Amusing Little Preggo Story

Just a quick post, since it's really early in the morning and I should be sleeping.  :)

Last week, my friend Robyn offered to have H3 over for a few days since I've been really tired and also trying to finish up some projects around the house.  H3 is very high energy and she's been a bit bored lately.  Our schedule has had us going out on weekends, but staying home during the week (no errands or anything to break up the day).  On Monday, I met Robyn in Williamsburg to drop off H3.  We met at a little ice cream shop, along with two of Robyn's daughters and another little girl.  Robyn's youngest, Julie, hadn't seen me in a while, or at least not since my belly really popped. She's 5. She stared at me for a while, and then said "Your tummy's really big."  I smiled and patted her hStiead because her mom and I were talking and I wasn't too focused on her at the moment.

I didn't think much more of it until I went to go pick H3 up on Wednesday afternoon. While we were standing in the kitchen, Julie came over and looked at my belly again, and then she said "Here let me help you," and started trying to push my tummy back in!  Robyn and I cracked up as I told her that she couldn't push my tummy back in because there is a baby in there.  Julie cocked her head and asked if she could push on my tummy to make the baby come out!  Robyn and I really lost it right then!  Poor Julie.  That will be one to tell her a few years from now.  :)  If only delivering a baby was that simple, right?

~H2

Quick Pregnancy Update

I went in for my 36 week check up on the 13th. Everything looks good with our baby girl and she is in the correct position (head down) so we're hoping that she stays that way. The GBS test was negative, so I will not need antibiotics during labor. This is a praise, since the test was positive when I was pregnant with Shannan and there was some trouble with the i.v. during my labor then. That's one less thing to worry about!

The check-ups will be weekly from here on out, and have been scheduled for June 19th, June 29th, and July 6th. The official due date is July 7th, but the baby could technically arrive at any time between now and as late as July 21st (though we really hope the latter is not the case). We are mostly in the waiting stage now, with everything pretty much ready!

There's really not much else to report, so I guess that's it!  Oh, and for the record, I finally found a decent watermelon.  I paid a bit more than I wanted to, but the craving was intense and I was so happy to get a big watermelon that it had to come home with me!

~H2

Lots of Pictures!

We've been very busy this month!  Today was H1's last day at the school for the summer!!!! We're very excited about that.  He will probably be working for the Parks and Rec Department over the summer, but that doesn't begin until June 25th, so we get to have him home for a little while.  Hurray!  I have a feeling that he has a lot of projects that he wants to get done, but I can't complain.  The house is looking wonderful, inside and out, thanks to his efforts.  

This month has been dotted with multiple trips to Busch Gardens, so a lot of our pictures are from there.  Last Sunday included a Chris Tomlin concert, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  H3 knows a lot of his songs, and she was singing at the top of her little lungs--so very cute.  What I enjoyed the most about that concert was that it was treated like a praise time, not as much like a regular concert.  There is just something amazingly cool about watching more than a thousand people singing praises to our King, recognizing that these are my family in Christ.

I have lots of pictures, so here's the first half of June!

I had fun one morning with H3's hair.

H1 and H3 are in the front of the car

H1 and H3

Airplane!

When it's in the mid 90s, the water sure feels good

It's kinda hard to tell from the picture, but there're fountains and pools of water everywhere she's playing.

With Auntie Amber (one of my college roommates)

We saw a little fairy tale show, and H3 got a couple pictures taken with the cast. It was really well done, with lots of gymnastics, dancing, and singing involved, all things H3 loves.

Roller coaster ride with Auntie Amber

During a bad storm, the roof and ceiling caved in on our church's nursery and one of the classrooms. We are in a rented building, and the owners are not going to fix it because they are trying to sell the property and I'm pretty sure the building is condemned anyways.  A group of men and women from our church spent an evening tearing out the nasty carpeting and relocating the nursery and children's classrooms.  H3 made the best of things with a tea party!

A current favorite activity is painting!  I've just been getting the cheap water color paints from the dollar store or Walmart, at least until she decides she's a bit more serious about it. I have a very nice set of water colors from when I used to paint, and when I replace them, I'll let H3 experiment with my old set.  Until then, she's perfectly content.

 She loves painting her hand....

