The new baby carrier!

I just got this in the mail today, senty to me by my Mom. I have heard a ton of great reviews for this baby carrier. It's called Ergo. I have an Over The Shoulder Baby Holder that I've had since Isabella was a baby. My old one worked great for the first few months when the baby was little. But as they get bigger it makes for one sore shoulder and back! The Ergo is designed to put the weight of the baby on your hips, and spread it over both shoulders. I am soooooo excited to have received this wonderful gift!!! I have used my sling in the past for shopping trips. I put the second youngest in the cart and the youngest in the sling. Makes for easier shopping. Plus I use my sling to get things done in the house. Although I usually had to keep a soft hand on the sling as it always felt as if the baby was about to fall out. But I just tried on the Ergo and it is wonderful. It feels very secure. And I can truely be hands free with it on. So here are a couple of pics of Jedidiah and I with our new "toy". P.S. make sure to check out the next post, as it is Moira's birthday today!

It's Birthday time!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOIRA

So Moira turns seven years old today!!! Wow! I can hardly believe it. Moira could be a six year old all her life, as I really think it "fits" her. She is very excited to be seven. And is looking forward to celebrating her birthday this weekend when Jerry's parents will be here. She has taken a liking to poodles. Which of course is sooooo Moira. Moira is a girlie girl through and through! She loves frills and pink and baby dolls. All things girlie.

So here is Moira and her poodle:

The big sisters

Four big sisters. Hmmm, for his sake I hope we have another boy in thefuture! Ha, ha....Actually after the first initial couple of days the big sisters have been very helpful. Now they have their moments of terrorizing each other, but overall they have been very helpful. They have done laundry, vacuumed, picking up and getting diapers. Not to mention they give out a ton of kisses and hugs. Saoirse is really into wanting to tickle his little toesies. So I thought I would post some pics of them holding the little prince. They really want to show him off to everyone who has come by. We have been very blessed to have people from church bringing us dinner every other day!

Just a few pictures to share

Here are a few pics of the little man. The first one is of us ready to cut into the birthday cake that we made for the occasion. The girls decorated it with *lots* of colored sprinkles.

Ugh! I can't stand that I can't figure this darn posting pictures thing! Oh, well, you at least get a peek at him. You gotta love his little chicken legs (that's what we call all our newborn babies scrawny legs).

Baby has arrived!!!

It's A Boy!!!!!!!

It's official, we have our first baby boy! We are all thrilled to pieces. He's getting more love and attention than any baby could want or need! I am on Jerry's laptop, which has the habit of messing up my posts, so I will only post the bare minimum of details here for now.

The Lord was kind to answer sooooo many of my prayers. When he was born and we got a look at the placenta it was evident that he indeed needed to be born. It was the smallest placenta both midwives have every seen! Not to mention that it had started to break up! Praise God for modern day technology and midwives who know how use herbs to induce labor. My labor was induced here at home with herbs, and when it kicked in labor was only 2 and a 1/2 hours long!! Amazing.

Jedidiah was born at 6:05 pm on July 1st and was 18 inches long, weighing in at a "whopping" 5lb, 8oz! All our newborn clothes are too big for him! He looks just like Moira did as a newborn. When I get up and about I will post pictures of him. So be patient.

Praise God with us for a healthy baby!

I had an ultrasound done today

Now that might seem wierd as I am just days away from my due date, but I have been measuring small. So I went in to make sure everything was fine with the baby. The baby is measuring small, as far as the ultrasound is concerned the baby's weight estimate is 5 pounds 4 ounces! That's how "big" I was when I was born, but I was a few weeks early, and this one is just about full term. So the baby looks skinny and I have low amniotic fluid, which are all contributing to my small measurements. The doctor said the baby looks fine, just small. He feels it would be better for the baby to be born now. He will be calling my midwife and talk to her about it. So we'll see what happens from here. He knows we are planning a homebirth, and he didn't say that I shouldn't go through with it or anything like that. As a matter of fact he told me good luck and that he hoped the birth would go smoothly. He was a nice doctor, my age AND he's from Rochester! He went to med school in Buffalo, what a small world we live in. So that was neat. It was good to know that the baby is fine, now we just have to convice the baby it's time for it to come out. He did say that there is a phenomena right before the baby is born that it "throws off" water. He said that babies are smarter than we are and they know when they need to be born. So it may be this baby is gearing up to be born very soon. Both my sister and I have picked July 2nd as the baby's arrival. We shall see. I'll fill you all in as to what my midwives say we should do from here. I may just start increasing my herbal formula as it has uterine stimulants in it, but not before I talk to my midwife about it first.

