getting ready for the show

maddux came to show me his costume for the performance madelyn had written, and they had been practicing all week, for their babysitter tonight. something about "corn cob bob" - which is apparently hysterical!

matt and i were off to our bible study's white elephant party tonight - here is a picture of our gift. love.

what's one more?

my friend who i walk with needed to attend a funeral today (young mom with a long suffering cancer - a sad and happy occasion) and she needed someone to watch the little boy she normally watches all week.  since he knows us from walking, she asked if i was free.  madelyn would have to ride the bus (to free up a carseat) but we could do it.

i think he is 20 months or so but he is manning's size.  he and maddux often pass snacks and books back and forth between the strollers while my friend and i walk and talk so he was pretty excited to have his one 'friend' over.  it went great.  so great that he didn't want to stop for lunch or a nap!  it helped that it was a beautiful day and we were able to play outside quite a bit.

i had madelyn ride the bus so that i would have enough carseats for the four boys when i drove mason to school.  i wasn't sure how it was going to work with mason in madelyn's booster seat (he is two months from being legally old enough, but he meets the weight and height requirements) and maddux in mason's seat in the back since he can't do all of the buckles himself.  but maddux was finally  able to buckle himself in!  he picked the perfect day to make that happen too!  he buckled himself in all four time we got in the car (picking up and dropping off mason) and was even able to unbuckle once!  very exciting!

the boys played downstairs most of the morning and outside most of the afternoon.  it really worked out pretty well.  it would have been much harder if we had to do anything else in the car though and our little friend isn't much of a hand holder which made things a little tricky in the parking lot.

all four boys were very taken with alphie.

the funny part was when his dad came to pick him up because he asked if i was running a daycare!  he was a little surprised to hear that the other four were all mine.  it does feel like a daycare some days.  love.

24, 17, 19

these are the number of months between our children.  and for you that might struggle with math, you need four children to have three gaps.  and number four is coming in (wait for it...) june!  yes, we are having a third june baby!  at least this time it should be early june (i say "should" because we have had no problem with going 40+ weeks).

we had a 10 week ultrasound at this doctor's office so here are some profile pictures.  you can see the head on the left and a foot/leg on the right.  you can also see an arm/hand near the neck area.  baby looks great so far and has a very good heart rate. 

i have had maybe four or five appointments (there seem to be a lot at this practice).  i have already had my glucose test because maddux was 11 lbs. they want to test me earlier to make sure diabetes isn't an issue (that generally leads to babies over 10 lbs.).  and i will have a second blood/glucose test at 28 weeks.  i didn't get a phone call, so i am guessing that i am in the clear on the blood work (they only call if something is wrong).  i have another check-up in a few weeks so i guess i will get a definite negative at that time.

i am guessing that we will find out boy or girl at the end of january because that is when i will be 20 weeks (i am 16 right now).  and we will be finding out.  either way the baby will sleep in madelyn's room because she is the heaviest sleeper and then we will arrange things for gender appropriateness (if needed) when the baby is ready to leave the crib (some time after turning one).

we just told family on Christmas because we wanted to hold the grandparents off on presents for the new baby.  our house just can't take any more toys! :)  it was a fairly easy secret to keep since we hardly know anyone here and it is winter (lots of layers and bulky clothes).  i did have some trouble dressing for matt's office Christmas party because i was 14 weeks and he hadn't told his boss yet - who was going to be there.  thankfully, i have not shown quite as early with this one as i did with maddux (or i just didn't lose as much weight between kids...).

mainly i have had aversions to sweets (and really most food doesn't taste great), teeth brushing makes me dry heave and i am exhausted.  this is all similar to my other pregnancies, but the sweets aversion was only with madelyn so i am thinking that it is a girl.  we are hoping for a girl to even things out but will be happy either way.

the next six months are going to be busy!  my main goal is to have mason potty trained before the baby gets here because i don't want three in diapers!  love.

freedom at last

right before i was getting ready to sit down and post tonight, matt had turned on football on t.v. as soon as madelyn heard the nfl music she turned around and shouted, "go chargers!" her daddy could not have been more proud.

yesterday, madelyn and i finally got to leave the house for the first time in almost a full week. we were heading out to her friend kyle's 2nd birthday party at 2pm. i tried to think of some errand we needed to run earlier in the day, but couldn't come up with anything so we waited until it was time to leave for our first taste of freedom.

we had a nice time at the party and kyle's mom (and dad) did a really great job with a sesame street school theme (kyle is into school buses right now - and sesame street). his mom did a school lunch for everyone that was really well thought out and delicious. madelyn liked eating all sorts of foods that she had not had before, like jello. she also enjoyed 'helping' kyle open his presents. she was doing a good job at sitting on my lap and watching at first, but there was an older boy who was 'helping' kyle open gifts and that got all the other kids 'helping' too. the main objective was to keep madelyn out of the way of the grandmas' camera angles. she actually would step back and just watch every now and then. towards the end i had her happily picking up all the torn wrapping paper and putting it in a bag while kyle got to unwrap things at his own speed.

i had worked on madelyn that morning to say "happy birthday". her version was more like "happy day" or "happy b'day" and "kyle" came out more like "color", but she could say it pretty clearly. of course i could not get her to say it to kyle when we got there. she did say "happy day" a few times, but it was too quiet for anyone to really hear her with all the party noise.

after the party, i had to stop by the mall to get my phone fixed. madelyn was so excited to be walking around somewhere other than home that she started crying and asking to "walk more" when we tried to put her coat back on to leave. i don't think that it helped that she didn't really get a nap because we had to leave for the party a half hour after we put her down. i thought that we could carry her asleep into the car and she could sleep on the ride to their house, but she wasn't really asleep when i went to get her and she never went to sleep on the ride over. and

we had one more stop to make on the way home and were later than expected. we had to put her straight to bed after a quick dinner as soon as we got home. she was exhausted, but totally pleasant all day. unfortunately for me, she decided to sleep in this morning. she always seems to want to sleep in when we actually have to wake up at a certain time. on saturday she got up at 6:30am, but today she had to be woken up at 7:30am! i know that she was just catching up from all the missed sleep yesterday.

matt and i had to go bowling with some people from his department this afternoon so we got a babysitter for madelyn. this is maybe the third time that madelyn has had a babysitter so i told her that kayla was coming over the play with her today and had her practice saying "kayla". as soon as kayla got here madelyn said "hi kayla" and started to show her all of her favorite toys. when i went to tell her that daddy and i were leaving, she said "bye" and gave me a kiss (daddy

also got a kiss). apparently she was really good and slept for 2-1/2 hours. i told matt that this means that we will just have to go out more if she is going to be this easy about it! not that i was really surprised. she never has had a problem with babysitters. i think she was really excited to have someone in the house other than matt and i.

(for the record, i beat matt - substantially - the first game and he beat me the last two.)

all in all a nice weekend but one that has left me more exhausted than rested, not the way i like to start the work week. at least it will be a little warmer and maddie and i might get out some. love.

look what i can do

maddie's latest skill is to hold the bottle while drinking. we haven't used a bottle in a few weeks and i thought that we should reintroduce it before we left her with a babysitter last night (more on that in a minute). plus, i am heading to chicago tomorrow morning and will be at a conference until thrusday so she will being seeing lots of bottle time over the next week. she didn't even flinch and got right to business by taking charge of holding the bottle.

so yesterday we had about 4 inches of snow that then got piled on by a few hours of sleet and followed up by rain. needless to say the roads were rough and there was a high risk of ice. but matt and i went out into the night for his office Christmas party downtown. so we left maddie with one of the neighborhood girls for the night (actually two of the neighborhood girls because on of the other neighbors came to keep the babysitter company since maddie would be sleeping most of the time). as we were getting ready to go, i kept worrying that something might happen to us on the roads. since we don't have our will written up yet (one of the million things i need to get done by the end of the year) i wrote up a little something and had matt sign it so that if anything did happen our families would know what we wanted even if a court wouldn't uphold such an informal, unwitnessed document. am i crazy or what? everything was fine. matt and i had a nice evening out at the public museum (where the dinner/party was) and madelyn did great for the sitter.

i also learned that the going rate for babysitting has not increases since i last babysat and in fact, we were called by the sitter's parents after i dropped her off saying that she would be returning half of the money because we should not pay her that much! oh well. i guess that it is better to over pay than underpay. right?

madelyn is way over this laying on the ground thing and just itching to sit and stand. here she is 'helping' me with the laundry and a video of her sitting and playing with a toy (not sure what you would actually call it - an entertainment table?). she also likes to stand at that toy and play - she holds herself up and can push the buttons so that they make noise and light put, but the camera is way too distracting to her when she is standing and she falls down before i get any real footage. maybe soon though... plus, you may notice that i have figured out how to lighten the videos before i post them! i think it makes them a little grainy, but at least you can see what is going on a little better. oh, and i should mention that she is not choking. that is just her latest extreme in making one of her favorite noises. even though it freaks matt and i out a little because it can sound like she is having an asthma attack or something! the joys of parenthood... love.