2:15 – Tell Annalie we’re leaving for the doctor’s in one minute. Realize she hadn’t brushed her hair yet, ask her to do so. Find granola bars and stash them in bag for later.

2:18 – Leave for base hospital. Drive should take 25 minutes in normal traffic.

3:08 – After finding a parking space, putting up sunshade in futile attempt to keep interior temperature of the minivan from reaching 100F, jogging across parking lot and into hospital, and taking elevator up three floors, arrive eight minutes late for 3:00 appointment.

3:20 – Go with nurse to get weight, blood pressure, etc. Back to waiting room to read books to Annalie.

3:42 – Finally called back to see doctor. Same friendly nurse shows us to exam room and promises doctor will be there shortly. Ask if I have time to pee first, am assured that I do.

3:45 – After returning to exam room, nurse peeks her head in door, apologetically explains that the doctor wants to do a urine dip*, and asks if I have any pee left in me at all. Magical pregnancy superpower #8: always being able to pee, even if you just went three minutes ago.

*Up to this point, the doctor had never wanted to do that particular test. I’d asked at every previous visit before using the restroom. Of course this is the one visit I didn’t ask first.

3:50 – Doctor comes in, introduces himself* to me and Annalie. Measures my belly, listens to baby’s heartbeat, asks a few questions. Assures me everything looks good, says they’ll see me in four weeks.

*I had to reschedule an appointment, and my regular OB was unavailable.

4:00 – Check waiting area in pharmacy. Doesn’t look too bad. Decide to take number in order to ask question about refilling prescription. Only seven more people before number is called. Man, it’s hot in here. Air-conditioning seems to be on the fritz. Yes, Annalie, I’m hot too. Yes, I know you’re hungry. Here, have a granola bar, and hang in there. It will be our turn soon.

4:05 – Half the pharmacy windows close. Line moves much more slowly. Annalie amuses self and people sitting nearby with old cell phone that can still take photos. She takes photos of Red Cross sign, her feet, pattern on my shirt, slip of paper with number on it.

4:55 – Number finally comes up. Prescription filled quickly and with minimum fuss. Yay! Head out to minivan.

5:00 – Leave parking lot. Wonder how long it will take to drive mile to base gate at this time of day. Share second granola bar with Annalie. Drive s-l-o-w-l-y towards gate with rest of people leaving base.

5:15 – Drive out gate and onto highway.

5:30 – Find non-fast-food restaurant to eat dinner and wait out worst of rush-hour traffic. Annalie is tired and hungry and falling totally apart because she wanted fast food with a playland. And her shoes hurt. And she wants to go home so she can swim. I explain getting home right now would take at least an hour at this time of day. Might as well eat dinner first. She allows herself to be dragged into restaurant, where she loads her plate at salad bar with broccoli, peas, garbanzo beans, black olives, chopped ham, and grapes. She cheerfully devours it all, plus seconds of ham and grapes.

6:05 – Driving out of restaurant parking lot, I spot Payless Shoesource in adjacent strip mall and suggest we kill more time there. Annalie immediately agrees; she loves trying on shoes.

6:20 – Nothing we wanted to buy at shoe store, so we stroll down mall to TJ Maxx, where we find no children’s shoes but lots of cute outfits for Baby, Annalie, and Aurora. Annalie looks at toys while I narrow down pile to one clearance item each for Baby and Aurora; one clearance skirt and one clearance swimsuit* for Annalie. Before we pay, Annalie shows me a toy and asks if she can get it. I say no, not unless you get rid of five toys you already have at home. She sighs and returns toy to shelf without further argument. I make mental note to remember that comeback.

*Annalie has suddenly outgrown all her tank swimsuits from last year, even though they fit her at the beginning of summer. I think she’s grown another inch in the past month.

6:40 – One last stop at Walgreens to look for cheap flip-flops for Annalie. Instead find cheap fake Crocs. Also find candy bars on sale and pick up half-dozen, planning to eat one on drive home, save rest for later. Go stand in line at register.

6:55 – Still standing in line, which now has seven people in it. Long line for a drugstore. Someone announces cosmetics counter open, whole line shuffles over there to pay. Leave store, walking past same woman at original register, still arguing with manager.

7:00 – At last, driving home. Traffic is still heavy but moving briskly. Take slightly different route home to avoid construction delays. Spot no fewer than five vehicles driving along with left turn signals blinking steadily away despite no apparent desire to turn or merge. Wonder if it was Leave Your Left Turn Signal On Day or something.

