2013-one for the books

I can't believe that 2013 is almost over!  With only one week until baby comes I'm going to type this out like a crazy blogging fool.

2013 has been our craziest year together yet!  I'm hoping for a few calm ones coming up.  

For now, here's our year in a nutshell.  By nutshell I mean a very long, rambling,poorly proofread and pictureless blog post.

In January I was rocking Hank to sleep in my room.  He slept in our room of course.  There was very really no other place for him. But as I sat there rocking him I decided I could squeeze one last child into this duplex.  We'd just have to put three kids in the kids bedroom and the other baby would squeeze into our room.  I certainly wasn't planning on having a baby anytime soon, but it was feeling like we were going to live in that duplex forever and I liked knowing I could handle it if we needed to.

Then one morning in February I woke up and said, "No!"  I texted my house-loving friend Candis and said, "Find us a house that costs the same as our rent."  She said, "I know just the one."  Matt was out of town for the weekend but that didn't stop Candis and I from going to look at the house AND making an offer.  Matt came home soon and thought the house was "really cool."  I mean, it had 10 mature trees.  He couldn't help but love it.

So, then, you know how it goes--total stress and insanity.  All of a sudden it felt like I was going to DIE if I didn't get that house.  There was the craziness of all the hoops you have to jump through to get a loan--faxing in paper after paper after paper; explaining every last tiny detail of your life since you were born.  There were the ups and downs.  We qualified!....wait, underwriting has a problem....wait, did you miss a credit card payment 12 years ago....We're going to get it!....wait, the PMI is outrageous.....we can't afford it!  Wait, my dad is the best dad ever and he's going to help with an insanely generous down payment!  We did it!!!!

It's an old home.  The deed says it was built in 1908  .  It's made out of stone, which has been painted an unfortunate yellowy cream color with white trim that really needs to be re-painted.  It has a beautiful antique front door that just needs a little TLC.  The main floor has one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, laundry room, family room and dining room.  The stairs are so narrow and so steep.  But once you get up there there are 3 tiny bedrooms and unfinished attic space.  Pretty much perfect for us.

We closed in early March and had to be out of our duplex April 1.  So we worked like maniacs to get a bunch done before moving in.  Of course, the plan was to get it ALL done before moving in, but let's not focus on that.  I painted almost every wall in the house except for the family room and dining room.  We had a guy help with retexturing those walls and ceilings and Matt had to re-texture one of the upstairs rooms.  The kitchen was red and cream.  I painted it white, painted the cabinets white and painted all of the trim a soft minty green.  We put in an island, cut a place for our enormous fridge into some pantry space, added a new cabinet, put in new butcher block countertops and a butcher block bar, and added a pretty light fixture where there previously hadn't been one.  We ripped up the carpet and padding and carpet staples in the front two rooms where we plan to refinish the beautiful hardwood floors underneath.  And that's how you'll find it today, eight months later--the old, ripped up carpet covering the unfinished wood floors and the walls in the front two rooms are still just covered with white mud, waiting to be painted.  You see, Matt is very, very, good at doing things around the house.  But he actually cares about structure and safety and important things.  So, he dug under the house (no crawl space) to find out why there was a soft spot in the floor.  He discovered mold and rotted joists and moisture problems.  Oh, and he also is way more interested in working on the outside than the inside.  So, he planted twenty more trees, pruned trees, planted grass, made tree swings, and seriously I can't account for what he did for the 5 months he spent always being outside.  But during those five months I gradually let go of the idea that this house would be done any time soon.  I decided that if Matt is going to do every thing himself then I have to cut him some slack.  I wouldn't want to dig wheelbarrows full of dirt out from under a house that you can only fit in laying down.  So, I've decided to let him procrastinate as long he wants.

But I'm skipping way too far ahead.  Let's just say February was a whirlwind of paperwork getting our loan approved.  March was a whirlwind of house projects---one of us always gone working at the house and the other back at the duplex with the kids.  Then, Easter fell on March 31 this year.  So, we spent Easter Sunday cleaning out our empty duplex while the kids just sat there doing nothing.  We had better intentions of getting done sooner, but you know how it goes.

So, that night, on March 31st we were finally completely moved into our house--boxes everywhere, projects half done all around. That night I looked in the mirror and said, "Matt?  Is this ear sticking out more than the other?"  He thought maybe we just hadn't looked at it before.  But by the next morning he said, "Uh...yeah....your ear is sticking out."

Awesome!  Mastoiditis round 4!  I had never actually had a visible abscess behind my ear before so I knew this time must be bad.  I tracked down a new ENT as mine had retired, and then cried about shelling out the dough because SURPRISE I had no insurance.  I hated the ENT.  I cried to him too.  He didn't seem too concerned about me.  (P.S. now I really, really like him).  So, off I went for a CT scan.  Then we tried treating it without surgery because of the no-insurance thing.

