Last Week of Summer

Ok, I think it's time for an update.

First of all, Happy Constitution Day!

We celebrated by going to the beach this evening. We were also celebrating the last week of summer. I love summer. This one was particularly a good one because of little baby Heidi being born. It was also a pleasure to have my dad visit for seven weeks. I also like summer because my birthday is in June. I love the long days. I love not feeling obligated to learn or teach EVERY day. My kids had quite the dose of PBS Kids and Netflix this summer. 

It always makes me feel a little sad when fall rolls around. I'm never quite ready to bring out the browns and oranges, nor the socks. The socks mostly because it makes laundry that much less enjoyable when you have ten people in the family with a gazillion socks. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share some photos from our evening tonight. I need to post more pictures from our entire summer. Perhaps later.

George loves the beach.

Normally I would take pictures of my own family, but they were in the water drifting away from me and I couldn't get any good shots of them. This is what was going on around me, so I took pictures:

Two men doing crunches in the ocean. 

More exercises. It was like P90X Beach Edition. After this they did a crab walk into the waves. I didn't get to see the rest of their workout because I had to chase after George down the beach while carrying the infant car seat. That was my workout.

Heidi

Fun in the sand.

Rachel singing a church song in her old lady voice.

Our weekly Family Home Evening Family Photo.

Lucky #7

It took Wendy seven years to master the bike and Heidi seven weeks to master the smile:

I'm not sure when most kids learn to ride a bike without training wheels. I think Emily was about 6, Bradley was 5, and Sarah was about 6 or 7. I was just super excited that Wendy was finally willing to try it today at age 7. I don't know if it was the boy's bike or the tutu that helped, but she got the job done. I have to give myself some credit too because I was the one running along side her in my flip flops on one of the most humid days ever!

And sorry for such a poor quality photo. I put Emily in charge of photography and she thought I meant videography, so I had to take a snapshot, using Google Picasa, from the video, which is why it's all weird and looking like I used a 1 megapixel digital camera from 1999.

This isn't one of Heidi's most photogenic shots, but.....look who's smiling! It warms a heart. 

Weight Check

It's a sad day when your baby exceeds your postal scale's 11 pound weight limit.

Baby #8 Birth Story

It began on Monday morning, June 25th. I woke for my daily tiny-pregnant-bladder morning bathroom trip at 6:30 am. I was alarmed to see blood....in my underwear. I knew it wasn’t a good sign, and so I panicked. I woke up my husband and told him what was going on. My husband called the doctor and the doctor said, “No more monkeys jump.....”  Actually the doctor said it would probably be best to head to the hospital be checked and monitored. So that is what we did.

I was so relieved to hear the baby’s heartbeat once they hooked me up to the monitors. My fears were calmed, but I still wondered what they would do since I was 38 weeks and 3 days. My regular doctor came in and examined me. He wasn’t sure what was causing the bleeding, but he concluded that it was related to cervical change and nothing to be worried about. He sent me home, told me to call if I had any further problems. He also suggested that I think about being induced on Friday, when I officially hit 39 weeks. Thankfully, I had no further major bleeding that day.

The following day I had my regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment in the morning. My status was the same as the previous morning. I was about 2 cm, the baby was still high, and labor did not seem imminent.

Wednesday was uneventful.

Thursday I woke up at about 5:10 am to go to the bathroom and again there was blood. It was a menstrual flow amount of blood. I didn’t panic because of my Monday experience, and therefore I didn’t call the doctor right away. I sat on my bed hoping to feel baby move. It seemed like it took FOREVER to feel her move, and when I thought I did, it was so subtle that I second guessed that I actually felt it. I decided to call the doctor. The on-call doctor seemed to think it would be fine to wait until the office opened at 8:30 am. I agreed, but I wanted to be more confident that baby was moving. I went downstairs and drank some juice to help wake her. She had never been a very active fetus in the morning, and I often waited at least a half hour every morning to feel some movement, so it wasn’t unusual. After some more subtle movement, I called my regular doctor. He had given me his personal cell phone number at my appointment the previous week so he would be sure to deliver baby number eight, since he hadn’t delivered ANY of my previous seven babies. He told me to meet him at the office at 8:15 am. He was scheduled to work in a different office across town that day, so he was going to check me at the office nearest the hospital before he headed to the office across town.

