i'll call this post babies, snowstorms, and toothaches

wow, what a weekend.

on saturday we visited our friends mike and becki and their daughters nora(4), gwyneth(2) and brand new maisie(3 weeks). it was so nice to see them and to be around a new baby, it seems like it's been awhile since a friend has had a baby and all of a sudden everyone is either just now giving birth or awaiting a new arrival.

we really enjoyed getting up to the suburbs, getting away, and having the kids play with friends. becki and i have been pregnant the first two times together, but this last time she was on her own. same situation with my friend kristin who also just had her third daughter, when our second kids were about a year and she told me she was ready for #3 i almost laughed. i actually, i think i did laugh. but her second was a piece of cake and mine was andie, and that's all i'll say for now. so, two friends whom i've shared pregnancies with have new babies that i haven't even considered with my own family. when people ask if we'll have another i tell them what i feel, which is that if we do we may wait a bit, maybe until the kids are both in school and then we'll either be glad to be out of the baby phase and moving on or we'll really miss it and feel like we want another family member. i do have a feeling though that we'll miss it and want another but i could be wrong.

and i *love* babies. i held maisie and it brought back such sweet, infant memories. but the funny thing was just how much aaron enjoyed being around a newborn again. before you know it, he got all mushy and was saying (multiple times even), "So, maybe we should have another." it's like all 7lbs of cuteness and sleepiness just brainwashed you. luckily, by the next day and some space from that hypnotizing munchkin aaron had come to his senses. after a mere shopping trip sunday with our own children aaron was back to reality saying "Yeah, I don't think a third would really be a good idea right now." amen.

so anyway, to get through our weekend story (i have some major tangents, i apologize, i do the same thing in conversations and i never actually finish a story) after saturday night dinner out with mike, becki, and our collective five kids, we had decided to drive 50 miles to another suburb to stay in a hotel and then shop at IKEA the next morning. well it had been raining freezing rain and sleet all evening and we weren't sure if it was safe to venture on or if we should take mike and becki up on their offer to house us for the night (i honestly just couldn't do that to a woman who had just given birth three weeks ago-becki, if you're reading, you're a saint to be so generous!) and when aaron tried the roads at 9pm after dinner he declared them "not too bad" and we were off. weeeeelllll, the interstate was pretty bad and traffic moved at 27 MPH and what should have taken not quite an hour took two and aaron and i were sure we would get into an accident. even at that pokey speed we cursed ourselves for not replacing our tread-less tires and at times aaron would have the steering wheel turned 45 degrees to the right and we would continue to veer into the left lane. it was white knuckled driving and of course at the very end with the hotel literally blocks away we got lost in a strange apartment frontage road. we arrived and threw our sleeping kids down in the hotel bed around 11:30pm just happy to have survived.

then,i awoke in the middle of the night with a horrible toothache. earlier in the week i had noticed the right side of my jaw felt tense and i figured maybe i had been clenching my teeth or something, i sometimes do that without knowing it when i'm concentrating. then during the day saturday i felt pretty achey all around my right, lower wisdom tooth (they should have been removed about 9 years ago but i never seem to get around to it). well, the pain literally kept me up at night. why do these things always happen over weekends too? at this moment in time right now i'm awaiting my emergency oral surgery consultation and have already decided that i would even give my fictitious third child to the individual who relieves the pain. ugh.

oh, and i almost forgot to finish up the weekend story (see? i told you.) so sunday the kids woke up, andie all flipped out because she'd been sleeping when we brought her to the hotel and she wanted to go home. she seemed to think we were now going to live in the strange bedroom and did not like it one bit. we tried to swim in the pool but it was freezing, so we swam in the hot tub. we went to IKEA, and even though we had just had a buffet breakfast at the hotel, we ate another breakfast at the store. we shopped a bit, bought three things--not nearly what i would usually get in an excursion to my favorite Swedish superstore--and realized that shopping in a major place like with our two kids was crazy and enough to make us seriously consider why we would want to add a third into the mix.

and lastly, we arrived home, immediately intent on getting new tires. we called every place, all were booked, we finally found a store that could do it. in the twenty minutes it took to get there they had had 5 people come in and we would have to wait 2 hours. sooooooo, we went home.

what an interesting weekend. it's nice to be home

**Edited to add: I just got back from the oral surgeon, it's an infection and he prescribed antibiotics. i'll be better soon, yay! I will need to have my wisdom teeth removed in the near future, but they didn't have to pop one out today, so I'm happy!