Since Kolby had roseola when Eli was born and Kolby and Eli had strep throat when Camden was born, I kept wondering if we would stick to our pattern of the older children have a contagious illness whenever I have a new baby, but Isaac seems to be holding out to arrive after everyone at the house is healthy. I have had a few times this week when I felt contractions, once when I wondered if it might lead to labor, but even though they were strong and pretty close together, it didn’t last for too long. Michael’s sister, Mel, had her baby boy, Kyler, on Friday (her due date was supposed to be 3 days before mine), and I thought maybe Isaac would come that day too, but was kind of disappointed when the contractions stopped. But it won’t be too much longer – from today, there are 9 more days until my due date (11 days until I will be induced, if it goes that long). I can handle that – I feel like I’ve been very patient with this pregnancy, unlike my pregnancies so far when I have gotten to the last month and just couldn’t wait to have the baby right away. But I am still crossing my fingers that it will somehow work out for me to have the baby early or late enough so that I can participate in the Halloween celebrations with the kids. I was telling Michael this morning that Halloween is a big holiday. As far as rating holidays on how important/fun they are for me to experience them with our children (and not taking into account how significant I think the reasons for the holidays are or how much I enjoy spending time with Michael or other family on those holidays), I think that Halloween would be tied with the 4th of July, right after Christmas. [I don’t know if that made much sense – Michael asked me about Thanksgiving when I told him that, and I said that Thanksgiving is important and the kids enjoy certain traditions we have like decorating cookies to look like turkeys, but it is a holiday that we have always spent our married life with friends, and Halloween is all about our kids and nothing else. So, not to make any other holidays seem less important, but I really love watching our kids dress up in their costumes, carve pumpkins, and trick-or-treat, so I hope I don’t have to miss that].
Well, let’s see, what else did we do this week? On Monday, after we did a family home evening lesson with the boys, we went to the Hymas’ house for Chelsey’s birthday party. We got her a wand, tiara, and feather boa so that she could be her favorite princess – I have fun buying girly gifts for our friends’ kids, since I don’t get to pick out cute pink things that often. On Wednesday night Kolby had his swimming lessons.
After Kolby’s lesson we dropped the boys off at the Hedgecock’s house and had a fun, inexpensive date night. We went over to the Hymas’ house, and they had already put their girls down to bed, and we played Nintendo Wii games. Michael’s parents told us that they would give us some money if there was anything specific we wanted for a Christmas gift for our family, and Michael has been talking about a Wii video game system, which I was not so sure about. I thought it sounded like more fun than normal video games, because you use the remotes like sports equipment to play the games – so you are standing and swinging your arms like you are playing tennis, bowling, golfing, etc. I think that games like that are better than ones that you just sit in front of, and I would prefer sports games to any kind of violent video games, but I am still not a big fan of most video games because of the time that can be spent on them, and the cost. So the Hymases invited us to come try it out, and it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the tennis game the most, although I wasn’t the greatest at any of the games (and my arm was quite sore from swinging that remote for 3 days afterwards – I guess that shows how out of shape I am). But after playing that night, Michael said that he thought maybe we should choose something else for Christmas, because he thought a Wii might take up too much time, especially once he has a busier schedule when he starts his residency next year, and he hasn’t mentioned it since then. It was a really fun date night, though. I really don’t mind video games (the ones that aren’t violent), but I do prefer them at someone else’s house, so we can go and enjoy them, and then come home and not have the temptation of spending too much time playing them.
