Fall-alicious!

Last Sunday we decided to go out and take a Sunday drive and look for signs of fall. It was fun to meander through the beautiful countryside and see the bits of orange sprinkled throughout the trees. We ended up at a family-friendly apple orchard that had a corn maze, jumping castles, bouncing balls, swings, pumpkins, and of course apples and apple cider, yum! Here are a few pics of our outing.

Well, they say the squeaky wheel gets the oil and it looks like our squeaky wheel, Anya has had enough of this watching the family eat and wants to join in. Lately I have been feeling that Anya is just hungry! She is still a good nurser and eats about every four hours, but this just doesn't seem to be cutting it anymore. She has been waking up somewhere between 12-2am to eat and she guzzles during this time. So, with the hopes of better sleeping and the desire for Anya to be full, solids have begun! Most books will tell you that it is not nutritional necessary until 6 months, but I am finding my mothering experience to not completely agree on all terms of "the books." In my five years of mothering I have learned to educate myself and then combine that knowledge with my God-given intuition. With Olivia, she too was an early sitter and was just about crawling when I started her at 5 1/2 months. I really tried hard to wait until 6 months, but her activity level just required more. Soren got his first nibbles at 5 months and he too was already sitting by this time. And now Anya is 4 1/2 months and has been enjoying tasty morsels of avocado. See a pattern here? I guess I just keep moving up this milestone by 2 weeks with every child!

Big Preschool Boy!

Soren had his first day of 3 year old preschool and he loved every minute of it! We went back and forth on whether we were going to do preschool this year, but we thought that since Olivia was going to be at kindergarten that it might be good to let him have a school experience too. He has a wonderful teacher and is having an amazing experience.

Soren has had to stand by and watch Olivia experience a lot of things first, so we wanted to make this day special for him. I made his name in pancakes, which he loved and now requests often for breakfast. Sorry honey, those are for special days, and days when Mommy has more time and patience. :-) Erik and I both went to drop him off and he went right in to the classroom without incident. The teacher had several activities out and around for the kids to choose and with only 7 students in his class there was a lot of empty stations. Erik and I kind of looked at each other with a bit of surprise when he went in and picked the "fine motor center" stringing beads on a string. That is usually something that frustrates him, but apparently not when you are in a preschool room! He has picked that same center first everyday, so I think making some beaded necklaces may be in our future. When we picked him up, he was having recess in a small play area and playing with some other children. It was so fun seeing him interact with his peers. He was so excited to tell us all about his day. I think he has been listening to his sister's retells because his retell included just about as many details as she puts in...."We did the hokey pokey where you put your hand in like this....we ate crackers in the shape of Toy Story and had juice with a picture of Clifford on the box...we had recess..."

Afterwards we drove through the McDonald's drive thru and ordered 1 vanilla cone and I wish I had a picture of his face lighting up when we handed the treat to him. To make the day even better he got to sit on the front step and eat it while watching a cement truck right across the street from our house. What an amazing day!

.33333

Well, our little peanut has reached the .33333 mark of her first year. This past four months has been a busy, fun time. This time period included a lot of traditional firsts, like first bath, first outing, etc...as well as some fun ones like our first road trip to visit family in Utah, and first hike in the mountains of Colorado. We were very thankful that she took this 4,000 mile journey at 2 months when she was still sleeping a lot, it made the trip much easier for everyone!

At her 4 month check up she weighed in at 16.5 pounds and was 25.25 inches long keeping her in the 90 percentile for both. Some of her milestones during this period has been first smile, rolling over (she is now officially a tummy sleeper), first giggles, and most recently sitting. Her temperment is still pretty laid back and only fusses if she is hungry or tired. When we are shopping, she loves to give anyone who stops and says hi to her a nice big smile and if they are lucky some coos as well. She has discovered her voice and not only like to coo, but make many other silly noises, like a coughing sound or low grunts. The hair on top of her head has also started coming in, but we are still uncertain of its color. At this point it is looking like a light brunette. The verdict is still out on her eye color, my prediction is that they will be similiar to Soren's color.

Ahh man...I just spent an hour making a slideshow collage and it won't load becasue I made it with a noncompatible program. I just figured out an easier way to make a slideshow on picasa, upload it to the web and then just embed the url, but this mama is too tired. So I will give it a whirl tomorrow. And because every post needs a picture :-) here is one of Anya "helping" me carry the laundry upstairs.

Off to Kindergarten!

