Natalie at Winners on Wheels!

Thursday was Winners on Wheels at the preschool, and Natalie got to bring her bike to school for some riding!  Natalie’s time to ride was unfortunately smack in the middle of the morning, but I was feeling pretty good and wanted to go up for it.  I stopped by my mom’s house to borrow a lens from David on the way.  I needed something with a little more zoom in it so I wouldn’t have to run around after her to take pictures.  I wasn’t up for that.  :)

My sweet girl finding her bike.

They put their helmets on and walked the bikes through the building out to the parking lot.

Ready to go!

I know Natalie kind of wishes she had a pretty pink helmet, but this one will get to be passed down, so that makes me very happy.  And the fish are cute.

And they’re off!

There were cones set up for the kids to ride around and around and around.

Natalie spent most of the time with her head turned, looking at everybody else’s business.  I kept hollering at her to look where she was going!

She only wiped out once though – that’s pretty good!  Thankfully other people were happy to run over and make sure she was okay so I could stand where I was and take pictures.  :)

This is my favorite shot I got and the only one I edited:

{The next paragraph is where I disect the photography of this picture, so if that doesn’t interest you, you can skip to the next picture. :)}  It basically looked like this straight out of the camera, I just cropped it a bit, sharpened it a tiny bit, and boosted the colors.  I was trying to get some pictures like this (with Natalie in focus and everything else a blur) but it was easier said than done.  I was very excited to get this one!  Basically what I did was slow down my shutter speed a lot so that it would take the picture very slowly.  Then, since it didn’t occur to me to steal borrow bring a tripod, I held the camera as still as I could and attempted to follow Natalie as she moved while the shutter snapped.  That way, Natalie stayed (basically) in focus while everything around her was blurred.  I think it’s cool!  Here are my settings for the above pic:
lens: 28-135mm
shutter priority mode (meaning I chose the ISO and shutter speed then let the camera choose the aperture)
f-stop: f/29
exposure time: 1/8 sec
ISO speed: 200
focal length: 53mm

Here she is looking where she’s going!

Natalie is a very laid back bike rider.  She has become interested in trying to ride without the training wheels, but I don’t think she realizes it won’t be so much like a carriage ride through the country that way.

They rode for like 15 minutes-ish I think, then parked their bikes and had a ice-pop!

Yum!!

Sweet class!

It started to sprinkle just about this time – I’m so glad they didn’t have to deal with it while riding!

Good job Natalie!

13 Weeks

13 weeks

How Your Baby’s Growing (from Babycenter.com):

Fingerprints have formed on your baby's tiny fingertips, her veins and organs are clearly visible through her still-thin skin, and her body is starting to catch up with her head — which makes up just a third of her body size now. If you're having a girl, she now has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 inches long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce.

How far along: 13 weeks

Pregnancy symptoms: nausea, tiredness, headaches
Also, I would consider this more of a “benefit” than a “symptom” but the hormones are making it very enjoyable to sing lately!  My high notes are just effortless, and my voice isn’t tired even after I sing a ton.  Hallelujah!  I’ll take it!  I’ve really only been paying attention to my voice like that the last couple of years, so I can’t really compare it to the last pregnancies. I wasn’t singing like I am now with Joanna or Natalie, and I don’t remember the early trimester making a difference with James.  I do remember it being a struggle to sing first soprano at the end of my pregnancy with him.  We were working on Christmas stuff, and I kept plugging along on first even though I couldn’t really do it justice.  I was hoping that after he was born (in October) I’d be able to sing it just fine, and I was!  It wasn’t until the next year (I think) that I started to become aware of how hormones affect our voices and started to pay attention to how my voice changed within each month.  So I don’t know what the rest of the pregnancy will bring, but I’m excited that right now I can really enjoy my upper range!

Food Cravings: French fries and milkshakes, snowcone, pineapple, donuts

Food Aversions: eggs, peanut butter, bananas

Sleep: The hubs is still on the couch and I’m still sleeping very well.  I often go several hours without waking.  It is joyous.

Measurement:  I weighed about180lbs at the doctor on Thursday.

Movement: not so much

Labor signs: nothing yet

What I miss: not being averse to cooking or the smell of food.

What I’m looking forward to: I’m looking to the start of the second trimester, whenever that will be.  :)

Milestone: I got to see the babies on the ultrasound last week, and they really looked like babies (as opposed to the beans from the 8 week ultrasound).

