U Day: Under Umbrellas

U is a hard letter if you think about it. There aren't many good, simple nouns that start with U. So I had a bit of a difficult time this week and mostly stuck to the word 'under' and my main source of U.

Originally I thought I would make a U obstacle course, with a bunch of things in a row that they had to get under, like under a blanket, under a laundry basket...but that's about where my ideas stopped, and I never could come up with anything else for them to go under, so I gave up on that one. But because I thought we'd  be doing the obstacle course, we planned to have letter day outside. I was glad we did, because what we did end up doing made kind of a mess. :) But it was fun. 

First I read them a little lift the flap book that asked questions like, "Where is the penguin? Is he under the bath mat?" And then you lift the flap and find the penguin. It was a little bit below their level, but it got the point of under across I think. Then we talked about how fish live under the water, and we painted an underwater scene.

For the first layer of the underwater scene we painted dark blue ocean. After that dried, I asked the boys if they'd ever been fishing and what you use to fish. They came up with a fishing pole. I asked them what part of the fishing pole goes under the water, and with a little help they came up with the hook. Then we cut out U's out of green paper and glued those to the paper to be our fishing hooks. Then the boys stuck sea creature stickers all over in their water. Lincoln put all of his in one big "school" instead of spreading them throughout the water, haha. It is always interesting to me the way kids choose to do things.

After that, I had the boys try an idea I saw online that looked really cool. You take a piece of bubble wrap and paint the bubbles a light blue, then you press it onto the top of your completed underwater scene. On the site I was looking on online, this gave the picture a cool bubbly underwater effect that didn't distract from the picture. But ours didn't quite turn out that way. I don't know if we pressed the bubble wrap too hard or what, but all it succeeded in doing was blurring our pictures. We ended up having to trace around the outside of the U hooks with a black magic marker so you could see it. But it was still fun.

For another activity we did an umbrella matching game. We talked about how you get under an umbrella when it rains so you don't get wet. I made the matching game using Word and did a search in Clip Art for umbrella, and picked six or so that I liked and pasted them twice into a word document and printed them out on cardstock and then cut them up so there were two of each. Then we spread all the umbrellas out on the table and the boys got to pick which ones matched and put them together in a pile. They both did really well with this activity, so I think we'll be doing some similar ones in the future.

Lincoln was funny, when I spread them out on the table for him I just put them randomly in a big circularish pattern...but then before he started matching them together, he rearranged them into a straight line. I just like watching how his brain works, it's fascinating to me. And it's not even that one way is better than the other, just that he seems to process things differently than I do.

For our last activity, I filled two empty ice cream buckets with water and gave one to each boy. Then we had pile of different things, a rock, a penny, a marble, a feather, a pine cone,a filled water balloon, a ping pong ball, a toy car, a sponge, an empty spool of thread, etc. and one at a time we put each thing in the water and guessed whether it would go under the water or stay on top. I think this was the boys favorite, and they seemed to really enjoy making the predictions about what each object would do. Sometimes they guessed right, and sometimes they were way off. But they were always anxious for the next thing.

And for the snack I did dirt cups (chocolate pudding with crushed Oreos on top) and told the boys they had to dig under the dirt and they would find a surprise. What was the surprise?

A gummy worm of course! :)

38 Weeks Update

I was kind of excited for my doctor's appointment today because I've been feeling a little bit looser, is that a word? I don't know, but my stomach hasn't felt as tight, and I've been feeling like maybe I have a little more room inside because bending over doesn't seem as cramped, and my ribs and back haven't hurt as much. So I was thinking that maybe that meant that the baby had moved down and i had made some good progress. Not to mention that I've been having a lot of Braxton Hicks.

I guess I set myself up for disappointment though. When the doctor checked me today, he said I was "a good 2". So the same as last time. I'm 80% effaced though, so that's better than last time. But not as much progress as I was hoping for.

I keep trying not to get my hopes up that the baby will come this week. I really do know that my due date isn't until the 7th. But when you are feeling so pregnant every second of your life, it's hard to make your mind think of anything except how much you'd really like not to be pregnant anymore. Not to mention how exciting it will be to finally see this baby!

My next appointment is August 2nd, which couldn't seem farther away if it were next year. The doctor said after my next appointment they could schedule an induction if I wanted...but that will be August 2nd, they probably wouldn't be able to schedule the induction until the 3rd which means I would most likely still be in the hospital for Kyle's wedding, which takes away the whole point of being induced. But that's fine, I'd pretty much decided that I don't want to be induced anyways. I've heard it makes your contractions feel like they are on steroids, and since I don't get an epidural, I'm not really up for adding any unnecessary pain. So it looks like we're still just waiting to see if I get to go to Kyle's wedding or not.

So I'm feeling a little disappointed tonight. I know I shouldn't be. In the grand scheme of things even if I'm pregnant another two weeks, that really isn't all that long. And my "progress" doesn't necessarily mean anything either, I know, since some women don't dilate at all before they start labor. But I was just hoping to be at a 3 or further. I need a distraction...any ideas?

The Baby Quilt

It is finally finished! I finished Adelia's baby quilt today. It wasn't hard, but it took for-e-ver. There is so much cutting. The original pattern doesn't have you put a back on it like normal (the quilt is three layers thick, so the back is finished, it's just not a typical back) and I wanted to put a back on it at first. After I got it all sewn together though, I decided not to add the back. And I'm glad. The quilt turned out differently than I had pictured, I thought there would be more of the brown showing through, but I still think it's cute. And I'm glad to have it done.

Also this weekend we got Adelia's room ready to go. She will be sleeping in the port-a-crib, until such a time as Ivan decides to sleep in a bed, so we set up the port-a-crib for her, and traded it places with the papasan chair, so she won't have to sleep right under the air conditioning vent. I got out all the baby blankets and put them in an accessible spot. Then I went through all the new baby clothes and pulled out all the newborn sized ones and took the tags off and washed them, folded them, and put them away in her drawers. There are still a lot of decorating things I would like to do in there, but for now, she has a place to sleep, a place for me to feed her, and clothes to wear in her drawers. So she can come any time she feel like it. (The sooner the better!)

A Little Scary

Last night was a little scary. I'd been feeling kind of off all day, so after we put the boys to bed, I layed down on the couch to rest for a bit. After laying there awhile, I noticed that my pulse was pounding REALLY fast. I told Aaron about it, then tried to take slow deep breaths to calm down. It didn't work. I noticed that I could actually see my heart racing in the veins in my wrist. Weird. Then I started to feel shaky. My hands first, then my arms, and then my legs started shaking uncontrollably. The only other time I've ever had my legs shake that way was after giving birth. It was so weird, and scary.

I thought maybe I might be going into labor, but I wasn't having any contractions at all, and my body has never done this while in labor before. Aaron and I were both worried. I asked him for a blessing, and he and my neighbor gave me one. It helped me feel a lot calmer inside, and know that things would be ok. But my body was still freaking out. We got me off the couch and moved into our bed. Aaron got me ice to chew on and the rice bag to help calm my muscles down. Then we decided to call the OB office to see if they could tell us what was going on.

We got to talk to the on call doctor, who asked us a lot of questions. He said since the baby was still moving, and since I wasn't having contractions or bleeding at all, and a few other things, that I had probably gotten over heated. He told me to drink water, and if I didn't start improving soon to come in and they would monitor the baby and test my blood.

Thankfully, things started to calm down, my heart rate went down first, and then slowly my muscles started relaxing. So we decided not to go in. But it was a little scary for awhile there. I'm glad we're ok now.

Pictures Say It All Sometimes...

Some days go like this at my house:

Many more days go like this:

And it's not like I never spend time cleaning. I usually pick up the living room between 4 and 400 times a day. But at the end of the day sometimes it looks like picture #1 and sometimes it looks like picture #2. I feel like life has been going a lot like picture #2 lately. Not enough energy to get things done, and the things that do get done don't stay done. But some day in the hopefully near future...I at least won't be too fat to bend over and pick things up. Not that I expect the chaos to settle even slightly once the baby gets here. In fact, it'll probably double...but at least I'll be able to bend over...and breath...and roll onto my stomach...and eat a regular sized meal...and....

Provo Baby Shower

I have several wonderful ladies who live in my apartment complex. Two in particular, I have been friends with for a long time. I am very grateful to have them for neighbors. We hang out together a lot, and without them I think I would be bored to tears. We all get a long really well, and our kids do too, which makes it nice.

Anyways, these two, Suzy and Misty, threw a baby shower for Adelia and I. Every since they first mentioned it, I have been so excited for it. When I'm pregnant, I use every event possible as my focus to distract me from how long it's taking the baby to come. So having this baby shower scheduled so late in July was perfect. Not to mention that I love parties in general, and girl parties (where it's just women) even better.