And making hand prints!  She calls them "tiny hands" after one of her favorite songs from the Baby Signing Time series.

Yet a different BG trip.  This was H3's first time on the tea cup ride, and did she ever have a great time!  This was the night of the concert, last Sunday.

I think that covers most of my recent pictures.  I know I have a few more that I haven't pulled off my camera yet, so you'll just have to wait for those.

This weekend is Father's Day, and we are blessed to have my father-in-law here with us, along with his Swedish exchange student (Martin).  Our plans for the weekend are still pretty fluid, but Sunday will definitely involved a little American culture for Martin.  On many holidays our church will have a food-related event after the service. For Father's Day, we're having a pig pickin'.  Yes, that's how you spell it correctly.  We're not roasting it over a pit though, as a lot of folks around here do.  We're going to use a huge "grill" for it.  The "grill" used to be our pastor's old oil tank (same kind you would use for a house), and this last year a couple guys from our church converted it to a grill.  Church members sign up to bring side dishes...I'm bringing brownies!  I should have lots of pictures after the weekend, so be on the lookout next week!

~H2

Watermelon

Yes, these are stock photos I got from Google.  Basically, here's how it goes.  If I go to the store to buy a watermelon, this is the size that is offered to me from pretty much any area local grocery store for $5.00 or more.

This is a bit more of the size that I'm looking for.  If a watermelon doesn't weight at least 20lbs, I have a hard time justifying the purchase.  Yes, I eat a lot of watermelon at one time normally, and I have a feeling I'd eat more at the moment.  Have I mentioned that I have a watermelon craving?  It's pretty bad, let me tell you.  I'm looking at the picture of this watermelon and I'm reasonably sure I could eat most of it in one setting right about now.

Fighting the craving until I can find a worthy melon....

~H2

Memorial Day Weekend

It's Memorial Day weekend, a time to take a few moments and remember those who have given their lives for the freedom that we enjoy.  Our family has taken some time to do that.  We've also tried to take advantage of the 3-day weekend that H1 had to spend some time together.  H1 needed a haircut, so Saturday was spent in Williamsburg, first picking up the new bed for H4, and then the haircut, and finally meeting up with my friend Robyn and her girls for ice cream at Sweet Frogs.  Sweet Frogs has amazing frozen yogurt!  We also browsed through Barnes and Noble.  It's always fun to look at the books, even if none came home with us.

Sunday after church, we came home for hot dogs and working on the house.  We did take the late afternoon off to enjoy the warm weather outside.  H3 had a great time in her swimming pool and she was laughing up a storm the whole time.

A picture of the whole pool.  My parents gave her a slide last year and it fits perfectly into the pool!

She loves lining up the duckies alongside the pool, and playing with her watering can.  Most days she brings it out to the garden to help me water the plants.

We did finally get a garden hose for our garden.  Due to the distance of our backyard, we needed over 200 feet of hose.  H1 took some time today (Monday) to line it up nicely on the reel.  

This is one of my two hydrangea bushes that H1 and H3 gave me for Mother's Day.  I love seeing them in my backyard!

For dinner tonight H1 made his amazing hamburgers.  They are a turkey burger with pieces of mushroom and black olives mixed in, along with some ketchup and a number of spices.  These burgers are one of my favorites!  We had corn-on-the-cob to go along with them, and some potato salad that I made earlier today.  To top it off, I made cherry cheesecake fudge brownies.

This was a snapshot of our weekend.  Blessings!

~H2

34 Weeks and Counting!

This past Friday marked the 34 week point for me in this pregnancy.  I can tell summer is arriving.  I've had a lot of swelling in my feet and legs, and some in my arms too.  Right now I'm really looking forward to holding little H4!

I was having H1 take a picture of my belly and H3 came over and kissed "baby sister" right as he was taking the picture.  So sweet.

This past weekend we bought a new car seat and stroller for H4.  The set we'd had with H3 got really worn out and would not have been usable for this little one.  We'd wound up selling it to a lady in our church who needed a back up car seat for her daughter last year.  I'm very thankful to have this new set!  H1 is planning to clean out the van and put seat protectors over the middle seats before re-installing H3's car seat and putting in the new one. 

