Reds Game

Last weekend we went to the Reds game, Mary's first! She got a little certificate that said when her first game was and she also had lots of fun eating all the snacks we brought from grandma's house. That's where we left Noah by the way. And apparently he didn't even ask about us until Sunday morning!

Here is some cousin love. It was our niece's first Red's game too!

The girls didn't really want to cooperate to get a good picture so this is the best we have:

Mary sat pretty well for the first three innings, then daddy took her over to the kid's area for a couple innings. Towards the end of the game she asked me where baseball was...so maybe there was some disconnect. But I think she really enjoyed it.

Friday was the first night the kids shared a room so she didn't get much sleep. I think it was finally quiet for good around 11PM???? Crazy. More on this later.

Homeschool Convention

This weekend I went to my first homeschool convention. About 8 - 10K people come to this thing. The picture to the left is part of one side of the exhibit hall if that gives you any indication of the magnitude of this thing. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical at first. Ian summed up my bias when he said, "hey, count how many pregnant women wearing bonnets and long skirts you see!" Turns out I lost count. But the vast majority of people there were totally normal:) I'm not sure why I even had this thought in my head because all the people I know who homeschool shop at kohls, don't have 42 kids, and are basically your average humans!

This is all beside the point. I LOVED this weekend. I went with two of my girl friends and most of our time was spent in sessions listening to speakers and just hanging out with each other. If you're wondering about the quality of speakers let me just say that Tedd Tripp was there. Yeah, believe it. He was great to hear in person since I wasn't a huge fan of his book. He really laid it down. His sessions and the majority of the ones I went to were about parenting. That's why I think the title of this conference could be a little more open ended, because it was basically a Christian parenting conference, with a fair amount of homeschool stuff thrown in. I was thinking of so many of my friends (homeschooling or not) who would have loved it! I took about 15 pages of notes while I was there and I plan to type them up and process back through everything we heard. It was a lot of info all at once so it will be good to take some time to reflect.

Bottom line: if you are even vaguely considering homeschooling or even if you just want to attend a great conference, you should hit this up next year. They also had a good amount of discount Christian book vendors there so my friend, who is in charge of Equipigration at our church, picked up a few good family devotion books. I'll be reviewing one of those for her so I can post here too if anyone is interested in knowing about this book. That little gem was recommended by Tripp so part of me wonders why even question it???

35 weeks

I am 35 weeks today! At my appointment this week my OB said, "Are you going to circumcise him?" I'm sure my eyes bulged a little. Then he said, "Do you know what you're having?" I thought it was a little late to ask that question, or at least out of order, but then I remembered that he can't possibly know what we're having. The ultrasound tech said she doesn't even look at the "parts" when parents don't want to know and I paid pretty close attention during the ultrasound. Pretty sure she really didn't go near that region. And at my appointment after the ultrasound the doctor came in and said everything looked great and the gender wasn't written down or anything.

After all of that flashed through my mind I calmed down, and answered the doctor. Besides that my appointment was pretty uneventful like always. Everything going ok? Yep. Any questions? Nope. See ya in two weeks! It occurred to me last week that we only had 6 weeks to go (now 5, yikes!) so I made a list of things I wanted to get done. I have successfully cut that list in half. I want to have it done in the next week so that I'll feel fine if baby wants to come at any point after that. Just sharing so that now the world knows (and by world, I mean the 5 people who read this) and I feel like I have to actually do it.

I'm getting so excited for baby's arrival. I'm really excited about the names we picked and what they will mean for our family. Can't wait to see who it will be!

a 5 birthday

Mary calls people's birthdays their (fill in the blank with age) birthday. Daddy had a 32 birthday, grandma had a 50 birthday, Mary will have a 4 birthday, etc. Anyway, my niece's birthday was a few days ago and she turned 5! The kids had a great time:

We did more than break open a pinata and eat cake...but not much. Perfection in my opinion. It also gave me the idea that I should make a pinata for the kids party this summer! So after a quick search on pinterest (and a little distraction with this awesome recipe on the home page) I found this pinata that I want to make. It will probably only happen if I get it made before this baby comes cause let's face it, not much is going to happen for a while after.

quotable

Mary: mommy can we get a pacifier for our baby so it doesn't cry?
Me: all babies cry Mary.
Mary: well I don't really like that sound.

She's got another thing coming!

