The Good Stuff

Introducing:  Mr. Barrett Stone

Born Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 5:33am

21 inches long and weighed 9lbs 7oz!

We are doing well and trying to adjust to a new routine as a family of 5.  It’s been a little rough, especially with a big baby who needs to nurse constantly, but we’ll get there soon.  I’ll be posting the birth story soon…I hope!

  Nobody is as surprised as me to say that I am still here, with child!  I thought for sure that with my third baby I would go early, but life rarely goes the way we expect it to.  I went to the doctor this morning.  He said that I am 2cm dilated and a little bit effaced.  He went ahead and stripped my membranes to “help” things along a little bit.  He scheduled an induction for me on Monday evening, which means I’ll be almost 41 weeks along by then.  He said that he doesn’t think I’ll make it until then, though, which is a good thing.  I’d definitely rather go on my own! 

I didn’t gain any weight this week, which puts my total at 25lbs for this baby to reach full-term.  That is 5lbs more than I gained with Conner and 4lbs more than with Logan!    My blood pressure was slightly higher this week than is normal for me, but they weren’t concerned because it was still pretty low for the norm.  It was 120/70 today.  Mine is usually more like 110/60.  I am also measuring a little behind right now, at 38 weeks, but obviously there are lots of variables with that measurement.  He is low in my pelvis, getting ready to come out, so that probably makes the measurement a little smaller!  The doc is still guessing that this baby will be around 9lbs, and that shouldn’t change much in the next week (we hope!). 

I am actually on the tail end of a cold right now, so I figure every day that I get well, the better my delivery will be.  It’s bad enough to be in labor, but to not be able to breathe on top of that would stink!  So perhaps him being late is working out for the best.  My family was all ahead of me on this illness, so it should be done rotating through our house soon and then we don’t have to worry about passing it on to the newest little man! 

And without further adeu (adoo, adu?), let’s move on to our new tradition…the Miss Fatty Pageants:

Here we have Miss Fresh-Face 2007 at 40 weeks pregnant and no bags under her eyes:

Then comes Miss Granola 2009…she may be in labor at like midnight in this picture, but why should she bother to throw on some make-up before snapping a piece of history?:

And finally, we have Miss Exhausted 2012 (picture taken yesterday evening)…she’s got two kids already and she’s just plain tired.  The mascara is smeared beneath her eyes and she can’t breathe through her nose because when you have little kids at home during cold and flu season, you are always sick.:

Hmm, do you think I look any bigger this time around?  Hard to tell.  I definitely look smaller with Conner up top. 

I am still pregnant!  I went to the doctor this morning, at 39 weeks and 1 day.  He checked me and said I was a centimeter and a half dilated, but no effacement.  This is pretty typical for me, though, so it wasn’t that discouraging.  I have healthy pregnancies and a strong cervix, so I can’t complain if it doesn’t dilate all early like it does for most women.  I expect to go into labor sometime this week.  Both of my boys were born within days of their due dates.  Whenever it happens, I am ready!  I’ve been staying home a lot and keeping on top of cleaning and laundry so that I am as prepared as possible when it comes. 

The only thing noteworthy to come out of my appt this morning was when the doctor said “Well, it looks like you’ve got a big baby in there!”  Awesome!  The baby was rolling all over the place in my tummy when I was laying on the table and even the nurse was like “Wow, look at the baby move!”  I asked what he meant by “big” exactly, and he said he’s thinking about 9lbs.  I told him I could handle that because Logan was almost 9lbs and I was kind of expecting that much.     If he’d said 10lbs I would have been a little nervous. 

It won’t be long and I’ll have three little boys!  Yikes! 

  No, we are not out having a hot date night tonight…this picture is from a few months ago at my sister’s wedding!  I am actually getting ready to go to bed right now (and it’s only 9:15).  I’m exhausted! 

Would you consider it “nesting” if I cleaned behind the fridge and stove today?  How about if I moved the kitchen table away from the wall so that I could scrub the wall?  What if I told you that I cleaned the knife block and then my husband had to wash every knife in the block because some of the unused ones were “dusty”?  I even dusted the wine bottles on top of the fridge.  This is in addition to cleaning the bathrooms and floors.  And I made my husband wash and vacuum our van so that I could rearrange the boys’ sitting spots and put the infant carrier into a clean seat.  Hmm, I wouldn’t call that “nesting”, would you?!    

Good night and happy new year!

It’s one thing to have this great idea about homeschooling your children, and it’s quite another to actually DO IT.  I absolutely 100% believe in the benefits of homeschooling and I’ve never thought twice about sending my kids to school (Well, perhaps just once or twice I’ve thought about throwing them on the schoolbus and waving goodbye when they are driving me crazy.).  I’ve been researching curriculum since Conner turned three years old.  I am really excited about what the future holds for my boys.  The hard part is establishing a routine of actually educating them!  Weaving it into our day-to-day life and moving it up on the priority list as they get older. 

