Here are a few more pictures of our little dude. He’s such a skinny baby. This is so foreign to us- we’re used to chunkier babies. We pulled out some old pictures of Monkey, & decided she was nearly a perfect sphere at birth. He just feels so fragile. I can’t imagine what it must be like for people who bring home little 6 lb babies.

Who do you think he looks more like? I need to pull out our baby pictures so we can compare. His hair looks light in this picture. Maybe it’s the lighting. But it is actually really dark.

His sisters are pretty darn excited about him.

Monkey has been surprisingly gentle. I thought he might be wearing an eye patch by now. But so far so good. We just have to watch her very closely.

Now if only he could get his days & nights straight.

Our baby arrived tonight, & everything went smoothly. We’ve been calling him our “little man” for months, and that may have been a self-fulfilling prophesy. He was smaller than both of his sisters, at 8 lbs 8 oz. And so stinking cute. We’re so excited he is finallly here! We’re both exhausted so this will be short, but here are a couple pictures.

More to come soon!

I’m done. I am SO done with this pregnancy. Today is my official due date. I’ve had a bunch of false labor in the past two weeks, and it is making me crazy and irritable. That never happened with my first two. I’ve had 5-6 people in just the past week tell me that also happened with their 3rd child. Weird huh?

Tomorrow morning I’m being induced. My doctor wanted to induce me a week ago, but my kids were sick & I didn’t want to bring a new baby home to a sick house. And I was hoping to not have to be induced at all. In fact, I had contractions for hours last night, & thought I would go on my own. But things fizzled out in the early morning. The same thing happened a couple times last week. Apparently he’s a little stubborn. Or a lot.

And ginormous. I keep surprising people with my belly. At our church Halloween party, a guy (who I barely know) made several comments on the shocking size of my belly. Luckily I’ve embraced my temporary largeness, so it doesn’t offend me. It is kind of funny to hear the comments actually. But still. I’m ready.

My first two (both girls) were 8 lbs 9 oz and 9 lbs 13 oz. I come from a 10 lb baby kind of family (I was 10 lbs 2 oz.) But Curtis was the 7 lb type. Hmmm. Any guesses on how big this kid will be?

The girls had a blast on Halloween.

Getting them to both sit still, look at the camera, & look moderately pleasant for a picture? That was another story.

We’ve been laying low this week. Stinkbug is at the end of the nasty croup. She had a little freak out Sunday when her airways were swelling & she struggled to breathe. Her coughing sounded like a barking seal. We took her in and they gave her some steroids.

Normally I don’t like to run off to the doctor first thing, but with this new baby coming I wanted to get on top of this quickly. Nice timing huh?

Needless to say we’ve spent a lot of time in pajamas this week. In fact, it is 1:30 now and we’re still not dressed.

Monday for family night we carved pumpkins. The girls loved digging through the goo, picking out the pumpkin seeds. I’m crossing my fingers that they’ll both be healthy for Halloween, because they’re sure looking forward to it.

My baby turned two over the weekend. I guess I need to stop thinking of her as my baby, with another one coming so soon. Although 5-6 weeks doesn’t seem soon.

I wasn’t feeling ambitious enough to attempt a birthday cake, so we settled for cupcakes. A Google image search brought up a lot of cute Elmo cupcakes, so we gave it a shot. They didn’t look quite right, but fortunately the kids are young enough to not notice or care.

I don’t recommend making these, for several reasons. The biggest (and smelliest) of all being red poop. Yes, I said RED POOP. I didn’t think this one through entirely. Maybe I should have waited til Monkey was out of diapers before making something with red frosting.

It was a fun little party. When was the last time you were this excited?

We are getting ready to put Stinkbug & Monkey in the same bedroom, to make room for their baby brother. We decided to take it a step at a time, & move Monkey from a crib to a toddler bed in her own room first. I was guessing that she would be all over the room without her cage crib to hold her in. But so far so good. What do you think, does she look happy?

