32.

I turned 32 today. Very strange. The years speed up the older I get. The day began with a trip to the OB for my 30 week appointment, where I was told the “new” OB I’d seen for the first time last month, the OB I was thrilled with and had scheduled out all my appointments for the rest of my pregnancy with, had an emergency and would be transferring care of all of his patients to other doctors until February.

I’m due in January.

Lovely news. No idea where to go from here.

I had my glucose test today. You know, the lovely sweet drink followed by a blood draw an hour later to see what my body does with ridiculous amounts of sugar. No one called to tell me I failed miserably yet, so I’ll take it as good news. I’ve never failed this test before, but I was reminded, by said not currently practicing physician, that my age and number of pregnancies put me at a higher risk. Ouch.

We stopped on a few errands, in flash flood pouring rain, with seven children… Grocery shopping on my birthday? Why ever not? It wasn’t actually that bad. We splurged on soft pretzels all around at Sam’s Club. Fun fun.

I mostly made myself my traditional German chocolate cake, (Liberty and Eden pitched in, in an attempt to get it baked before the pork loin went into the oven. Fail. Plan B: Blaine brought home sesame chicken… because it is my birthday, darn it!) Liberty offered to make my cake, but I thought it had a better chance of turning out well if I made it myself, and I only get it once a year. (It turned out lopsided, oddly enough. No idea. It tasted good I’m glad that glucose test was this morning and not tomorrow…) The 32 candles Liberty arranged in the cake made it all better… Draw the eyes upward, right?! (You know, to the near-need for a fire extinguisher.)

Life is so not what I’d imagined it would be. I was going to be done having babies by 30, for one. This is my second born in my 30’s. Grocery shopping in the rain, dashing as fast as a giant pregnant belly can dash while corralling many small children seemed pretty okay. It’s a built in party, right? The stack of construction paper cards, still wet with excessive glue, the letters telling of how loved I am… It’s all pretty great.

Top it all off with a conversation with my dear four year old boy. Pierce was, for lack of a better term, giving me the bird.

“Why can’t you do this with your finger momma? Are your fingers too big? It’s not really hard.”

“Umm, I could do that, dude. It’s just not… Nice. People think pointing with that finger is… rude.”

“Why is it rude?”

“Umm… because people say so.”

“You don’t really know?”

How ever do you answer that?

Yup, life is very different than I ever anticipated. But it’s pretty great.

And I’m pretty tired. In Sterling’s words, “I didn’t even knew you could run momma!” Pretty sure I can’t. Shouldn’t. Won’t again for oh, 10 weeks.