They had the shower in the back of our apartment complex, where there was lot more room for everyone.

A lot of my wonderful friends, neighbors, and family came to help celebrate baby Adelia. It was fun just having everyone in one place and chatting.

Misty and Suzy had a whole table full of yummy treats. I don't think any of us went hungry.

We played some fun games. One was a Madlib about labor and delivery, where everyone got to choose certain words, for example, "give me a present tense verb" and then using all the words we filled in the blanks on a story about my labor and delivery. According to the game Adelia will be 63 inches long, and have 432 fingers and toes. Yikes! For another game we each got three pieces of Bubble Gum and we had to chew each piece and then mold it into a baby, a binkie, and rattle. Let's just say, I am not a good sculptor, but a few of the ladies did pretty good for having bubble gum as their medium! The last thing was more of an activity and less of a game, but I opened a few packages of onsies and everyone got to have a onsie. Then Suzy passed around fabric markers and we each got to decorate our onsie with fabric markers. Such a cute idea! All the onsies were adorable too, I can't wait to use them.

And of course, Adelia (and me too) got spoiled. :) She is going to have so many cute things to wear. And not only that but everyone was really good about laying off the pink. I'm getting pretty excited to dress this kid.

Thanks everyone for coming and making it such a wonderful night. It was one of those few enjoyable times that you have during the end of pregnancy. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Oh, the little things that make my whole day...

I love my boys!

Stupid Human Tricks

Not that I think Aaron is a stupid human or anything, far from it in fact, but it just surprises me how many of these "talents" he has stored away for random occasions. :)

37 Week Baby Update

Yup, I'm on weekly visits. Something to look forward to each week, right? Haha. Well, the nurse who checked me in had an interesting comment, "How are you?" me, "Good." "Well, you have ankles, so your probably doing all right." Ok? Maybe because that meant my feet weren't swollen? Well, it was only 9:00am, my guess is that by bedtime I won't have ankles anymore, but I think we're still good. :)

Anyways, the Dr said I had made a small amount of progress since last time. I am now dilated to about a 2 and I am 60% effaced. He also said that the baby was sitting at about a -1 and last time she was at a -2. I've never heard that statistic before so I have no idea what it means, but hey, if -1 is better than -2 I'll take it. Every little bit helps.

Ideally, I will have this baby in July so that I can be recovered in time to go to Kyle's wedding. We'll see how it turns out.

B-Day Ideas for Linc

This post is mostly for my mom, who asked me for birthday ideas for Lincoln, so here is a little post made up of things I think he would really like. I put a lot because I know some people (Mom) like to have a variety of things to choose from so it's still a surprise.

Wedgits. We have a small set of these, and Linc loves them. I think he would enjoy having more pieces to build with.

A small wooden train set (small as in not a lot of pieces, not small as in choking hazard, we prefer to avoid those). Something that would be easy enough for little hands to put together.

A little tool set, so he could be just like Daddy, but so that he couldn't really pound holes in the walls :)

Leap Frog DVD Math Adventures to the Moon. We already have Talking Word Factory, and Linc loves it! And it's really helped him have a desire to pick out letters and words. We are probably going to get him Letter Factory, but I also think he'd really like this beginning math one as well.

We checked out Sheep Blast Off by Nancy Shaw at the library last week, and Lincoln can't get enough of it. In board book form would be best if they have it, because it would be more durable, but otherwise hard cover would do...we'd even take a used copy (they're a lot less expensive and just as good).







Lincoln has been really into dinosaurs lately. He keeps asking for a dinosaur birthday cake. So I think he would be thrilled aobut anything dinosaur, toys, books, or whatever.

You'd have to find this on sale...your best bet would probably be online. It's a water table. I think both the kids would get a kick out of it.

Any of the Olivier Dunrea books besides "Ollie" and "Ollie the Stomper" because we already have those two. But they are some of Lincoln's favorite books. Even even pretends Ollie is his imaginary friend.

Fisher Price Trio Blocks. They are pretty cool and don't have small choking hazardous parts.










Ok, I think that's a pretty good list.

Seven Peaks!

A little while ago Aaron's brother Ryan and Ryan's wife Melissa, started a photography business. They had Aaron help make a website for them. It's an awesome site. Aaron did a fantastic job on it. You can check it out http://www.flo-foto.com/. Because of Aaron's help, tonight they treated our family to Seven Peaks Water Park.

