Baby Bump - 35 weeks

Whew, that baby is sure getting big.  And believe me, I am fully aware of my size every time I *try* to roll over in bed, or attempt to get up off the floor after playing cars with Brooks.  I can honestly say that I love being pregnant though - even though I'm in my last month of pregnancy and it's been crazy hot here the last few weeks.  I figure I'm only going to be pregnant for a short time in my life and I better enjoy it while I can. 

Here are some pregnancy related highlights to catch you up on what's going on:

•  This baby really doesn't have a nickname.  Once upon a time we called him/her "guy", but that seemed to confuse people.  "Oh, so you're having a boy?"  Um, no we just picked the name at random - we don't know what we're having.  And since Brooks just refers to my growing bump as "baby", that's what we do too.
• This baby has been sitting WAY lower than Brooks ever did.  In fact, at this point in my pregnancy with Brooks I was icing my ribs after work everyday because he decided that shoving his butt under my rib cage was grand ol' fun.  Not this kiddo.  He's made a comfy little nest right on top of my bladder and pressing against my lower back/hips.
• Because of baby's position, I have had persistent lower back & hip pain.  All I can say is THANK YOU Dr. Marsh!!!  My chiropractor has allowed me to sleep well at night, sit & stand without constant pain and pretty much allowed me to enjoy this summer with my boy!  And with just a few weeks left until D-day, I'm seeing him on a weekly basis.
• Probably the most interesting thing about this kiddo is how much he/she moves.  And I'm not just talking about kicks and stretches.  Oh no.  This baby will start breach, flip to transverse and land head down .... all in the same day!!  Only to repeat this pattern the next day.  And the day after that.  And the day after that.  This has been going on for weeks ... probably months.  Even my midwife and chiropractor are amazed at how much this kiddo is still (literally) flipping around inside.  I'm just praying real hard that baby decides to end this gymnastics routine soon and will eventually land in the head down position - oh and not tangled up in the umbilical cord!
• We're working harder on preparing for birth now.  We're doing relaxation on a regular basis and have even done a labor rehearsal in our living room.  And I'm so impressed by my husband because he's been the one to initiate most of these preparations.  I teach this stuff for a living, but he's still reminding me to eat my eggs every day (because I totally forget otherwise), and practice relaxation and to keep doing my kegels and pelvic rocks.  He's such a fantastic husband and labor coach and the best daddy our kids could ever hope for!!! 

That's about it.  I have a feeling these last five weeks or so are going to go by really fast and really slow at the same time.  I'm just tyring to enjoy my last few days being pregnant before we become a family of four!!!

Road Trip

Last week Brooks and I road-tripped to my parent's house in Green Bay.  It was 8 hours of driving, but Brooks was an awesome rider!  I suppose it helped that I had packed a whole arsenal of car-friendly activities - crayons & paper, books, toys, lots of kid music and the lifesaver of it all .... the portable DVD player!!  Brooks LOVED seeing his Grandma Marty and Papa Dave!!!  And they sure loved having him around too.

Thursday we took a trip to Door County and visited The Farm.  This has to be the coolest petting zoo ever!  Baby goats, sheep, chicks & kittens were just wandering around, waiting to be fed and held.  And we did both!  My Aunt Rose lives right in Sturgeon Bay so she came along for the fun too!

This goat loved Grandma Marty :)

Since Chris is terribly allergic to cats, I had to take advantage of holding kitties while I could!

Friday we ventured out to Bay Beach amusement park.  We went last year, but since Brooks was so little he wasn't able to ride many of the rides.  But this year he could go all by himself!  What a big boy.  And despite my fears that he would scream during the whole ride, he LOVED them!

Captain Brooks!

Brooks riding the zebra on the carousel

Riding the train with Papa Dave



The weather on Thursday and Friday was awesome!!  Then on Saturday the heat and humidity came.  Quite a few of my mom's brothers and sisters came for the afternoon to visit.  It was nice chatting with them, but while they were all sitting in the hot stuffy kitchen, Brooks, Papa Dave and I snuck out for a little pool time.  Ok, so only Brooks swam, but I stuck my feet in the pool and Brooks splashed Papa Dave enough that he might as well have gotten in :)

I love this kid!

We had so much fun and it was really hard to say good-bye!  But we're looking forward to seeing them again in just a few weeks after baby arrives!

4th of July Randomness

Ok, so almost a week later I'll post some pictures and happenings from last weekend.  We're still in the process of unpacking and cleaning everything in this old, not-clean-at-all house that we just moved into.  So needless to say, blogging has been at the bottom of my to-do list.

