39 Weeks!

I thought I'd do a quick update since I had an appointment yesterday...

...I'm 39 weeks & 1 day today. I had an appointment yesterday and after a very rough morning (Kate fell out of the van at school drop-off! and Collin screamed from drop-off until we arrived at the clinic - 30 minutes), Collin was then an angel at the doctor's office and we had a nice rest of the day:) Here are the stats: my BP was 110/58, baby's HR was 130-140, I am 2 cm and the baby dropped down lower! I wasn't too surprised. I was rather sick over the weekend, Collin and I had a stomach bug and I had a LOT of cramping and contractions. I was super worried I was going to go into labor from it and would still be sick. But thankfully, I felt better by late on Monday. And Collin was better on Sunday:) 

Collin and I - not at our best

He loves the toys at the clinic

My appointment buddy

My doc has jumped in on the baby pool at the hospital (Dave's coworkers) and she guessed we would have a baby before the weekend (others say she is cheating:) Dave's on call Thursday, so we think Friday would be a nice day for Baby to arrive:) He also has the next two weeks off, so that is our perfect window...hope it works!

Collin has been a little "off" lately, not eating much at all, and up around 5:30 most mornings!! But plenty/most of the day he is super silly and fun. He is starting to sing songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, The Wheels on the Bus, ABCs and Row, Row Your Boat. He gets a word or two in each phrase, I just love when they are at this stage and trying to sing. I need to grab some video of this! 

What I hear from Kate every day, "Jeans are the worst thing in the whole world." She only wants to wear tights or maybe leggings and dresses most days. Good thing I went to Once Upon a Child and bought you so many jeans, ugh. I remember a phase where I also refused jeans, so it is a little hard to think she is crazy (I only wanted to wear those stirrup leggings...remember?:) I finally got her into jeans this morning and now I am hearing...they aren't fancy enough! Oh for Pete's sake...

Kate marked out a little calendar for January on my meal-planning tablet on the fridge. She likes crossing out each day and writing all the numbers out. She had started to ask when the Baby would come and I told her to put a heart on the day she thought the babe would arrive. After a little debate, she landed on January 15. She is pretty adamant. Yesterday was - two days, Mom!! Two days until the baby comes! And I was met with this morning, Mom - the baby comes tomorrow! In the morning, you'd better grab the baby clothes and go to the hospital right away!  She keeps telling me she is so excited and it is going to be the best day of her life. I hope so! She has an extra day of school this week and they have Show and Tell on Friday. I joked that we could bring baby. But that may have to be a little later in the year:) She is such a great big sister and very proud to be. I think she is definitely taking this second sibling as some kind of promotion! (I just learned that my doc also picked tomorrow - Jan 15 - as the day baby comes, I think that is so funny they picked the same day!) 

What do you do when you are 39 weeks and waiting....bake!

The plan is to call Mom and Dad, Andrew and Kylie when we are in labor. Depending on the hour and day, we have lots of friends and neighbors who have offered to watch the kids. Thankfully, this time we have wonderful neighbors right next door, so that should be convenient. When Collin arrived, Dave called a number of people before reaching a very sweet coworker, Brenda, who had volunteered to come over. She came over in the middle of the night until Dad arrived (around 3 p.m.?) The logistics are always interesting and I am so curious as to how it plays out this time. My hope is that we do not start labor at night again. I would love at least the attempt of a good night's sleep to start the process:) 

Dave's been bringing home flowers recently, these are SO gorgeous.
Pretty pink....is it a sign? 

I guess I need to take another picture - I like seeing the last picture before baby comes, it is always just mind-boggling to look back at, in my opinion. Kate came almost a week late, Collin came three days early, so anything goes as we all know:) I sure do think about and reminisce about the last two big days we've had....here are pics of the end of last two kiddos' pregnancies...

2009 -The night before Kate's induction

2013 - I think this is the last preggo photo before Collin arrived...

Alright...let's see if I can sleep! 

38 Weeks!

A little update from us, on this very cold day...

Kids these days...
Kate tells a joke: Basically it starts with "Knock, Knock" and makes no sense. Then she starts laughing and Collin cracks up like she is brilliant. Dave and I got them set up in the bath the other night and went out to sit in the loft for a few minutes. We just laughed listening to them - complete nonsense followed by great giggles:) Soak up this time when Collin adores you and thinks you are hilarious, Kate! 