THEN!  About two weeks into April I noticed I was late starting my period.  I had recently concluded that I wanted to enjoy my last pregnancy and baby and would therefore be waiting until Hank was about three years old before having another.  So, we were taking precautions to NOT get pregnant.  Anyway, I was late.  I took a test.  YOWZERS!  Pregnant.  PREGNANT.  I'm not sure how in the world we even had time to make a baby with the moving and the house renovating.  It was a total surprise and I've decided I don't actually know anything about the birds and the bees and haven't a clue how people get pregnant or keep from getting pregnant because it no longer makes sense to me.  But the funniest part of it was how similar my situation was to my own mom's pregnancy with me.  They had just moved into their new home in Windsor, MO when they found out they were pregnant with me.  They had planned on having a fourth baby eventually but the timing of my pregnancy was a big surprise.  Also, the birth order in my family goes girl, boy, boy, and then me.  And I was born on December 22nd.  My due date for this pregnancy was December 27th.  I've had my babies 5 days early, 6 days early, and 5 days early.  I thought there was a high probability this baby would even be born on my birthday!  It's totally ironic, though, because in all of our baby planning I've always avoided a December baby.  With all those similarities I was just positive this baby would be a girl, a mini-me.  We had an ultrasound in early July and I was pretty shocked to learn that we were having another boy. It wasn't that I was sad to have another boy.  In fact, I'm a little bit excited to be having three little boys around here.  But when the news came to me there in the ultrasound room, and knowing this was our last baby, it was like the ultrasound tech told me, "You will never have another daughter," and "Jane will never have a sister."  I held it together while at the doctors office but as soon as we left the building I started BAWLING.  Matt had admitted in the office that he felt a little sad at first.  I couldn't say how I felt of course because I needed to stay composed.  So he was shocked to look over and see me bawling.  We sat in the car for a good while as I cried.  Eventually I had to call Monique, both to tell her the news and because I knew I wouldn't allow myself to just continue crying on the phone to her.  By the time we got home I was composed.  I made some blue-filled chocolate cupcakes.  My parents were in town so they and my kids all found out together.  I saw Jane's face fall when she saw the blue in the middle.  It was very slight and she put on a good face for her grandparents.  I talked to her later and she said she was sad she wouldn't have a sister to do makeovers with.  It didn't take long for her, though, to say she felt special to be the only girl in the family.

Anyway, I had to drop the little pregnancy bomb on my ENT.  The abscess was not improving at all and was just getting bigger and more disgusting and something needed to be done.  Surgery was off the table now, at least during the first trimester.  So, he proposed he do a little in-office surgery. that. day.  As he put it, you know, what they had to do in the olden days.  So they numbed me up with shots into the abscess and ear canal that was more infected than ever before in my life, and the pain from those shots were so intense I barely kept from swearing and almost high-tailed it out of there.  But I stuck around for further torture.  He cut behind my ear, inserted some tube like device into the mastoid area and got some gunk out.  Then he took some water and drained it. And.....that triggered my inner ear.  The whole room was spinning and I was so incredibly nauseous.  They sat me up and somehow I managed not to throw up.  Eventually I felt well enough to drive home but recovery was so similar to how it had been with my previous surgeries and I was out for a good day.

The abscess went down in size though, so that was good.  Then about six weeks after the in-office surgery I got a call from my ENT.  He said that the culture tests they had run finally came back with something.  They found tuberculosis.  I had no idea what to think, other than that I was pretty sure I died from tuberculosis on the Oregon Trail game I played in elementary school. After that phone call I got a call from the health department.  I was told I shouldn't go out around people for about two weeks until they could make sure I wasn't contagious. A nurse came over that night and I was started on a 4-drug therapy for treating the tuberculosis.  The rest of the family was tested for tuberculosis.  Jane and Hank tested negative but Matt and Jack got positive test results, meaning they had been in contact with the TB bacteria and had "latent" TB.  They both started a one-drug treatment.  I was given permission to be around people again after two weeks.  My sputum tests were negative so they assumed I didn't have pulmonary TB.  

What's really fun is that with active TB I was put under direct observation therapy.  That means the state nurse, Carla, comes to my house everyday and watches me take my medicine.  She watches Jack too, but trusts Matt to do it on his own.  Poor Jack has to take his medicine crushed up and put into yogurt.  They don't have a kid version.  Direct observation therapy drives me CRAZY. You know how annoying it is to swallow pills everyday?  That's right, it's not at all annoying.  But do you know how annoying it is to have to be home and available and needing to stop everything you're doing at a certain time every day to have someone watch you take your medicine like you're mentally incapable of doing it on your own?  Well, it's highly annoying.  And I get to do it for at least a year.

I also started meeting with an Infectious Disease doctor who oversees my medicine dosage and my side effects.  He's like a hipster doctor who loves to shoot the breeze.  I have no time in my life to make appointments with doctors that I don't think are saying anything important.

