Great Shot

Isn't that a great shot? I was so impressed with Mike. He figured out a couple of settings on our camera and got this shot in a fairly dark room without any flash. Pretty impressive.

And pretty cute!

Kira is doing really well. She's eating, peeing, and pooping like a pro. She often gets mad when we change her diaper and can wake the dead with her screams. :) Of course, if she wasn't so good at pooing and peeing while we're changing her diaper, she probably wouldn't have as much reason to get mad... but try telling her that. She's already not listening to her parents. :)

And we can already tell she's growing and changing. Her arm flailing has decreased. She will sometimes sit and just stare into my eyes while being all peaceful and quiet. That's really nice for me. And today, she managed to get her thumb in her mouth and keep it there longer than she ever has before. Pretty sweet.

"A Joy Beyond Measure"

I've not found the time to sit down to write Kira's birth story just yet, but I wanted to just say that after 5 days, I am in love, in awe, and in heaven. She is just so perfect. I feel so honored to be her mom. And so blessed to finally have this little child that seemed like maybe wouldn't happen. I'm so glad that it did. I feel like I've reached both the end and the beginning of a long journey. I fully intend to enjoy every step.

40 Weeks

No picture today... I know you're sad about that! :) I don't look much different than last week.

So... the doctor was surprised to see me today. I would think they would avoid telling people that.

My stats for today were:

Weight Gain: 22 lbs (maybe she's not looking out for me as much as I thought!)
Belly Measurement: too lazy to take one...
Baby Heart rate: ~130

Nothing had really changed internally from last week. That was a bit of a bummer since I've had all kinds of contractions over the past week. But we'll see how it goes in the next day or so. I had him strip my membranes and I took some castor oil. Which I had done with both Jacob and Cole and they were both born the next day. October 21st seems like a perfectly great day to be born.

So...

We're just waiting.  I don't feel extremely impatient in general until I start having lots of contractions that eventually just stop and leave me feeling a bit frustrated.  It takes me a while to get out of the "this might be it" mode.  I decided this afternoon to just take a long nap.  That has helped my feelings a good bit.  So tonight when I go through the whole contraction thing again, I'll just try to ignore it and relax.  Maybe then it won't frustrate me so much.

My hope is that all of this pre-labor junk is working to make my actual labor a little shorter and a little easier.  A girl can dream...

So Far, So Good

Well, it's Thursday morning and there's no baby just yet. I'll be soooo happy if she waits another 48 hours to even think about being born.

Yesterday was quite the day. It was my only super busy day. I got Zach, Jacob and Cole and we all went to Reid's game. Someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that it was October 15th, and it was 87 degrees out when we got to the football game... where there was no shade... We suffered in the sun for a little while, but eventually, the shade expanded over on the visitor's side of the field, so we moved over there (I thankfully brought a folding chair) and sat in the shade for a little over half of the game. And aside from one very whiny child, I did fine sitting in my chair, watching the game.

Reid's team won 56-0. Poor other team. They are a new school, so they don't have any 8th graders. All 7th graders, and they were LITTLE. By third quarter, our coach was mostly playing our 7th graders... who were still killing the other team. Our third string quarterback got to play a good bit and Reid was playing a new position that he had never tried before. I can't remember what he said it was, but it was nice to see the coach letting the kids get a little experience.

This may very well be the last game I get to watch. Thankfully, Mike will be working from home once he gets back, so he can go to Reid's last two games. I will be sad to miss them, but probably would be sadder if the baby still wasn't born by then. :)

39 Weeks

Well, the doctor says this will probably be my last weekly pregnancy picture and post. I went in today and here are the stats:

• Weight Gain: 20 lb (I lost almost a full pound this past week. I think this baby girl is trying to watch out for her mama's figure.)
• Belly Measurement: 39" (It seems that my belly and my weight are inversely proportional.)
• Baby's Heartrate: 130-ish

So, I got the "internal exam" this week and I am between 2 and 3 cm dilated, my cervix is rotated forward, I am 70% effaced, and the baby is at 0 station (fully engaged in my pelvis). The doctor thinks it will be in a couple of days, but recognizes that no one really knows these kinds of things.