The non-pregnant adults (everyone but me) took turns on a double tube going down all the big slides. Those not taking a turn hung out with Lincoln and Ivan and I in either the wave pool, the kiddie play area, or the lazy river.

My kids love Uncle Ryan and Aunt Melissa (Linc calls her Wissa). They get so excited every time they see them, and were really excited that we got to go swimming with them today. Ivan (who is usually terrified in public pools and will cling to me and me only with a death grip) even let Melissa hold him at the kiddie play area, and even when he saw me didn't reach for me or anything. He'd just lay his head down on Melissa's shoulder and snuggle with her. They are buddies.

Both my kids enjoyed the wave pool the best I think. Lincoln was all over it. He loved jumping into the waves, and letting the waves carry him. Ivan liked it too...but he wanted to be sitting on my lap (we stayed pretty shallow) while the waves hit him. But he would laugh and sometimes he'd bend over so the waves could break on the top of his head. It was funny.

Aaron took Lincoln on one of the bigger slides with the double tube. Linc thought it was great. Ivan was just content to play with the tube on dry ground. Aaron and Ryan went on some really big scary straight up and down slides together. Yuck! I'm glad Aaron had someone to go on those with him, because I would not, even if I wasn't pregnant. Those slides scare me. But we got to watch Aaron and Ryan go down the big Boomerang slide, and they looked like they really enjoyed themselves.

Here's a scary picture. I had no idea my stomach looked this big from the side. All I ever see is the top down view, and sometimes the frontal view if I'm looking in a mirror. It looks pretty funny and awkward if you ask me. :) No wonder I waddle when I walk. Good one for the memory books I guess. But I'll tell you what...I'd spend every day of the rest of this pregnancy floating in a pool at Seven Peaks if I could afford it. Being in the water felt SO NICE. The cool temperature was amazing for one thing, and the underwater weightlessness was fantastic.

Thanks Ryan and Melissa for the fun evening. We will miss you guys while you are away for a month!

Watermelon Baby

Tonight was the night! We have a tradition that when I get pretty close to done being pregnant we paint my tummy to look like something amazing. It's a lot of fun. Aaron is the master artist, I just get to hold still and watch. :)

Here's the basic idea, without the finishing touches.

What would it be like if you could take a piece out and check on the baby?

Then there's the occasional craving...

Looks good hu?

People might think we're weird, but I have so much fun doing this. I look forward to it every pregnancy, and Aaron and I have fun together trying to decide what to paint next.

Here's all three together so you can compare and vote on your favorite. Lincoln is the basketball, Ivan is the Nemo fish, and obviously, Adelia is the watermelon.

Our First Imaginary Friend: Meet Ollie

The last couple of days or so, Lincoln has had an imaginary friend. The friend's name is Ollie. He's a gosling. I'm sure that the original idea for this friend came from the Olivier Dunrea books, "Ollie" and "Ollie the Stomper" which are two of Lincoln's very favorite stories. In fact, he can recite the stories verbatim while turning the pages, and even gets which lines that go with which pictures right. Anyways, in one of the books Ollie is just an egg, and then he hatches. So the other day Linc found one of our plastic Easter eggs that I had filled with pennies and glued shut. He kept saying it was Ollie, and got frustrated when he couldn't open the egg to get Ollie out. Then he just decided to pretend that Ollie had come out. Now, he holds Ollie in his hand, gives him big hugs, takes him outside with us, lets him ride the tricycle, and this morning I even had to give Ollie a bath before Lincoln would give me any peace. Linc doesn't always have Ollie with him, but he does pop up pretty frequently throughout the day. We'll see how long he hangs around.

In this video, I tried to get Linc to tell me about Ollie, but he wasn't really sure what to say I think, so it's just me asking him a lot of questions about Ollie. It's still pretty cute though.

T Day: Trucks, Textures, and Tie-Dye T-shirts

Due to vacations and stuff, we haven't had a letter day in awhile, but I figure it's summer, so we'll get around to it when we get around to it, right? Today we did letter T over at Suzy's house. She had a lot of fun things planned. Here's what we did:

We talked about trucks, tractors, and trains, and all their varieties. Then, using a toilet paper tube, cardboard circles, and a shishkabob stick broken in half, we made our own trucks. The boys got to decorate them with transportation stickers.