Well, it is official, we now have a kindergartener in the house. Today was her first day and what a day it was! Last night the school had an open house for the families to come and drop off school supplies, sign up for various events, meet the teacher, and get familiar with their new classrooms to help ease first day jitters. It was helpful for Olivia to have some sort of idea what to expect today. She woke up bright and early this morning and was really excited to go, but for the first day the second half of the alphabet was only going in the afternoon from 1:15-3:45, so it was kind of a long morning for her. Her normal day will be from 8:45-3:45 every day. As the time for her to get ready got nearer she grew more and more nervous and truthfully so did I. Once we got in the car to drive to school she started getting nervous and said, "I don't think I am ready for kindergarten." "What if I don't know what to do?" We reassured her over and over and tried to calm her nerves. Once we arrived she joined one of her friends from preschool in line, but just couldn't hold back the tears. She cried a little and told her teacher that she was feeling nervous. Olivia's tears opened the waterworks among the mothers waiting by for their kids to march off into the building. The moms were on the brink of crying just trying to hold back and as soon as they saw Olivia crying they couldn't hold it back anymore and well with Olivia and moms around me crying, I was toast too. ;-)

Soren had a great afternoon without his favorite playmate. He actually fell asleep for the first time in a long time during rest time, I think he actually let himself rest knowing that Olivia wasn't there. I think sometimes he just gets down right exhausted trying to keep up with Olivia. After he woke up we went outside and waited for Olivia to get off the bus. The bus driver pulled up and gave Olivia instructions on how to safely cross the bus. She was half way across the street and we noticed she didn't have her backpack, so we yelled, "Don't forget your backpack" and I think our yelling scared her, like she thought a car was coming or something. But she ran back to the bus, got her backpack and came running to my arms and collapsed into her safety net and let out some of her anxiety in the form of tears. Once we got in the house, had a popsicle and heard about her day she was very excited. We had her favorite dinner, spaghetti, and heard all about her day. Everything from the songs they sang...thumbs up, bottom out, tongues out...to Mr. Monkey, a stuffed monkey that the person gets to hold when they are talking during sharing time, to super stones for super behavior. I love how Olivia not only includes the activities in her retelling of events, but also her personal narrative about what was happening in her mind. "Well, I felt a little nervous when we were walking down the aisles (hallways ;-)) but then I got into the classroom and put my stuff away and then we started to do fun things and I thought, well, this is going to be a lot of fun. When we started singing all my nervousness just went away." We are so proud of you Olivia!

FIghting Giants

Here is apart of a conversation between Soren and I this morning:

Soren holding his Bible: When I grow up I want to be in the Bible.
Me: Who would you want to be like?
Soren: Well, either Samson or David.
Me: What would you do?
Soren: I think I want to be like David and fight giants.
Me: How would you fight giants?
Soren with great animation and lots of demonstrating moves: I'd get Daddy's hammer and nails and then knock him down to the ground and use the nails to pound him to the ground so he can't get up and hurt anyone because I protect God's people.

Parenting in the "Zone"

When people found out we were expecting our third child, a common response was a basketball analogy, "So, you're moving from man-to-man to zone." I remember having the thought that I was already playing "zone" when Erik was working as I was out numbered 2 to 1, but I have found the transition of 3-to-1 a bit more difficult. Things are just busy, busy, busy, I find myself just hustling more throughout the day to get everything done. I would say the majority of the time things seem to go really well, with only one fire to put out at a time...Anya needs to be fed, another one of Soren's melt downs, Olivia needs help making yet another paper heart, etc...I have found the craziness comes when there are multiple needs that happen simultaneously and everyone wants Mommy NOW! This is what happened to me last weekend while we were making the drive from Spring Grove to Milwaukee. Erik had caught a very aggressive form of strep throat and was running a fever of 102-103, so we decided to stop in at the walk-in clinic in LaCrosse on the way for him to get checked out. The timing for a stop was great as it was lunchtime and the kids and I headed to Fazoli's. Things in the restaurant went great. The kids sat down, had good manners, Anya was smiling in her car seat at strangers who stopped to talk to her...Wow, this was going really well. Then we entered the van....WAAAA...an explosion of cries. Anya was screaming, Soren was mad at Olivia for something. GPS to the rescue! I pushed the park feature and it showed one within a mile and a half. Perfect. I can feed Anya the older kids can play and get some wiggles out before we continue on the long drive. I quickly pulled into the parking lot where I had spotted an empty picnic table. I reached in to grab Anya and her entire backside was covered in #2, no wonder why she was so upset. After I pulled her out and made a beeline for the picnic table with a large pack of wipes to tackle this mess, I realized that I was walking through someone's graduation party, which provided a lot of onlookers to this chaos. I just smiled and continued on with giving a bath to naked, screaming Anya squirming on the changing mat on the table. I got her dressed and fed her and she was much better. During this time Olivia and Soren were running all over the park. When it was time to go I called them back to the car and Soren came back covered in mud. So, he was next on the agenda for a bath with wipes. Then Anya's car seat got a bath with wipes. Phew, finally everyone was clean, fed, and buckled in so we could go pick up Daddy and continue on with our journey.

Portrait session

When Anya was 10 days old, we headed to Portrait Innovations to do a photo shoot for the kids to mark the passing of another year. We plan to do more family photos with Aunt Terilee this summer when we see her in Utah, we just wanted to capture this fleeting newborn stage before Anya changes.

Onward and Upward...