My husband and I got ourselves showered and ready. While getting ready, I had a few minor contractions, so we decided to head toward the doctor’s office a little early and sit in the parking lot in case labor was beginning. My dad was home to watch the kids.On the way, I got a phone call from my doctor. He changed his mind and told me to go to the hospital instead of the office. I don’t know what changed his mind, but we obeyed. We arrived at the hospital at 7:30 am. I had my husband take a picture of my pregnant belly just in case I was admitted and had the baby that day. I really had no idea what to expect. I half expected to be sent home and half expected to have a baby. I was ok either way. I really wanted her to be born the following day, on the 29th, so our family would have three consecutive birthdays in a row (baby on the 29th, mine on the 30th, and Wendy’s on the 1st.) But since bleeding was a concern, I was willing to accept her a day early if it ensured our health and safety.

7:30 AM

Again I was relieved to hear the baby’s heartbeat when they hooked me up to the monitors. However, her heartbeat seemed to be faster than it was Monday. On Monday it remained stable in the 150 bpm range. On Thursday it was hovering in the 170’s. I inquired about it and the nurse said I was probably dehydrated, so she hooked me up to an IV. Sure enough the heart rate went down to the 150’s once I had my fluids. My doctor came and examined me at about 8:15 am. He said he didn’t know for sure what was causing the bleeding. He measured me at a “ballooning” 3 cm, which meant that the baby’s head was putting pressure on my cervix and making it bulge. He advised that I be induced that day. He said that it wasn’t worth the risk of the bleeding being an issue with the placenta and having an emergency situation later that weekend. I agreed.

So the plan was that my doctor was going to come back at 11:00 am to break my water and get the party started. I was extremely nervous about the whole situation. I had a pile of wadded tissues on my hospital tray table from all the crying. I had also never been induced before, and did not know what to expect. I always have a fear of dying in childbirth, especially since I had a bleeding episode after the birth of George two years ago. So I was especially fearful going into a birth already bleeding. It just didn’t seem like a good situation. I decided to write in my journal and let my kids know I loved them and express my testimony that I know Jesus Christ is my Savior. I told them in my journal that I would see them again someday. It was such a morbid journal entry, but I didn’t want to depart from this Earth with any regrets.

My doctor was running a little bit late and he arrived at about 11:40 just as a I was addressing my future grandchildren in my journal. He didn’t miss a beat when he walked in, sat on the bed and opened his medical device that looked like a giant plastic crochet hook to break my water. I’ve had my water broken before while in labor, but this was the first time I had it broken before contractions started. I had no idea what the outcome would be, except that I was committed to having the baby within the next 24 hours. He jabbed around for a while. It was extremely uncomfortable. He was having a difficult time breaking it because her head was pressed up against my cervix so tightly, creating no good spot to pop it. But finally after a few minutes of poking and prodding, it slowly began to leak. 

All that poking and prodding with the giant crochet hook gave little Heidi some war wounds on back of her head. She survived. And, yes, she has a lot of hair. It's kind of weird.

After the water was broken, the baby’s heart rate dropped. The nurse told me to roll on my right side and she gave me an oxygen mask. It kind of freaked me out, but nobody was in a panic so I remained calm. I couldn’t see the heart rate, but I could hear it pa-booming more slowly than before, and the doctor was watching it constantly. The nurse told me it was normal for a baby’s heart rate to change when their environment changes. I chose to believe her. Finally, when baby's heart rate was back to normal in about 5 minutes they hooked me up to pitocin to help trigger contractions. The nurse said the pitocin usually takes about 30 minutes to kick in. As she was hooking it up she informed me that the anesthesiologist was in a C-section at the moment, so if I wanted an epidural it would be at least an hour before I could get one. It made me laugh that they were telling me this after the fact, but I took a deep breath and said, “Ok! I can do this!” I wasn’t planning to have an epidural, but it would’ve been nice to have had the option. Rumor has it that pitocin makes contractions more intense than natural contractions. I asked if it was even necessary to get the pitocin, but my doctor assured me that the dosage was so low, it should not adversely affect labor. He said that we breathe in more pitocin than the amount that was being administered through the IV. I actually believed him for a moment, but I’m pretty sure he was kidding.

The doctor left the room because he said a watched pot doesn’t boil. I had him assure me that he wasn’t leaving the hospital, and he said he would be a moment’s notice away. He ended up sitting in the physicians’ lounge watching the news, possibly lamenting the announcement of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Obamacare earlier that morning.

