i feel so at peace. so tender and open. i feel like emerson's face is so full of beauty every morning and i just feel gracious and deeply appreciative of chris. i just feel like life has given me so many things to be thankful for and i don't want to take it all for granted.

okay so here is what happened. well first let me preface this by telling you what happened last time i was pregnant... when i miscarried.

i went to see my midwife and she was attempting to find a heartbeat. i was 11 weeks. she was trying forever to find it and kept saying things to try and help me relax. "well... we're not totally sure on timing, you know. so maybe the baby is smaller than we think." so finally after an agonizing five minutes or so of exploring every inch of my stomach she said, "you know what, let's just get out the ultrasound machine and have a look. maybe the baby is too little." i knew it wasn't.

so this time... i go in. chris and emerson were with me. and i'm lying down and we start the drill again. she says... "now sometimes it takes a while so don't panic." i giggle nervously. after a few minutes she still can't find the heartbeat. i'm starting to panic. she is saying reassuring things which make me feel more paniced because it resembles the last time. i am starting to plan what i will do when we find no heartbeat. i am thinking, "i can't believe this is happening to me again. i don't believe this. i am so stupid. why did we tell emerson... oh my gosh, emerson. i can't totally lose it in front of him. i'll ask chris to leave the room with him so i can cry for a few minutes and then i'll just have to pull it together." then is the kicker... she says, "you know, maybe your uterus is just not big enough to have lifted totally out of your pelvis. let's just get out the ultrasound machine." i couldn't even answer her. right as she ended her sentence she said..."oh wait. wait." and suddenly, clear as day was the "woosh, woosh,woosh, woosh" of that beautiful sound. a heartbeat loud and clear and strong. tears streamed down into my ears and we all just listened. she said,"You just tell me when you've heard enough." i wanted to just ask her if i could stay all day. "when's your next appointment. how much time have we got?" but instead i said, "thanks. that's good." and she turned it off with a gentle smile. she said... "i was never worried. but i know there was nothing i could say to make you feel better in that moment."

on the way home i felt exhilerated. the funny thing is that had we not had a few moments of hanging in the balance, i don't think that i would have appreciated the final result nearly as much. it was like this one christmas when all i wanted was a nintendo and i would have been so happy just to get it... but instead my parents created this intricate plot to make me think i wasn't getting it and then when i did... i was on top of the world. cruel? i don't think so. maybe if it happened every day. :) (you're not going to get dinner... wow! look dinner!)
anyway... this is getting much too deep and off track. anyway... the whole experience seemed like this microcosm of our whole life right now. hanging in the balance and not knowing how things will end up and choosing to believe that in the end we will see a heartbeat.

so there you go.

emerson has taken to replying to information tidbits with ..."hm... cool." very casual. very hip.

today we have a prenatal appointment. it's an important one for me. i miscarried last time at 11 weeks. this is my 12 week appointment and if... or when we hear a heart beat... it will be so psychologically calming for me. i am not nervous. i am terribly excited.

also... yesterday i told emerson that he was goofy and he corrected me... "no i'm emerson samuel kay."

was taking emerson for a walk on wednesday and i was soooooo stressed out about money. i was totally obsessing about budgets and savings and really getting myself into a panic.

emerson has had a hard time learning colors. so i noticed some flowers blooming and we stopped to look at them... mostly so i could do some color drills. "look honey... look at the pretty flowers. these are purple. those are yellow."

we walked on. about a block later emerson said, "mommy, god made those flowers."

i nearly fell over. months ago i used to read him this little book about god but i never thought he was interested. we haven't read it in so long.

here he was taking it all in all along.

somehow... emerson's childlike observation penetrated my panic and i thought... that's right... god did make those flowers. and he helped me to stop and be thankful and revel in beauty and life. and then i just had this overwhleming peace that my financial problems are not so complicated in the face of a god who can create flowers.

out of the mouths of babes... ?

just got back from taking micah and emerson to cosi. it was great to hang with micah again. and the boys had a ton of fun.

i'm exhausted. and emerson is looking like he's not going to take a nap. sigh....

thank goodness my mom will be here this afternoon.

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
- joseph campbell

i took the book quiz, the country quiz, the famous world leader quiz and the classic movie quiz as represented on blake and amy's blogs. here are my results....

i am ulysses by james joyce.
i am ireland.
i am ghandi.
i am sunset boulevard.

