Birthday Posters - The First Half

This school year I have continued making birthday posters for Nicky's school (see last year's posters here). It's a good assignment, and I have a lot of fun with it. Daisy is my official poster consultant and assistant (there are pros and cons to this). Here's what we came up with for the first half of the year:

For September, we based our poster on Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. My kids love Pete the Cat. Hopefully a lot of other children at Nicky's school do too. Otherwise they probably thought the poster lady just has a weird obsession with cats and buttons.

For October we did a haunted house with ghosts and pumpkins. Not the most original school poster in the world, but it worked.

In November, I tried to come up with something other than Thanksgiving, and since Charles Shultz was born in November, I decided to do a Snoopy poster. I even added Charles' name on a paw... tiny details no one will ever notice.

December was a fun one - I'd been wanting to post our curly-haired principal's head on something, and when I saw some Elf posters online, I knew what I had to do. When I went to the school to hang up the poster, the upper grades were on their way to lunch, and the poster caused quite a ruckus. The kids' reaction was totally worth any sort of trouble I might have gotten in. Luckily we have the perfect principal for antics like this (this wouldn't have been okay at my son's original school). 

Everyone Needs One

Every time I'm pregnant, I wish I had a grabber. If you haven't experienced bending over while pregnant, let me clue you in: it's not fun. There comes a point in each pregnancy where I get down on my hands and knees and crawl throughout the whole house picking stuff up off the floor because it's too hard to keep going up and down and up and down, so I just stay down. 

During my second pregnancy, I saw a stash of "As Seen on TV" grabbers near the register at the store, and I thought, "I should get that NOW!" because it's one of those things that you see when you're not looking for one, but if you're looking for one you'll never find one. Alas, I didn't have the money at the time so I decided I'd buy one the following week after pay day. 

Didn't happen.

Because they were gone.

Just as I knew they would be!

Finally, in my fourth pregnancy, I have a grabber! Scotty gave it to me for Christmas, and it was quite timely since I grew increasingly uncomfortable during the two weeks before Christmas.

Now I know this: everyone should have a grabber, pregnant or not. The other day my book fell behind the couch, and I was able to retrieve it with the grabber (otherwise I would've had to move the couch). Today I moved our deep freezer forward a few inches and used the grabber to pick up some stuff that had fallen behind it (I would've had to move the freezer several feet if I didn't have the grabber). Cleaning, in general, is much easier with a grabber. I pick up stuff from under my kitchen table with ease. Garbage, laundry, shoes, toys - all are so much easier to pick up with my grabber, not to mention, it extends my reach so I don't have to walk as far between the items I'm cleaning up and the place where they are stored. 

Go forth and get grabbers! You will be so happy!

I'm Still Pregnant (and ten other facts about pregnancy right now)

Fact #1: I am officially in the third trimester of pregnancy, and the third trimester didn't waste any time making its presence known. Since Christmas I've been nauseous everyday, and I am starting to get super fatigued again.

Fact #2: I haven't taken a single "belly photo," which is sad because I've been pretty diligent about that in the past. I did see a picture of myself from Christmas, though, that made me realize how unflattering my non-maternity clothes are on my very pregnant body (I might post that picture in another post soon).

Fact #3: Somewhere between 24-25 weeks, I got exponentially uncomfortable. One week I was sitting on the floor at my nephew's birthday party with no problem, and the next week, I could no longer get off the couch in a discreet manner.

Fact #4: I am carrying this baby a lot lower than all of my others. I have always carried very high and have had to push my uterus out of my ribs for relief as early as 12 weeks. This time everything is lower and my ribs are so thankful.

Fact #5: I've been having round ligament pain for the first time, and one of the things that aggravates it is running, so I haven't been running since October (which is fine because I'm not comfortable running pregnant when the ground is icy and the air is bad anyway). The last few times I ran, it took a week for my ligaments to recover. Now I save all my ligament woes for getting up to pee in the middle of the night, which is the other frequent aggravator.

Fact #6: I've never been pregnant in January before. Well... I have... but I was, like, four weeks pregnant and didn't know yet. Turns out that being a pregnant hormonal mess during the most depressing month of the year is kind of a bummer.

Fact #7: I have found it increasingly difficult to do simple things like do my hair and wear real clothes as time has gone on. I had an obligation last night that required me to look presentable, and I was nearly in tears at the thought of having to "get ready." I guess I've let myself go!

Fact #8: Pregnancy has not been kind to the texture of my hair.

Fact #9: I'm due right at the same time as Kate Middleton and Carrie Underwood. I wonder which of us will be in the spotlight the most?

Fact #10: I have been alternating between hot and cold everyday, much like the flu except not the flu. Just pregnancy. I've also been quite achy, much like the flu except not the flu. Just pregnancy.