Buddies. 

Kate was playing a game where she had to run on the big living room rug and only touch the flowers, the other space was "water with sharks and the sharks would eat you if you touched it." Reminds me of ENDLESS hours playing on the play set at Harold and Marlys' with Todd and Derek playing can't touch the ground:) Good memories. She stepped in the water at one point and the sharks were getting her, She yelled, "Oh my gosh!" Collin then started going around saying, "oh shosh! oh shosh!"

Collin is crazy about trains. It is pretty cute and we have one small toy we brought up from the basement (woo hoo - "new" toys for free!) that he loves and then up in the loft we have pieces to a Thomas set that he is really starting to get into. It is so fun to watch his little mind grow and change. His problem solving and concentration continue to expand each day.

Choo choo!!

Kate is still 110% into her babies/dolls. All she does all day long is mother them and narrate to us constantly about what they are all doing. Anything that Dave or I have said to Kate at any moment can come out of her mouth in reference to her "children." It is a dangerous time here:) Should be interesting in the next couple weeks! (she hasn't stopped talking for the last 45 minutes about her daughter going in for her chicken pox shots, a sleepover she had and the fact that her work was canceled because it was so cold the taxis weren't running anymore) ???? Okay, not everything she plays out is directly from us!

Kate (and Collin is in there too) watching a movie on a snowy night while Daddy was on call and away. If you see glitter all over our house, this dress would be the reason.

In just the last few days, I have had a tough time calling anyone by their correct name. I feel like 60% of the time, I'm saying Collin for Kate and vice versa. I have often called out "Kate" for Dave and recently Dave has called Kate "Laurie."  :)   Great, let's add another one to the mix (side note - nothing is certain on baby names. Still. Some good ones on the list, girl names more set than boy. Laid in bed awake trying to think of more boy names last night...)

38 weeks: If something drops to the floor, I gotta really want it to actually attempt to go down and get it. I assume this is what my other children are for. Sleeping is pretty much a joke, I know how much sleep I'll get with a newborn (and two others that make our nights interesting) but at least I will be able to sleep on my back or stomach again (yay!) and I won't be physically as uncomfortable. God designs this process well. 

Seriously, I do get dressed nicely and even have days I think I look alright.
But no one is around to take a nice pic!
Thus, all these - 'right before bed' pics I take.

We had an appointment yesterday - HR about the same, active. BP awesome, 1.5 cm dilated, thick and baby high. I had to have Collin with me and was a little worried about it as he gets so antsy and I wondered if she'd check me. Luckily, Dave was able to come along. (he and my doc had been in the hospital until 2-3 a.m. with another mom giving birth a few hours before:) She ran pretty late, but I understood! And praise God I had Dave with to manage Collin for that long. 

We brought up the baby stuff from the basement! Collin assumes it is all for him and has tried to get into the swing and sat in the bouncy seat, buckled himself in and got stuck. It is hard to keep him from messing with these things and to stop pushing the buttons all the time. Not sure if it is good we brought it up this early... to endure this for the next couple weeks or if it was smart and he will be desensitized by the time we have an actual infant in there for him to mess with. Stay tuned...

Dave and I have started reorganizing the basement and other areas of the house. I know. Super smart to do this at this point, but we are just thrilled we are getting it done. There are a lot of changes to the house and we are really enjoying it (new furniture, rearranged rooms, etc) Some of the work was in the crawlspace and few will ever see it but Dave and I will know it isn't mass chaos down there anymore:) 

The nursery/guest room in process...

Need to tackle the walls next

Still a queen bed in there:)

If people based the number of children on the emotions you feel when finding little newborn clothes your children wore...we would all have 19 kids like the Duggars. I'm just saying.

