The Middle Child

While I was pregnant with Amelia I realized that when she was born Benjy would become a middle child. Stereotypically speaking, this is not a good thing. Both of my parents are middle children, as is my husband, but I'm the oldest and so I think it's a pretty good place to be. So I was feeling sorry for Benjy that day. I wanted to write about him, but I was pretty miserable while pregnant. Blogging was so far down on my to-do list that it never happened.
Benjy was a champion the last couple of months of my pregnancy. Every morning after we got Sam and Ryan out the door he would crawl into bed with me and snuggle while he watched Netflix on the iPad. He never complained about being bored, he just kept me company until I felt well enough to get up.

This is the "cave" where he likes to watch iPad.

As I posted a while back, Ben did not like potty training. We haven't made a concerted effort again to get him back on the toilet. He's very stubborn. In fact, one of his talents is his ability to ignore people. He's amazing at it. If he is being tickled and doesn't want to laugh, he just doesn't. I can't even do that as an adult (not that I get tickled very often). It might sound like I'm being ironic in my praise of his stubbornness, but I really do admire his self-control. I think it will serve him well as he gets older.

I got into the shower late today. When I got out, Ben met me in the hallway brandishing the kitchen broom. I told him to go put it away, which he promptly did. I checked on Amelia, and picked out my clothes for the day. Then I heard "Yook! Yoooook!" from upstairs.

For those of you who don't have your Ben-to-English dictionary handy, that means "Look! Loooook!"

I wrapped my bathrobe back around me and hurried up to see what he wanted. This time he he proudly held up a baseboard, which until this morning was cracked but still attached to the wall. He swung it around a few times until I snatched it away. I was able to get it almost back in to place. By then he had moved to the kitchen and was demanding "Cheewos an melk*!"

*Cheerios and milk, as opposed to eating dry cereal like a peasant.

I felt bad that I hadn't gotten him a snack earlier, so I promptly gave him a bowl of Cheerios and milk and went back downstairs to get dressed. While in my underwear I heard him yelling "Moh cheewos!" I dashed upstairs, not caring that the blinds were open, because I knew if I didn't do it, Ben would get the Cheerios himself and possibly destroy the whole world in the process. I went back downstairs. By the time I was completely dressed he was demanding his third bowl of cereal, which he got. After he finished and cleaned up his hands, he ran to the couch to get his blanket. I knew the iPad was under his blanket, so I followed him to confiscate it. Not only did I find the iPad, I found a photo from our wall of family photos and a destroyed picture frame. Why he hid it under his blanket, I have no idea.

By this point I was tired of the destruction and frustrated that I would have to replace the picture frame, so Ben got scolded pretty sternly. He interrupted me as I was telling him off.

"Mommy, you happy?"

I was not happy, and I told him so. He began to cry, and I sent him to his room while I took care of the picture frame mess. Then I went downstairs to talk to him about how it is not okay to break things and hide them. I didn't get very far in my lecture before he told me he was sorry and crawled onto my lap for a hug.

I love this little guy. Even though he is a tiny tornado.

   

  

How it all began

When Ryan and I found out that we were having a boy (Sam), my great-grandmother made him a blue afghan blanket. She did the same when we had Ben, who is so attached to his blankie that he's earned himself the nickname Linus. Last summer when we went back East to visit my family we were so happy that we could show Nonna how much the boys loved their blankets.

She asked me if we were planning on having any more babies.
"I think so. We'd like to have at least one more," I told her. "I'd really like to have a little girl."
"I'll make her a blanket," Nonna promised.
My grandmother called me later to inform me that Nonna had finished the blanket. "And you'd better have a little girl next, because it is PINK!"
Fast forward to almost a year later, when we found out that we actually were having the little girl we dreamed would join our family. We all said that it must have been the influence of "the blanket". Whatever it was, we couldn't wait to meet our baby girl. Grandma mailed the pink blanket to us.

It IS pink.

Fast forward again: We were getting closer and closer to baby girl's due date, and I was getting more and more miserable. I don't know what it was, but I was much more uncomfortable with baby #3 than I was with either of the boys. I couldn't sleep at night, I was in constant pain; it was not fun to say the least. At one point I forced myself into "nesting mode" by buying baby clothes and having Ryan get all the baby gear out of the garage. I wanted her to come early. I didn't think I could make it to November 6th, her due date. Both of my boys were late, and as far as I could tell their sister would be, too.