We also bought a little bed for H4.  It's called a Snuggabunny Rock N Play Soother, made by Fisher Price. When H3 was born, she had horrible re-flux and for lack of a better alternative (financially), she slept in her car seat for the first 4 months because she needed the incline. I've been told these little beds can work really well for small babies that have re-flux issues.  Since the doctors have told us that we will most likely have that problem with H4 due to the cleft palate, I thought it would be nice to give it a try.  We set it up last night and I put it next to my side of them bed.  We'll probably transfer her to her crib upstairs after a few months, like we did with H4, but it's nice to have this ready for her arrival, whenever that will be!

H4's heart rate was good at my last check with my midwife this past week, which was a relief.  Nothing sounded odd and she wasn't sitting on her cord again.  My next appointment isn't until June 13th now, which will put me at almost 37 weeks.  I'll probably wait til them for any more updates or pictures.

~H2

A Little Bit More of May

We've had a busy month!  H3 seems to be pretty excited about her little sister coming soon.  She's taken to carrying around one of the ultrasound pictures and asking me regularly when "Baby Sister" will get here.  I tell her it's going to be 6 more weeks, and she's starting to try to bargain with me, saying "No, 5 weeks" or "4 weeks" or something along those lines.  It's kinda cute, though I'm sure this will turn into the lesson on the futility of trying to barter on time.

I've really been in the mood to make cookies lately.  I've made peanut butter oatmeal, chocolate with mint chips (H1's favorite, below), and just plain ol' chocolate chip.

Thanks to some dear friends of mine who let H3 stay with them for the weekend, H1 and I were able to spend a couple days to ourselves and celebrate our 7th anniversary.  At this point in pregnancy, I'm not able to do a whole lot, so we spent a Saturday seeing a couple movies in the theater (this was only the second time we've been to a theater in the last year) and then browsing through a few shops in Williamsburg.  We also happened to have giftcards to a few restaurants, so lunch and dinner were nicely provided for us.  Sunday we took a trip to Busch Gardens, which always makes me smile.  We had our honeymoon in this area 7 years ago and we went to Busch Gardens on one of the days.  

Again, I can't really do much of anything, so it was mostly a nice walk around, enjoying the beautiful weather and H1 riding a few roller coasters.  He hasn't gotten to ride anything this year so far, since each time we've been, he's been taking H3 on all the little kiddie rides.  H3 can ride a lot of them herself, but she likes company.  For those who don't live around here, the fun part about living close to Busch Gardens is that if you are a Virginia resident, you pay admission for one day and then you can go as many times as you want for the rest of the summer.  All you have to pay for is parking, though we upgrade one pass so we don't pay for that either.  If we visit 6 times, the pass pays for itself. With their new water-park area for little ones, it makes for a fun way to be outside during the miserable heat.


The last couple weeks have been pretty rainy, with spurts of sunshine and humidity. It hasn't been very good weather for playing outside.  Generally, H3 and I have still been taking our daily walks (about a mile in length) and spending just enough time outside to water my tomato, zucchini, and squash plants, and then hanging out inside for the rest of the day.  We've read lots of books and worked on a few crafts.  I've been teaching H3 how to read an analog clock and she is doing very well.  She doesn't have any issues with telling the hour, though we're still working on the minute thing.  I realized that I'll need to get a new clock or two (hoping to find a cheap one at a yard sale or something) that she can read easier than the main one in the living room.  My living room clock has an Eiffel Tower background and the whole piece looks antiqued.  I love it.  The problem is that it not only has Roman Numerals (which I'm pretty sure H3 is not ready to tackle), but the ticks that mark the minutes are also faded (purposefully).  I need to get a clock she can read easier.  Until then, we are working off of a little book that I'll post pictures of another time and some worksheets that I printed from a website.  She is also learning to read the digital clock correctly, though I'm not too sure how much of a feat that is.  She's been able to read the numbers on it for more than a year, it's just been a matter of having her understand that the hour is on the left and the minutes are on the right.

Summer is just about here!  Only 3 weeks of school left for H1!  I'm at 34 weeks today and really starting to count down.  I can't wait to hold this precious little girl and introduce her to her big sister.

Staying inside to avoid profuse sweating,

~H2