Mike left for Boston this morning. I'd like to have this baby wait until he gets back on Friday night, but I have people in place who are willing to step in and who say they won't let their cell phones leave their sides. :)

I decided to clean before I laid down for a nap today. I'll deny that it was true nesting and say that it was just me not wanting people to come in to my house and see the small load of dirty dishes on my night stand. :)

So things are going well here. I feel calm and sure that things are going to work out just fine. I have no place to be all week except for dropping off and picking up the kids (and Reid's football game on Wednesday), so it will be a slow week unless the baby decides to be born. I'll certainly keep you updated.

Reid's Game - Small Baby Update

So the game this past Wednesday didn't go too hot. We lost 12 - 41. Ouch. Apparently this team practices from early summer and has 5 coaches. We start practices on the first day of school and have 2 coaches. I don't know how programs can be so different from one public school to the other, but you certainly could tell that the kids from the team we played were much more "coached" than ours. But, I could really care less about winning or losing, so I was just happy to see that Reid was playing and that he seemed to really have his head in the game.

And I'm happy with the coaches we have. They really emphasize a well rounded athlete. They want their kids to be well behaved in school, get good grades, and to have good character. I think that's a great way for Reid to begin his football "career". They, of course, want to win games, and get stressed out when players aren't doing their jobs during the game, but they know that it's not all about a winning record.

And I'm doing pretty good. The baby just about kills me sometimes the way she moves about, but it's nice to know that she's plenty healthy and plenty strong. Mike flies out early Monday morning and gets back around 10pm Friday night. I'm going to say many prayers that this baby stays put until he gets back. Then she can be born whenever she feels like it. Hopefully she'll cooperate. :)

Farewell to Another Long-Time Friend

We traded in the Chevy Venture today. After two days of it stalling on Mike, he decided that even if it was an easy fix, it wasn't a good idea to have an almost 11 year old, potentially unreliable van as our main family car. Last night I found a car at Carmax.com that looked pretty good to me, so we went there today and ended up buying it. We both feel like it was a good decision. I've always said I would buy new again since we keep our cars forever, but this car stood out to me, and Mike felt really good about it. And after test driving it today and looking at the sticker price, I felt good about it, too. (We did buy a 4yr/48K mile warranty.)

So, here's the tribute to our Venture:


1998 Chevrolet Venture

You've been puked on, peed on, mistreated in every way possible and yet you took it all. You've been from Valdosta, GA to NYC, from Topsail Island to Dallas. You've seen our family through 11 years of growing and adventure, and for all of this we are grateful. You can go off to car heaven, if that is your fate, knowing you have served your purpose fuller than most cars can even dream of.

Thank you.
-------------------------------

Our new car is a 2004 Toyota Sienna LE. It has the 8 passenger seating which will work well with the addition of the baby's car seat. And it has some additional features that aren't standard like: Trip computer, side curtain airbags, 17" alloy wheels, power sliding door, and maybe another one or two that I'm not thinking of right now. It is Salsa Red Pearl which is my favorite of the Sienna colors. That's a nice little bonus for me. We hope to enjoy this car for years to come.


And it's a funny thought to me that the only house and car that my older kids can even remember will not be part of this new baby's life at all. I guess it's just more things to say, "That was before you were born" to. I hear John F likes it when things like that come up in conversation... :)

38 Week Pictures

So, here's the belly shot from Monday:


And here's a picture of my face... kinda weird, I know, but this blog is for posterity, so I hope you don't mind putting up with a little weirdness.

I find two things very interesting: 1) The dark freckles on my cheeks and nose. They are very pronounced and I hope they fade after the pregnancy. 2) How thin my face is. If you've ever seen a picture of me at the end of my pregnancy with the boys, you'll know that thin was not a word used to describe it. I generally get quite puffy and look pretty bad. Maybe I look equally as bad with my sunken in face, but it's a lot closer to normal for me than the puffy look. Anyway, here's the weird face picture:

38 Weeks

Today is 38 weeks. I took pictures and downloaded them to my computer, but then my computer decided it didn't want to accept my power source anymore, so I'm writing this on Mike's fancy new work laptop and am in the process of taking my computer apart to see if I can get it to work properly again.

