Preggo Pics!

Though I “officially” change weeks on Mondays, I almost always take my weekly picture on Sundays.  Matt is home to take it, and I’m usually a bit more dressed up than usual because of church!

I will post my official shot tomorrow with the usual updates, but I also had some with the children that I wanted to share.  Aaaaaaannnndddd…. I got my two pics from Kara this afternoon to share!

I know I already posted this one, but I’m posting it again!

Technically James did smile once, but Matt missed it.  He looks thrilled, right?

And my sweet middle child.  She looks a little like she’s in pain in this pic, but it was better than the other one or two we got.  She really wasn’t in pain!

And now for the professional shots!!

It just happens to be the same outfit, but considering I have probably 5 outfits total, that is not so surprising.  :)

This was definitely my overall favorite and almost everyone I asked picked it as one of theirs as well.  I’m going to print it large-ish and hang it… somewhere!

It was much harder to pick the second of my free ones.  I was torn between a few of them.  In the end I decided to choose something that was different from the one above, so I’d have a variety.  :)  I may end up buying a few more of the images for myself for Christmas though, we’ll see.

Joanna… through the pregnancies

I’m 35 1/2 weeks pregnant with Natalie here:

And about 38 weeks pregnant with James here:

I don’t always take “preggo shots” with the kids, so I had to hunt around for some.

Today, almost 35 weeks with the boys:

She’s SO TALL!!

iPod pictures

It makes me sad that my iPod takes such horrendous pictures.  It’s just so handy to use though that I take ‘em anyway!

So here are some pics from the last week or two that I took on the iPod.

Swollen feet, take one:

Not this past week but the week before was pretty rough.  I was feeling pretty bad and we found out that Matt was going to lose his job.  Then on Saturday this wonderful card came in the mail:

It was a HUGE spirit lifter and a great boost.  Every week the staff at church has a staff meeting, and at the meeting they bring up prayer requests like hospitalizations, new babies, deaths, and so on, and I guess God prompted someone to include me on the list.  Then everyone signs the cards and mails them out.  Boy did I ever need this!!

Ignore the scary face here – I think he was mid facial change.  I just had to snap a shot of James looking so sharp.  Gran got him some new Crocs and he spent several days wearing them EVERYWHERE.  On Sunday morning they just happened to match perfectly with what Matt picked out for him to wear, so he got to wear them to church too.  Phew!

This is what it looks like on the monitor during my non stress test each week.  In this particular session, Baby B’s heart rate is on top, in black, and Baby A’s heart rate is just below, in pink.  They’re both being graphed in the green area.  The line on the bottom is me, but I’m not exactly sure what’s being measured.  The big spike is just the monitor getting adjusted. 

Very blurry shot of James and Joanna wrestling.  They do this a lot.  :)

Jessica’s swollen cankles, take two:

Natalie’s hair before school on Thursday.

I made banana nut pancakes for lunch one day for the kids and myself.  I made up the “recipe,” but they turned out great!

I love making pancakes from scratch, and I have a few recipes I like using, depending on the day.  One very easy one is to pre-make a quick mix and then all I have to do is add egg and milk.  It’s like Bisquick but far far better food.  I had Matt make a batch for us this past weekend.  It is so nice to have some in the freezer, ready for almost instant-gratification pancakes.  I can barely do anything in the kitchen anymore.  The recipe comes from Heavenly Homemakers and can be found here.

So, if you’re interested (or if you’re me and looking for this later), here’s how I made the banana nut pancakes!

Ingredients (Double batch)
4 mashed bananas (I used some that had been in the freezer)
3 eggs
2 cups of milk
2 1/2 cups of quick mix
handful of chopped pecans

Whisk ingredients together and pour onto a hot (350 degrees) griddle.  Cook until bubbly and they start to lose their shine, flip and cook another minute or so. 

Since the bananas added a lot of liquid, I played around in a couple of batches with my measurements.  Sometimes the consistency was very wet, but it always tasted good.  :)

I saw this on the front door yesterday and I had to take a picture – a giant exclamation point!  It came from just the right things hanging in front of the mirror on the hall tree.

A wonderful friend brought over a meal this week including a pasta salad with lots of veggies in it.  I was finishing it up a day or so ago and James came over and started finishing off all the veggies!  I couldn’t believe it, but he ate a ton of veggies on purpose.  Yay!