On the 27th I went in to my OB for my routine appointment. I was 38.5 weeks pregnant. Dr. Klingler examined me to see how far along I had progressed. I wasn't too hopeful, as I hadn't had a single "real" contraction.

"Holy cow," he said at one point.

Not what you want to hear during a cervical exam, know what I mean?

"You haven't had any contractions?"

I repeated that I hadn't.

It turned out that even without contractions, my cervix had dilated 8cm (out of the 10 you need to deliver a baby). Dr. Klingler removed his gloves.

"You need to go to the hospital. I've never seen anyone progress this far who wasn't in active labor. If you don't go to the hospital you are in real danger of delivering at home."

Now, some people might not mind that, and that's great for them, but I fall firmly on the side of having babies in hospitals. So I called my friend Hannah, who is also my visiting teacher and one of my counselors in the Primary presidency, and told her what was happening. She agreed to head right over to my house to stay with Benjy while I got my stuff in order and got my about-to-have-a-baby butt to the hospital. Because she is my hero.

Ryan and I got ready, packing our bags and eating lunch. We even stopped by Sam's school to let him know what was happening and that Hannah would be home when he got off the bus. When we finally strolled into the hospital, a nurse hurried down to Admitting with a wheelchair.

"We thought you really were having the baby at home!" she gasped.

"No, just getting our stuff ready."

She looked me over. "You're not in labor."

"Nope."

"We thought you were! They told us you were eight centimeters!"

"Well, I am, but I'm not in labor."

She set the wheelchair aside. "I guess we don't need this, then."

All dressed up and... nothing to do.

We waited for the on call OB to check on me. Ryan finished a paper for his UW class. I got on Twitter. At one point I demanded that Ryan get a bag of potato chips for me, which I ate in secret while the nurse was out of the room. We watched Monday Night Football.

At 6:15 Dr. Bragg examined me and broke my water. That's all it took for the contractions to start. I tried to go "zen" and breathe through them. It mostly worked until I hit 10cm and needed to push. Then I got a little crazy with regret that I had not opted for the epidural. Some "words" may have been said.

Both boys had large heads at birth (who am I kidding, Ben still has a giant noggin), which required two hours of pushing. But this little girl came into the world after about 15 minutes. Total labor time: 2 hours exactly from breaking my water to birth. It was worth not getting the epidural.

Amelia Rose Reynolds, born on Nonna's 92nd birthday.  

Family Photos 2014

This year for our family photos we drove down to Fort Collins and met our friend Katie Esquivel on the Oval at CSU. That's where Ryan and I did our engagement photos 6+ years ago, so it was neat to go back with our boys and do it again. I was prepared this year with an entire bag of gummi bears with which to bribe Benjy, which mostly worked. He's nowhere near the ham that his big brother is, but at least he wasn't screaming and crying!
Here are some of our favorites.

Yay cute boys!

I don't remember what Ryan did to make him laugh like this, but it looks great!

Sam kept begging Katie to take pictures of him doing different things. I think at one point Katie bribed him to stay out of photos of me and Ryan by telling him she'd take more pictures of him!

Ben loves his daddy.

One of our engagement photos

Still in love :0)

Potty Training

We decided to potty train Benjy this weekend. Sam was easy to train--we used the 3 day method, and it worked exactly as it was supposed to. He loved sitting on the potty, and it didn't take him long to recognize when he needed to pee and deal with it accordingly.

Ben did not love sitting on the potty. Ben's attitude towards the potty was best expressed thusly:

We hates it!

It didn't matter what we did. We gave him chocolate while sitting on the potty, a new toy train, snuggles... I learned the words to all his favorite Thomas the Tank Engine songs and sang them while he sat... nothing. Three days later he still hates sitting on the potty. How were we supposed to teach him to go potty when the potty was his worst enemy?

So today Ben and I went to WalMart and bought more diapers. And if I were a drinker, we would have had a box of wine in the cart, too. But as I'm not, I ate all his potty treats instead.

Baby Robins!

There is a robin's nest in our backyard, safely nestled on a drainpipe off of our garage.

Curious as to whether or not there were any eggs in the nest, I waited until the robin flew away, and sneakily lifted up my phone to take a photo.

Result! How gorgeous is that color? I always thought robin eggs were a lighter blue; I'm digging the turquoise.