So the pictures will have to wait a bit. Here are the stats:

Weight Gain: 21 lbs
Belly Measurement: 38" - it shrank an inch
Baby's Heart rate: 152

I've been having lots of sporadic contractions. Nothing regular, but enough to make you realize that it could be any time now. I picked up the last item on my list today: nursing bras. So I suppose I'm pretty ready for this baby. Except that I'm not. I'm glad for the two weeks remaining and hope that she'll stay put til then. :)

I do have other children...

So I've realized that lately, all of my posts have been about my oldest and my upcoming youngest. There are other children scattered about in our family, so I thought I'd give them some much overdue blog time.

Zach:

Zach has been doing pretty well in middle school so far. He and I have that quiet time together, before Jacob and Cole get home from school (Reid is at football practice), so that's been nice. I can focus on Zach and help him with his homework.

He's also adjusted fairly well to our move. The first day we were here, he saw a group of boys out playing and just ran right out and became part of that group. We haven't seen those boys since, but it was nice to see him just jump right into a new situation.

And he still is the one who keeps me on my toes. I drive him and Reid to their bus stop most mornings and we chat while we wait for the bus. Zach always has interesting bits of conversation to contribute. I think if it were just Reid and I, we might sit fairly silently (which would be fine, of course), but Zach just brings a little zing into the morning: "If you had $10 million dollars and the biggest house in Preston, what would you do?" (Preston is the golf community that we live on the tail end of... very, very posh and fancy... come over and I'll drive you through the streets with the huge houses that back up to the golf course.) Every day is a little adventure with Zach. Some days good, some days not so good, but it sure is nice to have him in our family.

Jacob:

Jacob has become a reading machine lately. He flew through a series by Rick Riordan called Percy and the Olympians. Then just before we moved into the apartment, we convinced him to start reading the Harry Potter books. He's reading the third one now. It's exciting to think of him enjoying far off worlds and what books he'll decide to read next. He did reject something that I brought home from the library in between the two series, so I don't know that he's become the kind of person who reads anything anytime, but he is definitely finding some joy in reading and that makes me happy. It makes his dad really happy. :)

Cole:

Cole is, well, Cole. Happy and full of life. The past few months, our cat, Kory, has taken to Cole and will cry at him for what I call "Coley Love". Cole will pet him and rub foreheads with him and then the cat is usually happy to go off and do whatever. But for whatever reason, he needed his Coley Love. :) I told Cole I knew how the cat felt. It just seems unnatural to walk by Cole without stopping to get a hug or something. He's just so cute. :)

Reid's Third Game

So yesterday was Reid's third football game. The great news is that Reid started as defensive end. The kid that he replaced at defensive end starts on offense as tight end, and he and Reid have been good friends for a couple of years, so hopefully there aren't any hard feelings there. And that kid ended up getting to play a good bit due to an error on Reid's part:

At some point either late in the third quarter, or early in the fourth, our team fumbled the ball and it was recovered by our opponents. Reid apparently didn't notice the switch out of sides and missed playing in the first play of that switch. He barely got out onto the field in time for the second play. After that, he didn't get to play anymore. He would go out with the defense, but the coach always sent the other kid in to replace him. I didn't disagree with the coach's decision at all. I was sitting in the stands watching as Reid was not paying attention to going into the game and it just about killed me to watch. I think I'm too pregnant and emotional to be able to shake even little things off right now.

And I figured that when I picked Reid up at the school after the game, that he would be upset, but he apparently didn't think he did anything too bad. And he said the coach only said, "Know when you're supposed to be on the field." Hopefully he'll still get to start next week, but we'll just wait and see.

And we lost in overtime again. We went to overtime at 0-0. Too bad, too. But we turned the ball over a few too many times and are really lucky that the other team didn't score during the main game, so it turned out better than it could have.

And I'll definitely keep you posted on Reid's play time next week.