On Thursday afternoon I left the kids with Michael, since he was home sick, and went to my doctor’s appointment. [Hey if any of our friends here in Milwaukee are pregnant and looking for a good doctor, I would highly recommend Luverda Martin – she is a midwife at Froedtert Hospital. She has been great – I have had a different doctor or midwife with each pregnancy, and I will stick with Luverda from now on as long as we live here. When I first considered seeing a midwife, I wondered if it would be weird, but I thought I’d try it out and then just switch doctor’s if I didn’t like it. But my midwife is not weird at all – she has given me “normal” care like any doctor I’ve had – I’m not into herbal stuff or home remedies or things like water births, which I thought a midwife might suggest, and I was definitely not interested in someone who didn’t fully support my decision to have an epidural – and she has never suggested anything to me that seemed different than a normal doctor. She is very personable and she has always made herself easy to contact if I have any questions, and she has a couple young children of her own, so it doesn’t faze her at all when I bring all of my kids into the appointment with me. Anyway, I just think she’s great, so if anyone is looking for a good doctor, you have my recommendation.] Back to the point – I went in for my appointment on Thursday and all is well with the baby. I was measuring normal and she said that the baby’s heart rate is starting to go down a little, just like they would expect since the baby is preparing to be born. And I had her strip the membranes – which is supposed to help the baby come, if your body is ready for labor – I don’t know if I really think it helps or not. With Kolby they did it, and then he was induced a week later, so it didn’t seem to do anything. I don’t remember them doing it with Eli. And with Camden they did it and then he was born 2 days later (2 days before his due date). So, I figured it couldn’t hurt, but I haven’t gone into labor yet, so I guess it didn’t do much this time around. Oh well.
On Thursday night my friends threw me a little baby shower at Sandra Simon’s house. We had desserts and everyone just had fun socializing. I told them that I felt like we didn’t really need anything for the baby this time, so I didn’t need any gifts, but they decided to throw a “pamper Stephanie” party, and most people brought things like nice lotions and body washes and stuff like that, which was fun. It was really nice to get together with friends and have a fun night out, just talking, sharing stories about being a mother and wife, and laughing together.
On Friday Kolby got to go to school again after missing it all week because of his strep throat – he was really excited to go again. And that night we had the little birthday party for Kolby. Michael and I spent the whole day cleaning the house and preparing for the party – and I was pretty worn out by the end of the day (even though I know he felt pretty lousy with being sick, I’m glad Michael still found the energy to help me clean up, because it was a lot of work to get everything done that I wanted to, and it felt really nice after we had finished). Kolby was excited about his Tigger Halloween costume, and so when I asked him what he wanted for his party theme, he said Tigger. We took orange ribbons and curled them and hung them from the ceiling like bouncy Tigger tails, blew up balloons for the kids to play with, and played pin-the-tail-on-Tigger. I used half a container of yellow food coloring and half a container of red to turn the frosting for the cake a bright orange color like Kolby asked. And I got a little set of plastic Winnie the Pooh characters that I used to decorate the cake, and then the boys got to have them as toys afterwards. Kolby was so excited about his friends coming over and the gifts that he got. The one thing we forgot was to hand out the little goodie bags that the boys helped me make at the end of the party – so we still have a big bowl of goodie bags sitting out in our living room, I guess we will have to give the candy from the bags out to any trick-or-treaters that visit.
On Saturday morning I went to the church for our Super Saturday enrichment activity, and among other things I did a project where we etched our name on the bottom of our glass dishes. I think they turned out well, although I signed up to do 4 dishes when most other people just did 1, so it took me a lot longer than I had planned.
Church went pretty well. The boys did a good job. Camden has trouble because he gets so tired while we are at church – if we were at home he would just lay down in his crib and cry to sleep for a few minutes, but there is no place for that at church, so he kind of has a rough time. But what we heard of our lessons was good and Kolby’s and Eli’s teachers said that they both did well in their classes. Camden spit up a couple times at the end of church after he had his cup of milk – I am wondering if he has some kind of lactose intolerance. I mentioned to the doctor on Monday that he had started spitting up again for about a week, (which is strange because Camden spit up a lot with the formula, and then stopped entirely when we switched him to whole milk about 3 months ago). The doctor thought it might have something to do with him having a little cold or being sick this week (because milk can cause you to have more mucous when you have a cold), and suggested not giving him any milk for a few days to see if it stopped. I got a bottle of soy milk and he didn’t spit up once with that. But I figured that now since he is over his cold, he should be fine on whole milk again. I don’t know – I guess we’ll have to talk to the doctor about it and see what we need to do to find out if it is any kind of allergy or if it might be something else.
Well, there is a roast cooking for dinner and Michael is off home teaching right now. I can hear the boys in their rooms waking up from their naps. Tonight we are having a new family in the ward, the Gittins, over for dinner. They have a little boy and a little girl, so it should be fun for the kids to get together and for us to get to know them better. Hope you are all having a nice Sunday!
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