I am a firm believer that the best way to educate preschoolers is to enlighten their curiosity.  I don’t think that they need to be reading by a certain age or that they need to start learning history and science from the time they are little.  Those things all come in due time.  For the past four and a half years, I have focused mainly on teaching my children good character.  Manners, self-control, and fostering good relationships with others are the things that I stress for the boys when they are little. 

Conner will be five in just six months, though, so it is time for me to begin introducing some more structured learning time.  Conner hasn’t shown much of an interest in reading yet, but we are going to start putting a big emphasis on books here in the near future.  I wouldn’t ever want to force him to read, but I want him to learn to love being surrounded by literature.  Once a child learns to read, he can learn anything.  Logan is already showing signs of readiness to read, believe it or not!  There isn’t anything that kid doesn’t want to do!  Part of it is his personality, I suppose, but I also suspect part of it is being a younger sibling always wanting to get out of older brother’s shadow.  So I will let him learn to read right along with Conner and I if he wants to!

We’ve also been working here and there on teaching Conner (and Logan of course) to write.  He has picked it up rather quickly and can write about half of the alphabet well and the other half not-so-well!  The half that he writes well are the letters that make up his first, middle, and last names!  Logan can write a couple of letters as well.  The other night the boys really wanted to work on their letters, so after dinner (and before I left for a meeting), we sat at the kitchen table and worked on them…

They made a lot of progress that night!  The beauty of homeschooling is that you can work on things whenever you have a chance and whenever they are most enthusiastic. 

Another life-skill that we’ve been emphasizing a lot lately is learning Spanish.  Raphael can speak spanish rather fluently, and I know quite a bit of Spanish, so we teach them words as we go about our days.  When we are driving in the car, I point things out and teach them how to say the words in Spanish.  At home, it’s the same thing.  They know all the colors, some of the numbers, quite a few animals, and a lot of other random words that they’ve wanted to learn!  Conner even knows how to say “How do you say…” in Spanish.  So when we are out and about and he wants to know a certain word in Spanish, he just says “Como se dice…” and then whatever word he wants to learn.  The other night he was playing basketball and he came running over to me and said “Mommy, I’m en fuego!” rather enthusiastically. (Which means, “on fire!”) 

After the baby gets here, I know I’ll be exhausted, unkempt, leaking milk everywhere, and barely able to sit down without wincing…but I also know we’ll be spending a lot of time at home together.  During this necessary break from the busyness of life and running errands, I plan to spend more time doing specific blocks of “school time” with the boys and getting used to having that be more of a priority.  Raphael will take some time off work after the baby comes, so he is going to work with the boys on some fun science projects!  This will also allow me and the baby time to rest.

I am really looking forward to the days ahead with my children.  There is nothing in life that matters to me more than this.  I am thankful that I will get to spend the days with them in addition to the evenings and weekends; and that I will get to be there for most new things that they learn.  I’m thankful that my husband sees the value in these choices and is happy to have me home, raising and educating our kids (with his help, of course).  

A lot of men have seen this look from their wives before.  But not all of them have been brave enough to dare take a picture.  With this being our third child, though, my husband knows I’m not really going to go all praying-mantis on him.  

He and I have both been sick with a cold/flu for the past few weeks.  It lasted a long time for me, but he seems to be getting over it rather quickly.  The good thing about being sick is that you really appreciate life better when you are done being sick!  It’s so nice just to be able to breathe.  Ahh the things we take for granted. 

Aside from being large and sick, I am typically always a little crankier around the holidays.  It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of the month of December.  I think people who claim that this is the most wonderful time of year are a bit delusional.  Perhaps once upon a time it was a beautiful time of food, family, Christ, and a FEW gifts.  Those days are gone, though.  Now it is a consumerist frenzy.  We try to keep things simple around here, but since we don’t live in a bubble it can be rather difficult to do so.  For the first time EVER, though, I am happy to report that I am completely done with all of my Christmas shopping AND wrapping before Christmas Eve!  Aaaaaaahhhhhh!  We agreed this year that for our boys, Santa gifts will fit in their stockings…and that’s it.  Then from us they will each get a few quality gifts that we think they would most enjoy. 

Anywho, aside from the talk about Christmas, I am just trying to get ready for my new little man!  He should be here sometime in the next three weeks or so!  Oddly enough, my down-low pain of a few weeks ago has subsided a little bit and I’m feeling rather comfortable for being 8 1/2 months pregnant!  The boys and I went to the zoo this morning and for the first time (and probably last time for a while) since I became a mother, we went through the whole zoo with no stroller!  Instead of me being exhausted pushing them up and down the hills, I wore their little butts out and made them walk it with me!  It was so nice.  But of course in just a couple of weeks, I’ll be back to strollering!  That’s ok, though…these days are fleeting and I do enjoy having little ones.

I’ve also been working overtime on my scrapbooking.  I feel the need to get all caught up before the baby arrives.  I suppose that’s why I haven’t been blogging…it has just fallen lower on the priortiy list.     There have been so many other things happening around here as well, but each deserves it’s own post.  We’ll see…

All three of the following pictures were taken at 35 weeks…

First we have pregnant with Conner:

…looking pretty fresh-faced, right?

