posted October 9th, 2006 by Shannon
We arrived back home safely from our SA trip. It was a great trip and I’ll try to write more about it soon. The drives there and back took us over 7 hours each, whereas it used to take just under 5 hours. Making all those stops for a newborn sure adds up. We had a wonderful time, but we’re glad to be back too. More later.
Filed under: Adventures on October 9th, 2006 | No Comments »
posted October 4th, 2006 by Shannon
I have all these posts that I want to write running around in my head. But I want to post a picture with most of them and our photos are still on our camera. I could download those, but I’m too lazy right now. So you just get a text update tonight. And a short one at that. I’ve been working on some things for George but I need his help to finish it up and he’s on the phone now. So I’ll updated you until he gets off the phone. (Pardon the randomness).
Hannah weighs 9 pounds 10 ounces as of yesterday. She may also be going through a growth spurt right now because she wanted to eat A LOT today. She also wasn’t staying asleep too well this evening. Makes the mama tired.
Nathan has been in big boy underwear since his birthday on Monday. We just decided we were tired of him being in diapers. We’ve had plenty of accidents but he’s getting there. The trick that appears to be working (at least this week) is letting him tickle mommy every time he puts something in the potty. Apparently that’s an attractive motivation for a little boy.
We’re headed back to SA this weekend. Some friends from our old church are graciously giving us a baby shower. We’re looking forward to seeing some of our friends there. (Not looking forward to the drive with 3 kiddos though.)
We joined a food co-op here. Every other week we get a box of fresh organic produce, much of it is supposed to come from local farms. This is our first week. It’s working out well so far (in fact I think I’ll go grab a plum or two right now), but, uh, does anyone have a recipe for bok choy?
Well that’s it for the update. George is off the phone now. Good night!
Filed under: Family on October 4th, 2006 | 4 Comments »
posted October 1st, 2006 by Shannon
Big accomplishment tonight! After dropping my sister off at the airport tonight, I missed my exit off the highway and had to take the next one. Taking that alternate route I passed right by a Barnes & Noble bookstore. On a whim I decided to stop. There’s a new book I’ve been wanting to flip through and I just hadn’t found a way to get to the bookstore yet.
So I did it! I managed a trip to a STORE by myself with all three kids. I have taken all 3 kids on walks by myself. I took all the 3 kids to a playgroup last week. I picked my sister up from the airport with all 3 kids on Friday. But this was the first time I’ve been brave enough to tackle a retail situation. Of course, it helped that B&N has a kid’s section and that kid section had a train set for Nathan and stuffed unicorns and a fairy tale book for Emily to play with while I looked at my book one aisle over. It’s a big milestone for me.
Filed under: Family on October 1st, 2006 | 4 Comments »
posted September 21st, 2006 by Shannon
Gosh, I should really blog more often, shouldn’t I? We are doing well, just busy. Hannah weighed 8 pounds and 5 ounces a week and a half ago. Still not quite what Emily weighed at birth, but I imagine she’s passed that by now. We’re getting ready for Nathan’s 3rd birthday in just a few days. We found a bike for him today and he’s so excited about it. It’s outside in the shed now – we’re making him wait at least until the weekend before he gets to ride it.
So what have we been doing these past 2 weeks? Homeschool. After taking off the week after Hannah’s birth, George needed to get back to some sort of routine where he could be in his home office for longer periods of (mostly) uninterrupted time. I wanted to help the kids get into some sort of routine as well, so we just decided to start our ‘school’ at the same time. We started out real slow (so much for all my big “1st Day of Homeschool” plans!) and worked up from there. We just finished up day 9 of homeschooling and it’s gone fairly well. We’re still fairly unstructured about it though. Here’s what our typical days are looking like:
George helps get the kids dressed and ready while I get myself and Hannah ready and fed. Then George heads to the home office at 8 while the kids and I either take a walk or they play in the backyard. Then we come inside and they each get to pick a book from the school shelf. I pick a couple school books myself (otherwise we’d read nothing but Cinderella and the Berenstain Bear’s Science Book) and we read those on the couch together. Then we have a box of more educational toys that the kids get to play with for 30 minutes or so. They can do this on their own, so it’s my chance to run in the office and check my email, feed and/or change Hannah, and figure out what we’re going to do for a craft that day. After the toy time, the kids work on their workbooks for 15 minutes. Nathan pretty much makes up his own activities with his workbook. He circles things or draws lines to connect different objects. It would be fine with me if he didn’t do a workbook, but he wants to be like his big sister. Then it’s craft time. Emily thinks it’s not school unless she does a craft. Usually it’s a simple craft involving crayons and a blank piece of paper. I decided I can manage painting one day a week, so Friday is painting day. And that’s it. It’s usually 11 by now so for the past several days they have been watching a movie at this point until lunch. We borrowed some Magic School Bus movies from the library so it’s still educational, right?
It’s not quite the way I want it, but it’s working well so far. Hannah usually sleeps through the walk and most of the reading time. I usually have her in the sling for the walk so it’s pretty easy to just sit on the couch with her still asleep. If she wakes up during the reading time, she’s content to simply eat until we’re done. She’s usually back asleep again by workbook/craft time which is really nice. I know it won’t stay this easy, but I’m enjoying it while I can.
George usually takes a lunch break at noon and often he’ll eat lunch with the kids while I run back in the office and check my email. Then it’s rest time – wohoo!! (My favorite part of the day – but no, I’m not the one doing the resting.) Now I just have to figure out what to do with the time from 3-5 after all the kiddos are up from rest time and I’m quite ready for some rest!
