Turning 40 and having babies

Wow. I just got off the phone with my friend Holly, who told me she is pregnant! My other friend Val is unexpectedly pregnant too, and now I feel JEALOUS! Val and Holly will both be turning 40 in the next few months, and I am right behind them. I always told my husband if we have one more, then it has to be before I am forty. So now I am adjusting it a TEENY bit to being PREGNANT before I turn 40. That buys me a little bit of time, in case we decide to go down that road just ONE MORE TIME.

My biggest fear is that I will die.

Honestly, Brooke's emergency birth was really scary... I have this terrible feeling that if I went there again, I would end up being that statistic - the mom that dies with a complication. So I tell myself that having another baby for me is sort of selfish, and that is what has been holding me back. I mean, the kids I have already need me.

Besides, Alex could never make it without me. LOL.

Shameful

So the other day was the first time I have posted all summer, basically. That is just shameful, and I have no great excuse. Summer went along as it typically does in our house. I always have these great big plans of doing lots of fun, inexpensive, memory-making stuff with the kids, and then... nothing. We do the same old stuff - nights and weekends filled with our kids softball and baseball games, then tournaments, then soccer. Before you know it - GAPKIDS is putting up their back-to-school clothes online, and I am getting ridiculous amounts of fall catalogs in the mail.

Crap. Another summer, over.

This summer was particularly painful, because we had more rain than sun. I often felt like I was stuck in some bad Groundhog Day in Seattle movie or something. Rain really put a "damper" (hehe - admit it, that is funny) on my plans. The kids actually go back to school in less than a week! I'm not even done getting everyone organized for school, and that's almost like a crime in my book. I can't stand to be disorganized.

These are some of the things that I wanted to do this summer:

--Go to Sleepy Hollow Lake (not once)

--Go to Lake Taconic (no)

--Go strawberry picking (nope)

--Go camping (negative)

--Take fun bike rides with the kids (barely)

--Make my backyard look GREAT (boo, soggy marshy mushroomy yard)

--Go to Cooperstown (did it!)

--Go to the Bronx Zoo (nah)

--Take the kids to Six Flags, Zoom Flume or Hershey Park (no)

--Go Hiking (not once)

--Howe Caverns (Jenney and HER family went...)

--Weekend in the city (Statue of Liberty, Museums, etc) - this did not happen.

Oh well, I guess I will put those things on my Summer To Do List for next summer!

Call me Ishmael

So we were getting ready to go to the library yesterday, and Megan, my 8 year old says, "I want to get out Moby Dick!" I was like, impressed. I've been a big reader since I was just a little girl, and I have been excited to see Meggie fall in love with books these past few years. So I went on to explain how Melville's Moby Dick was classic literature, considered to be one of the world's greatest novels - something everyone should read once in a lifetime, etc. I began to tell her I thought she might be a little on the young side for Moby Dick (ya think?), and it eventually occurred to me to ask her where she heard of Moby Dick in the first place. She smiled, and informed me that she heard about it from Timmy Turner. As in the kid from the goofy Nick Jr. cartoon, Fairly Odd Parents. Then she skipped out of the kitchen, giggling - with goldy summer hair billowing behind her.