7:25 – Arrive home. Whew.

Yesterday we had a fun playdate with Carrie and her kids. I feel like I was neglecting an assignment and now I’ve finally gotten a good start on it! See, Brenda and Carrie are blog friends from way back. When Brenda and Bug were here helping us unpack last spring, Carrie and her son Erik came over for lunch one day, and we had a blast, kids and moms alike. Brenda ordered me and Carrie to become good friends and have lots of playdates so she could live vicariously through us. I had every intention of following her orders, because Carrie is smart and funny and interesting and I liked her very much, and also I don’t have very many local friends!

But you know how life goes. First, we were busy unpacking and settling in. Then, Carrie and her husband Mike had a baby girl, Elsa, and were deep in the newborn stage of just trying to keep their heads above water with no extra time for playdates. Then Annalie and I went to Omaha for a visit. Then it was Annalie’s birthday, and my mom was in town for a few weeks. And of course by then I was dealing with first-trimester exhaustion all the time, and then we went on another trip to Omaha.

But finally, all the stars aligned and we had simultaneous free afternoons! So Annalie and I went over to their house to play and eat Carrie’s yummy version of my spicy veggie stir-fry with peanut sauce, which I just realized I’ve never blogged despite it being one of those recipes that everyone always asks for when I make it. Then Annalie and Erik wandered downstairs to the playroom while Carrie and I gabbed away for more than an hour. We were so busy talking (mostly about cloth diapers—more on that in a bit) that we neglected to check on our kids even once. But it was okay, because they got along great! They prepared a delicious pretend vegetable soup garnished with maple syrup for us.

Then we changed into our swimsuits and went to the splash park! There is an awesome park in their town that is full of fun things to do, among them this excellent splash park next door to a miniature golf course. Annalie has been to a half-dozen different spraygrounds in her life, so they’re no big deal to her, but when we walked into this place her eyes widened and she exclaimed, “Oh, wow! This is so cool!” She barely stood in one place long enough for me to spray sunblock on her, she was so excited to go play. (Incidentally, I’d like to kiss whoever invented spray sunblock. I love that stuff.)

Annalie and Erik both took off as soon as they were sunblocked. I grabbed my camera and followed them, persuading them to pose for a quick photo before they ditched me to play. I followed Annalie around as she checked out the “big mushrooms” and the waterfall cave and took a moment to spin the wheel on a spray fountain. I grabbed her for a quick arm’s-length self-portrait by the water maze, forgetting that I’d zoomed in for the previous photo and the result was a surprisingly good close-up shot.

Annalie fell in love with this blue whale, whom she said was named Daisy. There was a bit of drama over the fact that other kids kept climbing onto the whale with her, which would make Annalie hop off and pout till they’d left. Then she would race back over and climb on the whale’s back again. I think we are providing her with a sibling (and hopefully some perspective) not a moment too soon. Erik, meanwhile, spent a few minutes perched on the frog’s back, encouraging it to hop. “C’mon, Frog, HOP!” He didn’t seem to mind that the frog ignored him.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I pointed my camera at Erik, who tried to thwart me by sticking his hands in front of his face. So I just raised the camera and pointed it down at his head. Ha! At least to a 4-year-old, I’m still tall.

Most of the time we were there, both kids were in the water maze. I spent some time in there myself, since Annalie wanted me to go in with her a couple of times—purely for fun, not because she was afraid. I actually spent a few minutes contemplating how great it was that she wasn’t the least bit afraid of the noisy jets of water; that she just charged right into their midst, laughing. I bet last summer she would have had to spend a while working up her courage, and then she would have only gone in if someone had been there holding her hand. I love watching my kid grow up. No crying on my baby’s first day of kindergarten for me, thank you!

Well, she’s home-schooled, so her first day of kindergarten was at home with me. But that’s beside the point. My point is that I genuinely delight in her growing confidence, knowledge, and skills. Did you know she can totally make her own microwave popcorn now, starting with getting the package out of the pantry and all the way to dumping it in a bowl and adding a sprinkle of salt? She can also get her own bowl of cereal, pour herself a glass of lemonade without spilling, and get herself out of the shower, dried off, and into her pajamas. I love age six!