I told Sam and Ben that there would soon be baby robins in our nest, and every day when their shrieking scared the robin away I would use my phone to take a photo of the nest so I could see if the eggs had hatched.

One day, my photo looked like this:

Baby robins! Incredibly nasty looking baby robins, but still cool! 

We pulled the ladder out of the garage and let Sam climb up to take a look. He concurred that they looked disgusting, but he still wanted to look at them over and over again. Ben was too short to see the robins, even on the ladder, but he looked at the photos on my phone and got excited. Now when he comes out to the backyard he runs right to the garage yelling "baby wobins! baby wobins!"

The babies have feathers now, so they are much nicer to look at. They are very vocal when their parents come to feed them, which I love. I feel a special kinship with the mother robin, because I too know what it's like when your offspring won't shut up during dinnertime.

According to Wikipedia, the baby robins will leave the nest two weeks after hatching, which doesn't leave us much more time with them. The Wiki also says that the mother robin will build a new nest for her next brood, so I'll be keeping an eye out for it. We'll miss our baby robins!

The Latin name for the American robin is Turdus migratorius, which was too funny not to share. Here's hoping none of the robins leave any turdus migratoriuses on our heads while we're outside.

Diary of a Sick Pregnant Woman

Mar. 1: I feel sick to my stomach. Weird. Maybe it was the HuHot I ate for lunch.
Wait, I'm pretty sure my period's late.
This is happening.

Mar. 2: First day as the ward Primary president, and I didn't puke on any kids. *self-high-five*

Mar. 3-10: I'm exhausted, but not puking. Maybe this pregnancy won't be so bad. I'll just spend it sleeping on the hide-a-bed.

Mar. 11: Hello, toilet. We meet at last.

Mar. 22: This whole "not keeping food or water down" is lame.

Mar. 23: Hmm. I haven't kept anything down in two days. I should probably do something about this.

Mar. 26: Driving down to New Mexico. There's a nice bucket at my feet in case I puke.

Mar. 27: I can't swallow my saliva.

Mar. 28: Where are my kids?

Apr. 8: Time to go back to Laramie.

Apr. 10: I am never having more kids. Why did I want to do this again?

Apr. 23: I can swallow my saliva!!!!!

Apr. 24-27: Solo trip to Utah. Not being in charge of the kids does wonders for my upset stomach.

May 3: I should probably tell people I'm pregnant.

So that's our news! Baby #3 is due in the beginning of November!

Pitching is hard, let's do it together!

A great contest hosted by Brenda Drake is coming up in March--Pitch Madness! It's like March Madness, only way better and with less basketball. Just kidding. There's no basketball involved (I hope). To read more about the contest, click here.
To enter the contest, you'll need a 35-word pitch (as well as the first 250 words of your MS, but you already have that!) When I read that part of the guidelines, I was like, "Seriously? I have a query letter, synopsis, and a couple of Twitter-length pitches, and now I need THIS?" It can be hard to come up with so many different ways to "sell" people on your novel, but guess what? We didn't enter the writing game expecting it to be easy. A 35-word pitch (also known as an elevator pitch) is highly useful at writing conferences, so it's good to have on hand!
I'll be working on my pitch here on the blog, and I hope that others who'd like help will stop by, too. If you post your pitch in the comments I will reply and offer my suggestions, and the idea is for other people to help out as well. What I've learned about the online writing community is that it is AWESOME, and everyone is totally supportive of everyone else. I've received tons of help over the past few months, and I'm excited to pay it forward in my own way.
So what do you need for this pitch? How are you supposed to sum up your book in 35 words or less?
We need to know the WHO: Who is your main character, and what makes him or her special?
WHAT is the challenge they face?
WHY is your book different from others? Or in other words, what makes it unique?

If you need help getting started, here are some resources:
Upstart Crow Literary
NA Alley
Nathan Bransford

So, here's my first attempt. Comments welcome!
Anna's strong sense of familial loyalty keeps her home with her lonely widower father after high school. A Shakespeare Festival roadtrip satisfies her need to travel, and brings love and balance to her life.

I think I have the WHO and WHY down, but not enough of the conflict. I'll try to get that across in attempt number two!

Okay, it's been a couple days, here's my next try:
Anna defers her dreams of independence so her widower father won't be lonely. An impromptu Shakespeare Festival roadtrip threatens to tear down her façade of contentment and leaves her aching to live her own life.

What do you think? Does it show more conflict?