About five or ten minutes later my contractions started. They weren’t extremely painful, but enough where I had to stop and breathe during them. I managed to take this picture with my iTouch in between contractions and post it to Facebook. It made me laugh because I don’t believe there is such thing as comfort when it comes to labor and delivery. The picture was comical too.

The contractions became regular at about 3 minutes apart. Since they came so soon, they were likely naturally occurring from my water breaking. At this point I had no idea how long they would last before delivery. I was kind of expecting a 2-3 hours because I was only about 4 cm when they began. I had a lot of pressure on my bladder, so I decided to go to the bathroom before the contractions intensified. When I got back to my bed I had a very intense contraction and they continued to intensify, still at about 3 minutes apart. I told the nurse she was not to leave the room and she kindly obliged. She told me to tell her if I was beginning to feel pressure. I couldn’t tell for sure if I was feeling pressure, and I didn’t want to be the woman in labor who cried wolf. I decided to tell her that I was feeling slight pressure so that she would feel an urgency to call the doctor. She did a cervical check and said I was about 8 cm. About 3 minutes later I had another extremely intense contraction. Usually I can just breath through them, but this one was intense enough where I couldn’t help but moan and verbalize my pain. (No bad words, just more volume to the moaning and breathing.) When that one was over I made sure the nurse was getting the doctor. I was relieved to see him walk into the room wearing his scrubs as I breathed heavily through the pain of the next contraction. The nurse immediately began to help him get on his baby catching gear. While she was tying his robe thingy and he putting on his gloves, I could painfully feel a head crowning. The nurse and doctor did not seem to be ready and I was getting nervous that the baby would pop out and fall on the floor.

Now, I’m not a loud and boisterous person by nature. I have a tendency toward the quiet and meek type of personality. So if I scream at you, you better listen and take me seriously. It was at this point that the pain was so intense that I moaned and screamed, “It HUUUUURTS!!!! …. She's COOOOOMING!!! …. AHHHHGGGGHHHH! …..It HURRRRRRRTS!!!! …. She's COOOOOMING!!!”

Now, the quiet and meek translation would be: “Excuse me. Um. There is a baby’s head in my crotch trying to come out, and she is not waiting. It really hurts. So if you could please hurry up and let me push I would really appreciate it, because I would like to get her out as soon as possible. I hope you’re ready to catch a baby, because my body is about to push her out. Oh, and did I mention it really hurts? Thank you.”

Now picture a pregnant woman thrashing her legs back and forth on a hospital bed while tightly holding onto the bedrails, her head thrown back as she screams, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth almost to the point of hyperventilation. Then picture more shouting of the above phrase, “IT HUUUUURTS!!! SHE’S COOOOMING!!” That was me. I would love to have a video of the action, but I’ll have to be content with the vivid memory, and you will just have to use your imagination.

My husband knew to take me seriously. I think my doctor thought maybe he should take me seriously, so he peeked between my legs, saw a head full of hair trying to make her way out, and he said, “She sure is!” which gave a boost of motivation for the doctor and nurse to pick up the pace. My doctor instructed me not to push.

In response to my doctor’s instruction not to push, my husband laughed and said, “Yeah, right!” My husband later related to me how he just wanted to bust up in laughter at the whole situation. I mean he felt bad that I was in so much pain and being told not to push when it was clearly time to push, but he said watching the nurse and doctor scramble to get ready to deliver a baby, knowing that time was against them, was very funny.

Finally my body decided to take over, disobey all doctor’s orders, and do the pushing for me. I no longer had control over the contents of my uterus, and a baby head popped out. The doctor must have seen it happen from his peripheral vision, so he turned 90 degrees and reached between my legs to catch a baby and guide her out safely at 12:38 pm onto the foot of the hospital bed.  She was born about 55 minutes after my doctor broke my water. Apparently, my pot doesn’t take long to boil. Baby immediately began crying and I received much relief from both pain and nervousness. I was so excited to have baby here safely, and I was slightly shocked that the anticipation of her arrival was over so quickly. 

Oh....and that rumor about pitocin making contractions more intense is not a rumor. It's totally true.

They set the gooey baby on my abdomen while my husband cut the umbilical cord. I thought they would leave her there for a bit longer but they whisked her off to the baby heater thingy to wipe her off and do all they do to a newborn. I was kind of thinking, “Aww. I want to hold her for a little longer.” But at the same time it didn’t bother me that they took her to wipe off the goo before I held her. 