Ok, I'm rambling now. I better make sure the house is in order (I've been keeping it in order, but I did do some sewing last night and that made a bit of a mess), and spend some time with the kiddos. We may go to the lake tomorrow. We've only been there once so far this season and they loved it. It would be a good way to pass some time and have fun with the family.

"Talk" to you all later!

Apron making

Well I saw this apron that someone made on another board and I loved the way it looked. I've wanted an apron that wasn't the bib kind, and was full length. This was it! I made it in two days, with lots of "help". Ha, ha. My nesting has winded down now and I feel like I am living normal life again. I got a ton of meals cooked for the freezer for after the baby is born. I have about two dishes each of the following: lazagna, chicken stuffing casserole, individual pizzas, cresent chicken, breakfast burritos, soft tacos, tuna calzones, beef stoganoff, twice baked potatoes and about 4 breakfasts worth of waffles. Plus about 3 snacks worth of yummy blueberry muffins. I would have had more, but we ate a bunch before I could get them in the freezer! I think we are well stocked. All that will need to be done is pre-heat the oven and pop in a frozen meal and voila, dinner! I wish I had this apron made before all that cooking as there is something about a pregnant tummy being a magnet for food spills.

We just got in Isabella's grammar book the other day. I ordered two school related items for the summer to work on a few things. We didn't do much grammar this year (although her year end test results came back and she tested very high for grammar), so I got a book that is pretty much self teaching. I will read over the information at the top of the page to make sure she understands the concept and then she'll work on the samples. The other item was called Math-it. It is a bunch of tricks and games to help them learn their math facts quickly and easily. I read over it the other day and even I learned some neat short cuts! If she can get a handle on knowing her math facts it will make next years math go sooooo much easier. The funny thing is she is able to pick up on the concepts really easily, but the drudgery of memorizing the math facts makes her work go sooooo slowly! On the other hand, Moira knows her math facts better than Isabella, but she has a harder time learning some of the concepts. Oh well. With Moira I plan on just playing some math war games and work on her reading. She is not as confident in her ability to read. She *can* read, she just thinks she can't. So going over some past lessons and having her read out loud this summer will help her out.

We've been having a lot of rain lately. I mean alot! Over 8 inches just in the past two weeks! Plus there is more on the way. I had been praying for rain as we were actually in drought conditions. But I think the drought is over! So we've been spending a lot of time inside. I am hoping to modify the apron pattern and make one for the girls. Isabella really wants to learn to sew and she would really like to help out making her own apron. She made the beginnings of some pin coushins out of the scraps of fabric I had. She used my sewing machine and is learning how to use it. She did very well.

Well I need to get the kiddos to nap. then I get to relax a bit. Something I will be trying to do more of before this baby comes! Here are the pictures of the apron, plus one of my belly. That baby is growing and is low! It's getting ready to make it's apperance.

Our Birthingroom

No, no sign of a baby coming yet. I just thought I'd show you all our birth room. Having a home birth means having more responsibility for the whole birth in general. I've had two hospital births and two homebirths so far. Our first homebirth we were a bit nervous of course. Seeing all the things we needed to gather and do for the birth. Which once you've gotten it all done doesn't seem so bad after that. And each one has gotten easier (to put together).