Teeny, tiny baby clothes.
But will #3 bypass all these - washed a million times newborn clothes?
Probably 

I'm remember/trying to prepare for/getting freaked out again by labor and delivery. I've done this twice. All went well, You would think I would be less anxious about it the third time. And honestly, I'm very excited about it too. It is truly a miracle and I am going to love going to the hospital and knowing that the baby will be in our arms soon (I have always walked in the hospital NOT in active labor, so there has been no drama in that so far:) but I know that it can all come about in a million different ways and I am starting to wonder what this story will be:) Collin's L&D was also a little more difficult than I was expecting for my second go round, so it may be affecting my thoughts this time:)

I'm so happy to finally feel like the house is in good shape, I think I've washed all the newborn clothes that we need until we know boy/girl:) I just did a giant grocery run to stock up the house a bit and make some meals (and hopefully freeze some meals)...final items on my list are to get a pedicure, hang up some decor/pictures on the wall, clean out the freezer, get the house really scrubbed/cleaned and work on the baby book. Oh, and pack my hospital bag. How is that the one that I haven't really finished yet?! 

A box of size N, 1, 3 & 4 (Collin is in between sizes and who knows how big Babes is)
Uff da

Hope everyone stays warm today! It's only -5 right now, but the wind is pretty fierce, even at our place. So grateful I get to stay inside with cuddlebugs on days like this! 

Our Christmas in Wisconsin

Another post:) Our final Christmas celebration - our little one with Dave, Kate, Collin and I at home. We weren't sure how to fit it in and when to open our own gifts. We really liked being at our home for Christmas Eve/Morning the last two years as the kids came down our stairs for the stockings, etc. But we managed to fit it in on Christmas Day this year, just much later. 

When we arrived home on Christmas Day from Burr Oak, we unloaded the car and then sat down to open our gifts, there was no way we were keeping them up super late two nights in a row. Dave and I hadn't really bought much for each other (our new furniture we got a couple months ago!), so most of the gifts were for the kids/from the kids. It was super fun to watch them open and my highlight was watching Kate get excited for the gifts she gave us. From "Collin" I received some yoga supplies - much appreciated as it is about the only exercise I do now and one I hope to really dive into full-speed as soon as I can, post-partum. From Kate, I received a beautiful snowflake necklace and some stunning earrings. I had lost my special earrings from Dave recently and these are to replace them (though not diamonds) and I was so touched. It also reminded me of getting my Mom jewelry each Christmas (or was it Tony?) we would go to the jewelry counter and pick out a necklace.., I can still picture them...a moment that felt very full circle to me! Dave gave me an incredible gift - a gift certificate to the most amazing spa in the Dells! 

Little wooden Tonka trucks! Yes!

Sooooo....pregnant:)

Ballerina Belle Barbie

Tearing into a double gift - Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head

Putting popcorn in his new dump truck

Socks! :)

Teamwork:)

Kate gave Dave some slippers (he had also lost his - geez, we are worse than the kids!:) and a hat with the earflaps, like Collin has:) Collin gave Dave an Adidas sweatshirt and I gave him a coffee travel mug he had been admiring and told him I was thinking of getting him a helicopter, but that I wasn't confident picking it out and had no time to get anyway! 

The kids were able to play with just a couple things and then had to go to bed - so cruel! After they were asleep, Dave and I cleaned up and were able to sit and decompress a bit after the whirlwind couple of weeks. It was a really nice hour or two together and we reflected on a beautiful Christmas season. 

Here are some other highlights of our house, our kids during the holidays (that haven't yet been mentioned in a post)...

Our tree!

Ballerina Kate checking out the new train upstairs

Love this pic

Both trees!

Collin running the train. From a safe distance, it is actually quite loud!

Kate and her buddy Gracie

Elsa sitting on top of the coffee table and playing with Collin's new farm set

Incidentally, her new Elsa dress made it exactly one day before she spilled pizza sauce on it. I got most of it out, but can't seem to get the sleeve clean yet. Awesome.

Kate painting Mommy's toenails for Christmas

Our little man all dressed up:)

Conversation on Dec. 27
Dave: Kate, do you know that the baby is coming soon?
Kate: Yes.
Dave: when do you think the baby will be here
Kate: January
Dave: did you know that January starts on Thursday?
Kate: Yes!
Dave: Collin, did you know there is a baby coming
Collin: No.
Me: Collin, where is the baby?
Kate: Mom, stand up!
Me: pointing to my belly, "what is in here?"
Collin: Ho, Ho, Ho!

Collin's vocabulary continues to expand. I wish I had written down all the new words. If you ask him a question, you will often hear an emphatic, "I don't know!" Mama and Dada are now sometimes "Mommy" and "Daddy" which seems so much different to me, so grown up! 