Third birth

Not MY third birth...but my third birth as a doula took place about two weeks ago. One of my closest friends had her first baby! This mom was a trooper. She was basically in labor for two days straight. Longer if you count the contractions that were further apart. She went to the hospital only to see if she had dilated at all from her appointment. I think she wasn't very hopeful when she went in, but she found out she was completely dilated! And had the baby about 1.5 hours later. Here are some pictures of Mary holding her new little friend:

This birth was especially fun for us because it means a new stay at home mommy friend for me and a new little baby friend for Mary. She LOVES him (and all babies, notice her baby doll is next to her). And I have to say this was the most well supported birth I have been at including my own. The nurses were so very supportive and praising of her choices. They actually told her she didn't need an IV! Wow. You don't see that much. It's true...but you don't see it much sadly. They kept telling her how she could be the poster mom for birth and how she was just a pro. Every woman should hear such encouraging things after giving birth! If only all L&D nurses were this way!

I again will contend that dad's are one of my favorite parts of the team. I've known this dad for a while and he is usually pretty even tempered and laid back. He was literally jumping up and down at one point after his son was born. It was the coolest thing to see.

And I learned/practiced a valuable lesson. If you walk with authority you can basically do whatever you want. In YL I always walked around like I owned the high school even though I really didn't "belong" there so much... But I knew that if God called me there, I belonged there and his authority was what really mattered. I apply this when I'm in the hospital too.  I know God has called me to this work, so I walk with confidence. I even walked through a door that said authorized personnel only. It didn't say authorized by whom...so I took that as a go ahead. Plus I had come out of that door when leaving the laboring mom's room to get her stuff for her. I knew I was doing a good job of looking like I belonged when a lost family asked me if I worked there. Nope, I must look professional though:)

The next birth I attend will be my own! A few more weeks and we will meet our third kid. Crazy! I'm looking forward to the process and praying for a supportive team and healthy birth. Wont you pray with me?

Museum Center

We wanted to make the most of Ian's spring break so when he wasn't feeling sick (had a stomach issue early in the week) we were out and about. We got a pass to the museum center for Christmas so we went to the children's museum one morning. It is AWESOME!

Mary found the little pretend places area and found a baby doll who needed rocking. Noah was in the background eating the fake food:

Rocks! Well, rubber that looks like rocks:

They have a water section where the kids can get geared up and play with lots of water toys. At one point I had gone to sit down and Ian and Mary were across the room. Noah leaned in to this area below to grab a boat and totally superman(ed) on the side of the tub. I jumped up to grab him totally thinking he was going all the way in, but he got his hands down and managed to not slip all the way in!

Easter Egg Hunt

A couple pictures from our Easter egg hunt last weekend:

I'm not sure where eggs and Easter bunnies came from, but I am sure that all the materialistic-ness of Easter is no good. I'm down for the occasional egg hunt, don't get me wrong. But one way we try to redeem these things our culture does that Mary really loved this year was to use these resurrection eggs. They are made by family life so how can you go wrong with that?! In our brokenness we try to take every celebration that has something to do with God and make it about toys, a fake man in a suit, or a stuffed bunny. So in our family we are always trying to find ways to point our kids to what we are really celebrating. The resurrection eggs are a pretty cool way to do that. Mary didn't really understand much of it yet. I'm pretty sure the only thing she took away from it is that Jesus rode on a donkey because he didn't have a car...but we'll get there.

Opening day parade

We went downtown for the opening day parade on Thursday. It was really fun and the kids enjoyed it, but it was quite a long day! It started with donuts

We went down to fountain square and got some free stuff first! Then walked around for a while and got some Wendy's for lunch.

Here we are waiting for the parade to start:

Someone got a little cold:

Guess who tried to go to sleep on the sidewalk while we waited?

Don't worry we sat him up and out of the way of people's shoes, I just had to get a picture first. He kept saying night night and laying down. We tried to put him on the blanket but he wouldn't lay down on it!

In the next picture I thought he was listening and smiling because I told him...but turns out there way a dog behind me. He started saying doggie while I was taking this picture and the nice lady let him pet her dog:)

Their favorite parts of the parade were the police motorcycles being "silly" and driving back and forth, lots of fire trucks, and the school bands that walked by. We ended up leaving before it ended because we'd been watching for 1.5 hours!

Mud

Mary and Noah both like to go to the river with daddy to throw rocks in. Mary comes home clean. Noah comes home looking like this: