stereotyping

Tonight I decided to try a little something "new" with my cooking, and instead of making regular old pancakes as usual, I decided on making oatmeal pancakes. I thought they were delicious - a little heartier and flavorful than the regular ones - but when Ella took a bite, her response was a little different than mine.

Ella: "Mom - is this Chinese food??"

Me: "No, honey. They're pancakes. Why would you think it's Chinese food?"

Ella: "Because it's DISGUSTING!"

I'm not sure Ella's even TRIED Chinese food before...She's only ever seen us eating it, and she thinks it looks gross.

Who knew you could even stereotype food!

trapped

In the photo below, you will see a smiley, happy Chloe. But just moments before, she was screaming for dear life.The girls have been playing "house" a lot lately, where Ella is the Mommy, Britten the Daddy and Chloe the baby. They have a whole set-up in our unfinished basement with a bedroom for naptime, toys in a playroom and even a kitchen for their happy little family. Ella and Britten are good little parents, taking good care of their little baby. Clothing her, changing her diapers, and even strapping her in her booster seat and giving her a bottle of water.

The problem with having a 4 year old and 6 year old as parents, is that they can become easily distracted and forget altogether about their baby. They become so distracted, in fact, that they unintentionally leave their baby strapped in her booster seat, all alone, screaming her head off in the unfinished basement. This has honestly happened at least a dozen times in the last couple of weeks.

Chloe's screams are like white-noise around here, so she literally has to scream and scream for way too long before someone actually hears her or remembers they left her strapped in her seat, all alone in the basement.

Andy and I have had many talks with Chloe's "parents" about not leaving their baby unattended, and despite their promises of never doing it again, the fact is, they are 4 and 6. Their promises don't mean much. Chloe is either a glutton for punishment or has the child-like ability to forgive and forget, because she agrees to play "house" with Ella and Britten day after day.

But as you can see, she doesn't seem traumatized by it at all:

Let's hope her REAL parents do a better job taking care of her! :)

our little plumber

In working with our water meter, Chloe very clearly shows us her plumbing skills.

nothing quite like it

There's nothing quite like the perfect summer day. As a child, my definition of this would include: swimming, picnicing on the beach, playing at the park...and of course, ending the day with ice cream. I guess now that I think about it, this hasn't changed for me as an adult.

Me and the kids had a day like that today...Enjoying so much quality time together outdoors. I love these sort of days, knowing we're creating memories they'll take with them into adulthood. They're priceless.

The beach was a blast. We met up with some friends to swim, play and picnic on the beach. I don't have pictures to document, but I WISH I would've had my camera on me when Ella literally caught a FISH in her small toy bucket. Not a minnow...an actual FISH. She was utterly ecstatic and very carefully ran around the entire beach showing everyone her "catch of the day!" I honestly don't know how she did it, but that girl has determination like no other child, and when she sets her mind to something, she does it. Such is the case with her catching a fish in her toy bucket. Amazing.

We ended the day by stopping by a local park. We had intentions of playing at the park while Daddy ran errands, but when we got there we found something better! They had a community outreach going on that included live music, FREE woodworking kits for kids (compliments of the local Home Depot), food booths, ice cream, and lots of other things...

We had a blast! I love last minute surprises like that...especially when they're FREE!

Ella enjoyed putting together her birdhouse. It was so cute to see how proud she was of herself when she was done! We're going to paint it tomorrow and put it somewhere in our yard.
This was Chloe's favorite part of the evening...go figure. This girl never stops eating.
It was a fun-filled day, leaving us tired and sun burnt, but it was worth it!

There's nothing quite like the perfect summer day!

6 months old

I know, I know, you've been sitting on pins and needles for MONTHS waiting to hear the new about this little guy... In short, our life has been NUTS the last six months. I won't go into it all right now, but I know there have been a few concerned blog readers wondering about our well being. So I will just say that we are doing GREAT. And so is the sweet little face you see above.

In fact, that sweet little face turned 6 months old today, if you can believe it!?!? It seems like only yesterday that Asher Andrew was born. Like I expected, I had a very quick (I didn't say painless, just quick!) labor and delivery. They clocked the labor at about 1 hour, and I only pushed through one set of contractions before he was born at 2:04pm on January 1st. 2010.
It left me with a very bruised tail bone, and him a bruised face, but otherwise all was great!