But we did have fun last weekend ... eventually.  Here's what I mean.

Friday night I'm looking through the paper and lo and behold, there's a 4th of July parade this weekend.  Fantastic!  Firetrucks, marching bands, free candy ... what's not to love.  So Saturday morning after breakfast (which is around 10am) we quick throw on some clothes (because no one has bothered to shower by this point), put on our shoes, pack a quick toddler survival bag (snacks, water, sunscreen, more snacks) and headed downtown.  The whole time we were talking up this awesome parade to Brooks and boy was this kid excited to see a firetruck!  We were running a bit late, but we actually found a parking spot, pulled out the stroller, and started speedwalking the two blocks to the parade route.  We rushed up to 6th street to be welcomed by ...... no one.  There was no one on the street.  No people.  No firetrucks.  No candy.  No marching bands.  Um, what?  So Chris pulled out his phone and looked it up.  Sure enough.  The parade was on MONDAY.  Not Saturday.  Oh, and did I mention that I texted a friend of mine that morning too to meet us at the parade.  Talk about feeling like a schmuck!

So I apologized profusely to my friend for my inability to read a calendar and started the walk back to the van.  Brooks needless to say was quite disappointed.  But as a loving mother who hates to see my kid sad (especially when I caused it) tried to cheer him up.

Brooks:  (sad) Parade?  Firetruck?
Me:  Sorry buddy, no parade.  But look, there's a water fountain!
Brooks:  (excited)  Water!! Touch water!
Me:  No, sorry you can't touch the water.
Brooks:  (crying)  Touch water!
Me:  No you can't touch the water.  Look, there's a puppy
Brooks:  (cheered up)  Puppy!  Puppy!  Pet puppy.
Me:  No, that's not our puppy.  You can't pet it.
Brooks:  (more cyring)  Puppy!!!

And so the morning went.  Yeah, I was pretty much the world's worst mom.  I was considering giving him some candy, just so I could take it away.

Anyway, we came home, had lunch and put Brooks down for a nap.  I still felt bad about the morning's events, so in an attempt to make it up to him we decided to go swimming after he woke up.  So around 4pm we put on swimsuits, sunscreen, grabbed the towels and the toddler survival bag and headed to the pool.  We swam for about half an hour when they blew the whistle and closed the pool .... for an hour!  Boy I sure was batting 1000 today.  Fortunatley Brooks can't tell time and that 30 minutes must have seemed longer to him because he was ok with leaving the pool.

We went home, changed and went out to Qdoba for supper, because this awesome day also happened to be our anniversary.  Happy anniversary to us!  The upside of the day was that after supper we took a random trip to Target.  You know the "we don't really need anything, but since we have nothing else to do let's go to Target" kind of trip.  And Chris found a new grill for 50% off!  Which was great since ours died just a few days prior.  I'll post pics of that later.

(here's where the fun really picks up)  Saturday night our friend Tyler calls us.

Tyler: I'm sure you guys already have plans for the weekend, but we're heading to my uncle's cabin on a lake tomorrow after church if you want to come.
Me:  Actually, we're pretty lame and have no plans.  Sounds like fun.  We're in!!

And so we did.  We went camping overnight Sunday into Monday and had a BLAST!!  It was so nice to get away and relax. 

This whole barn was renovated into a cabin.  Pretty cool, huh?

We rode 4-wheelers (and by "we" I mean everyone but me.  Bumpy trail rides + lots of already occuring Braxton Hicks would not have been a good combination.)

played games

and had a ton of fun playing outside.  2 acres of open grass and a 2 year old boy??  Yeah, he had fun.

That night the boys blew stuff up for a couple of hours .... it was a lot of fun. 

The next day we decided to go canoeing.

yeah, I know I look goofy.

We paddled out to an island in the middle of the lake to have a picnic.  Going out was easy because we were going with the wind.  Coming back ..... well, that was a different story.  Let's just say that all marriage retreats should include a canoe trip with your spouse.  Chris was a trooper because there were many times when my arms were so tired I just couldn't paddle anymore.

And what did Brooks think of it?

Well, despite the fact that he could barely see up over the canoe and he could hardly move in his oversized life jacket, he had a really good time.  On the way home, all he talked about was the "blue canoe" and going for a ride on the water.

So despite the rough start to our weekend, it ended well and we have a lot of great memories from it.

