The kids love dressing the same and being “twins”…isn’t it sad that it’s still cold enough for them to be in their fuzzy Christmas pajamas?
One Week To Go (Give or Take)
Apr 6th, 2011 by ECM
I’m one week out from my duedate, though yesterday my OB check-up was a bit disappointing…I’m still at 1 cm, and I’m strep B positive again, which means I’ll be going in to the hospital sooner rather than later because my labors tend to be so short. (I was positive both other times, and they did get me on antibiotics long enough to protect the kiddos, so I’m not worried. But since my baby brother almost died from untreated strep B, it is something we take pretty seriously in our family!)
So I don’t plan on having this baby early… I’d mentally been thinking that the baby really wasn’t going to come two weeks early, so I had fun stuff planned through yesterday (when I got my hair done) but had a pretty empty calendar after that–just in case. Yesterday I definitely readjusted my hopes/expectations, and I’m making a few more plans for the coming week. Sigh. Waiting for a child to come is one of those few times in my life when I’m forced to acknowledge (though I usually pay lipservice to the fact) that God’s the one ultimately in control, not me!
Shopping and Coloring
Apr 5th, 2011 by ECM
Elizabeth recently rediscovered one of my smaller purses, and it’s her new favorite toy (best used in conjunction with the shopping cart). We’ve got a little shopper on our hands…
Meanwhile, Tommy’s coloring fixation shows no signs of slowing down…
Little Bible Reader
Apr 4th, 2011 by ECM
Elizabeth loves her Big Picture Story Bible!
Spring Clothes Shopping
Apr 2nd, 2011 by ECM
I’ve been looking forward to the spring consignment sales for awhile now, as this is the first time I got to shop for Elizabeth! Remembering the high prices from the fall sales, we waited ’til the half price sale Thursday afternoon and scored a bunch of deals. In general, I’m not willing to pay more than $1 for used kid’s clothing, but I can tell this will be harder when buying for girls…there was one Gymboree dress for $7 that I just couldn’t resist! Tommy’s basically the same size as last summer, so we just picked him up a bargain suitcoat for $1.50 and a couple other random things. I had to take the kids with me, and I definitely found myself buying more pink for Elizabeth than I otherwise would have because she was so excited about it all! I am most excited about the matching Mommy/daughter skirts we found–a real incentive to get back to my normal size asap this summer.
It’s also funny that what I found necessary for Tommy’s summer wardrobe as a two year old was quite a bit less than what I felt compelled to buy for Elizabeth’s summer. Girls are just so much more fun to shop for!
For $36, that’s:
5 dresses
11 tops
4 skirts (plus a matching Mommy skirt)
2 pairs of shorts
1 pair of pants
2 girl’s swim suits
1 boy’s swim suit/rash guard
1 sport coat
pair of soccer socks
And because we’re girls, we had to come home and try on our favorites, the Easter dress and the cherries dress:
Playing in the Snow, Again
Apr 1st, 2011 by ECM
I really couldn’t believe it when it started snowing again this week. While Thousand Oaks, CA was in the 80s yesterday, we bundled into the snowpants and snowboots for the last time (??) to sled and play in the snow here.
Tommy’s Four Year Pictures
Mar 31st, 2011 by ECM
We really like to try to get the kids professionally photographed once a year, and I’ve been fortunate to know some great photographers in the last two places we’ve lived. A couple weeks ago, it was finally warm enough for Lauren to come over and do a session with Tommy. He was very hard to work with–not willing to smile, impatient to just go play–but she still caught some good shots. I am super bummed that she’s moving out of state this weekend (not only because I’m losing a friend, but because now I don’t have anyone to do this baby’s newborn shots!), but I’m glad we squeezed this in before the big move! If you know anyone in Arkansas who’s looking for a photographer, we highly recommend Lauren! Here are a few of my favorites:
and here are Elizabeth and Peyton hanging out during the photo shoot…she will miss her little buddy!
Well, my duedate is two weeks from today. Monday I had a good OB check-up…the baby’s head was down, heartbeat was steady (135), and I was 1 cm dilated. Not that it means much, because I was 1 cm dilated just hours before having Tommy on his duedate and 5 cm dilated for several days before Elizabeth finally made her appearance 10 days past hers!
I’ve scheduled out fun things (haircut, company, pedicure with a friend) up through my duedate, as I want to have things to look forward to instead of just sitting around waiting for the baby to come. Thank goodness no one is getting married or graduating in the next month–we really have no deadline we have to make for this baby’s arrival, and he or she can come whenever. We toured the hospital a week or two ago. It’s not Prentice Women’s Hospital by a long shot, but I’ve heard the L&D nurses are good, and that’s all that really matters, right?