This may sound weird, but one of my favorite parts of childbirth is sitting in the bed with my legs spread eagle while the doctor delivers the placenta and my husband stands by the crib snapping pictures of the new baby. I think I like it because there is an immense feeling of physical relief after the baby comes out, and a secondary feeling of physical relief after the placenta comes out. It’s also a rare moment in life when I have no other option than to just sit and observe the moment while a team of other people do all the work and photography.

I love hearing the sound of a little newborn cry across the room. I love finding out how much the baby weighs after months of wondering. I love the joy and emotion that is felt as we welcome a new member to the family, even when that new family member is one of the most funky newborn babies you have ever seen....

I'll be the first to admit that Heidi is not one of my more attractive newborns. But I'm ok with that. Wendy wasn't either, and she has turned out to be quite beautiful. I'll be patient for Heidi's beauty to evolve.

Seriously look at those nostrils! I think she had her nose pressed against my pelvic bone which flattened her nose into a funky shape. At least that is what I would like to think. You can poke fun. I did. 

....I am happy to report that at 6 weeks old Heidi is beginning to grow into her nostrils, and she's getting cuter.

So that is pretty much the story of Heidi’s birth. It was a pleasure to have my very own doctor actually deliver one of my children after me being his patient for 12 years. I have to say, I enjoyed being induced more than I thought I would. I would totally do it again....

Heidi's first birthday cake. I love birthday parties!
Another benefit of being induced on the June 28th was that it ensured that I would have a June baby. All of my children have birthdays in a different month. Only Heidi and me have to share a month. There are still openings in March, August, September, and December.

Birthday! Birthday! Birthday!

I just wanted my blog world to know that Heidi Johanna was born!

She came June 28th and all went well. I really wanted her to be born on the 29th so we would have three consecutive birthdays in the family, but she didn't cooperate. Well, she may have, but my doctor advised me to be induced on the 28th for medical reasons, which will be included in the birth story that is coming soon...(hopefully tomorrow.)

Our first family photo with Heidi.

June 28th, 2012

Heidi Johanna

6 lb 11 oz, 19 1/4 in, 12:38 pm

A lot of people ask if there is meaning to the name. Not really. We just really liked the name Heidi and we thought the German version of Johanna went well with it. It wasn't an easy decision because there was another contender name. We also like the name Henry and wanted to save the 'H' in case we have another boy. But at this point, I don't think we need to be worried about saving first letters for future children in case there aren't anymore. We might as well use the names we like for the children we have. If we by chance do have another boy, I'm sure we can find a name that starts with A, F, I, K, L, N, O, P, Q, T, U, V, X, Y, or Z. You think? (In case you're wondering, we have a rule that each member of the family will have a different first initial. Pretty much the opposite of what the Duggars do.)

We are very excited. However, reality hit today when my milk came in, the postpartum hormonal headaches began, and I changed several newborn poopy diapers. That stuff just seems to constantly ooze out of her!

We came home yesterday, June 30th, from the hospital. It was my 36th birthday. I would have to say it was a great birthday present to bring home! 

June 30, 2012

July 1st, 2012

Wendy's seventh birthday. Sarah baked, frosted, and decorated her cake. It's Funfetti with cream cheese frosting. It was a great day for Wendy!

Now we get a 2 day break as we wait and prepare to celebrate America's birthday on the 4th.

Killing Time

That last two weeks of pregnancy always seem to drag, especially when your last child was two weeks early. I think that was just luck because right now I feel like I will be pregnant forever.

Meanwhile I've been finding things to pass the time. Today my dad and I took the kids to a local farm to pick tomatoes so that we could can them. I've never canned tomatoes before. It's something my grandmother did every year, so I thought I'd carry on the tradition. I'm sure she would be proud. I don't know if we did it her way, but we tried. I Googled it and found a method on our state's university extension program's website.

Here is our day in pictures:

 We picked 60 tomatoes. 

It was about 35 pounds.

I washed them in the kitchen sink. Ideally these would have been picked from our home garden, but our tomatoes aren't doing so well this year. The fruit flies and worms seem to like them. 

I sterilized the Mason jars in the dishwasher.

My dad cut out the stem part.

He also sliced an "X" in the bottom of the tomatoes to help the skin peel off nicely.

We blanched 4 tomatoes at a time for about 1 minute. We learned that each jar held about 3 large tomatoes or 4-5 small ones.