And that’s what we’ve been doing the past 2 weeks. Not terribly exciting, but it’s kept us busy. We’ll try to get some updated pictures of Hannah up. I’ve also been informed that we don’t have any photos of Nathan and Hannah on the web. We’ll try to get some of those up soon as well.
Filed under: Family on September 21st, 2006 | 2 Comments »
posted September 5th, 2006 by Shannon
Hannah‘s cord fell off yesterday leaving an adorable belly button. The midwife’s assistant came by to check on us today. Hannah’s weight is up to 8 pounds.
Nathan kissed Hannah on her cheek yesterday. She turned her mouth towards his a split second before spitting out a bit of partially digested milk. The spit-up landed right on his mouth. His expression was priceless. He said “Daddy, I don’t like that!”
Emily is still in love with her little sister. When Hannah cries, Emily often says “Maybe she wants me to hold her.” Or tonight at dinner Hannah started crying and Emily said “Maybe she wants a big sister kiss.” What a sweetie!
Filed under: Family on September 5th, 2006 | 2 Comments »
posted September 3rd, 2006 by Shannon
Pictures from Hannah’s birth have been posted here. We started with over 200, but I was able to narrow it down to just under 50. They are all G-rated (or at least just PG).
Hannah is doing well. We had a good night last night. I think everyone got more sleep last night than we have in several days.
This is my last day of being confined to my room. Tomorrow I get to move to the couch if I want – wahoo! The past few days have been very relaxing for me. And thanks to my cool hubby, I have Internet access too!
Filed under: Family on September 3rd, 2006 | 3 Comments »
posted September 1st, 2006 by Shannon
Hannah Michelle. Thanks for being patient while we decided on that. Keep reading if you want a very short version of the birth story….I woke up with contractions around 2:45am and had contractions all stinking day long. They stayed around 10-15 minutes apart and weren’t too bad, but they were definitely the real thing. And there would definitely be no sleeping or napping through them. We went on a walk, I ate, I showered, I tried to sleep (ha!), I watched a movie, I played with the kids. Nothing made them slow down or go away, but nothing made them increase in intensity either.
It wasn’t until about 8:30pm that the contractions really started to pick up. At this point, I was getting quite tired and exhausted. Somewhere along there, George called our midwife to give her another update, but I didn’t know if it was really time for her to come out or not. Thankfully she says she’ll head our way.
I decided to get in the tub, but the tub wasn’t as magic as I was hoping it would be (though I hear that for some women it is). I had a little bit of a mental breakdown in the tub thinking I couldn’t handle any more. I know better. I know that when I think I can’t handle it any more, that probably means I’m just about there. I tried to tell myself that, but my brain just wouldn’t believe it.
Our midwife arrives, checks me, and I only have a tiny bit more to go. It still took a while before the baby came down far enough and I felt ready to push, but that time did eventually come. Seven minutes of pushing and our baby was out. My mom had just woken Emily up so she was there in time to watch our baby enter this world and announce “It’s a girl!” Hannah was born at 12:46am – 22 hours after the first contractions of the morning. (Longer than my first two labors combined!)
We’re SO glad she’s FINALLY here and it was a terrific birth. But we’re all very tired and I’m going to bed! Good night!
Filed under: Family on September 1st, 2006 | 3 Comments »
posted September 1st, 2006 by George
She’s finally here! She arrived at 12:46 AM this morning. She was 7lb 12oz and 20 in long.I will post some more info later today (including her name).
Filed under: Family on September 1st, 2006 | 10 Comments »
posted August 28th, 2006 by Shannon
George and I accompanied the kids to a friend’s birthday party on Saturday. I REALLY had not planned to go as my plan was to be home with a baby, but that was not to be. The inflatable play structures looked like so much fun I just had to try one out. Adults were allowed to play so it shouldn’t be a problem. There was just this small issue of me being pregnant and when the rules said that pregnant mommies should not play, I’m sure that included pregnant mommies somewhere at or past their 40 weeks! Well, I only tried one and I only did it once, but George managed to get 7 photos of me in the process. Caught red handed.
I was really just trying to help convince my kiddos that the slide at the end of this obstacle course was something to be enjoyed, not feared. Emily said no way. She made it up about 2 steps before leaving me and crawling back out the entrance.
George then sent Nathan in and he climbed all the way to the top of the slide before taking a quick peek over the edge and deciding he wanted to go back down. I somehow managed to reason with him and he agreed to take the last few steps and sit at the top. He and I did finally make it down the slide together with him gripping my hand all the way down.
Nathan never did a slide on his own (without being lovingly “helped” down by George). Emily, on the other hand, did start doing them on her own after being “helped” down by her father once. There was no keeping her off the slides after that. They both had a great time – and both want to have their birthday parties there now. Great!!!
Filed under: Adventures, Family on August 28th, 2006 | 2 Comments »
posted August 21st, 2006 by Shannon
Sorry we didn’t get this updated sooner. It has taken us a few days to process all that’s happened in the last week. We had a sonogram last Thursday to check on the baby and everything looks great. The not-so-exciting news for us was that our due date is apparently a couple weeks ahead. We choose not to have a sonogram earlier in the pregnancy. (Partly because we weren’t going to find out the gender and not having any insurance we frankly didn’t want to pay for a sonogram when I didn’t need one at the time.) That means the only due date we had was based off my last cycle – and that formula assumes you have regular textbook cycles, which is not always an accurate assumption.
So, what does that all mean? It means we could be waiting another 2 weeks or so. Or we could still be having a baby tonight. Either one. We feel like we have been waiting around for forever and it’s a little hard to wait a few more weeks, but we are doing much better with it mentally and emotionally than we were several days ago.
We will, of course, post baby information as soon as we have it!
Filed under: Family on August 21st, 2006 | 2 Comments »