??? i don't know but it was good for a little entertainment.

tonight my family all went to mongolian b-b-que to celebrate my birthday. loads of fun. loads of food.
generous gifts. chris gave me the new dave matthews cd. we loved dave matthews when we were dating and felt that his first two albums were out of this world. the following albums were good but lacked the cohesiveness and whatever that magic tenderness was in the first two. now he's set out on his own and we thought we'd give him another whirl. jt got me the shins cd that i borrow from him so now i have my own copy. christopher gave me my choice of a free haircut and color (he is a hair stylist), babysitting this weekend, or hair products. (and then apologized because he'd do any of those things for me anyway but he just bought a car and is broke.) he needn't worry... the presents don't make so much of a difference at this stage in life... it's the presence of people and their willingness just to be in my life that means the most. (oh and christopher also wrote this all inside of a very hip Barbie birthday card.) candy and richie came and gave me a genrous check. very kind. and my mom and dad had one of the collages i made framed for me. it turned out so beautifully. they also footed the bill for all of us to wine and dine till we were stuffed to the gills.
so it was a terrific evening.

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maureen came by tonight and watched emerson so i could get a breather. god bless her.

i told her i feel like i'm incognito when i go out alone. no one knows that i'm a mommy. or maybe it just surprises me that they don't... i feel like it's written on my forehead.

so then these three adults walk into the coffee shop where i was decompressing and they have a brood of children. these children were not misbehaving in the least... they were simply being children. loud, energetic, active, and curious. they didn't stay for too long but after they left i went up to the counter to get something to go... the barrista says to me... "maybe we'll have to start asking a surcharge for kids." i gave the polite chuckle but inside i was thinking... "he has no idea! it's incredible. i'm as mommy as they come."

so tomorrow i'll bring emerson in there with me and make said barrista shuffle his feet a little. :)

i have to say that emerson and i have had one of the best weeks together that i can remember. when i dreamed of having a little boy... i never dreamed it this well. i love him "somethin' awful".

or as emerson says... when i ask him "do you know how much mommy loves you?" - he always yells... "Too Much!" what he means is that i love him 2 much. he knows that "how much" is a quantitative question and he tries to answer it with a quantitative answer... two-much. :) But it always makes me laugh.

so... the best way to explain it is that my stomach is like an angry god that demands virgin sacrifices at regular intervals. you see... after i've eaten something for a day or two... that item joins the ranks of what has already been experienced... it becomes tainted and is now putrid to the angry god. the god raises its fist and the volcano starts to rumble and a virgin food must be sacrificed immediately or the lava will rise and spill out onto the landscape.

i.e... potatoes were the last virgin food of preference. four or five baked potatoes within a 48 hour period... and now when poor, uninitiated Kate tried to offer angry stomach god a baked potatoe as it rumbled last night... it became even angrier. it wanted fried chicken! baked potatoes are used goods. fried chicken will be discarded and tossed on the heap of used and worthless items soon enough... and then what will it be? no one can predict this angry god's whim... only that it will have to be virgin... something that hasn't been tasted in the past few months at least. at the rate i'm eating.... there may not be enough choices to appease it. :)

i have to go to bed soon because i'll start getting nauseous if i stay up much longer. the food in my stomach has a timer on it and the clock is ticking. once digestion is underway and the contents begin to decrease... all systems rebel. sigh....

anyway... chris has been working 16-18 hour days for over two weeks now. we miss him. tons.

he has a new office in the arean district. fancy schmancy. he'll move in on monday. the last two weeks have been rehab. we miss him. i know i already said that... but we really, really do.

feeling more and more preganant all the time. very exciting and very uncomfortable. :)

i'm ten weeks now... a fourth of the way through!!! (although i didn't actually know i was pregnant for the first 5 weeks so it doesn't really feel that way.)

i'm officially done watching micah for the time being. after i got off the phone with mark to let him know... i just burst into tears. part of it could be hormones... but part of it is undoubtedly that i've grown to adore this little boy. most of my impetus for taking a break was less related to micah and emerson's recent struggle and more due to my growing nausea and exhaustion. but i'm hoping that as a side effect of taking a break from watching him... emerson and micah's relationship will have titme to recover as well.

anyway.... things will be pretty quiet around here in the mornings for a while.