*As a side note to those in the family who have the belief that Jerry is making me have a homebirth against my will......NOTHING could be farther from the truth!!! He was the one that needed convincing. I wanted a homebirth with Moira but he was totally freaked out about the idea and wouldn't even consider it. But I persisted in educationg him on the safety of a homebirth and finally in the lst few weeks of Flannery's pregnancy he agreed. Now he's a total homebirth advocate :-) Much to my delight! I don't have the time right now to pull up all the incredible info on the safety of a homebirth, so for those concerned you can do a google search or wait until I find the time to post such information.*

I have just about two weeks and two days till the due date, so we are getting closer to the big day. I snapped a few pictures of our room to show you what we have set up for the birth. I can never seem to get captions worked out for the pictures. Someday I'll figure it out, but not today. So below you will find pics of the birth pool. Last time around we bought just a regular kiddie pool that worked great except for a few small details. Those details being that Jerry and the assistant midwife couldn't reach me to help me keep my legs back while pushing (I've been wanting a waterbirth ever since I was pregnant with Isa, and haven't had one for one reason or the other.) The other being that the sides were not meant to support a very pregnant woman in labor and we had a minor flood in our bedroom! Soooo this time around we went with a pool that was more designed for a water birth. Much more expensive than a kiddie pool, but I am hoping that this is the ticket to having a water birth. The other pics are of the paper bags filled with the towels, washclothes and receiving blankets. One of the exercise ball that I will use as a birthing ball. Then the last are of the top of my dresser that has the rest of the birthing supplies. I have it covered now and will uncover it on the day of the birth, to keep dust and little hands off the stuff.

We have housage Huston!

Finallly, it is here! The house that is! They had it sitting on our lot over the weekend and then set it on the foundation yesterday and today. We went over there this evening to check it out. The back door is only a few feet off the ground so we hoisted the girls up and took a look around. The funny thing is that it feels smaller than it looks on the inside. The outside looks monstrous, but inside it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, it;s still a whole lot of room inside, it just doesn't feel like it as there is not a lot of open space, except for the dining/ family room area. The girls were sooooo excited to see their rooms. The front of the house looks out to a bueatiful scene. Unfortunately the pictures do it no justice. So our room, the living room, and the girls' rooms face the front. So we will all have a lovely view to wake up to each day. There is a cabinet in the laundry room that we had no idea would be there, but I love it. It will be soooo nice to have somewhere to put my cleaning things and they will be out of the way. Right now my mop is in the front hall (in our current house, out in the open) and the mop bucket resides in the bathroom, again out in the open. This house was not built with practical living needs in mind.

Things seem to be getting ready for the baby to come. I can tell my hormones are having a hay day! UGH! The baby has dropped as well, although it will be interesting to see if it stays down. But I actually "shrunk". They measure your tummy each visit to see how the baby is growing and as it was I was measuring 4 weeks behind. This week I am measuring a whole centimeter behind what I was last week, putting me 6 weeks behind! Yikes! We feel it is due to the baby dropping and it's position. I am really praying for a small baby, hoping that a small baby will have a small head, making labor a bit more tolerable. I got all my birth supplies now. The girls have been banned from our room as we blew up the birth pool to let it air out and loose that plastic smell. But the girls think it is a bounce toy! I have to say it does look like a lot of fun, but I really don't want to have to make a repair before I even get to use it. Not to mention that this pool will be classified as a "birth pool only". It was a wee bit expensive. The last pool we got for Saoirse's birth was just a kiddie pool and after her birth and a good cleaning the kids used it for the summer, at which time it saw it's full use and was put out with the trash come the fall. But this pool will be packed away for future births. So I thought it would be fun to put up my "predictions" of the outcome of this birth. You can all join in as well. Here is how I think it will go: Birth date: July 2. Gender: boy. Weight: 6lb, 5 oz and length 20 in.
The girls and I made a chain link for the countdown to the baby's due date. They kept asking me multiple times a day when the baby was coming. I told them only God knows that. But they kept asking. So we made a paper chain to count down the days till the due date (which is July 10th). I am praying I do go early or I know I will go crazy with hearing little girls asking me about why the chain is gone, but on baby. I suppose then we will add a link for every day late the baby is.

Ok, it's getting late and I want to add the pics of the house. I think I most will be self explainatory. Some of the kitchen, some bedrooms, the unfinished upstairs.... It's too late for me to make any captions for them. But at least you can get a peek.

Our 4 divas!