So, May and June were full of tons of doctor appointments, and side effects and first trimester symptoms.  The main side effect was being tired.  I was already tired because of being pregnant.  But the medicine, oh my goodness, it made me so tired.  I wasn't just sleepy but it felt like I didn't have the energy to move at all.  I would just sit down and hope I'd never have to move again.  Luckily, as I was told, that faded after being on the meds for about a month.  Now the only side effect I have is having my arms and legs fall asleep all the time.  Its a common side effect and they make you take vitamin B6 to counteract it.  But lately every time I wake up in the middle of the night both my arms are asleep, and sometimes my legs.  I'm hoping it goes away as I can't imagine holding a baby with numb arms!

Jack turned 4 in June.  He had a little friend party--a couple friends from preschool, and Tommy, Charlie, and our new neighbor Scotty.  We played outside with water balloons and silly string.  They were both gone in about ten seconds and I was pretty much out of entertaining ideas.  But the party survived and Jack had fun.

Then, at the end of June I had my big-time surgery.  I already hated being on all the meds while I was pregnant and needing surgery really stressed me out.  They called me the night before to tell me when to come in.  I told them what I was having surgery for and then the surgery center didn't feel equipped to care for me and I was told I'd need to go to the hospital.  They spent most of the day deciding how to handle a TB infected surgery patient.  They ended up having me in a special operating room with the doctors and assistants in full hazmat gear.  To recover I was taken to a negative pressure room where the nurses also had to wear their hazmat suits.  The surgery ended up going for five hours.  My ENT removed all the infectious material as well as these granulomas that had grown in response to the infection.  He also took the cartilage from my tragus and made it into a new ear drum.  Then he took out the damaged hearing bones and put in prosthesis bones.  I didn't wake up until about 10 or 11 at night and was still really out of it.  I ended up staying in the hospital overnight.  But the baby's heartbeat did well and was still doing well so I was very grateful about that.

I spent the next couple days recovering at home.  About day three I was feeling much better.  Then, a couple days later I felt horrible and had bad ear pain.  It was Sunday and we went to the ER.  I had a post-surgery infection and was put on two more antibiotics.  

Eventually I felt better and life started to settle down a bit.  I was still enjoying my daily visits from the state nurse but physically felt pretty good. Also in July we went to a Jespersen family reunion at a tiny little place in southern Utah called The Rockin' R.  The kids had a blast and so did the Jespersen clan.  I thought it was funny though, that, The Rockin' R reminded me of everything I never enjoyed about growing up in a small rural town.  And they charged money for it.  But, apparently the country life is something other people enjoy.

Jane started first grade.  I was worried about her being gone all day but she has loved it from the get-go.  She says school goes by really fast but she hates how quickly time goes once she's at home and has to do homework, dinner, baths and bed.  Jack started a new preschool and also goes to a free reading class at the Lehi Library.  He is doing great but I can't believe he'll be in kindergarten next year!

Jane turned 7 in October.  This was also her year for a friend party.  She had an awesome little nature party in our yard.  We made bird feeders, and stamped river rocks, and painted little wooden critters, and made nature trail mixes.  She invited five girls from school (Mati, Addie, Rachel, Lexi, and Joy), a friend from church, Kalli, and her best friend Abby.  They had a blast.

In November we went to California for Thanksgiving.  It was the first time we travelled for Thanksgiving since being married.  It was so much fun.  The road trip only took us 12 hours which was a huge improvement from the last time we went when Hank was still nursing.  That was 16 painstaking hours. In California the kids had a blast playing at grandma's house with the legos.  And their favorite part of the trip, they say, was when we went to the beach in San Francisco.  We were totally unprepared for them actually wanting to get into the cold ocean in November, so they ended up with their clothes completely soaked and then played in the sand, completely caking their clothes with sand.  Matt could barely handle it.  That was our only stop in San Francisco that day because we had to take all of their clothes off to let them in the car.  We went back to San Fran another day and went to Golden Gate Park and Sutro Baths.  We had a great Thanksgiving dinner and saw lots of family.  Even Pete got a little shout out with a sweet little baby shower.  Then we headed down to Carmel for a quick visit.  The kids were so sad to leave.  We all were.  Sometimes California is so perfect I really can't let myself think about it too much or it will make me too sad we don't live there.

So, there were a few months there (August-Novemberish) that, even though we didn't have a fully functioning house, I got to pretend that life wasn't too crazy. For the most part I didn't think too much about the upcoming baby and would freak out when I would think about how quickly it would come.  So, by the time we got back from California it was December and it was all of a sudden GO TIME!  I demanded we curtain the front room even if it wasn't painted.  (The walls still need more work before we get to that and the floors still need to be repaired before we can sand and stain them).  But I had to have a place to nurse without the neighbors seeing everything.  We also had to finally move the TV set out from our bedroom and into the front room.  I needed a nursing chair, a place to put Pete's baby clothes, a place to change his diaper downstairs, and a place to fit his bassinet in our room.  And, last but not least, we needed to buy a van to fit all of our kids into!  With one week left we still need a chair, a place for the bassinet, and a van.  But we're getting there!  And of course there's the usual mile-long Christmas to-do list.  I really want to get everything done and try to relax for a few days before we meet Pete.  I'm not sure if I can pull that off, but ready or not, 2013 is about to end as crazily as it started!