Life Right Now

I have no pictures for this post, just a bunch of thoughts from the last week or so.

• I feel really front-heavy now. My belly feels heavy, especially when I sit on the floor and it starts to get sore after a while (and makes my back hurt). Only 12 weeks to go!! Feels like a long time for this baby to get bigger and make me more uncomfortable, but not that much time to get ready. The child's name is still very much unknown and we aren't very good about actively talking about it. I think Ben and I have officially brought it up maybe two times. Yikes. I have to pee all the time now and the heat makes me nauseous. I have felt far more nauseous with this pregnancy than the first two, and I'm totally blaming it on the time of year. A guy at church today (prob. about 50 years old who has four kids) told me I seem like pregnancy agrees with me. I told him I can smile and look happy at church, but that doesn't mean the pregnancy is going that awesomely. I'm tired of the nausea. The only upside is it keeps me from overeating or gaining too much. The high heat and humidity last week made me feel really gross. Enough complaining :)
• Eli has stayed dry for almost two weeks now. This is huge. I'm not sure what happened, but he is very motivated to play Angry Birds Rio at the end of the day, so he stays dry. He doesn't always get to play it because it tends to rile him up before bedtime, but it's still motivating and he's finally noticing when he needs to go before it's too late.
• Funny enough, Charlie hasn't pooped in his underwear in weeks either. Ben and I suspect he was copying Eli in his own way or just trying to get attention. It's still a chore to get him to go on a regular basis, but there is major improvement from before. I told my friend the other day though that I felt like I had won a war that night by getting Charlie to poop on the potty (he kept resisting even though we could tell he needed to go).
• Enough TMI for one post. My dad will say it's a little much (the potty talk). :) It helps me keep track of how long this has been going on though and I hope it makes someone else out there feel better if their child struggles with potty training. I just happen to have two that struggle. :) 
• Charlie is in a really funny age. Says hilarious things, pretends a lot in a high-pitched voice, and loves to copy Eli, who mostly loves the attention and can be extremely sweet to Charlie. Last night we decided it was way overdue to take the steri-strips and band-aid off of Charlie's forehead over his stitches scar because they had been on for two weeks+ and after going to the beach, there was sand and other stuff stuck in there. We gave the boys a bath and told Charlie we were going to take the strips off and he flipped out. Eli kept coming up with sweet things to cheer up Charlie and help him be less scared. He even offered to draw him his own funny Angry Bird guy and cut it out. I thought it was sweet that Eli was considerate of Charlie's anxiety and trying to distract him. We finally got the band-aid and strips off without too much pain on Charlie's end :)
• This afternoon, Ben got home from doing church stuff for eight hours straight (went to our ward for the first hour, then left to speak in a city ward since he's on the high council, had a meeting about physical facilities needs at that building, and went home teaching) and was totally zonked afterward. He fell asleep on Eli's bed while the boys were up there playing and the next thing we knew, the boys had torn up their room, stuffed animals were covering the floor, their clean underwear and socks were strewn around and they spent their time jumping on Charlie's bed and being crazy with the stuffed animals. It required quite the cleanup afterward. I think it's funny Ben slept through it all. I was downstairs trying to get visiting teaching assignment emails out and attempting to ignore the chaos upstairs :) 
• Last week, I was carrying a bunch of loose things (water bottles, a chair, a magazine, and my phone) walking over to the kids' tennis class and dropped my iPhone on the cement. It shattered despite having a case (I think it landed on a rock). I have a warranty, but they send it in to get replaced and gave me a Droid loaner phone for the time being. I really miss my iPhone. There really is no comparison and I can't wait to have an iPhone again. 
• Our closest couple friends got a divorce a few months ago. I'm still really sad about it and get frustrated when we talk to the husband. It's hard watching someone you care about make stupid decisions. Another friend's husband also went off the deep end and they are getting a divorce. I feel like we have entered that phase of life where divorce is more common among people our age and it makes me really sad. 
• Our summer has been really busy. Eli has OT twice/week to try to get his fine motor skills up to speed in time for kindergarten. The boys have swim camp a few weeks this summer along with their regular swimming lessons. They're doing soccer camp for two weeks this summer, a library class, tennis class, playgroup at the park once/week, and between all of that, it feels like we're running around all the time. I may take a hiatus in August when I can't move anymore. :) All of the exercise is really good for them, especially Eli. But it's exhausting!!
• To end on a positive note - we've started reading longer chapter books to the boys as part of their bedtime routine. We finished Charlotte's Web a few weeks ago and Eli especially loved it. I am amazed at how much he retained and how excited he was to read a chapter each night. We read the book, Something Wonky This Way Comes, and it wasn't that awesome. But how do you follow such a great book like Charlotte's Web?? :)