Thoughts from the children: I’m loving having bigger kiddos during the pregnancy – it’s so fun!

Doctor’s visit: Assuming everything is fine, we won’t have another one until 16 weeks.

Other thoughts: I am really hoping that I’m on the upswing, as far as the nausea goes.  I am handing the super-tired pretty well, but the nausea is GETTING ON MY NERVES!  :)  Occasionally I have a good day where I don’t feel as nauseous or at least a part of a day, but then it comes back with a vengeance.  That is almost worse than it just staying bad.  I have the hope. :)  I am completely unable to cook these days and that is just getting old fast.  The smell of cooking food is debilitating.  But on the other hand, I LOVE BABIES!!  The last couple of days I’ve felt “off,” but not super-nauseous.  Yay!

Baby-related projects:

• I have a big…well… mediumish furniture rearranging in the plans for this summer.  We may very likely switch the girls from their trundle bed to the low loft/bunk from Ikea.  It’s pretty inexpensive, and it looks like it would work well for our space.  Either way, we’re going to move James in with the girls in his toddler bed.  We’ll move the girls’ play kitchen out to the living room where the changing table is now.  The changing table will go into James’ old room, which will be the nursery.  We’ll do some finagling of the little furniture in there to get another crib in as well.  My plan is for this to take place in June.  I think it will be a good idea for the kids to get readjusted to sleeping in the same room over the summer.  And I’m hoping I’ll feel like doing this in June.  :)

Park Fun

We have a new park area down the street, and the kids have been so excited to go this weekend!  Even though it’s been beautiful in the evenings, it’s a bit hard for us to try and fit in some park fun on school nights.  (Can you tell I am READY for summer vacation?!)

The plan was for them to go with Daddy this morning before I even woke up, but they weren’t here.  :)  So after I picked them up from Gran’s, they got park-ready, and Matt and I made a quick lunch for them to eat there.

They were gone about 40 minutes before I decided I needed to go too. 

The little girl pushing James is from Joanna’s class at school.  Yay friends!

I sat in the sunshine for a few minutes, then retired to the shade.  It really is a beautiful day!

We noticed there is all kinds of exercise equipment as well as play stuff.  It’s not for me right now, but I think it’s a good idea to be able to get a little workout in while your kids play!  There’s a good amount of shade too – hallelujah!

I just discovered that Matt took a bunch of pictures with the little camera before I got there.  I am way too tired lazy to upload and go through them now, but I will post them later – it looks like there are some cute ones!

Ramblings

At some point I was whining about the smell of... everything, and my mother suggested that maybe what I needed was a cold. :)

Yesterday James and Ray and Natalie and I sat on the couch for quite a while scrolling through all the trains at thomasandfriends.com. James just looooooves them. :) His current special obsession is Emily the train. He loves her and calls her beautiful. I am now just trying to come up with any kind of reason to order her from Amazon.com. I guess I could get her for my birthday and share. :)

Matt took the kids to the park down the street a little while ago. They've been so excited for days! We even packed a little picnic lunch for them. I probably should have gone along but am very much enjoying just sitting here alone on my couch in the quiet house. I may join them in a bit. Matt might need my help dragging them home kicking and screaming.

Yesterday my very wonderful mother had us over for a fajita dinner. It was delicious AND she kept the kids overnight at her house! Matt and I didn't do anything super exciting (I feel pretty gross ALL the time), but we got to come home and not put the kids to bed! We also watched a movie, slept all night long, and didn't feed anyone breakfast. It probably says something about us that that was an enjoyable evening, but I'll take it!

Thoughts from the children

James: When I go to sleep I will get babies in my tummy.
Me: You have babies in your tummy?
James: No, I have to get them in my tummy. (And then something about the grocery store.) They're growing and growing Momma. They're beautiful. And there's a boy and a girl in my tummy.

I just wonder what's happening in his head when he's saying all of this. What does he think is really going on?

Natalie asked me this morning how long we were going to get to keep the babies. I told her they would come live here like she does.

I was showing Joanna the pictures from the ultrasound today and describing what the babies were doing. She went right over to one of our twin books from the library to find something it made her think of. She is so very fun to share his pregnancy with!
(Well they all are!)

12 Weeks and pictures!

I had my 12 week appointment today, and I was surprised (and excited) that my doctor did an ultrasound!!