Dr. Pence and Too Many Beds

Joanna brought home a mask and a pair of gloves from my dentist appointment last week, and they have been THE BEST TOYS EVER since then.  :)

Though the gloves are not currently still surviving.  :)  Matt brings some home from time to time accidently in his scrub pockets though.  So it’s all good.

The other night I went to check on the kiddos before bed and found them all in Joanna’s bed.  You can see the girls snuggled up on the left and James’ wee hand down on the right.

I have since moved the other two beds out of the house because clearly they don’t need them.

Obviously I’m kidding.  :)

But it is nice that they have room to snuggle when they need to.  :)

Alright… a couple of things that don’t have pictures to go along.

Joanna has predicted October 11th as the birthday for the brothers.  She knew James’ birthday, so I have to take her prediction with some seriousness.  :)  Natalie thinks the boys will come on James’ birthday, which is October 18th.  Does anybody else have any predictions as far as birthday and birth weights for the boys?  It could be a fun game!  There could be prizes!

On a less lovely note, we got news last week that Matt will be losing his job at the end of the month (through no fault of his own!).  He works for a company that is contracted by the facility that he works at.  That facility (or rather their powers that be) have chosen another company to staff their therapy department due to that other company under bidding Matt’s company.  (I’m sure there’s a smoother way to explain that.)  We really covet your prayers over this situation.  Obviously losing a job is never a great thing, but the timing of this job loss is what is causing us so much worry and stress.  We know that God will provide, but the waiting and the doing in the mean time is hard.

Playing in the Rain

Tuesday morning Joanna and I sent the little ones off to school with Lisa, and we packed up our homeschooling stuff.  Our house was being cleaned (!!!) so we headed to my Grandma’s to work.  Even though we essentially dropped in on Grandma and Aunt Gail, they still fed us lunch.  :)  We’re such lucky girls.

It started to rain just as we were leaving, and when we got home there was quite a healthy downpour.  Wahoo!  I told Joanna to go get her rain gear on and let me take pictures of her playing in the puddles.

She was SO EXCITED!  (And I was excited to just have one dripping, muddy kiddo to mess with after the fun.)  :)

I played around with different edits on some of these pictures, so you kind of have to look at them individually, instead of as a group to appreciate them.  They don’t really mesh.

Trying to stomp in the shallows:

Come pose for your mother:

And then running out to the street where the real puddles are!

I think this one may be my favorite.  I like how it shows her motion of jumping and running around in the puddles.

Stopping to look at her reflection:

I wanted to slow my shutter speed down a bit to show the motion of the water as she splashed.  It made her blurry too though.

The response I got when I asked her how excited she was to play in the rain and puddles:

And she’s big enough that she wiped off her feet and hopped in a warm shower to rinse off the mud with almost no help from me.  Whew!

I kind of dream about having a bathroom with a door to the outside.  Just open the bathroom up and let the muddy, dirty, sweaty kids in to shower.  Clean only one room instead of also the trail there.  :)

Maternity Photo Shoot

A couple of weeks ago, a friend on Facebook let me know that a local photographer was looking for pregnant “models” to try out some new techniques.  I signed up and headed to Spring last Thursday to have some maternity pictures made!

One photo is posted on Facebook in a gallery here.  If you click over and leave a comment on my image, I can “earn” a free 8x10 or accordion book of the session.  And that would be lovely!  Don’t forget to “like” Kara Powell Photography while you’re there; she does beautiful work (and has lots of gorgeous newborn twin shots in her galleries)!

She sent over my gallery today with the rest of my images to peruse through.  I get 2 digital images as a thank you for “modeling” and an option to purchase more.  I need help picking!!

You should be able to click here and then enter Pence as the password to access the gallery.  (Make sure to capitalize the P in Pence.)  Each photo is numbered 1-17 – let me know your favorites!  It’s hard to pick favorites of myself.  :) 

It was very fun and it’s nice to have some “glam” shots of myself carrying those boys.  :)

34 Weeks

34 weeks

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

Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (about the size of a cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you've been nervous about preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