It is hitting me that we will have two in diapers. I hadn't really given it too much thought, good or bad. I started to ask some moms, all said - do not try and potty train when you have a newborn. Got it. Sounds awful. I remember all the time spent in the bathroom, dropping what one is doing to take them, etc. And with Kate, the process was very long. I can't imagine doing that while nursing a newborn. So, of course, I came out of the laundry room one day to Dave holding Collin on the toilet. He was just grinning from ear to ear. He has started to sometimes take his pants down and we wondered if it meant he had to go. Kate usually has the door open when she goes to the bathroom and Collin has definitely seen the process in action. So Dave tried it and he went a little! We were yelling and praising him. He loved it. He has made us take him a few more times, once we were unsure if he went, but he definitely did another time. They say to wait until they are ready and I vowed to go with it as soon as he showed interest but....really!?! We'll see. We've had a lull now, so it could have just been a fluke, I guess:)

We don't have a potty seat or anything for him yet!

Kate seems to have perfected the eye roll and an even sassier attitude lately. She will jump to point out when we are not giving her our full attention or interrupt her - anything we ask of her, she is demanding right back from us!  She also can/will cry at the drop of a hat. I'm an emotional person, but she will probably take the cake in our family! Uff da. She continues to be an incredible helper to me, able to now make PB&J sandwiches for her and her brother if she can get the ingredients, feed Abby, load quite a few things in/out of the dishwasher... though of course there is still some fighting and bickering between her and Collin, she continues to be very good at responding to his needs and distracting him when I need her to.

Collin adores his sister, does everything that she does, including singing, dancing, repeating what she says, he is like her little parrot. He loves when Dave and Kate come home from work/school..he goes nuts screaming their names and running to them as soon as they come in the door. If you mention going somewhere or outside or a car, he starts saying,"hat!" "shoes!" and will go get them. And...he is still very obsessed with football and trains. When he is done with his food and we aren't paying attention, he will start playing with it. Really not paying attention?? He will start throwing it on the floor. Kate never did this, so fun to have these new traits show up:)

We had to take the car seats out of my van for awhile and when we put them back in, we added the base for the infant seat! So, Kate is now in the far back of each vehicle and Collin and Baby will be right behind the front. She doesn't mind it but we are still needing to help her reach and get buckled - hope that gets better soon! Three car seats is....interesting! I already can't wait until warmer weather to help with that whole process:) 

Oh - I need to mention briefly that we had no snow for this Christmas! We love the snow and having fun outside in the winter and we have honestly been pretty bummed that we haven't been able to play outside at all. I cannot believe that southern California has more snow than we do - this world is upside down!  I know it will come and I have tried to remember to be grateful when traveling and moving around outside more easily without it, but we are pretty anxious to get our snowshoes and skiis out! I guess it will work for me, I'll be much smaller and have my balance back by the time we get out there:) 

Well, that concludes our Christmas celebrations:) Time to really wind down, relax, settle into some sort of winter routine and catch up on sleep..riiiight. 

Christmas in Iowa

Dave was on call Dec. 23 and it turned out he was in for an epidural in the wee hours through mid-morning on the 24th. Collin was up in the night and so I was short on sleep as well. Awesome, another holiday where we have rough nights and are late on the road to Mom and Dad's (Thanksgiving!).  

That morning before Dave was home, I got a text that Grandma (Elsie, my Mom's mom) was taken to the hospital overnight with shortness of breath. Mom and Dad had been there much of the night, and she was comfortable and they were waiting to hear from the doc again that morning. The initial problem was fluid on her lungs. Well...needless to say I cried. Quite a bit. And then stopped and had to get us packed up and ready. And then Dave came home and when we talked about it more, I cried more. I don't know what else to say except that my grandmother is incredibly important to me, I love her to the moon and back and I don't want her to ever leave. Yes, I know how rational that sounds, but logic doesn't push out my emotions lately (ever?). 