I’m finding that nesting is a lot harder with two little mischief makers running around. I try to clean up a room, put away laundry, or start a project, only to turn around and find that one of the kids has come behind me and undone all the work I just did. Monday I set the kids up with breakfast and ran to take a quick shower before my doctor’s appointment. I came back downstairs 5 minutes later to find my uneaten bowl of oatmeal on the floor, cracked in a hundred pieces, and a whiney daughter insisting that the yogurt and chex she’d asked for was not in fact what she wanted for breakfast. Yesterday she got into a highlighter we thought was out of reach and did a number on herself, her clothes, and the kitchen table. Tommy clogged up and overflowed the toilet in my freshly cleaned bathroom last week and then did it again yesterday (now I know why we were going through kleenex so fast–half the box was in the toilet); Elizabeth took all her clothes and diapers out and scattered them all over her room; and the contents of my dish cabinent are reduced weekly with the combination of overzealous kids and tile kitchen floor.
I’m really tired, and I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping on my own unless I take a sleep aid before bed which then makes me feel drugged and woozy in the morning. I want to keep doing our normal social activities (Bible study, play group, Baby Boot Camp) as long as possible, and I want to finish up some craft/sewing projects while I still have the time, and oh, I want to keep up with the daily cooking, shopping, and laundry! I know I have more energy now than I will after the baby comes, so as hard as it is to get out of bed in the morning these days and push through my daily tasks, it’s better to do it now…between naps and rest breaks! Oh, and I’d rather not go into labor today, as Elizabeth’s nose is pumping out green snot at a truly alarming rate, and my official childcare-provider-while-I’m-in-labor, Jenny, has three kids of her own who I’d rather not infect!
So here are my two-weeks-to-go prayer requests: that I’ll stay patient with my kids, that I’ll get enough sleep, that the essential household tasks will get done, and that Elizabeth gets over her cold (or is at least non-contagious) by the time I go into labor and we drop the kids off at Jenny’s! And for those of you who aren’t already praying for the Talcotts, some of our dearest college friends are having a baby April 14, just a day after my duedate. Baby Hope has a birth defect involving an improper closing of the back of her skull, and we have been praying for her every time we pray for our baby. I’ve forwarded on Anna’s blog to many of you–she is doing a great job keeping everyone posted on how we can be praying specifically for Hope and the whole family. Check it out and lift them up, please!
Here’s the belly picture that a couple people requested, too…
My Sundress Attempt
Mar 29th, 2011 by ECM
Last week I picked up a dress pattern at Walmart on a whim, and here are results #2 and 3 (#1 had to be thrown away because I foolishly followed the directions exactly with disasterous results):
(and another pic just because Tommy wanted to be in one:)
I’m not thrilled with the pattern (I actually gleefully crumpled it up and threw it away), but these are fine for a two year old. The fabric was just leftovers from her quilt, so essentially free.=)
NB: I do not actually enjoy making clothes. I de-stress when I quilt or sew felt food, but the process of following clothing pattern directions that don’t in fact work frustrates me to no end. I’m not exactly a newbie–I’ve probably made 30+ dresses since my early teens–but I think I’ll save my enthusiasm for crafts and let myself buy Elizabeth some cute summer dresses at the consignment sale this week…
Preschool Update: Phonics Fun
Mar 26th, 2011 by ECM
Lately I’ve definitely been letting the phonics part of preschool slide because Tommy has all his sounds down but wasn’t ready as of a couple months ago to start putting them together to sound out words. This week, though, he rediscovered the foam letter stickers in the art box and asked for a preschool project with them. I decided we’d pick words and work backwards, sounding them out and finding the sticker letters that made each part of the word. (We stopped for him to draw the picture after we finished each word.)
He did really well! When we got to the A in CAT, he got impatient about finding the sticker and told me, “I can write an A.” Now, I have really been resisting writing because things I’ve read say that kids this age don’t really have the fine motor skills to form letters correctly and it’s better to wait rather than form bad habits now. But Tommy had somehow learned by osmosis how to write an A. And a C and an H. (Derek recently discovered that he apparently knew all the letters to spell “I love Nona” as well.) So I’m giving in and pulling out the alphabet tracing books. I know my intense personality and that my struggle is always going to be against pushing him (the firstborn of two firstborns!) too hard. In this case, though, I think I was overcompensating and holding him back from something he’s excited to do. I’m not saying he’s gifted (!), just that I need to pay closer attention to what he’s interested in. And this Jessie Wise article gives me a good overarching perspective of the whole reading/writing process…homeschooling certainly is a learning experience for me!