Dresses and winter clothing do not stay put for long in this house. The girls are always trying to dress themselves up. So here are our divas.
We are STILL waiting for our house to be delivered. There has been one delay after another. Each day there is a reason they can not deliver it. Now yesterday was understandable as we got 7 inches of rain!!! So they are supposed to deliver it tomorrow and set it up on monday. I am not holding my breath. They have to get it in sometime I'm sure. But it is starting to feel like we will never move. That's ok as I have enough stuff to get done around here as it is. I have been packing a bit here and there. I am now gearing up to make and freeze a bunch of meals for us after the baby is born. I made up some waffles, bread, and tuna calzones yesterday. Today I plan on making about three or four beef recipes. Thankfully I made up a bunch of potato soup the other day so we can have left overs tonight.

First Pigtails

Saoirse was born with little hair. At the age of two, she still doesn't have much hair! All her sissies wanted to wear pigtails, and she came up to me with two hair ties to do her hair. Now for the past few days she asks for me to do her hair. The funny thing is that she is my only one who wants her hair done (comparing her to the others at the age of 2), but she doesn't have enough hair! Isabella had an abundance of hair at age 2, but would run at the sight of a brush. Oh well, we just have to work with what we got.

We are almost at the 4 week countdown to baby birthday. So we start the hunt for baby clothes. Washing them. Getting our bedroom ready for the birth. I can't believe it is getting so close. I am really enjoying feeling the baby move around and it always makes me a bit sad to think that soon this child will not be inside of me. But at the same time I am excited to meet this baby and see "who" it is. We are still working on a girls name. We will be testing our theory on our own "gender predictator". My theory is that we only can seem to find a name we really like in one gender. So far that has been a girls name. Except for this baby. The only name I am really loving is a boy's name. So I am predicting that this baby is a boy. But only time will tell if my theory is correct. If it is a girl, I am really hoping a name will pop out to me! I do like one, but it doesn't have that "pull" to me like my other girl's names did. That is how all the boy's names felt to me in the last 4 pregnancies. They just didn't sit right with me. It will be so exciting to see if this baby is a boy or girl.

Well things need to get done and children are asking for me to play with them. So I must be off.

New pregger pics

Well I thought I would show you all how much I've "blossomed"! Ha! Let's just say that by comparing my last pictures (in the March post) with these will show that I have gained!!! I truely don't think gaining some 35 pounds is very becoming. I look it and FEEL it! I walk a lot more slowly now. But I am also near the end. I will be 35 weeks on monday! I really can't believe it. I'm not sure if I'm ready or not. So many changes happening here that I can't comprehend another big change. Don't get me wrong, I am totally excited to meet this child and see who God has given us! But I seem so scattered brained. I realized that I will need to have everything ready in another two weeks! I bought most of the birth supplies yesterday. I still have to get the birth kit and the pool. Since I will be cutting it close to the 36 week mark I may have to order my 2nd choice of pools. But it will be cheaper. I liked my 1st choice because it was oval which may give me leverage during the pushing stage. We'll see, it depends on how quick they can ship it to me.

Ballet and foundations

How's that for a title! Ha, ha. Well things have been very busy around here. I was sick for two weeks, the kiddos started getting sick, Saoirse inhaled a small plastic bead up her nose (which neccesitated a trip to an ENT) and a whole bunch of other smaller things have occured.

As for the Ballet....Jerry and I take each girl on what we call "special time". It usually is just to get some ice cream or to the store or something small. But last month Jerry took Isabella to see the US Mens Soccer team play here in NC. A couple of weeks ago was Moira's turn. The funny thing was that we kept it a secret and while eating dinner (at the Macaroni Grill) and on the way to the auditorium he convinced her she was going to a football game. Too funny! She really believed him. They got inside and she saw all these posters of ballet and asked Jerry about them. He said, "Oh, they must do football and ballet here." It wasn't until they walked into the auditorium that she realised he was joking about the football. She got to see Cinderella. She LOVED it. They got home late, but she stayed up telling me all about it. Here is a picture of them right before they left.

They got our foundation put in! Yeah! Now of all the foundations I have seen being put in, this is by far the biggest looking! Yikes! We have a bit of slop that runs from the back down to the front. So the front of our foundation is anywhere between four and six feet. the bak though is only about two and a half to three feet high. They will be delivering the house on May 30th. We can't wait to see it! We are hoping to be able to watch them put it on the foundation. But with the amount of space and the amount of equipment they will have we may not be able to. We'll see. Here are the pictures: The one of me holding Saoirse is in the back of the house. The other two ar the front of the house. We will have lots of yard work to do as there are a ton of roots that were left behind from the lot clearing. We won't have a very big back yard at first as we will need to cut down some more trees at a future date. Although it still won't be that big. Our front yard is much bigger and our side yards are huge!