I admit that when I think ahead to her being a college student I might sigh a little, but then Annalie tells me that she doesn’t want to live in a dorm when she is in college because she would be too sad to leave me and Troy and her little sister. I take that with a grain of salt of course, because she probably will change her tune over the next 12 years. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she doesn’t. She is just that kind of person. Hey, my younger brother lived with my parents for six or seven years in his late 20s, just because he liked living with them, and I am forever telling Annalie how much she reminds me of her Unky Ben! So we’ll see….

…but I digress! I was telling you about how the big water maze was the main attraction for both Annalie and Erik. Even Carrie (with Elsa asleep on her chest) and I enjoyed standing near it. The shallow water cooled our feet and the mist from the fountain sprayed our faces and arms and kept us from overheating while we chatted about how we wished we had waterproof cameras and kept an eye on the kids. Though it was actually perfect splash park weather yesterday, not horrifically hot like it was last week.

Eventually, we noticed that the kids were getting tired, and were just sort of hanging out near us. It was almost time for us to head home anyway, to give us a chance to beat the afternoon rush. So we casually mentioned the magic words “ice cream” and Annalie and Erik immediately announced that they were ready to leave and rushed over to dry themselves off and put their shoes on so they could go pick out their ice cream treats. Not a bad way to end an afternoon at the splash park and a summer playdate!

Thanks again for the fun afternoon, Carrie, Erik & Elsa! We’re already looking forward to next time.

Oh, remember how I mentioned up there that Carrie and I were talking about cloth diapers while our kids played? Yep, I think we’re gonna cloth diaper this time.

I’ve been really intrigued by cloth-diapering since right around the time Annalie was potty-trained. I’d been watching my friend Lynn use cloth on her daughters for a couple of years by then, and I’d had several conversations about the whole thing with OMSH, who is a staunch advocate of cloth diapers.

Then I moved to San Diego and became friends with Sonja in real life. She’s a cloth-diaperer who also works at a shop that sells natural, organic and earth-friendly products for parents and kids, including a wide range of cloth diapering, breastfeeding, and babywearing products. So she’s kind of an expert. My friend Madge also used cloth diapers on her kids. And now Carrie, too. Much like with homeschooling, the more I considered using cloth diapers on a theoretical second child, the more people I discovered around me who had been cloth diaperers. Troy and I talked it over, and we decided we’d give it a shot.

Which leads me to the above photo. Carrie’s daughter Elsa, at 3.5 months old, is ahead of the growth curve and has already outgrown a lot of her size small diapers. Carrie had mentioned that she was trying to sell them online, but that she was running into a lot of people who weren’t willing to pay her (more than fair) asking price. I offered to buy a few from her, thus getting me started on my stash, and preventing her from having to deal with crazy bargain-hunters and shipping hassles.

Which is why I left the playdate yesterday with ten size small cloth diapers (and a sample of Rockin’ Green detergent and a couple of little cubes used for making wipes solution that Carrie generously shared with me). When we arrived back home and I opened Annalie’s door so I could grab the shopping bag of diapers, Annalie hopped out with a grin on her face and her doll Greta clutched in one arm—and Greta was now wearing the blue and purple diaper that had been at the top of the bag. Even Annalie thinks cloth diapering is a good idea, apparently.

There is a family at my parents’ church, Tim & Melissa Lorang and their toddler son Noah, for whom tomorrow—July 28, 2010—will be a day of great joy and greater sorrow. Their daughter Amelia Grace will be born via C-section, but Amelia has anencephaly. Anencephaly is a congenital defect in which the baby’s brain, skull, and scalp fail to develop properly, and it’s always fatal. When she is born, Amelia will be missing most of her brain, and likely the top of her skull and scalp. Amelia, like all babies born with this defect, will most likely die within a few hours of her birth.

Melissa is one of those people whose faith is so strong and who is so full of grace that it puts the rest of us to shame, if you know what I mean. She has been blogging about her pregnancy, her daughter, her grief, and her faith for the past few months. Tomorrow is the day they meet their sweet baby girl, and likely the day they will have to say good-bye to her.

Amelia Grace: her first name means “a work of the Lord.”

I don’t really know the Lorangs (Tim is about five years younger than I am, and his family didn’t start going to my parents’ church till I was almost graduated from high school) but I’ve been reading Melissa’s blog and praying for them. Tomorrow, I will be praying for them harder than ever as they grieve the loss of their daughter. If you are a person who prays, could you take a moment to say a prayer for them too?

UPDATE: Amelia Grace Lorang was born at 9:02am this morning, and passed away at 11:00am. RIP.

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