We also learned about textures. Suzy read the boys a truck board book, and each truck had a different texture that they got to feel. Then we took a piece of paper and crayon and went around to find different textures. We did the fridge, the back of a tricycle, a fly swatter, the door mat, the cement wall, a bike tire, and a leaf. Pretty cool.

Another activity was Tie-dye T-shirts. Suzy gave each boy a paper towel, we folded it up until it was a small square, then we dipped the corners and edges of the square into different cups of water that were colored with food coloring. Then we unfolded the paper towels and let them dry. Next we traced the shape of a T-shirt onto the colorful paper towel, and cut them out. Then glued the shirt onto another piece of paper and drew in head, arms, legs, etc. To make a little person wearing a tie-dye T-shirt.

Nursing Box Stage One

I haven't been blogging as much as usual lately, but seriously it's because we spend almost every second possible playing outside, because I know that in a few short weeks our available outside time is going to take a major hit, and my boys are probably going to have a mutiny, so I'm trying to make up for it before hand. (Don't worry, it probably won't work, more likely scenario is that they'll just be used to spending all day every day outside and then they'll be even more upset. Oh well. Can't blame a gal for trying.)

We have done a few projects though, so I'll post a couple of them here. First is our wind socks. We did these for craft day at the library. It was fun. And even Ivan could handle the coloring part.

They are pretty easy. All you need is an empty toilet paper roll, a piece of paper that fits around the toilet paper roll, streamers, small length of string, glue, and tape.

The kids colored the paper first. We wrote their names on it and all that fun stuff. When they were done with that, then you take the paper and glue it on around the toilet paper roll. Then you tape streamers to the bottom and a string to the top to hang it by. Done and done.

We hung ours up on the hooks in front of our apartment, so the boys can see them from the living room window, and anytime we get out of the car. They get super excited about it. Especially Lincoln, who has been missing his Octopus wind sock (that we made on O day) ever since the rain melted it to a pulp.

Something else we've been enjoying, although I don't have any pictures, is making birthday cards. Lincoln had been really in to cutting and glueing lately. So I let him pick a color of construction paper, then we use my cookie cutters to trace shapes on it. Then Linc gets to "cut out" the shapes. Very rarely does a shape come out whole, usually it's been snipped into 5 or so pieces by the time he's done, but oh well, we can work on that later. He puts all his shapes into a pile. When he's done cutting, I give him the glue stick and a folded piece of cardstock. He glues the shapes onto the cardstock in whatever pattern his little heart desires. He likes to put a little glue on the back, stick it to the cardstock, and then put a lot of glue on top of the shape to stick it down, just for good measure. I let him, because he's learning and because it keeps him occupied, and because glue sticks aren't that expensive. After the cardstock has dried, we color it with markers and make it into a birthday card to give away to whoevers birthday is coming up. I feel like that way the supplies we used doing the card don't go to waste. :) Or in the very least, that I don't have to be the one to throw them away. Haha!

Our latest project is called "The Nursing Box". Background behind it...I hate nursing. Some mothers love it and do it forever and feel an awesome emotional connection with their child. To those of you who this describes, I would just like you to know that I am jealous. So far both of my nursing experiences have been stressful, unfun, and definitely emotional but not in the connecting-with-your-child kind of way.

Maybe it's unfair to say that Lincoln is the cause of all my nursing anxiety, but it's pretty much true. When he was a baby he wouldn't nurse. I have no idea why, but he just wouldn't. He'd latch on and sit there for 20 minutes and not eat a thing. We even took him to a lactation consultant, and she said the same thing, "he's been latched on for half an hour and he hasn't gained an ounce!" translates into, he's not eating. So for him I pumped for three months and bottle fed him breast milk and then finally switched over to formula.

When Ivan was born, he was actually a fantastic nurser. I was so relieved...except that now all the sudden I was trying to nurse a baby and take care of an out of control 19 month old at the same time. And Lincoln knew that whenever I sat down to nurse that he pretty much had free reign of the house because I couldn't get up to stop him from doing the things that he shouldn't. And although Ivan was a good nurser, he took his sweet time about it...45 minutes or so each time. It was more stress than I could deal with, and I felt like I just sat Lincoln in front of a movie all day long so I could nurse in peace. I nursed Ivan for 3 months and then tried pumping for a little while, but was still having the same problem because pumping took a lot of time too, so I finally switched to formula.