Birthday cake and buses

Well I wish I could say that Saoirse's b-day was a lot of fun. But the child was a basket case ALL day long!!! UgH! She fell asleep in the evening, even with a nap, and when she woke up she was worse than she had been all day. Then today she has started sneezing, and so I am assuming she is coming down with something. She was very happy with her new doll, at least for a few minutes.


We spent most of the day cleaning the "new" van. It was pretty dirty. We took our first ride in it this morning to church. Let's just say it's a good thing I don;t have a history of pre-term labors!! Oy! Looks like we will need to replace some shocks. But the girls LOVED it. They were sooooo excited. They think it's a bus. Just think all we have to do is give it a coat of yellow paint....and they can have the experience of riding a school bus. Hee, hee.

How to hold a crochet yarn

Or at least how I hold it :-)

Our baby turns 2 today!!

UGGH!! I lost my post!! I had it all ready to put up and I hit the wrong button. Boo hoo.

Our baby truns 2 today!! Where does the time go? We gave her one of her two gifts this morning. IT's an ABC puzzle. She loves puzzles. This one says the letter and the picture when you put the piece in place. It freaked her out at first, but she loves it now. We will be celebrating with a "My Little Pony" cake tomorrow. She picked it out herself when we were at Walmart. We have to wait until tomorrow since Jerry won't be here this evening. He's driving to pick up our "new" van!! New to us that is. We will finally have working A/C and heat!! Woo hoo!! Plus we will have PLENTY of room to grow into as well seeing as how it's a 15 passenger van. I'll be driving a bus!

Saoirse is growing up into a big girl. She finally talks now. She is my big helper. she loves to do dishes and laundry with me. She is actually very good at folding all the dish towels and wash clothes, no joke!! She loves to look at books and color. She loves to play with her sisters, and will play pretend with them. Right now as I write she is pretending to be a dog. Not like we don't have enough of those around here as it is. Actually we only have two puppies left, ours and one to sell still. We kept a black female that we have named Shiloh. She is a fearless thing!! Cute as a button and will keep us on our toes for some months to come I am sure.

Well we are off to empty the contents of our van so that Jerry can take it up to get the new van. He is making a trade in. We'll miss our light blue van. I'll post picks of our new bus, er, I mean van and some pics of Saoirse blowing out her candle tomorrow.

Our land!!

We went out to our land! We had the closing on thursday and it is by the grace of God that we actually closed! There were sooooo many things that were going wrong right up until the last hour till we were to be at the lawyers. But then the actuall signing went very smoothly and quickly. So today we went out to take some pics. Plus we picked up a "few" ticks along the way. Yuck. I knew that would probably be the case so we had stopped by the store to pick up some bug wipes. I am sooooo very glad we did or we would have been covered in them. They were all hanging out on our ankles and didn't go any further due to the bug wipes. I had so many I just decided to throw out my socks as I was getting fed up with trying to kill them all.

We did meet our backyard neighbor........and lets just say......hmmmm......well he was a character. He was freaked out that we were on his land. We were at the creek on the bridge and on the one side is our land and on the other side is his land. We had our dog with us and Jerry (who was talking with him up the way) called out to make sure our dog didn't come his way. Ends up the guy has a pit bull and he didn't seem friendly from what the guy said. My first reaction was, well if he doesn't keep him contained and I see him, well there will be one less dog in the world. We ourselves have had a pit bull and she was the sweetest thing, but I won't mess with one that the owner doesn't feel safe around other people! The creek on our side has a lot of fallen trees over it and so we will spend a bunch of time trying to cut them up so the girls can be sure to be on our side of the land. The neighbor doesn't mind if we are just playing around right there by the bridge, he just doesn't want us to come up towards his house (which you can hardly see from the bridge). But we will be good neighbors and try to keep on our side of the line. Ok, with out further waiting I will upload the pictures. They alway load differently each time so I will try to caption them after I add them, but there's not telling how it will come out.

