Moving on

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Leaving all the festivities behind (and a few unopened and amazing looking lego sets) me and the boys packed up some of our belongings including floaties, sunscreen, swimming suits, goggles...and packed ourselves in with my parents for a much needed vacation to Florida. The only down side to this trip was having to leave daddy behind but so far I've managed to keep them pretty distracted.
Since our arrival there has been much Wii playing (I could never see Mario Kart again and be very happy), lego building, swimming, blueberry picking and beach chilling.  It has been wondering to have time to read and knit again.  There's just something about getting away for a time. The week has flown by but unlike most of my vacations to see my parents this one isn't quite over.
My Aunt from Oregon, my mom, me and my 3 boys (and of course #4 who is constantly making his presence known) are leaving again Monday for another eventful road trip. This time we are going to see my sister and niece how live in Missouri. I am pretty excited about seeing her place and being back in Missouri again. I armed myself today with 2 400 page Batman coloring books. With those and the DVD player we should be good to go for many hours on the road.  It almost feels a bit unfair because shortly after this trip ends my family (this time including Ben) will be headed to the beach for another week of vacation mode.  Let the summer begin!!

A Party Around Every Corner

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Today is Peter's Birthday.  Of my 3 boys he seems to take the  most after me in mood and disposition which is not necessarily good but something I can relate to.  He is definitely our moody artist at times, sensitive, independent, and now 5 years old.  The biggest milestone we have faced in turning 5 is giving up his tiny blue blanket and his thumb.  We tried to make a production of this reenforcing to him that he is now a big boy and all sorts of other logical reasons why the thumb should be turned away from. Unfortunately he is least of all logical at this point so I resorted to other methods. We went out yesterday to shop for a cozy stuffed animal to replace his beloved blanket. In the blazing sun of the afternoon without any hint of impending bedtime he eagerly brought me his blanket to be packed up for his posterity and picked out the stuffed animal to replace its affections (a tiger webkin which he has named "Tigerie").
Things were not as blissful last night as he was drifting off to sleep weeping over his blanket and pleading for us to get it back for him. I must say it was heartbreaking but we both stood firm and he made it through his first night with no thumb or blanket. This is what it means to turn 5.
Now we are all stuffed with chocolate chip pancakes and are pressing on for a day of movies and slight festivities as we continue to remember his big day.  Tomorrow Christopher turns 3 and the day will end in a big party for both of them which will hopefully include a pirate cake if I can manage to get it all put together. I'm a bit intimidated by that part.
Grandma and Grandpa arrive this evening and there is no end to the fun.

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Furnishing Minimally

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     We moved into our 1940s house last November and since them I have done very little decorating. Part of the problem is that up until now I have never lived in a place that I have felt like decorating. Most of our homes have been rentals and although I know several people that dive head first into decorating their rental I am not one of them.  The one house we did own we only ended up staying in for a year so I really only had time to paint and hang pictures. 

     I found after we moved into this house and were finally beginning to settle into a place that we plan to live in for as long as we can possibly stand (which hopefully will be 10 years or more) that I didn't even really know what my style was.  

     I discovered this one weekend when my husband's parents were watching the boys and we decided to peruse a furniture store for ideas. Up until now we have only had furniture that was given to us or we found for a steal on craigslist.  During those times you can't be very discerning or turn something down because it's not your style. You just take it and use it because people need places to sit.  

      Going to the furniture store was highly unsettling to me. I'm not even going to deal with the fact that the sales clerk there basically stalked us through the store despite our constant reassurances to her that if we did find something she would be the first to know and that we really were just looking.  It was all my pregnancy hormones could do to stay calm and not scream at her, "Stop following us!!!" So trying to ignore her footsteps behind us we pressed on looking at tons of oversized, overstuffed furniture that didn't come close to resembling anything I would want in my living room.

     First of all in the 1940s they didn't sit on giagantor couches that make you feel like you're a little kid when you sit back on them.  I am short and there is so little furniture made out there for people shorter than 6'.  When I'm visiting with guests I don't really feel comfortable kicking my shoes off and curling up into a fetal position on the couch just to get comfortable.  So we both left discouraged and my husband said, "I need you to figure out your style." 

     So thus it began. A quest to determine what says me. It's easy to point to what doesn't say me but the other side is much harder. The next week I googled, looked through magazines, and countless blogs on the subject and eventually found out that my style is very similar to our house. I prefer smaller furniture. The kind of furniture that most likely originally furnished this house when it was first made. I love the 1940s style which interestingly enough is modern. It has sleek lines not bulky pillows and oversized recliners.  Much of what I found is now considered apartment furniture.  

     The only thing left was to actually find something that was in our price range (which is really cheap...i mean REALLY).  Amazingly enough I found this on craigslist and fell in love with it (so I guess we still haven't broken the mold of getting our furniture on craigslist).  It is the first piece of furniture that I truly believe reflects my style and we both absolutely love it. 

Now to tackle the whole concept of curtains....Ugh!!!

The Perfect Name

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Before my husband and I started even coming close to having children we made a list of names, both for boys and girls, that we both liked.  Interestingly enough we had at least 10 boy names at the time and barely any girl names.  So when we had our first boy there was no question. We knew exactly what we wanted to name him. This was the case for all three of the boys. Every time I would get pregnant we would know exactly what our boy name would be but would labor long over just one girl name we were happy with. 

It's also strange because even though we never used any of our girl names we would never carry those names over to the next pregnancy. By the time I would get pregnant again that name just didn't seem to fit.  