But in theory I'd like to be able to nurse Adelia for longer.  And as always, I'd like to keep the kids' TV watching time to as close to zero as possible. I've heard of this idea from a couple different sources, and I very much hope that it works. So here's the game plan. I have a box that is called "The Nursing Box" and for the last couple months or so, I've been collecting things from dollar bins, or little things from around the house like laundry soap cups, and I made a bean bag snake out of one of Aaron's old ties, etc. and I'm going to put all those things in the box. Then I'll put the box somewhere where the kids can't get it, and I'll only pull it out when I'm nursing the baby. The kids can play with it all they want while I'm nursing. But when I'm done, we pick everything back up and put it away and don't get it out again until next feeding. Hopefully, they'll like it, and they'll be good so I can nurse the baby without so much stress.

Today for our project, we picked out a good sized cardboard box and I let the boys decorate it with crayons, markers, and paints. (Lincoln got to paint. Ivan still eats the paint, so he got to use markers and crayons.) I called it stage one in the title, because I'm going to try and drag this project out as much as possible. Once the paint dries we'll probably cut out some pictures from magazines and glue them on, and then another day we'll stick stickers to it. Mostly I just want it to look as fun and as inviting as possible.

36 Weeks Baby Update

We had doctor's appointments galore this morning. Aaron had one at 8:30am for his toe, he has an in-grown toenail that's infected. The good news is the podiatrist saw him right away when we got there. He got the in-grown nail out in about two minutes and told Aaron to keep taking some antibiotics and soaking his foot twice a day. Aaron said his toe felt so much better after the appointment. I'm happy. It's been bothering him for a week or so now. So I'm glad that it's all taken care of.

Then we went to my OB appointment. After about 2 seconds in the waiting room with the kids, Aaron decided he'd have better luck watching them at the park across the street while I stayed for the appointment. I was glad about that because then they could get some of their energy out and I didn't have to be out in the hot sun while they did. The appointment went just fine. They checked my cervix for the first time since the very first appointment. It's definitely not enjoyable, but it is nice to know I'm making some progress. I'm dilated to 1 and 1/2 centimeters and about 40% effaced. The doc said Adelia is head down and still pulls away alittle, but that she's getting ready to come. Good news. :) I wasn't expecting to be anywhere along by today, so it was a nice surprise. Hopefully things will just keep on working out and we'll have a nice end of July birth.

"Killer Boots, Man!" and a Few Other Things

I've been deep cleaning my house today, you know, wiping walls, washing windows, doing an extra good job vacuuming around the edges, and such, because my house is currently driving me crazy. Aaron has been outside all morning doing yard work and repairs for the apartment complex. He just came in and told me that I had to take a break. So here I am. :) Lincoln wouldn't take a nap today, so I sent him outside to help his dad. Ivan is sleeping and hopefully will be for another hour or so. I have the house basically all to myself. Wonderful. The perfect blogging atmosphere.

I've been meaning to blog about the bridal shower we threw for Kelsey, my brother Kyle's fiance. It was a lot of fun. It was at my mom's house, last Wednesday. Here's the spread, from both sides, so you can see the nut cups.

My mom and I did the nut cups with her Cricut machine on Monday, folded them and all. It took forever but they turned out really cute. Tanya made the punch and did the game, I made the brownies and brought thank you cards, Mom made the Chicken Salad and the Corn Pops, and did everything else. :) For the game, Tanya had a DVD with 20 different romantic movie clips, everyone had to guess which movie the clip was of. It was fun, but I didn't do very well. I guess I don't watch enough movies, but I'm ok with that.

Kels got some really awesome gifts. I gave here a really cute apron that my next door neighbor made, it has yellow and green and pink circles on it, that almost look like citrus fruit, but not quite. It's super cute, and I did not take a picture of it :( But Kelsey's sister did, maybe she'll share.

Kyle and Kelsey are getting married August 4th. This stresses me out the closer it gets to the date. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy for them. I think they are great for each other and I'm excited for them to be married. The reason I'm stressed is because I'm due August 7th, and I have gone early with both of my boys. I'm worried that for one reason or another, all involving the baby, that I will not be able to go to their wedding. I would feel really bad/sad to miss it.