How far along: 34 weeks
Pregnancy symptoms: heartburn; carpal tunnel syndrome; trouble sleeping; lower back pain, making it difficult to walk; mega stretch marks; tiredness; hip, pelvic, pubic pain; anemia; swollen everything – feet, legs, hands, belly  :); constant need to pee; stretch marks
Food Cravings: these may not all be current, but they happened some time this past week: pork chops, Pringles, pie, potato soup (it is a total fluke that those all start with P)
Food Aversions: Some sweet things
Sleep: Sleep is pretty rough.  My everything hurts at night, and there’s no comfortable position.  Even so, I can sometimes get everything positioned just right and get a few hours of sound sleep in a row.
Measurement: 229lbs
Movement: Even with how tight it is in there, I still feel them both move regularly.
Labor signs: Braxton Hicks contractions, some of which are doozies.
What I miss: A lot, frankly!  I miss being able to walk across a very small room without my back hurting.  I miss not having to go to the bathroom constantly.  I miss my hands not falling asleep and being in pain all the time.  I miss having more things to wear.  I miss being able to do simple chores.  {I’m whiney!)
What I’m looking forward to: cooler weather, meeting the babes (I’m ready when they are!), getting the nursery put together (hopefully before they come?)
Milestone: I have a few!  34 weeks feels milestone-y as far as growth and viability.  We finished our Bradley birth class tonight.  And (I’m technically finishing this on Tuesday) I made it to October!  This is in all likelihood the birth month of the boys!
Thoughts from the children: Joanna asks so many thoughtful questions, but of course I’m not thinking of any right now.  :)
Doctor’s visit: I had another non stress test, which was rather uneventful.  Yay!  I had some blood work last week that showed I’m still anemic, even taking an iron supplement.  So I’m taking the supplement twice a day now.  Or twice when I remember the evening one.  I don’t have a routine set up for that one, so I keep forgetting.  I set an alarm on my iPod; hopefully that will work.
Other thoughts: I actually feel better this week than the beginning of last week.  My mother says I must have gotten stronger.  :)  My everything still hurts, but it’s not that unbearable pain from last week.
Baby-related projects:

• I’m putting this on the list kind of after the fact: Work on potty training James.  Hallelujah that boy is doing so so well!
• Clean up/organize the girls’ room to make space for eventual James.
• Go to IKEA.  Look at and possibly purchase the Kura low loft bed and shallow mattress for the girls.  **I’ve been putting this off since it is logistically hard, but we are ready to get this done!
• Move the majority of the toys into the main living area to make space for sleeping and clothes in the bedrooms. I still need to sort through and organize the books, which are in a giant pile on the floor.
• Do some research on the best sleeping arrangements for newborn twins.  *I’m currently planning to use a standard sized pack and play with the newborn “shelf” in it for our bedroom when they’re bitty.  If we discover they don’t sleep well with each other, we can always switch to two pack and plays or just use the cribs.
• Figure out number of diapers that would be ideal for the babies.  **I think at this point we’ll just get a few more newborn sized diapers and then wait and see what works when they come.
• Pick out infant car seats.
• Organize James’ closet.  (This is where the not-in-use clothes live as well as a lot of baby things, and it’s a super-pit.)
• Shop for a king sized bed.  We really really really really want one.  :)  But the logistics and expense may mean this isn’t the best time.
• Tinker with a baby registry.  We don’t need much, but I have started putting some things on an Amazon registry when I think about them
• Pull the baby boy clothes from the attic and take inventory.
• Possibly get some maternity/family pictures made.  **I got some maternity pictures made last week!  There will be a separate post on that.
• Wash, dry, fold, put away the 0-3 months clothes. 
• Pull the new infant car seats out of the boxes and make sure they are what we think they are and work as they should. **Done! And I’ve started stalking Joanna’s new car seat, waiting for a great price.  **We got Joanna’s new seat last week!  “We” have yet to put it in the car and make sure it’s going to work, but it’s here!
• Preregister at the hospital.
• Work on a birth plan (mainly just for us but also to bring up any questions I want to ask my doctor about this different kind of birth coming up!)
• Hospital bag lists – one for labor/delivery/right away, another of things I’d like to have if I stay a few days.
• Work on “decorating” the nursery.  Basically this involves pulling out anything that isn’t baby boy related and putting up things that are!  **It’s really not too bad in there, it just needs some TLC.  This may simply have to wait until some far away time to get done.  :)
• Pack the hospital bags, including a list of things to add at the last minute.  This is pretty much done.  I felt the need to get that taken care of last night.  Basically, as long as I have my camera and camera bag, I’m happy to go to the hospital with nothing else.  Somebody can bring me the things I’ll want for my stay later on.  :)