She is pretty pleased with herself. And she hasn’t even climbed out. Yet. (Knock on wood.) No destruction, no climbing dressers, nothing. Which if you know Monkey at all, this is in & of itself a complete miracle. When she wakes up she yells for me, and waits for me to come. Now cross your fingers that when we put her in her sister’s room next week she will adjust as quickly. I’m not holding my breath on that one. I am enjoying each milestone. But time goes too fast. EXCEPT in regards to pregnancy.

I don’t know what it is about the 4th of July in a small town, but I love it. Maybe it is nostalgia. Or maybe it is the momentary escape from my frustration with the government, this presidential election, and all the crap going on right now. For one day, the 4th of July, I don’t think about it. I love being surrounded by real people. People with common sense and good values. I love hearing the good things about our country for a day, rather than all the America-bashing that has been going on the past few years.

And I love to see our brave soldiers and veterans honored. At the parade we went to, someone was handing out little flags to all the kids. At the base of each flag was taped a slip of paper with the name, hometown, and date of death of a brave soldier who died protecting us.

Here is our little Stinkbug at the parade in my neighboring hometown.

In the evening, we have a spot on the Snake River where we hang out until the fireworks start. We got a workout, trying to keep our little Monkey away from the water.

Stinkbug was excited all day to bring out the sparklers sprinklers. After about 18 times trying to correct her, I gave up and was calling them sprinklers by the end of the night. She loved twirling her sprinklers around as she danced.

We ended the night watching a fantastic fireworks show over the river, put on by a local company. It is synchronized to music, and is the biggest show west of the Mississippi. Not bad for small town Idaho, huh?

The only dark spot on the evening? (Quite literally.) Monkey pooped out of her diaper mid-fireworks show. On my lap no less. Her snacking began at the parade at 10:00 am, and ran for about twelve hours. It was the one day in my life that I did not put the brakes on the sugar consumption. And boy I paid. I guess sometimes it pays to be anal. At least I had a great fireworks show providing enough light to clean up the mess.

My last couple of posts have been negative, so here are a couple things that have made me smile, to balance out my previous complaining about our weather (which by the way is now beautiful).

Stinkbug has been taking swimming lessons the past couple weeks. When we got home the first day, I had her take a quick shower to wash off the chlorine. She asked what chlorine was, and I told her it is something that helps keep the pool clean. Yesterday we rushed straight from swimming to do a hundred other things, so she didn’t get to shower until later. She said “Mom, I need to hurry and shower so I can wash the poisin off.” It took a minute for me to realize that she meant the chlorine.

Then the other day, we had the radio on softly in the background. The DJ said “The Police are coming up next.” Stinkbug’s jaw dropped, and she asked why the police were coming. She began to panic, and wanted to know who they were coming to get. She didn’t believe me that The Police are just a group of guys that sing.

The things that come out of her mouth blow my mind. She is so smart, so random, and so observant to things that I don’t even notice. Sometimes it brings me to tears. Partly because I am so in awe that this little person came from us. That she was sent to our family. Tears because I am so tired, physically and emotionally, and she wears me out sometimes. And a lot of the tears are tears from laughing so hard. I love the laughing tears.

My second bit of joy came from my 21 month old, Monkey. Yesterday I pulled out the little potty chair for her. I didn’t think she was anywhere near ready, but I figured I’d let her get used to seeing it. She loves little chairs her size. So I told her it was a potty chair and stripped her down to let her sit on it. She thought she was pretty cool, but I wasn’t sure if she had any idea what it was for.

Today when we came in the house, she ran straight for the bathroom door and said “Pa-ee” (potty). So what the heck, I took off her diaper and let her sit. Her sister came in and sat on the toilet next to her, and Monkey listened to her pee. A few seconds later Monkey stood up, looking confused and worried. She had peed in her little toilet! *Cue praising, hugs, and an offer for some candy.* The whole thing seemed a little traumatic for her once she peed, and I wanted her to have a positive connection with peeing. We’re definitely not above a little bribery around here.

I still think it will be a while before she is really ready for serious potty training. I’m not getting my hopes up of having her out of diapers before the baby comes. But it is something, right? It gave me hope & put me in a great mood. Funny how a little pee combined with good weather can turn your world around, huh?

