This week is going so slow. I thought yesterday was Wednesday almost all day. I am anxious for a few reasons. Firstly, my younger son took a terrible fall of the play structure at the park on Sunday night. It was like a nightmare unfolding before me in slow motion. He cried and cried and I cried and cried. He stood up before I could even get to him, which was a comfort of sorts. The ground at the park is squishy and covered with finely shredded bark. He didn't even have a scratch on him. It was so close to bedtime though, that I had trouble sleeping and kept getting up to check on him. It wasn't until I had thoroughly scoured the Kaiser handbook and the Internet for "head injury" that I finally relaxed enough to sleep. I was going to stay at home with him on Monday, but he seemed fine when he woke up. He was walking a bit gingerly, but I didn't see anything wrong with him. I only decided to take him to day care because I trust his caregiver so much. I knew she would never ignore any symptoms and would call me for anything. He fell almost 6 feet, but bounced back like it was nothing. I cannot believe how absolutely lucky we are this time. My whole body aches today; I have been so tense since it happened that as I am finally loosening up my muscles are aching.

I am also very anxious because friends of ours are expecting a baby any minute. She is going to be induced tonight if her labor hasn't started on her own. This is their first child, and I remember vividly how frightening the whole process is the first time around. She and her husband are so prepared though, I have faith that this experience is going to be a lovely one for them both. I'm just having some trouble focusing on anything else today! They live in Kentucky, so we will have to be satisfied with pictures of their bundle of joy until we see them again. Good luck guys!

My cousin Dawn is also expecting any time. Her due date is May 30, but her babies are notoriously early. She is 9 months younger than me, and is giving birth to her 7th child. She has 3 boys and 3 girls, and this newest one is also a girl. She started young, barely 15 when she gave birth to her first. I have stopped being shocked when she tells me she is pregnant. I don't think she will ever stop having children. She's not a religious person at all, except when it comes to pregnancy. "I'll just have as many children as God gives me, I can't stop" she tells me. I've given up seeing any reason to it, and truth be told, all of her children are healthy, wonderful little people. My biggest fear is that they won't make the most of their lives, but fall into the same routine of teenage pregnancy, welfare abuse and this strange sense of entitlement their mother has. She has always been an enigma to me. As young children, she always made me feel immature and unworldly. I don't recall, however, feeling any sense of jealousy when she started having sex, ran away from home and quickly became pregnant. I knew on a very base level that those things were not correct of girls our age. The hardest realization I came to was that she is a habitual liar. I didn't believe for years that she was lying to me and stood up for her left and right. It was my inexperience that couldn't let me believe someone who loved me could lie to my face on such a regular basis, and with such ease. It chilled me to my bones when I finally saw her as she was. She even lied to our grandmother after the birth of her previous child in 2003. She told Gran that she had her tubes tied. I started to become suspicious at our Gran's funeral. New baby was barely 8 weeks old, and as she held him she joked about how we'd better look out, all it takes is holding a baby to make her pregnant. She made several comments like that throughout the day and I'll be damned is she wasn't pregnant months later. I knew she was pregnant before everyone else did, but I didn't say anything to anyone until Dawn told me herself. The only reason to talk about that sort of thing is to gossip and tsk tsk, and I just didn't have it in me. My thoughts as always, go out to her children and I pray that they are happy.