Overheard

I heard Sammy telling a crying Owen the other day, "Owen, that's what boxing is all about. You kick someone in the face and then they heal." I love it when he acts like the authority on everything, especially since he's 19 months younger. Meanwhile, Owen suffered a bloody lip from this "boxing." But of course, as boys will do, they were back at it within a few minutes. They tell me they have to practice boxing or they won't get any better at it.

Chris and I deserve this. When we were first married we lived in an apartment at the end of a dead end street. On our way to and from the apartment, we always had to pass this house on the corner and almost every time there were 3 boys on the front lawn beating the hell out of each other. Both of us thought this was the coolest thing ever! Who would have thought that 8 years later we would be able to see this on a daily basis in our own home? Fantastic! God really does have a sense of humor!

Meeting with the Midwife

I hadn't been to see her since late April, but went for an appointment today. At 28 weeks, I was due to take the glucose test for gestational diabetes and I figured it had been a while and I had some questions for her. She was so nice and alleviated some of my reservations about having this baby in a hospital.

I had my first two sons in a hospital in Detroit with a doctor who I thought was great. She put up with all my quirks and allowed me to (overall) have the birth experiences I wanted. However, having William at home with a midwife was a real eye-opener as to how things could be. I learned more about birth on my third time around than I had with my first two. With Owen and Sammy, there were a lot of things that were ordered and I didn't have a choice on, such as the routine vaccines they were subjected to when they were just a few minutes old. When they were born, they were immediately taken away from me and bathed, weighed, measured, etc. before I even got to look at them.

My homebirth was so different: William was cuddled and loved for about 45 minutes before the midwife asked "Can I take him to weigh him?" Imagine that! He was my baby FIRST, her patient SECOND! He came into the world so peacefully and I definitely preferred the homebirth a million times over my hospital experiences. If it weren't for the insurance situation, I would be doing a homebirth with my 4th son, as well.

So I have a midwife but will be giving birth at the hospital and my main question for her was where does she fall between the natural aspects of the midwife and the clinical setting in the hospital? Apparently she is much more like the midwife I had for my homebirth but just simply practices out of the hospital. She will allow me choices as far as the baby's care, as well as my own care. She will go over my entire birth plan with me and honor all my wishes, as long as there is no danger to the baby or myself. I felt much better after speaking to her.

The baby is already head-down and measures appropriately. My official due date is September 14 and the midwife will go out of town the weekend of September 25-27, so he'd better come either before or after that. I can't believe how quickly all of this is flying by and that I'm already in my 3rd trimester!

The other day I asked Sammy what he did and he said he had gone to Walmart. I asked if he was good for Daddy and he said yes. I proceeded to give him a small lecture on how important it is to be extra good for Daddy when they go to the store because there is only one Daddy and three little boys. Sammy said to me "Well actually, Mama, pretty soon there's going to be four of us." Very astute observation for a four year old, don't you think?

Our Songs

I have songs for each of my boys. These are songs that I began singing to them before they were born and continue to sing to them whenever we get a few quiet moments. I cry whenever I sing them, because I imagine (God-willing) that these are the songs we will one day dance to at their weddings.
For Owen, it's "You Belong To Me" and for Sammy it's "When You Tell Me That You Love Me." I dance with them to the songs whenever I get the chance. William's song is a really old one by the McGuire Sisters that my mom told me is how she feels about me. It's called "May You Always." Here are some of the lyrics:

May you always walk in sunshine
Slumber warm when night winds blow
May you always live with laughter
For a smile becomes you so

May good fortune find your doorway
May the bluebird sing your song
May no trouble travel your way
May no worry stay too long

And may you always be a dreamer
May your wildest dream come true
May you find someone to love
As much as I love you.

I sing this to him every night before he goes to bed and I cherish this time with my little boys. I hope their songs let them know how very special they are to me, each in his own way. I hope to one day be able to keep it somewhat together if we do get to dance to these songs at their weddings, but I doubt it. I'm already a big puddle of mush just thinking about it!

FINALLY!

Well, he's 4 1/2 and he can FINALLY go to the bathroom unattended! YIPPEE!!! I decided this weekend to let him cry and plead with me to "yine it up" but no matter what, I would refuse. Now he is going all by himself and is very proud. WHEW! With the new baby on the way, we definitely don't need to have to drop everything when we hear "I need to go pee pee" anymore.