Lincoln was born 10 days early, and Ivan was born 6 days early. If Adelia could be born that early, I would be out of the hospital in time to go to the ceremony, and then could see about everything else depending on how I felt. So everyone pray that I have the baby about a week early. It would be a lot more of a relief to have already had her, than not. If I haven't had the baby yet, I'm going to be really nervous that I'll go into labor at any moment. I don't want to be the first woman ever to give birth at a temple ceiling. They are getting married in the Salt Lake temple, too, which is about an hour or so away from where I live depending on construction. I have really fast labors. 3 hours max from first contraction to birth. If I went into labor while we were in Salt Lake, not only would I have to spend one miserable hour having labor pains in the car (from my experience all laboring done in the car is the worst) but I'd be stressed out that we wouldn't make it to the hospital in time. I don't want to have a baby in the car. I also don't really like the idea of going to an unfamiliar hospital and having an unfamiliar doctor deliver me, so that rules out just going to the hospital in Salt Lake. Anyways, I really have no control over it, so I guess whenever she is supposed to be born she will be. Hopefully everything will work out so that I don't have to miss the wedding.

Switching subjects, check out Lincoln's latest fashion accessory:

Sydni sent us home from WA with these snow boots of Zac's that won't fit him come winter, but will fit Lincoln. Lincoln found them in the closet a couple days ago, and they have been the rage every since. I told him that he can only wear them inside though, because it's way to hot to wear them outside. So he wears his sandals outside, but as soon as we come in, he takes them off and puts the boots on. Silly child.

Last night we went to Subway for dinner. We sat at a table by the window to eat our sandwiches. All the sudden Lincoln started asking me, "What does T say, what does A say, what does C say, what does O say." Each time I asked him back, "What does T say, do you know?" And he would tell me the sound. He got all the sounds right...well, he did all the short sounds, he doesn't know the long vowel sounds yet. Then he wanted to use Aaron's pen and have Aaron write the letters on his sandwich wrapper. Then he started asking what D said, and E, and L. Then he asked me what a sun said. Well, finally I looked out the window, and next door to us was a Del Taco with the big sun logo above the words. He was reading all the letters off of the restaurant! I was so impressed and proud. I knew that he knew most of his letters, but he's been so good at recognizing them all over the place lately. And I had no idea he had the sounds the letters made down so well.

I've been pretty impressed with Ivan lately too. I'm always impressed when my kids start doing new things :) Ivan has been talking up a storm recently. He jabbers on non-stop, which a lot of babies do, but when Ivan does it, he looks right at you and waves his hands around like he's really talking and trying to tell you something. It cracks me up. He is starting to say a lot more words too. Besides all the words I've listed before, he now says, please, thank you, bye bye, grandma, grandpa, Lincoln, ding, bounce, boing, ooh ooh ahh ahh (monkey), roar, and I think he tries really hard to say Carson (which is the name of the little neighbor boy we play with all the time) because every time we are already outside and Carson comes out to play Ivan yells something and waves his hands excitedly. Ivan is starting to really love to be read to, and will bring me books from the shelf to read to him and actually sit and listen while I do. He has his favorites and some of them surprise me. He really like Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud, which is a longer book we got for Lincoln. He also really likes The Paper bag Princess and always roars when the dragon comes up, Snake Soup, Trucks, Red Hat Green Hat, and Ollie.

Something nice happened today that was unexpected. A woman stopped me in Wal-Mart and asked how far apart my boys were. So I told her they were 19 months apart. Then she asked when I was due. I told her August. Usually at this point, I get sneers, snide comments, or people flat out telling me I'm crazy, or they condemn me to hell for overpopulating the earth. So I prepared for the worst. But instead, with a warm smile she said, "How fun. Three under three right? That's what I did, all boys. It was so much fun. Good luck." It was so nice. Thank you woman for just being a nice person and wishing me good luck. I wish everyone would be more like her. I get so tired of all the comments. I know I'm having my kids close together and that some aspects of that are going to be harder than if we spaced them out more. But it's my choice, and I am the one who had to decide that I can handle it. I don't look down my nose at you for waiting to have kids, or for spacing them further apart. And no, just because I have 3 under 3, doesn't mean I want 300. I'm not going for any world records. Aaron and I and God are just planning our family the way we feel it is best, and hope that everyone else out there is doing the same, even if what's best for them and their situation is different than what's best for us and ours. But I didn't mean for this paragraph to get off track. Mostly, I just wanted to make note of how grateful I am for the few and far between instances when people are just genuinely friendly and non-judgemental.

Anyways, those are my few updates from the last week that I've been meaning to get posted. Guess it's time to get back to it.