Anya had her two week check up this past Monday and she is growing very well. The goal for this check up was to be back to her birth weight of 9 pounds, 7 ounces, well she met that challenge with an additional 4 ounces weighing in at 9 pounds, 11 ounces with a height of 22 inches. We had a team of two nurses that hadn't seen Anya before and they commented on her height about four times, as well as her "never-ending" torso. She is definitely our long green bean. ;-) This two week mark also brought the end of the umbilical cord as the last little string/ artery gave way, so now all she has is a cute little bellybutton.

She is settling into a nice eating and sleeping pattern. I usually put her down for the night around 10 and she will get up around 2am and then again at 6am to eat and goes right back to sleep. She will then wake up again around 8 to eat again and then eats about every 2-3 hours in the morning taking small cat naps throughout the morning. Then around 12:30 she is ready for her loooong nap. She has been taking a 3-4 hour nap most afternoons and then wakes up for an evening of eating and smaller cat naps. This long nap gives me some great time to be with the other kids, take a nap with Soren if Olivia is at school, do housework, etc. She has been such a great addition to our family!

Anya Elizabeth

On May 3 at 2:43 a.m. we welcomed into the world our third child, Anya Elizabeth. She tipped the scale at 9 pounds 7 ounces and measured 21.5 inches long. She is very long and slender with some very kissable cheeks. Her weight is in the 90 percentile and her height places her in the 95 percentile, while her head circumference is in the 35 percentile. Mommy was very glad for the small head size! ;-) She was born after three days of early labor with irregular contractions ranging from 10-20 minutes apart, and about 12 hours of real labor followed by 8 minutes of intense pushing. We were very thankful for our wonderful doula who coached me through every part of the labor and delivery. Anya was a little bit turned, but she turned with the positions the doula suggested, something we wouldn't have thought of by ourselves. Her coaching really kept the pain manageable. A big thank you to my parents who came here to help us celebrate Olivia's and Soren's birthdays as well as be with them while we were at the hospital. That was a huge help!

Big sister Olivia couldn't be more smitten with her little sister. She ADORES her and wants to hold her continually singing her songs and telling her stories. Soren is also in love with his little sister and is learning (we hope!) to be gentle with her. Gentleness doesn't come naturally to him so it is a learning process. :-)

Anya is now a week old and is doing very well. She is sleeping well for the time being which we are all thankful for any rest we can get. I can see how life with three kids is going to be busy yet joyful. We are so thankful to have Naana here with us now. I even got a three hour nap this afternoon, how great is that! This is probably why I am finally posting, thanks Naana! :-)

Still pregnant...

With only five days until my official due date, we are all getting very excited for the arrival of our daughter/sister, as we realize each day brings us one day closer to our union. We have really enjoyed our doctor and his philosophy about pregnancy as he doesn't get too stressed out about much and treats it as a normal, natural part of life. He generally doesn't consider induction until the completion of week 41, which is the same as the doctor we had in Dubai. At my 39 week check-up on Friday, I could see some wheels were turning in his head and he was acting a little bit different than normal. After he measured my uterus, which has expanding beyond my previous pregnancies, and checked for effacement/dilation, he took a look at me and said..."I think we have a large baby on our hands that is very comfortable in there, what do you think?" I had to agree that this is my biggest and most rounded belly of the three pregnancies. He then said that we needed to get a ballpark estimate of the size of the fetus to determine if an earlier induction than 41 weeks would be necessary and ordered an ultrasound for the following day. Saturday morning we went in and the ultrasound tech made measurements of every part of the baby. Everything was measuring 39/40 weeks, except the abdomen, which was measuring quite large. At the end of the measurements the computer puts out an estimated fetal weight, which was...drum roll please....9 pounds 12 ounces. I would be lying if I didn't say it took my breath away for a few seconds as a surge of fear of what labor and delivery could hold rushed over my body. The technician was pretty surprised and said that maybe the abdomen measurement threw things off a bit and reassured us that ultrasounds can have a one pound margin of error. We will just concentrate on the hope that it is off by being on the high side instead of the low. ;-)

Later that afternoon we had our last birthing refresher course with a fabulous doula that we found in Menomonee Falls. After talking with her, a good (well, best as one can at this point) night sleep, and an uplifting church service, I can say that I am replacing that initial fear with a spirit of determination and confidence that I can do this and trust God will be there with us each step of the way. I am also trying not to focus on the size of the baby, but rather all the good news that came from the ultrasound. The placenta is still healthy, there is still adequate amniotic fluid, and best of all, she is in the best position for delivery with her spine on my left front. I can feel her feet kicking me from behind my right rib, just about all the way up under my bra strap. Her rounded shoulder blades are resting on my left hip bone, it really feels like there is no barrier between her and my hip. Without fail when I lay down to go to bed at night she gets the hiccups and sends a little rhymic vibration through that hip, which I find very reassuring because it lets me know that she is still in the optimal position. We continue to pray for her to stay there as I really don't want to repeat Soren's back labor.

My doctor is out of town this Monday and Tuesday. He said he would call me on Wednesday after he gets a chance to review the ultrasound measurements. But from our conversation on Friday, I am pretty sure he will want to induce me ASAP. So the baby will be here soon!