Still not yet... for all those who are wondering ;)

Ok, now it is 5 days until my due date! :( I'm absolutely going to explode! :) I just really didn't think I was going to make it this close to my due date! My belly button is completely out now! I'm so miserable ;) It's been super humid and my feet have been extra swollen - I can barely get them in my shoes :( I'm trying to walk around, but it's so hard... between the swollen feet and the bowling ball in my pelvis! ;) At my dr's apt on Thursday I was more dilated (very very close to 3cm), and more effaced (up to 60%). I was so hopeful after the apt - I thought for sure I would have her by the end of this weekend... now I'm just hoping that she was waiting for Mike's b-day, which is today! The waiting game is just horrendous ;) Well, eventually she has to come out - I'll just have to make it through each day until that happens :)
Jamie brought Mom up on Friday, so things should go pretty smooth when it happens. I don't have to worry about being home alone w/the kids and going into labor. So, I'm feeling much better about that part. I'm just so ready to bring this little baby home! :)
Just wanted to let you all know we're still waiting :)

The countdown continues....

:) 10 days until my due date now! Less than two weeks! Of course I could still go over my due date, but I'm really hoping not to! There are about 4 or 5 others who all have due dates around now - according to the pregnant lady at the gas station... the postmaster's friend had hers last week... the lady at the gas station was due July 27th with her second, which is also a girl, but as of the 29th she was still waiting...

I previously had mentioned a little bit about the baby shower that Mike's family threw for me the weekend before last, I wanted to wait until I got some pics so that I could post them :) Got to say thanks to Fay for being so quick with the pictures!! :) I'm still waiting for pics from the baby shower my family threw for Duncan ;) Anyway, the baby shower was so much fun! The games were great! One game was to guess how big the belly was by tearing off a length of streamer... Mike's mom got it right on!! Followed closely by Lea, who was just about a 1/2 an inch too much... Then Terry Ann had enough streamer to wrap around probably 3 pregnant bellies ;) It was really fun! :)

We also played a game where we had to find the most pins in a bowl of rice :) and the best game, which I think I mentioned already, was one where Lea had mushed and microwaved a candy bar into a diaper and we had to guess what kind of candy bar it was! That was gross and hilarious!! Of course she chose a few with nuts and such ;) it looked pretty accurate!! ;)

There was so much good food, I ate entirely too much of all of it! :) you can see all the food on the table :)

The gifts were just awesome and adorable! Too much!! :) Mike's mom and Ashley and Alyssa got the baby a 5 piece layette, a pack of onsies, two sleepers, a package of flannel blankets, a package of receiving blankets! It was a huge bag full of beautiful things! :) Terry Ann and Pat got a mongo pack of diapers and wipes, which is awesome! I won't have to go shopping for diapers for the first few weeks! Fay, Addi, Lea, Steve and Michelle got a clothes basket full of goodies :) a princess robe, two pair of ruffle butt pants ;) onsies, blankets, a huge pack of bibs, pink hangers :) and probably other things that I'm forgetting! Candy got this huge bear with a hat on it and some headbands around the neck and the cutest rooster teether :) and Rene handmade a quilt and matching pillow that I'm absolutely in love with!!! :) The shower just turned out really nice and I was really glad that they had a shower for us :) They all put in a lot of work and we all had a great time! :) Now hopefully we'll be able to throw Lea a shower soon!!! :)

12 Days to go!

Ugh! It's supposed to be stinking miserably hot and humid for at least the next 3 days! Temps should be in the middle 90s! Ugh!!!



Well, Emma ended up leaving early :( Fay called Friday afternoon and said that they had a change of plans, Tylor was homesick so they decided to leave Sunday instead of Wednesday. No matter how awful those two girls act, it's always sad to see Emma go :( After a couple of days you kind of get used to the din and it just becomes part of the house... it has been so quiet around here... even though there are still two kids here :) Maria was bored probably 2 minutes after Emma left... she's been moping around ever since. It will probably take a few days to once again get used to the change in the house. We are all sad and feel the emptiness Emma's departure has left. Maria's got a whole month and a week or so before school starts to relieve her boredom... last week she said she was ready to go back. She was ready to go back to school last year around the first week of June! :) I'm so glad she enjoys school so much.


