lately i've felt like a huge (no kidding. huge.) bear;

an uncomfortable, nearly immobile, achy, itchy, restless, irritable, neurotic bear.

not this morning!

for whatever reason, i woke up feeling like mighty-mom.

or super-woman, except without the svelte physique. that part's long gone, never to be seen again.

(bummer)

not one to pass up an opportunity (usually, although sometimes i do procrastinate and said opportunity gets tired of waiting for me and leaves), i put my new-found energy and pep to good use.

i whipped up a batch of cookie dough.

it's THE best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever, and makes a huge batch. we're talking 6 cups of flour, 5 eggs... yeah. big.

but we eat them slowly, so i've gotten into the habit of forming them into balls and freezing them. that way they don't get stale and get tossed, there's not a bunch staring at us begging to be eaten NOW, and if we only need a few cookies, we can take out a few dough balls and bake them. and it tastes way better than most of the frozen dough i've tried (well, except for the expensive school fundraiser kinds. those are usually pretty scrumptious!).

so... i now have 129 individual balls of dough ready and waiting to be baked and devoured...

and for more readily-available treats that don't go stale in a few days, i also made a batch of no-bake cocoa mounds. hey- the main ingredient is oatmeal, so it's not all bad, right?

i even managed to overlook the chaos that has been our household lately... toys scattered everywhere, two small being fighting and having tantrums more than once a day, that sort of thing. while calmly ignoring a rather loud dispute over a certain toy, i had a moment of clarity:
toddler etiquette is nothing like adult etiquette.
they have a whole different set of rules...
which proved true when the screaming match dissolved in a matter of minutes, everyone emerging relatively content and mommy not having uttered a word.
huh.
maybe i should let them fight it out more often...

oh, this looks so comfy!!

funny that madi should take to sitting on a ball, seeing as how i haven't gotten around to dragging mine out. i need to... time to get more proactive in encouraging things to move along a little more quickly so we can meet this little man!

~

so, i'm not sure if it's a sign of impending labor, since every labor is different, but the energy, the ambition, the calmness... it has to mean something, right? i've had a few intense contractions this morning, but nothing regular, and i've been really focused on relaxing, using a positive mantra and some visualization techniques through each one.

~

there was a brief, oh-so-brief moment this morning where i thought my water had broken. it was in the middle of a contraction and i was in the kitchen; i stepped on something wet, which turned out to be a very small puddle of water. must've happened when i refilled the brita pitcher. made me giggle a little, knowing that we're at the stage now where stuff like that makes us think "this is it!!".

~

a lesson in humility came my way this morning- i'm not the kind of person that likes to ask for help, much less accept it when offered. i like to think that i can do it all myself. but i got a phone call from a very special lady, asking if she and her co-worker could bring supper to our house tonight. my first thought was "absolutely not- it's OUR place to feed YOU", but then realized that this is something she wants to do. in not accepting help from someone else because i think i can do it all on my own, i'm denying them the opportunity to feel good about what they're trying to do. just as lending a helping hand makes us feel good, allowing someone else to help us makes them feel good too. now, that doesn't mean i'm totally comfortable with accepting help when it's offered (i'm so used to doing things myself and being in control that it's now way outside of my comfort zone to accept assistance), but i know now that it's not always what i'm comfortable with- it's about the thoughts and intentions of the other person.

funny how things just kind of dawn on you, all of a sudden, after years of thinking that you had it all figured out.

between that and the toddler-etiquette thing, that's two epiphanies for me today.

i'd say that's enough for one day... any more revelations about to come my way can take a number and wait till tomorrow! :)