We put them in cool water (there was ice in there), so that they would be cool enough to handle and peel.

I peeled the tomatoes. They peeled very easily, I think in large part due to the "X" sliced on the bottom of them. 

My pretty bowl of peeled tomatoes. Bradley was curious to know what they felt like, so I let him touch one. Kind of like giant eyeballs.

I sliced them into eighths. 

We did the hot pack method, so the processing time would be 45 minutes instead of 85 minutes. We boiled the tomato wedges for about 5 minutes.

  

I spooned them into the jars. Each jar had 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in them. The lemon juice lowers the pH to prevent the botulinum toxin.  

Since I don't have a pressure canner, we did the regular water bath method. I bought this new pot because I needed a taller one to process my quart jars. Unfortunately the bottom wasn't completely flat so I couldn't get it to boil water on my flat top range. Thankfully our brand new grill, that I bought my husband for Father's Day, has an extra side burner, so we used it to heat up the pot over the open flame. Only four cans fit in the pot at a time, so we had to do this three times each for 45 minutes. I wonder how much propane is left in the tank?

Our beautiful 12 jars of canned tomatoes. The problem with homemade canned food is that you don't want to ever open them because they are so pretty, and you know how much effort goes into making them.

Papa and me. 

That was fun :)

I would like to say that it was an extremely educational experience that all the kids played a part in the canning process. But it wasn't. It was educational for my dad and myself as we slaved away over the hot stove (and grill burner) while my kids played games on my iTouch and watched Netflix on the computer . I plan to teach them more next year, now that I know what I'm doing.

And to add to the fun this evening I have some zucchini bread in the oven. My dad and I grated four very over-sized zucchini yesterday by hand (I really need to invest in a food processor), because I'm really bad about picking them at the right time. I have about 20 cups of grated zucchini in my fridge and freezer. Tonight I used 2 cups to try making zucchini bread for the first time. I found a recipe that my grandmother mailed me, probably about 3 years ago when I told her about my abundant zucchini crop in 2009.

Aww. I love old-fashioned handwriting.

Oven timer just went off! It smells like cinnamon!

Our New Homemade Table

So my kids reminded me today that it's been awhile since I posted. Yeah, I know. I'm kind of in turbo nesting mode as I am currently 37 weeks and 4 days (but who's counting?) When I'm taking a break from turbo nesting, I'm being lazy. Unfortunately during all this nesting I still have NOT gotten out the baby girl newborn clothing from the attic, the crib from the garage, nor the infant car seat from the garage attic. I think I have a fear that if I'm completely ready, then baby will actually come. The truth is that I'm experiencing a bit of anxiety regarding childbirth. Some might think, "But you've been through this seven times, you are a pro." But I think, "I've been through this seven times, I know what to expect, and I'm SCARED!" Here is a brief summary of how the previous seven births went:

#1 - First baby. Had no idea what to expect. Did some natural laboring. Ready to ask for an epidural. Turns out the extreme pain I was feeling was transitional phase of labor, I felt Emily's head crowning, and there were no nurses or doctors in the room. My husband had to run into the hallway and call for someone, and a random doctor from another practice delivered her. After that I knew I could do it without an epidural, so I have chosen not to receive them for subsequent births.

#2 - Calm birth in middle of afternoon. All went well. My mom and Emily waited in the waiting area. Nineteen month old Emily pooped in her diaper and it leaked on her overalls, so she had to wear my maternity shirt the rest of the day at the hospital.

#3 - Started labor at about 10 PM. Had to call next door neighbor to come over and sleep on couch. Labored most of the late night/early morning by myself because my husband was half asleep in the chair next to me at the hospital. Difficult labor and delivery because Sarah was face up instead of the ideal position of face down, and it required much more pushing.

#4 - Probably my best labor and delivery. My mom was there to watch it while Emily, Bradley, and Sarah were swimming at a friend's house. It was the middle of the afternoon. Everything went well. No hard pushing. She slipped right on out.

#5 - Almost born in the car. Born about 10 seconds after being rolled into the emergency room. Never want to repeat that scenario again. Never.

#6 - Born in the middle of the night. Her head was facing sideways when she came out, so it required a bit more pushing.