Meet the Girls

I didn't mention much about Christmas around here after it had happened. In addition to finding out that we're having a girl, Christmas brought one more change to our household... or three.

Nicky has been asking for chickens for a while, and Scotty and I have wanted some as well, so we thought Christmas would be a great time to get some. It's not every year that your kid asks for something somewhat practical. The gift that keeps on giving, and all that! Definitely better than electronics!

The problem was, we didn't have a very good place to put a coop. Most of the perimeter of our yard is used up. Adding a chicken coop to the yard would require us to move sprinklers or transplant a perfectly good raspberry bush, which we didn't want to do. Then Scotty had a great idea. We ended up removing the picnic table and the sandbox from under our playset and turning that area into a run. We borrowed a house temporarily from my dad which we will replace in the spring with one of our own. This made it possible for us to go from zero to chicken coop overnight. 

Boy, was Nicky surprised when he found a note from Santa on Christmas morning saying that he might have left a few gifts outside.

For now, because of being re-located and because it's winter, "the girls," as I call them, aren't laying eggs, but come spring, we will be happy to have their eggs (we've opted to not have a lamp in the coop). Meanwhile, I am begrudgingly buying eggs from the store and looking forward to the day when the chickens start earning their keep (I am also looking forward to the day when we have a lot more vegetable scraps to feed them via the garden. That was always one of my favorite parts of having chickens as a child - preparing them "gourmet meals" from our garden) (Did I mention that I grew up with chickens? And my dad breeds and raises them? And he might have helped Santa with the arrangements for getting Christmas chickens? Cause Santa's workshop doesn't make chickens. It's a supply and demand thing). 

Nicky has done a great job taking care of the chickens so far. In fact, all of the kids are quite fond of them. They all love feeding them and playing outside while the chickens are out wandering. Zoe is especially a fan. When she sees them outside the window each morning, she yells, "Dih-dih!" (which is "chicken" in Zoe-ese), and then she goes and gets her purple boots on so she can go outside and bond with the girls. Zoe climbs right in the coop with them, puts her hands in her pockets, and just watches. She also likes to feed them and ride her bike in circles around them on the patio. Whenever we go anywhere, Zoe has to go in the backyard and say good-bye to the "dih-dih" first.

My only complaint is the poop, but that comes with all living things, so we're used to it.

The Person Most Interested

Nicky is at an age where he is starting to take interest in things that I am also interested in. This is great because sometimes I get to watch movies or shows that I like instead of PBS Kids and Dora over and over and over. It's refreshing to have a little buddy who likes some of the same things I do.

Nicky recently discovered the joy of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. He was so excited when he answered his first Jeopardy clue. It's rare that we can actually sit down and watch together, but when we do, it's a blast! (I need to remember to stay quiet during these game shows and give Nicky a chance to figure things out, but it's so hard! I'm an answer hog! If I know the answer, I can't keep quiet or I'll die of a twitching fit).

When Nicky heard me talking about going to see The Giver, he became very curious about it. He asked me several times if I would let him watch it, and it's a movie that I feel good about my kids seeing (with some follow-up discussion), so I told him he could watch it when it came to Redbox. I knew most of it would go right over his head (and it did), but I loved watching it with him and explaining the story and the themes to him. Nicky was thrilled because he got to watch a PG-13 movie (he's a little obsessed with movie ratings right now).

Several months ago, Nicky and I watched The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe together. It's hard for me to sit back and just watch a movie with my kids when there is something much bigger to the story than they can comprehend on their own. I paused the movie at least a dozen times to ask Nicky questions like, "Why do you think Mr. Tumnus betrayed Lucy to the White Witch?" and "Who else can you think of who died to save other people like Aslan?" He was so great to go along with it, and he never once complained that I kept interrupting the show.

Shortly after that, Nicky started asking me about the Lord of the Rings. He's always been intrigued with LOTR, and I've always told him that he can watch the movies when he's older. Scotty and I were planning to watch them, and Nicky knew, so he kept asking and asking if he could watch them with us. We decided to let him try it out, but first we explained to him that there are a lot of scary-looking creatures in the movies, so we made him promise that if he felt scared that he would tell us and be brave enough to stop watching. I really didn't think he'd make it very far into the movies before he got scared. Nicky has always been very afraid of everything on TV and in movies - to this day, he will not watch Toy Story 3 because it's too scary, and yet, he watched most of all three LOTR movies without flinching. I thought, "Wow! He is being so brave during these movies, but tonight he's going to come into our room sobbing!" We watched the movies over the span of a month, and he didn't get scared once! Orcs? Goblins? Giant spiders? They've got nothin' on Nicky. But toys in a trash incinerator? Nightmares for WEEKS! I don't get it. But I'm so glad I got to watch LOTR with my son (even though most of the story went over his head, and he asked me no less than a hundred times who Frodo was).