Then there was Logan:

…wow, rough day!

And now with Baby #3 (picture taken yesterday):

…bad lighting, but otherwise looking less gaunt than the previous pregnancy!

This pregnancy has been uneventful, just the way any mom would hope for.  I do notice something different this time, though.  With the other two boys, I carried all the way to term without hardly any aches or pains.  This time, right at about 34 weeks, I started to get the uncomfortable sensation that my pelvic region was bruised by the end of the day.  I’ve heard that this is common for most pregnant women.  It’s really not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but it goes to show how your body starts to wear with each pregnancy.  I think this baby’s head has already dropped pretty low into my slacked pelvic muscles, which is making the area feel sore after standing all day.  The good news, of course, is that he is head down and will hopefully stay that way!  Looking forward to meeting him in about 5 weeks! 

Anybody want to throw out some guesses as to the weight and birth-date?  There are no prizes, just the satisfaction of being awesome!     My official guess is January 7th for the date and 8lbs 15oz for the weight.  My due date is January 10th.  Conner was born three days after his due date and Logan was born two days before his.  Conner weighed 7lbs 15oz and Logan weighed 8lbs 13oz.

Well, so posting the first and last week of my monthly menu plan is good, right?! 

Monday:

Breakfast:  Meet other moms for breakfast at one of my favorite restaurants!

Lunch:  Nana’s House

Dinner:  Spaghetti, Bread, Salad

Tuesday:

Breakfast:  Yogurt, Muffins, Fruit

Lunch:  Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Tomato Soup, Broccoli

Dinner:  Nana’s House

Wednesday: 

Breakfast:  Eggs-in-a-Hole

Lunch:  Sack Lunches for Friend’s House  (PB&J, Fruit, Cheese, and Crackers, etc.)

Dinner:  Beef Stroganoff, Carrots

Thursday (Thanksgiving!):

Breakfast:  Breakfast Casserole

Lunch:  Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Rolls…oh my!!!

Dinner:  Snacks/Leftovers

Friday: 

Breakfast:  Lazy Granola

Lunch:  Pizza Pockets  (triple batch for freezer)

Dinner:  Corn Chowder Soup, Salad

Saturday (Our 6th Wedding Anniversary!): 

Breakfast:  Eggs, Bacon, Potatoes, Toast

Lunch:  Smoothies

Dinner:  Mom and Dad at Mom’s 10-year High-School Reunion, Boys at Nana’s House

Sunday: 

Breakfast:  French Toast, Fruit

Lunch:  Clean out Fridge

Dinner:  Dinner at Grandpa’s House

Several weeks ago, my cousin (and good friend) contacted me saying that her husband and kids were driving her crazy and she needed to get out of the house for some girl-chat.  AMEN to that, I said…count me in!  Then she explained that there was only one day she could get together (November 17th) because her husband has been working weekends and he had that one day where he could be home early.  Strange, I thought, but whatever!  So I asked Raphael if he would mind coming home from work a little bit early on the 17th so that Jennifer and I could meet for dinner.  He gave me a little bit of crap, but ultimately said that would be fine.  After all, my friend’s life was crumbling to the ground as we spoke and she NEEDED me.

So, fast forward to this past Thursday evening.  I had other engagements nearly every night that week, and by the time Thursday rolled around I was exhausted, but excited to get out of the house.  Raphael got home from work around 4pm, and I headed out to help my friend pull it together so that she wouldn’t jump off of her roof.  (She had given me lots of these colorful phrases to entice me out of the house on a weeknight.)  I met her at one of our favorite restaurants, prepared to be a good listener and friend.  Almost immediately after we sat down, she pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to me. 

Confused, I grabbed the envelope and started to open it.  I immediately recognized my husbands hand-writing all over the envelope and I gave her a weird look.  That’s when I noticed that there was Twilight propaganda all over the tickets inside.  I was staring at the tickets, still confused, when I looked up and said “So, this isn’t about you at all?  This is for ME?!”  She started laughing hysterically and said “That’s right, I’m a big fat liar!…this was all your husband’s idea.”  She had to explain the whole story to me because I kept saying things like “So, your marriage isn’t falling apart?” and “Chris hasn’t been working every weekend after all?”  and “You don’t actually have any big news to share with me?!”  Seriously, I’m slow! 

Turns out that the company my husband works for had rented out a theater at Harkins and sold sneak preview tickets for Breaking Dawn Part 1 to their employees.  The money was going to charity, so in addition to the face value of the tickets, you could pay extra to donate, which is precisely what he and Jennifer did.  The best news of all was that we didn’t have to stay up until midnight to watch the movie!  We got to walk past all the lines of people waiting outside to see the show at midnight and head right in to our 7:30pm showing!  It was so awesome! 

The lady running the booth for the company Raphael works for informed me that my husband was the very first person to contact her when he read about this special offer because he knew I’d really love it!  Being a tired pregnant mother of two young children, I had just resolved myself to the fact that I would be seeing the movie at least a few days after it had come out.  Raphael is so good at surprises, and my cousin is a great friend for helping him coordinate the whole thing!