Stuck and Unstuck, The Upside-Down Boy, and Other Tales

I'm writing here, because nothing else is writing well lately. I'm reasonably reassembling old notes into new lectures, inarticulately given in Hard Foreign Language for two versions of the same class. But otherwise.... nada. Revisions: no. Article I need to write: nope. Newsletters for home: not so much. I feel like I have a mix of writer's block, culture shock, and expectant parent distraction all rolled together. Here's hoping things turn around this week....

In other news, Sam is doing fine. We went to church today. Two weeks ago (before the typhoon) and today I took him by myself to Local Church. Emily's having trouble moving and I think when the twins come, it will probably just be me and Sam on Sundays for a while. I want him to feel like he has a home church or two and I can tell he's a little out of sorts going to different places. This week he really enjoyed playing with the older kids. He threw a pink ball at church over and over again and enjoyed the response of the older kid. He would then laugh uncontrollably. But then he didn't sleep very well. A toddler insomniac. He painted in the afternoon with the neighbors, so from his perspective it was probably one of the best days ever. Weekends often feel like marathons to us, however.

We also did our thirty week visit for the little ones. Unfortunately, little boy is now head back up. This makes a c-section a lot more likely. Breach is possible for him, but about 25% of the time this requires birthing number one and then doing a c-section anyways. Further discouraging this option was a story from another American at our hospital who did 44 hours of labor, including two hours of pushing, and still ended up with the c-section. We will see. We still like the doctor. The babies are both healthy weights and moving around. Everything seems to be on track.

Emily is getting larger and larger, and is slowly outgrowing her maternity collection. She's now added almost exactly 20kg since we started at this hospital (~4-5 months). She naps and sleeps a lot, which is hard for her, because there's a lot she wants to do. And she has some swelling now when she's out for part of a day. She won't be on bed rest proper, but she's slowed down substantially.

I still feel like our biggest problem is the anxiety about the future. There are so many unknowns that it has really thrown us. At the same time, we are working on managing better and doing the best preparation we can. We may look into cleaning or babysitting help. I've done some modest nesting this week. We're doing our best to balance out the chaos, the expectation, the fear, and the hopefulness.