September 2011

September began and my parents came to visit and to attend my brother's retirement ceremony. (how do I have a brother old enough to retire? at some point I got old!) Since school hadn't started yet we were able to do some things and travel a bit.

Here's mister W gearing up to go (and being cute!).



Miss L enjoyed using her camera.



She also enjoyed seeing her Pawpaw.





I love this photo. It's not my most flattering angle, but for whatever reason, I just love us standing there together. It just reminds me how he's not going to be little forever, but that he is right now.



We found this photo.



Miss L found it interesting.



Of course we attended my brother's retirement, too, followed by a lovely reception.



Then it was back to the grind. Miss L had her first day of school at a new school this year. We had so many challenges last year and just felt like a new start was in order. Thank goodness we found such a wonderful place!

Miss L has always LOVED school so she was VERY excited that summer was over and it was time to go back.

I'm not sure what mister W is thinking in this photo, but it's funny.



Then we had another series of funny faces (which seems to be the norm now).





...and finally a smile!



She didn't want a new backpack this year. When I asked her she told me, "But I already have a backpack!" I love my practical girl.





September was a funny month. I learned that because I was on insulin that I would have to deliver at 39 weeks and that my OB was unwilling to induce me because it often doesn't work well on moms on insulin so the natural VBAC that I was planning was going to have to occur before 39 weeks.

As many moms know convincing a baby to come early is no easy feat. I had the world's BEST doula (seriously, the best! If you need a rec for a birth doula in the area just let me know and I'll give it to you) who helped me know my options for encouraging the new little guy to come on out. SO... much of the month was spent thinking about what I could do to induce labor or what I needed to get done before the little guy came. I had tons of doctors appointments but he always looked great.

During this time I also discovered a bulls eye rash on my behind. We had a LOT of ticks this summer and while we tried to check each day somehow we missed one on me and only found it once it was engorged. I went to see my general practitioner who said that she thought it was Lyme but wanted to have me tested. I know a couple of moms struggling with this and probed them for any information I could get. I already knew that the rash is diagnostic for Lyme on its own and since I was 36 weeks pregnant I didn't want to mess with it. We live in a Lyme endemic area and I knew that this could be really serious. One of my friends referred me to her Lyme specialist, a Lyme literate doctor (LLMD) who just happened to be close to my house. The problem was that her practice was closed. I called, left a sob story about how I was pregnant and desperate and she fit me in right away.

She gave me a lot of hope right away. Lyme is a persistent bacteria that can cause all kinds of issues and I'd been trying to do some research and I was so scared about what effect this would have on our baby. She told me what a blessing that bulls eye rash was. Many people never get the rash or miss it and end up without treatment for months or years before a diagnosis is finally made. The bacteria is much easier to treat when it's caught early.

She also told me that while it is possible to pass the disease through the placenta it is much less likely to do so while treating the illness.

She prescribed two antibiotics, one that treats bacteria outside the cell wall and one that treats it inside the cell wall, both safe for pregnancy and told me that I would be on them for around nine weeks as long as I had no symptoms. I had already been on one of the antibiotics after seeing my general practitioner so I had a bit of a leg up already.

At the end of September, getting that sense that you get near the end of pregnancy, we decided to go pumpkin picking one Saturday morning. I wanted to make sure we were able to keep our tradition of visiting one of our favorite local farms and picking out our own pumpkins. The kids were on board as soon as it was mentioned and we headed that way.



Just one of the reasons we love this farm. The view is spectacular no matter where you look.





We picked our pumpkins, one for each of us, and I was super impressed when Brad dragged the wagon full of children and pumpkins up the hill. It's good to have a strong daddy when we go on our adventures!

As part of miss L's OT she is supposed to engage in activities that give her a lot of tactile stimulation. One of these activities that both kids absolutely love is finger painting. Everyone loves getting their hands messy and between the two of them they can go through most of a packet of paper making their creations. With the two of them bound to the table I decided to take some photos.

Miss L is really growing up. Instead of just painting she wants to actually create pictures. This one is a butterfly made out of dots.

Not in focus, but a great expression...



Mister W is constantly being reminded to NOT eat the paint. It doesn't help much though.





Miss L's palette.





The aftermath:



That's what it's all about!

See you in October (and you know that one is gonna be big)!

August 2011

Hello! Remember me?! Think I'd forgotten you? I haven't. It's been really. busy. around. here.

I'm glad to be back though and since Brad is currently doing the dishes and miss L and mister W are downstairs playing and sweet little man is sleeping in his carrier (told you we'd been busy!) it seems like I have a few minutes to get this thing up to date. My last post was at the end of July so I'm just going to start where I left off and give you posts for each month I was gone. Then maybe I'll stay on this thing and keep it up to date! (maybe...)