The plans changed from everyone gathering at Wellington Place (where Grandma is in assisted living) to my parents house with people stopping by to visit her at the hospital. We arrived at Mom and Dad's around 4 p.m. Us four adults were so very tired and I could barely keep my eyes open and honestly was not looking forward to an evening with a bunch of people. But of course, we got some sweets out and once everyone started showing up, I felt much better:) We had a great time visiting with my cousins, aunts and uncles. Kate played (bossed around?!) Madi and Cayla. Collin tagged along:) Then we did a gift exchange game which was pretty fun. After more visiting, the crowd left and though late, we started to get ready for our little Brown family Christmas. 

Face timing with T,T & Q

Hi Quinn!

Gifts!

I remember vividly the late, late nights when we would stay up at our house and open gifts after having the big family all at Grandma's. It is a little different these days with super young ones:) We Face timed with Okinawa while we opened their gifts and said Merry Christmas as they headed to the beach!! 

Cutie pie!

A jewelry box with a ballerina!

We had the kids open their gifts first and then put them to bed and had the adults open theirs. It was pretty fun with kids at age 5 and almost 2. Collin would be so into one gift, he didn't really care about opening the others. Kate was all over everything:) The kids went to bed super late and without a fuss and we had a nice time opening our gifts. Again, such thoughtful and fun gifts! It was so late when we were done. But of course there was more to do! Right as Andrew and Kylie were leaving, Collin woke up and so I went down (in the basement to see to him) and the others went to work cleaning up the mess and helping Santa:) I was so nervous Kate would get up with all the noise and go upstairs and catch them in the act! As I've said before, it is so nerve-wracking to keep up the Christmas....magic:) 

Somehow we are still standing, Merry Christmas Eve!

After awhile, I got Collin back down (3 a.m. but the others were up til 2:30 a.m.!) and came up to see the stockings filled...all was well. Collin got back up at 7 a.m. and I pushed Dave out of bed to get up with him. I slept and figured I might miss the kids seeing their Santa stuff but hoped Dave would get me before too long. Around 8:15 I got up and realized that everyone was still sleeping! Collin and Dave had watched tv and played but he hadn't noticed the stockings (not surprising) and so we tag-teamed it again. Dave slept on the couch and Collin and I played and waited for Kate to wake up! She didn't wake up until almost 10 a.m.! I heard her coming and was able to wake Dave up in time to see her reaction (priceless) and we had them open the gifts that we brought (from Santa - it's complicated) and then Gma and Gpa came down and we opened the rest of our stockings (Santa stuff that Mom bought). It actually worked out pretty well and we had a lovely, lazy Christmas morning. Gpa made pancakes and after a brunch meal we took naps and got ready. We were going to head to the hospital and see (Great) Grandma as we didn't have time the day before.

Christmas morning! playing with his new tools

We both had some lefse while we waited for the others to wake up

Collin climbed up on sleeping Daddy, it didn't last too long:)

Santa brought her an Elsa dress!
She kept telling people that she told him she wanted it when we visited him at the library:)

Opening the rest of the stockings

Andrew and Kylie came by and we all went down together. The hospital was rather empty on Christmas Day! It was good to see her and she was doing pretty well considering all that had happened. She loved seeing the kids, of course...oh. I forgot to mention. Kate was in full Elsa mode - wearing her new dress and with her Elsa braid. So that was quite a sight at the hospital:) Collin was pretty antsy in the small room, so we took turns running down the halls with him. We were only there an hour and she started to indicate wanting to rest. More visitors were coming later and I didn't want her to get completely overwhelmed. I didn't want to leave, I'd love to just sit there and nap with her and watch tv, but oh well. 

I'm sure this happens every day at the hospital...

I think she was teaching him to say Elsa

(Great Grandma was transferred up to Mayo today (Dec. 29) for more tests and to meet with a cardiologist and others. We'll learn more in the coming days and decisions will be made soon. What a blessing to have a large family and everyone around to help, participate and support one another. Grandma -sorry, I always flip between referring to her as Great or just Grandma - seems to be dealing with it all okay. We all know she would rather be back home at Wellington!)

After saying goodbye to A&K in the hospital parking lot, we headed back to Mom and Dad's and packed up to head home. A very quick and busy 24 hours!  The ride back to Wisconsin was rather tiring, I dozed while Dave drove, the kids watched Mary Poppins;) and napped. We arrived back at our place around 8:30 p.m. Whew! 

I would have to say it was a pretty exhausting and emotional Christmas but, once again, filled with wonderful memories, great conversations, magical traditions and a lot of love.