Between Owen's graduation from kindergarten and now this, we are having a week of major milestones! Now I wonder what William's going to come up with...

The Perfect Age

Who could resist this face? I swear, 18 months old is the absolute perfect age for babies. William's babbling just cracks me up! He is 100% confident of what he is saying and truly believes we understand him, too! He has about 10 words that we actually DO understand including: WHAT?, num-nums (food), juice, HEY GUYS! (when running after his brothers) and of course, Dada and Mama. Here he is enjoying some music on the Ipod I got Chris for his birthday a couple of weeks ago:

Hmmmm...wonder what he's up to? He is into EVERYTHING, of course, but so far hasn't done anything too destructive. I'm sure he'll save that for when he's older/bigger/stronger. Don't you just love those chubby feet???

Last Day of Kindergarten

Well, I can't believe this year has gone by so fast! I swear I cried more yesterday on Owen's LAST day of kindergarten than on his first! It seemed so sad to me to have this short chapter of his life over already, never to go back again. At the same time I was sad it was over for him, I was realizing how quickly my own kindergarten experience flew by and far away it is in the rearview mirror of life.
But, anyway - he had a lot of fun. They had a Luau party and Chris took Sammy and William up to school to celebrate with them. Below are a few pictures. The first one is of Owen with his best friend, Josh.
Here they are setting up coconut bowling:
Here's Owen with his teacher, Mrs. Neuwirth. She has been so very kind and patient with him this year and we feel so grateful he ended up in her class. We're definitely going to be sending her some repeat business!
Last time off the school bus as a kindergartener!
Owen brought home a TON of stuff and we're going through it to see what to save. There are so many cute things! I can't believe my mom saved NOTHING from my school experience - not a single paper, art project - NOTHING! I plan to someday organize everything for the boys and give it to them when they grow up and move out. Perhaps I can get into scrapbooking someday...someday far, far in the future.

Where Has The Time Gone?

Seems like just yesterday we were excited that he was GETTING teeth, and now here he is LOSING them! During the kindergarten field trip to the farm on Thursday, Owen lost his first tooth. He proudly brought it home to us and Chris and I were a little sad. I can't believe that 6 years ago we were about to embark on this journey of parenthood and now we are practically seasoned professionals. It's so amazing how quickly life can change!

I had read a few years ago about a different way to approach the "Tooth Fairy" tradition. As a child, we had put our teeth under our pillows and I believe that's the most common way to do this. I can't recall if we put them in an envelope first or just threw them under there, but I can imagine the difficulty of fishing around trying not to wake the sleeping child. Anyway, the idea that I read about was to put the tooth in a cup of water on the dresser in the child's room. Once Owen was asleep, I took the cup into the kitchen and removed the tooth, replacing it with four quarters. I then added food coloring and glitter so that he would know that a fairy had touched the water. He thought it was GREAT!

Any other interesting twists on this tradition out there? How do you put your own spin on the "Tooth Fairy?"

New Pet

Owen has been begging for a new pet since we lost Sir in January. I see how he is with Dope (not good) and realize he is still far too young. So we have allowed him to have "outside pets" in the form of toads, which are all over out here, as we live across the street from a lake. He keeps catching the same one pictured here over and over again. I can't believe this thing keeps allowing itself to get caught after all Owen's put it through! He pushes him in the baby swing, throws him down the slide and has dropped him countless times. Chris and I absolutely cringe and yell at him when he accidentally hurts "Toadie," but we also know it's part of the learning process.

I took this picture of the boys, not realizing "Toadie" was trying to make his escape...

How We Spent Our 8th Wedding Anniversary

I can't believe it's been two weeks since we went to the zoo! We had such a great time! The weather was cool - the kids wore sweats and jackets in the AM but we were able to switch to shorts later in the afternoon. I had thought that William was the perfect age for the zoo but didn't realize how much Owen and Sam would enjoy seeing the animals. This was our second trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo and it's a pretty nice zoo, but I must say it makes us very nostalgic for the Toledo Zoo. When we lived in Detroit, that was the zoo we always went to. If anyone is ever in that general vicinity, I would HIGHLY recommend going to the Toledo Zoo.

Here are a few more pics from our day at the zoo...