Well, we ended up getting a new car on Friday!!! We had been somewhat shopping around for the past month or so off and on since the truck will be payed off in September. We decided last year that when we payed the truck off we needed to get a 4WD vehicle, since the winters up here are usually pretty bad (we really lucked out last year)... that and really I was having a very hard time trying to decide where to put 2 car seats in the minivan... the middle row of seats is short and leaves room for someone to climb into the back row - so the seat belt stretches across the opening to get into the back row, so not a good spot for a car seat... so really only 1 car seat can go in the middle row--- so do I shove Duncan in the back or the new baby? I really didn't like either option - don't want to displace Duncan and don't want to have a new baby all the way in the back row... so anyway, long story short (wait, didn't I just give the long story?) ;) Ideally we were looking for something with 4WD and 3 rows of seats... that proved quite difficult to find... especially for what we were willing to spend... we were almost thinking about the Ford Escape - which did not have 3 rows, but we figured we would keep the van for when we had Emma... but then really, we go down to Sparta to pick her up in the winter months too... so then we saw a Mercury Mountaineer that was a little over the price of the Ford Escapes we had been looking at, and it had 3 rows of seats! Well, we called the car dealer and set up to go in and look at it... of course they had let someone take it on an overnight test drive... but the dealer said that the Ford Explorer was pretty much the same vehicle... we said "but they don't have the 3rd row of seats" and the dealer said that they did! At first I wasn't really convinced, I still thought the Mercury was a little better - the 3rd row could fold 50/50... the second row folded maybe 70/30 (2 seats and 1 seat)... and the Explorer was a little more expensive... of course the girls were immediately in love with the Explorer! We test drove it on Wednesday, then talked about it all night and decided to take it on an overnight on Thursday... by then we were pretty much sold on it. It is roomy - and two car seats will fit in the middle and Maria can still sit in the middle comfortably with both car seats... and the 2nd row folds in 3rds, so it doesn't matter which spots the car seats go in... the 3rd row only folds all or none ;) but that's not really a big deal... the girls were equally comfortable in the back row or the middle row :) and the front seats both have the lumbar thing :) It's a very smooth and comfortable ride :) lots of extra features... and in looking at the safety rating it's the top of it's class! :) Five stars in all category but one, which was 4 stars! So, we're actually quite impressed with it! And we stretched out the payments over 72mos, so amazingly, we're not going to be paying much more than what the truck payments were!! Of course now I have to stop giving soccer mom's in suvs the evil eye!! ;) LOL!! Never thought I would be driving an suv!! It's a little more necessary up north here though... and not too many minivans have 4wd...

12 days to go before my due date! Of course every day I think is going to be the day... I just keep getting more and more miserable and ready!! I keep thinking that it can't possibly get any harder to walk, and then it does! ;) just got to think that very soon now I will have less to complain about ;) of course I'll have a different set of complaints ;) lack of sleep probably being the #1... poor Mike - I know he's ready for me to have this baby too --- he's suffering from a lack of sleep now... my having to get up 20 times a night to pee, flipping around all night trying to get comfortable, having restless legs, and the snoring! :) Of course he will still be suffering from lack of sleep when I have the baby - but he'll at least get a few couple hour stretches of sleep in... :)

I've been trying to pass the time by making baby booties ;) which I think I went a little too far with once I found 2 patterns that I really liked... but they are so darn quick and cute ;) Now I have about 10 other crochet projects either to finish or to start and can't decide which one to work on... it's definitely a good hobby to pass the time with :) I'm so glad I picked it up! It's all thanks to Maria - she got a learn to crochet book from a book order at school - I learned it to try to teach her, but of course it's kind of tedious and monotonous, so a little too boring for her to keep her interest in it... but every now and then, when she's reached a certain level of complete and utter boredom she will show a renewed interest in it...

15 Days and Counting...

Yes, I really still have 15 days to go before my due date :( That seems like forever! At this point I am so uncomfortable, 15 more days seems unbearable... of course it could very well happen sooner (which of course I'm hoping for!) or later (which I don't even want to think about!). I had my Dr's apt yesterday - a little more dilated, up to 2 1/2 cm! Yippee :) and the baby's head has dropped down further... I don't know if she can get any lower! And the Dr said she thought the baby was facing down, which is good - that's the optimal way for them to come out :) if they are "sunny side up" (facing upwards) you can have really bad back labor and it makes the turn much more difficult - they can get caught up in the birth canal. Which is exactly what I did to my mother ;) I don't think Duncan ever really dropped - I just don't remember being this kind of uncomfortable with him... It's just getting impossible to sit, stand or lay down! ;) I am so doing the pregnant waddle these days.