A quick update

I don't have any new bump pictures to put up. sorry.  working on that.  trust me, it's still there and still getting bigger.  I don't even have any kid pictures to put up.  Wanna know why?  We moved!  (and I can't find the camera)  Yep, we moved ........ again.  A month ago we received a call from the guy who owns our house (ya know, the "I promise to rent my house for a LONG time and as long as I have good renters I will continue renting" guy) saying he was moving back to Sioux Falls aaaaand ............... back into his house.  Well, isn't that nice.  'Cause ya know the thing I wanted to do most this summer was pack up everything I own while being 7 months pregnant and move it somewhere else ... oh, and with a toddler.

But after going through all the steps of greiving (crying, anger - I really wanted to throw rocks at someone, more crying, denial, anger again, more crying, finally acceptance) we realized that we're not really in control of our lives anyway and somehow (somehow) this must be God's plan.  So we collected boxes, packed most of our stuff into them and moved.  The nice thing about moving (if there can be a nice thing) is that each time we move we get rid of more junk.   But this time we actually had valuable junk and sold it on Craigslist, giving us a little stash of cash :)  I'll take an extra few hundreds dollars, thank you.

So the move on Saturday actually went really well.  We have awesome friends who gave of their time, trucks and backs to move our very heavy furniture into our new house.  (Note to self: invest in inflatable furniture.)  Then a few more friends came by in the afternoon along with our new neighbor girl and helped us unpack.  So by the end of the day, I'd say over half of our stuff was out of boxes and put away where it belongs (sort of).  That was a really good feeling.  And every night this week has been unpacking, re-organizing and cleaning (don't even get me started on how very un-clean this place was).  Soon we will be settled.  Soon this will feel like home.  And hopefully (hopefully) we'll be in this place for a long time.  Well, at least longer than 10 months.

Par-ty! Par-ty! Par-ty!

Today was Brooks' 2nd birthday party - making it official that my 'baby' really IS two years old!!  We had a wonderful time and were blessed by the many friends who came and celebrated with us.  We had a sports themed party, complete with footballs, basketballs, soccerballs and lots of cake!!

Jeff & Joanie aka
"Cole Daddy and Cole Mommy"

Laura & Jessie

Lewis and Friend Ella!

Brooks enjoying his cheeseburger!  Yum.

and his cupcake!!

Not quite as messy as last year :)

Then of course there were presents to be opened!

What a fantastic day celebrating our special little boy!!

Happy Birfday Brooks!!

Wow!  I can't believe my little boy is two years old already.  TWO YEARS!  How did that happen?  I seriously can remember the day of his birth so vividly - it doesn't seem like that long ago.  And Chris noted that as parents you view birthdays totally differently.  Instead of anticipating cake and presents (well, we do that to) we find ourselves reminiscing about that special day two years ago.  The day that we became parents.
..................................

Ok, enough of that mushy stuff.  On to the celebrations!!!!!

Last night after Brooks went to bed, Chris and I (ok ok, mostly Chris) blew up over 50 balloons and filled his room with them!  The result??

One slightly stunned, but overall VERY happy birthday boy!

(and p.s. please totally disregard his completely mismatched jammies.  He insisted on wearing his new "moose" jammies, but it's a set with long pants and a long shirt.  So we compromised and let him wear the pants and just grabbed the first t-shirt from his drawer.  I promise my kid matches most of the time.  This would not be one of those time.)

Then we had pancakes for breakfast - a special treat compared to his usual banana.

Then after Drew and Cole arrived, we packed our things and headed for the zoo.  This kid seriously LOVES  the zoo.  Our zoo membership was the best money spent this year!  And since we've already been so. many. times. the  trips seems to all blur together.  But this time we did something different.  Today we fed the goats!!

And much to my suprise, Brooks wasn't scared at all.

He especially loved that he was able to feed the baby goat!  Well, that is before the mama goat shoved him out of the way so she could get food.  Nice job, mama.

All 3 boys at the zoo!

After the zoo, we had a picnic lunch in the park and Daddy joined us.  And of course we made time for the swings!

The afternoon brought on a much needed nap and rest time for everyone followed by supper at what seems to be becoming a tradition for us ..... Dairy Queen. The menu consisted of a cheeseburger and fries (mostly fries) ...

... ice cream ....

... and a belly ache. 

Yep, after barely touching that huge sundae, Brooks starting crying and saying "belly hurt".  Obviously he's not used to eating a meal of just french fries and ice cream (that's a good thing).  So needless to say, we skipped our planned trip to the park and headed home. 

After a Tums and a diaper change, we were good to go.  That and there was a whole pile of presents that were waiting to be opened. I didn't take any photos of the present opening, but we do have a video.  I'll see if I can figure out how to load that onto here.

Overall, it was a really fun day!  Two year old birthdays are way more fun that twenty-something birthdays.  Saturday is Brooks' party and I can't wait!