#7 - Born in the middle of the night. Not a bad delivery, but an uncomfortable labor because I had to pee really bad and the nurse wouldn't let me go to the bathroom, because she was afraid I would have the baby on the toilet while the doctor was delivering another patient. She gave me a bed pan instead, but I couldn't make it work. I missed my husband's full, wide-awake attention while I was in excruciating pain. It's not fair, but I had infomercials to keep me occupied. My parents were not in town yet, so I had to call someone to come over at about two in the morning to sleep on the couch.

#8 - Who knows? And that's what scares me. The good news is that my dad is here, so I don't have to worry about finding somebody to watch the kids. The whole length and intensity of labor remains a mystery.

So today I give you pictures of our new kitchen table. I know I promised them awhile ago. The thing is, I was waiting to have a clean kitchen in the background, but I gave up on perfection and finally just took them to get it over with. So here they are. Ta da!

If you are just tuning in and are wondering what this kitchen table thing is all about. My husband and I made benches and a new table top to fit our expanding family. We used lumber from Lowe's and some basic tools (drill, jigsaw, sander). If we can do it, you can do it. I think the total cost was about $100.

Although the benches aren't quite as comfortable as a chair, I'm liking the clean lines in the kitchen. The new table can seat 10-12 people now. If you have any questions about the construction of them, just ask. This post is obviously not a tutorial. 

That's all for now, folks. I can assure you that Bradley will not allow me to not promptly blog about the birth of the new baby. I'll be in touch. 

Bears on the Beach and Cake Parfaits

On Friday we had a beach theme. We went to the beach in the afternoon/evening and made another blue Jello dessert called Bears on the Beach.

Blue Jello (ocean)

Crushed graham cracker or light colored cookie (sand)

Whipped Topping (frothy water from the waves)

Gummy Bears or Teddy Grahams (beach patrons)

Drink Umbrellas (sun protection)

A few shots at the beach. My girls all have matching bathing suits that I bought on clearance at Target last year. It makes it easy to keep track of them when we are out.

When we came home from the beach the kids showered, put on their pajamas, and then we assembled our Bears on the Beach. I had no idea it would be as entertaining as it was. They all assembled theirs differently, and they insisted that they had to explain what was going on in their Jello scene. I think the biggest novelty for them was the drink umbrella. George refused to remove his from his cup while he was eating, despite the fact that it was annoyingly in the way the whole time.

Group Shot

 (minus George, who is off to the side)

My favorite was George's which looked like his bears were bear-ied under a couple feet of snow in a winter wonderland. (bottom left). A couple of kids had a bear drowning in the water too. Or maybe they were just scuba diving.

I also had a great plan to make some homemade moon sand to go with our beach theme, but I was tired in the afternoon and instead chose to rest in my bedroom for an hour before we went to the beach. I think I made a good choice. The kids will have to take a rain check on the moon sand. Maybe we will have a space themed week sometime this summer.

....So that was Friday.

On Thursday we made cake parfaits. Just a little concoction of our own. I don't even know if cake can officially be labeled as "parfait", but it was an idea that popped into my head and it sounded yummy and pretty.

We made a box cake mix, divided it into six bowls, and dyed it the colors of the rainbow. 

We baked them in empty and cleaned tuna cans (well greased and floured).

We baked them.

We sliced the rounded tops off.

We took a biscuit cutter and cut off the browned edges so the pretty cake colored showed in our layers.

We sliced each color in half, so we could make two parfaits.

We layered them in rainbow order with Cool Whip in between each layer.

We ate them!

(We had leftover batter that we layered into two 1 cup mason jars and also baked. I forgot to take a picture though. Shame on me! It was really cool though because the layers did not bake evenly so it was kind of swirly and psychedelically groovy looking.)

Cakes in the tuna cans. Thankfully they did not taste like tuna.

The rainbow cake parfait.

Each kid got to eat the cake top to the color they mixed.

I am pleased to say that Jason accomplished his cleaning on Thursday (with a lot of coaching) and was rewarded his chocolate parfait. He ate it instead of the rainbow cake parfait.

As I proofread this post, I am beginning to think that my readers might be thinking that all we eat is sugar in this house. I promise we get a good share of fruits, vegetables, whole wheat bread, cheese and other nutritious stuff. But I don't think to take pictures of my kids eating carrots, turkey sandwiches, apples, bananas, oranges, or watermelon. You'll just have to believe me. Right now my kids are reaping the benefits of having a pregnant mother who feels like eating just about anything and everything.

34 weeks prego with a farmer's tan. And those extra pounds from the anything and everything that I've been eating are mostly on my thighs, which I conveniently cropped off the picture.