Duncan is continuing to add new words to his vocabulary on a daily basis. It's too cute :) such a wonderful age! :) A couple of weeks ago he started saying Wal-Mart when we pulled in to Wal-Mart... he says it "Mall-Mark." The other day we drove by it without stopping and he said "I see Mall-Mark" and he just kept saying that for about 20 minutes! It reminded me of when Abby used to say Old Navy "O Nay-nee." When I was telling Ally about Duncan saying Wal-Mart she said the same thing, that it reminded her of Abby. Abby was too funny, she would say "O Nay-nee" and if you would repeat it the same way she said it, she would get so mad and say, "No! I said O Nay-Nee!"

It is so hard to decipher what he's saying sometimes... sometimes he will say what sounds to be the same thing for two different things - he will say Piee for both play and potty... but the other day, almost the whole way home he said something sing-song like that sounded like "F*** a bucket," which of course was not what he was trying to say, but he just kept repeating it over and over again... Mike said he thought it sounded like he was saying "say goodbye kids," which it did sound like that a couple of times... I just have no idea what it could be. And I feel horrible that I can't decipher everything he says :) a mother is supposed to know these things. Tiffany was always so good at decoding what her kids were saying. But of course there was one story that she told me that I think of everytime I can't understand what he's trying to say - and that's when Abby (or maybe it was Elli) was asking for her "gackle" Tiff kept pulling things out of the diaper bag that sounded similar "cuddle," "blanket,"... etc... after a very long guessing game (what do you do with your "gackle")... they finally figured out she wanted her sunglasses.

Amazingly, the girls spent very close to 30 mins arguing about Maria not handing Emma the dustpan... I just let them go. I thought about intervening, because it was so annoying listening to them "just hand me the dustpan," "no, you didn't hand me the dustpan when I was sweeping the bathroom," "well you didn't ask me to"... etc... I don't even know how they resolved it, I think Emma finally had to go get it herself. If I would have intervened it would have meant taking a side, which I'm really trying to avoid doing. And in this case, who was right? Should I have told Maria just to hand her the dustpan (which is probably what I would have done) or should I tell Emma just to get it herself... glad I stayed out of that one and they eventually worked it out themselves...

Girls, Girls, Girls...

I had just talked to my mother and sister and told them how impressed I was with the girls' behavior over the past couple of weeks... the first couple of weeks they were bickering non-stop from the time they got up in the morning until the time they went to bed. Everything was a major ordeal. I stopped trying to mediate and started ignoring them and started delegating who got to do which part, and that seemed to work rather well. They were down to a few minor spats a day - over who got to sit where, who got to do what first etc... but not the exaggerated blow ups over such minor issues they had been having...
Then last night after dinner... these docile, delicate, fragile creatures (yes, that's completely sexist--but it's what society would have you believe and it is still how little girls are treated) had a dog poo war! Yes, you read it right, these girls were flinging dog poop at each other!!
I went out into the yard to put Duncan in his swing and Emma was getting out the pooper scooper and Maria said "be careful, there's dog poop all over" I figured she meant a couple of piles by the swing set - for some reason, all around the swing set is Sally's preferred area for defecation... at least Jo-Jo goes along the fence line... anyway I didn't really think much of it and was pushing Duncan in his swing when Maria told me that Emma put dog poop in a velcro paddle thing they have for a tennis ball that sticks to it... and that Maria had gotten dog poop all over her hands... I told Emma that was disgusting and that she wasn't going to watch TV today... I asked Maria if she washed her hands, which of course she hadn't... so while she was in washing her hands I was really lecturing Emma about how that wasn't funny, it was gross... etc... after a few minutes of harsh lecturing from me she fessed up and said that she only did it because Maria had put dog poop on a stick and threw it at her and it had hit her... and that's when I really noticed all the little bits of dog turds all over the yard!! It became quite clear that it wasn't just the two incidents, they had been flinging dog poo at each other - an all out dog poo war! Needless to say, neither of them are watching TV today... and we had them wash up and sent them to bed early! Unbelievable! Girls throwing dog poop at each other!
Anyway, to change the subject (I know you're all thinking please change the subject!) it is supposed to be miserably hot and humid for the next few days here :( I'm just so not looking forward to that. The past week it has been really nice weather and I've really been enjoying it. My feet and ankles haven't been getting too swollen and I've been able to get a lot of housework done. I've been keeping up on the dishes for the most part, which is an amazing accomplishment for me :) Mostly because I keep thinking I could go into labor any day now and do not want my house to be a pigsty! :) Of course I still have 18 days to go until my due date... and plenty to keep me busy and distracted from thinking about it :)