First she got measurements on “right” baby.

Then “left” baby.  She says this one may be measuring a tiny bit bigger, but it could also be that it was more more stretched out during the ultrasound.

When she went back to “right” baby, it gave a little wave!!  There’s no picture, you just have to imagine it.  That one is on the right in the pic below and the blob on the right is it’s face.  It may look like an alien, but it is not.  :)  I think we’re seeing the top of left baby’s head on the other side, but I can’t be sure.  And you can see they’re separated by a membrane or whatever.  That didn’t stop them from kicking each other though.  :)

I was sooooooooooo excited to see them moving around and get to watch their little hearts beating!!  I had expected just to hear their heartbeats, but this was better! 

For a couple of weeks, even though I’ve had no reason to worry, there’s been a nagging little fear that there might only be one baby in there.  I don’t dwell on that thought much, but it does steal a little of my joy.  Now the babies are bigger, I have seen their little images, and I am starting to feel confident that I feel them jiggle a bit.  Yay!!

My mom invited herself to come along to my appointment, so I made her take a couple of pictures when she dropped me off back at home.

She was soooooooo excited to see the babies!

This one is upside down so that “right” baby is on the right and “left” baby is on the left.

 

{That still makes them upside down since it’s a photo.  I try not to think about it too much as it hurts my brain.}

Vacuuming

So it’s pretty sad that vacuuming is such a momentous occasion around here that it deserves it’s own blog post, but…

It is.

Our vacuum is pretty big and heavy; it means business, but I figured it was time to start teaching the kids how to use it anyway.  :)

(Joanna took these pictures for me.)

Note: It is much harder to vacuum with James’ “help.”  BUT he didn’t run screaming from it!

Natalie took a shot at vacuuming her room.  It was really hard for her to turn or even push it upright at all.  It won’t be too long though.

Joanna is much better at it, though it’s still pretty hard for her to do.

But we did learn that vacuuming can double as writing practice – look a Y!

She made an H at some point too.  I could totally homeschool.  :)

My cutie pie James. (He wears a PJ top and diaper a lot these days.  It’s rough being the only one who can’t dress yourself.)

After working on the kids’ rooms, the bathroom, and tiny hallway, I had to sit down.  I was absolutely beat.

I had to rest up to even make lunch.  :)

And my dining room looked like this:

So the kids had a picnic.

They loved it, and since I hadn’t vacuumed in there yet, it was perfect.  :)

It took the rest of the day (and some help from Matt) to get the rest of the house vacuumed.  But it is so much more pleasant to be in now!  I had spent time on Sunday and Monday morning putting things away and picking up and organizing to prep for the vacuuming.  I feel much better when the house is in good shape.  I had intended to do some more work including getting caught up on laundry on Tuesday, but I felt so nasty terrible that I scrapped that plan for survival.  :)  Today I actually feel a bit better (hallelujah!), but there are 5 kids here so not much is getting done. 

I was reading back in my blog from when I was was pregnant with James, and it appears that sometime in the 13th week is when I felt the “second trimester” kick in.  I remember with Joanna it was in the 17th week, and I was barely sick with Natalie so it’s not really applicable.  I’m hoping it won’t take tooooooo much longer with this pregnancy.  I’m trying to be patient.  And thankful.

Speaking of thankful, look what showed up on my doorstop today!

It’s our first official purchase for the babies!  I’m going to NOT wash and prep them right away, and I will put them up so I don’t feel tempted to let James break them in.  We really have plenty for diapering him right now, and I want these to be all fresh for the babies!

My favorite diapers are Bum Genius 4.0s and Freetimes from Cotton Babies.  Last week they made a bunch of “seconds” available, and I jumped on it!  I’ve bought seconds before and been so pleased.  Most of the time I can’ t even find the defects but when I do it’s usually like a tiny dot of dirt or ink or something.  I bought 16 Freetimes (a bit more expensive but “all in one” so easier on the laundry front) and 6 4.0s, which are the pockets.  I’ve never tried the Freetimes on a teeny baby, and the pockets just seem like they’ll be trimmer for when they are itty.  The one flowery print on the top of the picture I just couldn’t resist.  They didn’t have the cute “boy” pattern available, but they did have this sweet “girl” print.  If neither of the babies are girls then I’ll just pass it along!