Nicky is also showing an aptitude for board games. A few months ago I bought Rummikub thinking it would be a good game for Nicky to learn. I taught him how to play, and he plays pretty well. We've also taught him the basics of Quirkle (without keeping score) and Ticket to Ride (with lots of help). He used some of his birthday money to buy Super Big Boggle. He's getting to the point where he's no longer going to be content playing with his friends on game night - he's going to start trying to infiltrate our system! I need to be prepared for this!

I often look at Nicky and wonder, "Where did this kid come from?" He asks me about the books I'm reading and about every show I watch. He asks about my school assignments and my plans for dinner. I never expected that the person most interested in my life would be my eight-year-old son. I hope he stays this way, and I hope we can share many more interests in the years to come.

Change of Plans

We weren't finding out what we were having. 

We've done it twice, and it's really lots of fun!

But when I went in for my ultrasound at 19 weeks, Scotty and I both thought we saw "something" (or a lack of something, if you know what I mean).

Over the next few weeks, it ate away at me. It turns out that "kind of" knowing is a lot harder (and very different) than "not knowing." 

I had an appointment on the 15th of December, so I called my doctor (without Scotty knowing), and asked if he would do a gender check. He obliged, and I had him put the results in an envelope so we could open it on Christmas. 

(Note that this required me to be patient for 10 days while I had the answer tucked in my purse. High five for diligence!)

Since Scotty didn't know about the envelope, I had to attend several Christmas parties and lie to everyone.

"Do you know what you're having?"

"No. We're not finding out."

My apologies to all of the people I deceived over those ten days!

As we suspected, we're having a...

I never thought I'd be a mother of girls, plural... let alone THREE!

I'm very excited, but I never imagined that Nicky wouldn't have a little brother. It always seemed like a given. I'm not entirely opposed to having another baby someday, but I have always felt like four is our number, and I would really like to be "done." I feel good about four. Five? I just don't know. But "change of plans" seems to be a big theme in life, so we'll see what comes. Maybe there will be a brother someday - life is unpredictable, and God can be pretty convincing.

2014 Resolutions in Review

When I made my resolutions for 2014, I decided to make my theme for the year "Sing a New Song" based on Psalm 40. This year I really wanted to change my tune and fix a few character flaws that had been holding me back. I can't really say that I was successful, but I'm definitely singing a new song - or at least an unexpected song. At the beginning of the year, I had no idea that I would go back to school or become pregnant.

Here are some of the things I hoped to accomplish this year:

Run a half marathon before June. DONE

I ran an organized half marathon in April. Then after I was injured in the Spartan Race in June, I couldn't run for about six weeks. One Saturday morning in August, I went on my first "real" run post-injury (i.e. more than a mile or two), and I hoped to run between 5-8 miles, but I ran 13.1. I just kept going and going. I had to text Scotty and say, "I'm still alive - I'm trying for a half marathon." He thought I was nuts - and I was, considering I hadn't ran in six weeks - but I did it.

Win something by luck (not skill). DONE

I was hoping to win something cool, but all I got was a camp chair in a raffle. Still counts, though. And I needed a camp chair. An iPod or $1,000 cash would have been nice, but whatever.

Reach the weight recommended by my doctor. DEBATABLE

Pregnancy interfered with this one, but I'm in a good place with my weight gain so far. Not too much, not too little, so there's still some doctor approval involved.

Read the Book of Mormon as a family. IN PROGRESS

At the beginning of the year I made a plan to read the Book of Mormon with my family in its entirely. I'm sure there are plenty of families with small children who accomplish this, but my plan was too much for our family. By the time March hit, I had to change what we were doing because it just wasn't working. We are still reading, but we didn't finish.

Read The Power of Everyday Missionaries and the Old testament. SO NOT DONE, IT AIN'T EVEN FUNNY

This didn't happen. Not even close! And I don't even have an excuse. I just didn't want to do it. I think I made it about 30 pages into each.

But The Power of Everyday Missionaries is really, really good. Somehow I just need to get through it! I can do it by the new year if I try. Will I try? Sheesh! I dunno.

In my new year post for 2014, I also made mention of a few other goals I was working on:

• There were three friendships or relationships I had specific goals for
• I tried to do 5,000 things to improve my home/family life
• I had a bad habit I wanted to overcome
• I tried get in a better place spiritually and emotionally

I'm going to go ahead and proclaim those goals "mostly unsuccessful." In fact, in a few of those areas, I think I'm even worse off than I was a year ago.

So, here I bid adieu to 2014, and though it wasn't a horrible year, I'm glad to be singing my way into a new year, even though it's not the song I had in mind.