Early August was fully of summer. I began my third trimester and we enjoyed not having to be anywhere. Mister W and miss L discovered the happiness of playing legos together and I enjoyed watching them play. Here you can see miss L's headphones for her auditory therapy. We were best friends with those headphones for awhile!



I do think that we enjoyed the awesome local produce we have here even more this summer than in the past. The farmer's market became our grocery store and we visited lots of farms to pick produce and we canned a LOT of it. The first weekend in August we visited a local orchard to pick peaches, raspberries and blackberries.





There is nothing like a fresh peach. Oh my goodness.



Miss L usually likes the produce that we pick ourselves or from the farmer's market (but not always what we get at the grocery store). Mister W loves produce from the grocery store, so he was in heaven eating peaches off of the tree. We usually have a one fruit per person rule while picking (since we basically aren't paying for anything we eat while picking) but I think that both kids had a couple of peaches. They were just so juicy and sweet! YUM!





I couldn't even get them to smile for a photo together because they were too busy.



At 29 weeks the new baby is bigger than a peach (or at least my belly is).



There was more fun that day, but sadly we didn't capture it. We dropped the camera (gasp!) and broke the lens. It was bad. We knew we needed something. After all I did not want to be caught without a lens when the new baby arrived. I ordered a prime portrait lens (prime meaning that it does not zoom in and out). When I received it, I realized that it didn't work with the auto focus on my camera so I decided to try it out to see if I could work with the manual focus. The advantage of this lens was that the aperture opens WAY up which is great for a variety of reasons!

Here are just some random photos that I took with the new lens:















We did decide that though we love the new lens, with the manual  focus it wasn't practical for shooting photos of our kids so we replaced the broken lens with another from craigslist.

In the meantime we missed a few things.

We attended music camp for the fourth year. It was such a blast!

Mister W was FINALLY baptized. It just took me 18 months to be able to do it. Before the twins were born I think I just had this vision of having them baptized together and I always regretted not having sweet baby Ben baptized before his death. I know that God welcomed him home regardless, but I would just have loved to have the ritual performed. With all of that sort of tied in to mister W's baptism it just became this thing with so much baggage involved. So in mid-August when I realized that unless I wanted to baptize mister W and the new baby together that we'd better get it done, we finally did it. It was a lovely bittersweet day for us and I am still shocked that mister W didn't cry at all.

We also celebrated my birthday by going out just the two of us. We went into the city and ate a lovely meal and went to see "Wicked" with some close friends. It was wonderful and since I had miss L's camera in my diaper bag (what, you don't take your diaper bag on a date?) we were able to take a photo of the two of us.



August seemed to be the month of birthday parties and luckily at least one occurred after the new lens purchase. We just had several to attend including one for our friend mister C.

He doesn't like the limelight.





Everyone likes presents!



Here's another random photo of my messy house and miss L with tickle mitts on her feet.



At the end of the month it was (of course) miss L's fourth birthday. I sort of can't believe that she could possibly be so old. We celebrated with a low key party for just a couple of close friends at home. It's what she wanted (though she wanted to invite everyone she knew, so she compromised on that to be able to have it at her house) and it was awesome.

I also can't believe that I was so big!



She wanted a ladybug theme and I made a shirt for her.

The biggest difference I noticed between this year and all the others is the speed at which miss L devoured her gifts. There weren't that many but she had them all open within a couple of minutes (tops). It makes me wonder what Christmas will be like!





After the party we played with toys (of course) and our timing was pretty awesome because we experienced our first hurricane (the week after our first earthquake). :o) Having a few new things to play with was just what we needed.



The rain really hit in the middle of the night and we didn't have any damage from Irene. The morning was a bit damp so we stayed indoors and played.





Miss L loves this dress.







Mister W loves a tutu. :o)



By evening the clouds had moved on and Irene left the most beautiful weather behind her. We took the opportunity to play in the yard. Apparently mister W just never got dressed?



They really are two peas in a pod. I pray they always have this relationship.

I wish one of these shots by the door had turned out, but that's okay.







We wrapped up August with a trip to a local farm park (more park than farm, really).

They climbed trees during our picnic lunch.







No matter how I tried I couldn't get anyone to sit for a photo and take me seriously. They just made faces at me.

This is miss L's grumpy face.



Silly face.



Another silly face.



AND another photo, but still no smiles. :o)



Finally we celebrated Brad's birthday with a homemade German Chocolate Cake. Yum!

Happy August. See you in September. :o)