He was a little guy, like we expected him to be. At 6 lbs, 9oz, 20 inches long, Asher was our smallest baby! But he was ready to GROW, and more than doubled his weight by his 2 month appointment.

In a nutshell, I didn't blog right after having Asher because I very much struggled with postpartum depression, along with anxiety/panic attacks. I only struggled through this a short time after delivery, but words cannot describe how scary this was for me...feeling SO out of touch with myself and not being able to control my emotions. My heart goes out to women who struggle with this for months, sometimes years! It's truly debilitating and leaves you feeling completely helpless and overwhelmed. Anyhow...

I can't explain it, but even the idea of blogging stressed me out, so I decided that I wouldn't blog again until I really WANTED to. I realized that day came today...When it dawned on me that my baby boy turned 6 months old and I wanted to show him off to the world - well the blogging world!
This is me and my smiley, sweet boy just a few days ago. He is hands down the sweetest little guy in the universe. The name "Asher" actually means happy, which I found out while pregnant. Somehow, I knew in my heart that his name would suit him perfectly and it really does.

There will be more posts to come, so please don't give up on me. There is a lot of fun things going on these days, and I'm excited to start sharing them with you again!

Until then, Happy 6 months, Baby BOY! You were the best gift God could have ever given our family!

now THAT'S a growth spurt!

So much for having a smaller baby! In the last two weeks my baby boy has grown...and grown...and grown. I could tell he was getting big by how uncomfortable I've been, but I couldn't believe the difference in his size until I took my 2-week photo today. Holy moly.

This is me two weeks ago...
This is me tonight...

It's only a matter of days (or hours?) before I meet my little guy and I can't wait. My doctor and I have tentatively scheduled a "water break" for this Thursday, December 31st, unless he comes sooner, so the end is in very near sight. I'm feeling very pregnant these days - like I could go at any given moment - but my body's ability to hold off full-blown labor never ceases to amaze me.

Life has been crazy lately. We sold our house last week, hosted Christmas at our house for my husbands whole family, and then to top it off, my husband is terribly sick with strep throat right now. He feels so miserable that I don't even think he's physically capable of coming to the hospital if I were go into labor tonight. Fortunately, me and the girls are healthy and I'm praying it stays that way!

I'm sure you'll be hearing from me soon - I'll post something on my blog as soon as baby BOY makes his arrival! YIKES!

any day now!

Two weeks ago, at 35 weeks:

Tonight at 37 weeks:
It's like I have nothing else to blog about these days except my growing belly. There is a lot of important and memorable things going on in our household, but it takes brain power to write a good blog post and that's something I'm lacking these days. I could make a laundry list of things I've forgotten in the past few weeks, and some of them being major and quite embarrassing. But I guess people are willing to cut me a little slack, given my pretty full plate.

Aside from pretty severe insomnia, leading to my lack of brain power, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm definitely starting to get uncomfortable and I can tell my body is preparing for labor. Lots of lovely things going on, but I'll spare the nitty-gritty details.

In case you have or haven't noticed from my belly pictures, it doesn't seem that baby has any major growth spurts in the last 4-6 weeks. He's definitely getting bigger, that I can personally attest to, but there was some cause for concern at my doctor appointment last week because baby was measuring on the smaller side. I've never measured small with my girls, in fact, if anything, I was always on the bigger side, so hearing I was measuring small was a little shocking, and as you can imagine, a little nerve-wracking. My doctor ordered an ultrasound for the same afternoon, just to put my mind at ease.

Fortunately, everything crucial checked out fine - fluids, umbilical cord, etc - but he is a little small. Last week he was measuring around 5 1/2 lbs, which put him in the 30th percentile for 36 weeks. I understand from what I've read and in talking to others that the ultrasound can be off by a pound (or more sometimes) because they can't determine the amount of fat on the baby, so he might be a bit bigger than that. Needless to say, I'm hoping baby stays INSIDE as long as he needs to because I want him chunked out for the Minnesota cold. Considering his size, we probably won't go through with the induction, and I'm totally okay with that. I want him to come at HIS own pace, because that is ultimately what is best for him. For now, I'm choosing not to worry because my doctor has assured me that everything is fine.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has experienced this before and what the outcome was???