Ok, I just loaded the pics and everything came out totally different! I will have to work on figuring out how to manipulate the text and pics to look decent and orderly. So here is description of the pics:
top right: Isabella at the creek.
2nd row on left: Us going down to the bridge, Jerry is taking the picture up by the one corner of the property and our property runs right down the path, past the creek and on about another 100 feet.
2nd row on right: The two orange stakes are the left side of the house.
next going down: Standing in front of our property lokking up to the main road. The dirt road is the easment that allows us and our neighbor to get to our houses.
next: Us at the creek with the crooked bridge.
third: We are walking from the easment towards the house area (the house will be towards the left).
last: The orange flag on the left is one edge of teh property, looking down along the property front. Where the road curves out land keeps going into the woods. The curve goes down to our neighbors house and pond.

So there you have it. We are excited it is getting on its way. The guy who will be clearing our land will be there next week. We are only clearing the area right around the house and driveway. So we will have a very small open yard. We plan on clearing a bit more each year until we have what we want cleared (for a garden and swing set).

Pregger pics

Ok, I thought I would put up some pictures of the pregnant lady who resides here. They are not the best as I was trying to instruct Isabella on what she was supposed to be doing, like keeping her fingers off the lens. Not to mention the batteries were going on us and we had to fiddle with the camera to cooperate for just one more pic. Anyways you can see how "big" I am. That's in quotes only because by now I am usually getting all sorts of comments on when I am due etc. But no stranger has noticed that I am pregnant yet. I am carrying this baby VERY different than my other 4, hence it must be a boy. Well that's my guess anyways. I am so convinced it's a boy that I have started buying one pack of boys clothing when I go grocery shopping at super walmart! And if it's a girl.....well she can either wear some new blue clothes or we exchange them or give them away for baby shower gifts for people who actually are having a boy. I have gaine like 20 pounds already!!!!! That puts me on target for a 45 pound weight gain like I have with the last two. I have to say I am no looking forward to that, it only means more for me to take off after the baby. But that being said I can't help eating when I am sssooo hungery! So I eat and it shows! Ha ha. Oh well, tis only a short season.


I wanted to take some pics of the puppies as well, they are getting bigger and cuter by the day. The girls have named them all! All 11 of them! They are starting to play now. So when I go into the pen area they all come up trying to bite your ankles and pant legs. Plus they try to get out as soon as you open the door! The little sneaks. Since the camera ran out of batteries I'll have to take the pics later.

I also need to go and take some pics of the land we are getting for the house. Jerry found a small wooden bridge that crosses the small creek that runs through a corner of the property. I can tell that is where the girls will be wanting to spend all their outside play time.

Happy Valentines Day

We were supposed to have a tea party this week. But things have been a wee bit crazy. A lot of driving around looking for land. Oh, wait, I'm not sure if I've told everyone all that has happened in the past few weeks. Lets see the short of it is:
Back in Jan. Jerry lost his job, then four days later our landlord calls to tell us they are going to sell the house. Then Jerry got a job, and we have been trying to find some land to put a modular house on. Normally it is cheaper to buy an older home. Unfortunately this isn't the case this time. Well....I should clarify we are trying to find a decent size house on about 3 acres of land. Sounds pretty easy, except that this whole areas real estate is totally different than a few years ago. We couldn't find anything around here and at first our only option was going to take us MUCH longer to get to church and a MUCH longer drive to work for Jerry. No fun. So today Jerry calls and says some land just came on the market and would I want to check it out. I thought it would be another let down and really didn't want to go. But along the way I came to peace about the land that was far away (that we needed to just decline) and as I turned onto the "street" I was totally shocked. It;s bueatiful. We are getting all the details on it and we plan on going ahead with it. the awsome thing is that it is the same distance to everything we know! Yeah! Obviously we are not counting our chicks before they hatch. But this is a most promising opportunity. Plus on top of all this it looks like a new job opportunity has come up, a permenant one!!! We are very thankful.

Wow, I'm tired from just typing it all out. Ha! So change is in the air. I am praying the whole house thing works out perfectly before the baby is born. I am 19 weeks now! I have been feeling the baby move for the last week and a half. I love it!

Well I need to catch some Zzzz's. There is a lot of work to be done around here.