Powwow Weekend!

We had a pretty fun weekend! Lots of family was in town for the powwow. Maria's two older sister's Ashley and Alyssa came up with Mike's mom and Leon. Maria was really excited about seeing them and she got to spend some time with them. They all went swimming during the baby shower. And then we let the girls go to the powwow with their Aunt Candy, which they were absolutely thrilled with, and of course met up with Ashley and Alyssa and the rest of the gang. Mike and I decided not to go, I didn't want to do all that walking around at the moment :)

Mike's family threw me a really great baby shower! It was lots of fun! The food was really good :) and the games were great. And they all got the baby so many things!! They were all absolutely cute and wonderful! Renee made the baby a quilt and matching pillow that are just adorable!!! I'm going to have Fay email me some pictures from the shower so I can post them here, and I'll say more about the gifts then so I can show y'all pictures :) Everything was so great! This baby is really going to be decked out! :)

Crochet and More :)

So, I've been madly crocheting things since we found out we were having a girl... I went right to Wal-Mart and got tons of pink yarn and baby yarn the day after the 20 week ultrasound. I spent days looking up free patterns for booties, hats, blankets etc... online, and found so many really cute patterns! Some of them have worked out better than others... I've been trying to get a good baby bootie :) Of course you really have to use the right yarn... I was trying to make a pair of Mary Janes - the pattern called for "Aunt Lydia's Baby Denim" I just figured it was baby yarn, so first tried some 4-ply baby yarn, it was too big and I ended up sewing it together a little wrong (wrong sides out)... then I tried some thinner baby yarn, amazingly that one turned out too small! :) Then I looked up the stuff the pattern called for and it's actually crochet cotton... so then I got some of that, and I just don't like how that turned out. It's a little stiff... so I have more patterns for mary janes (about 3 or 4 others) that use regular baby yarn, so we'll see if those turn out any better...
Then I have this book which has a really cute set in it (blanket, bonnet and booties) - it called for fingering weight yarn, so I used 3-ply baby yarn and the booties turned out great, maybe a little big, but not so much... but in making the bonnet I realized that I would have to get the lighter weight yarn for that because it turned out way too big! Using 3-ply added an inch to every square, which there are 8 squares...
I've been much more successful at the baby hats, which are pretty easy to make, I think I've made 4 or more... OK, make that 7!
I made a cute little cuddle for Duncan, and was going to make one for baby, but once I made a couple of squares I realized that they were way too big (I was using a bulky yarn instead of a light one), so decided to go further and just make another blanket... which meant I had to go get more yarn and what I had gotten was this bulky honey baby yarn on clearance... so they didn't have the variegated one I started out with :*( so I'll have to make do with only 2 squares of that one and the others white... But I finally made a really cute hat and bootie set - pink and green for the coming home outfit...
In the meantime, I made Duncan some crochet flip flops :) since he seemed to really enjoy walking around in Maria's :) They turned out really cute. Anyway, so that's what I've been crocheting lately :) Next I plan on starting something special for Brad and Holly's baby, and probably some hats and maybe some booties for Ally's friends Lisa and Angie. Then I want to get back to sewing some stuff, I haven't really done much since I drug the sewing machine out! I made a little bag for all of Duncan's peek-a-blocks and a little nuk holder for the new baby... but I have to work on the design of that... I think instead of trying out my own designs with the sewing machine I need to get a lot more sewing practice in! I have a pre-cut ready to sew quilt that I got for Duncan a long time ago, I think I'll work on that first to try to get the hang of sewing :)