Well, this time has been completely different.  We had our girl name picked out way before I got pregnant and had absolutely no idea what boy name we both liked.  In my superstitious mind I thought, "Well, maybe this means I'm finally having a girl!"  We never find out what we are having so I still won't know for sure until October when the baby finally decides to show us its true gender but the farther along I go in this pregnancy the more I have this overwhelming feeling that we are having another boy.  I can't really explain it, it just seems like I am.

I even went so far as to take several online gender prediction tests. Okay, so I know that those things are completely crazy! I do find myself wondering how my age and the date I conceived has ANYTHING at all to do with my baby's gender. I even ran across a blog where a woman was swearing that the sure way to tell is to look at the hair line of the child born before this one.  CRAZY! So I admit that nothing can be relied on with these tests but I just couldn't help it.  As you guessed, almost all the tests I took proclaimed that I was having a boy. So we'll see. 

All this has spurred me on into a desperate search for a boy name that we both can agree on. 

It may not seem like a big deal to some. I know several couples who are weeks away from having their baby and still have no idea what they are going to name it. I just can't do that! I find that I get much more excited about the baby's arrival if I have a name that I am excited about. That is my hope this time. If I can find a boy name that we just love then I'll be a lot more excited about having another boy. 

Boys are all I know and I have been telling myself that it would be so much easier to have another boy. With all of that, I do have to admit that I finally came to terms with myself and was willing to admit that I really want to have a girl.  I was really hoping this would be our girl. I can't help trying to envision what our little girl would look like. When I go too far I stop and look at the amazing little boys I have and smile at the thought of having another warrior to add to this already male-dominated family.  

Remembering

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For some reason when I'm pregnant I get an overwhelming desire to read about pregnancy, birth stories and any other experience that women have gone through during and after this ordeal of growing and delivering a life.  You would think by my fourth it would be old news but it somehow seems new every time.
This time I collected all the books my library had about midwives (which wasn't much). Mostly their stories or memoirs. The one I most recently started reading is about a midwife delivering babies shortly after WWII in Britain.  It wasn't exactly what I was thinking when I requested it but hey, how bad could it be? One comment she makes early on is that it seems that once that baby is finally in the mother's arms  she forgets all the pain, hardship and suffering that she just underwent only minutes ago.  In the author's thinking she must, why else would she ever do it again?  I'm not sure how many times I have heard this theory but it drives me crazy. I haven't talked to many women but all I know is that even when I was pregnant with my first I had to make a bee line for the door in order to avoid hearing all the gruesome and excruciatingly painful accounts women could tell of their own labor experience. At the time I was naive enough to think that if I didn't listen somehow it would be a much less painful experience for me.
I have to admit that even at 17 weeks pregnant with my fourth I have moments of panic. What am I doing? Why am I doing this again?? Am I insane??
I remember vividly the birth (and pain that came with it) of my 2nd and 3rd babies (not my 1st but that's for another time).  In fact after Christopher I was so sobered by the overwhelming feeling that I couldn't possibly go through it again.  We have always wanted to have 6 kids but at that time I realized there's no way we could afford adoption and I just couldn't have another baby naturally. This was a devastating reality.  Of course things changed but not because I forgot the pain or it was somehow minimized by the tiny, somewhat bluish and unnatural looking baby in my arms right after delivery.  The thing that made me want to do this again was the joy that I have with my boys right now as they age and the long term perspective I keep having to maintain that reminds me of how wonderful it is going to be to watch them all grow and start their own families and impact the world in new and better ways (something we could have never done alone).
So I'm not sure about you but I don't forget. I have had to move on and put things in the perspective that looks past the few hours or more of excruciating pain to the life it will give us.

A Window to the World

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Our big picture window has provided hours of entertainment for my 3 boys. Especially because a lot of things that happen around here involve trucks, scoops, trash trucks, backhoes, ladders and everything else that boys get very excited about.  A few weeks ago our neighbors even entertained us with a small kitchen fire that called out a fire truck and several police cars (heaven for my youngest boy who sat and watched until that very last one pulled away).  Today the tree trimmers are providing most of the edge of your seat thrills.  From climbing to the tops of the trees to devouring every last branch in their branch eating machine.

I on the other hand can think of only one thing. Today is the day that my camera is going to arrive.  I am not the queen of saving money. Ever since I was little I couldn't stand to have money in my pocket that wasn't being used to buy something immediately, so it was close to a monumental event that finally made me realize that to get the camera I wanted I was going to have to save up, not just a few months but possibly a few years. So last year I started. Every Christmas, birthday or event where I could squeeze money out of people I did. Finally after this past birthday I had enough to get me so close that my husband was willing to make up the difference.  So the Nikon d3100 will soon be in my possession and hopefully my photos will show a remarkable difference in quality because of it.

Another thing to be celebrated is the fact that hopefully we are done with the puking around here! It started out last Monday morning when Peter took it upon himself to loose his breakfast. That night Warren joined in on the fun only he didn't just join half-way, he put his whole heart into it. He was bedridden for at least 3 days (throwing up for 24+ hours and then incredibly weak and helpless for at least 36 hours). Once he decided to join the land of the living again my youngest couldn't help but get in on the action and started throwing up the day before my birthday. My husband had to stay home with the boys while I attended the family birthday party in honor of me and my sister-in-law.  Christopher tried to get better sooner but it wasn't until yesterday that he jumped into normalcy. This is when I decided I couldn't be left out and joined them. Thankfully mine only lasted a day.  I am hoping to say it is all behind us, that is if Ben doesn't want to get in on the action as well.