Life is good.

So I’ve been a little frumpy lately. Ok, a lot frumpy. A couple months of feeling sick and hiding out in sweats and t-shirts do funny things to you. Wait, who am I kidding? I love sweats and t-shirts even when I’m not prego. Alright, I wear them 70% of the time when I’m not pregnant, and 99.9% of the time when I am. How’s that for honesty?

But you know how it feels, just feeling icky? Even when I try to fix myself up, I’m very aware of the belly (in the stage where people can’t tell if I’m prego or just gaining weight), the swelling, and the varicose veins. Oh the wonderful veins. I won’t get into those, because they deserve an entire post to themselves. They may be the death of me.

Today my husband comes home from work with flowers. Loads of flowers. In pots, hanging pots, vases, and some are seeds. I guess that ‘teacher appreciation day’ fell on some kind of national flower day too. So the kids brought flowers. Pretty cool, right?

My four year old Stinkbug’s reaction as she gasped? “Dad, did your kids bring you all those flowers because Mom is so beautiful?”

And my sweet husband said “Yes, they sure did.”

My friend Sarah called it. One of several reasons that I’ve been slacking lately, is that my head has been hanging over the toilet a lot. Yep, there’s a bun in the oven. This is sooner than we expected, but we’re thrilled!

We usually wait until 4-5 months to tell people. That was easier with the first two.

With Stinkbug, I started showing around 5-6 months. With Monkey, around 4 1/2 months. This one? Ten minutes. Well it felt like it anyway. I was pooching at 7 WEEKS! I kid you not. I’m almost 14 weeks now. But when people around us starting noticing the belly & asking, we figured we better start telling family before they found out from others.

By the way. Maybe that’s a question that shouldn’t be asked unless you already know the answer? I’m just sayin. That’s dangerous territory.

I had the talk with Stinkbug the other day. You know, the talk no parent wants to have with a child as young as four. The talk about electrocution.

I was folding clothes on my bed, while Stinkbug was playing in the tub in the adjoining bathroom. This is the part where the perfect parents cringe because I turned my back on a child of any age in the tub.

A minute later, Monkey came waddling in. When she noticed the bathroom door open, the waddle turned to a sprint.

Now we are pretty anal about keeping things locked up around here. All the bottom cupboards have childproof locks. Not because they have anything dangerous, but because she can empty one before I finish picking up the last one she cleared out. We keep cupboards locked for my sanity. We also keep the bathroom doors closed at all times. Any time Monkey sees something left open for a split-second, she will drop what she is doing and run to get in the forbidden cupboard or door. When this girl sees a window of opportunity, she can fly.

So Monkey ran for the open bathroom door. I was about two seconds behind her, but that was just long enough. She pushed the door shut, and immediately opened the drawer behind the door. I was locked out, and began to panic. Stinkbug yelled that Monkey was getting something she wasn’t supposed to. I told her to get out of the tub quickly, and close the drawer so I could get in.

And what did I find floating in the tub?

That’s right, the Purrr. Talk about a heart attack. Luckily it wasn’t plugged in, but so many terrible scenes raced through my mind about what could have happened. After recovering from my freak out, I got the kids and the bathroom cleaned up. I was so relieved that my girls were safe.

The next day, I began mourning the loss of my Purrr. This thing has been in the family for at least thirty years, maybe more. And it still works worked like a champ. It’s a power detangler, and a huge lifesaver if you have girls with long hair. Especially girls who whine when you have to comb or brush their tangled hair.

I figured no big deal, I can find another one on Google or eBay. You can find anything on Google or eBay, right? No such luck. Google brought up a bunch of links which either seemed pet-related, or trashy. One link looked promising, but was a photo of a 30 year old newspaper ad with the Purrr. EBay produced nothing. Just more cat stuff.

If anyone knows where I can score me a new thirty-year-old Purr, give me a holler! I’d be willing to pay, or work out an interesting trade.

Note to self…those leashes that I used to see on kids at Disneyland? The ones I made fun of people for using, thinking they must be cruel idiots? Yeah, maybe not such a bad idea after all.