Last week my younger brother spend a few days with us. We had a great time! He was a huge help to me and played with Sweet Pea whenever I needed him to. He also ran errands with us and kept Sweet Pea occupied the whole time. Whenever Charles got home from work we would all head to the pool and Charles and my brother would throw Sweet Pea around. He had a blast! Sadly all the pictures I have from his visit are from my cell phone when we were at restaurant play place. But here they are!

I am now 37 weeks along in my pregnancy. At my 36 week appointment I was 3 centimeters dilated and this week I am 4 centimeters. The doc says it could happen anytime or I could still make it to 40 weeks! Who knows?!

Yesterday Sweet Pea got stung by a bee! Well…it could have been a wasp or a hornet. We aren’t completely sure. We just know it was a sting of some kind. And that is a first you want to put off as long as possible. It was a little scary because he was just playing in the grass and was all of a sudden screaming. When I picked him up he was kicking his legs in pain. He finally calmed down enough for me to find the sting and it was already swelling pretty good. My aunt is in town and she came to our rescue with her first aid kit. For stings there is a homeopathic medicine called apis mellifica. It is amazing! Within the hour we couldn’t even find the sting on his foot and he never complained about it again. Although he does remember it happening. Whenever we walk by the spot in the grass he says “bee sting!”.

Charles is still enjoying his first grad school class. He is devouring all information he can about education. So if you know of any good books let us know! We have also known for a while that he needs surgery on his knee and we finally made an appointment to figure all that out. So hopefully by Thursday we will have a surgery scheduled.

Our lease on our apartment is up July 31 and we finally decided to renew the lease. Much to our excitement we were able to negotiate a lower rent! So now that we know we are staying we have begun rearranging to try to make the most of our 850 square feet. With two little ones we are going to need all the space we can get and we are trying to figure out the best way to not waste any.

That is all for now!

The past two weeks or so all we hear out of Sweet Pea’s mouth is “my turn!!!”. He wants to do everything by himself from putting on his clothes to buckling up his carseat. He no longer wants to help daddy stir the pancake batter, he now wants to do it himself. Even though it can get complicated at times I love this development. It’s fun to help him realize what he can do. Of course this has made us late on several occasions when we didn’t allow for time for him to not only want to put his own clothes on but also his diaper (and let me tell you that one is a hoot).

Last week he decided he no longer wanted us to wash his hair. So our new routine is pouring a tiny bit of shampoo in his hands and watching him scrub himself clean.

No matter how many kids come after him, he will always be my baby.

A good friend of mine from church knows that I am going to be attempting to have this baby naturally, with no medications. So she lent me this book called Adventures in Natural Childbirth. The book is filled with birth stories of women whose goal was the same as mine, a non-medicated birth. I just finished the book and I would highly recommend it to any pregnant woman, even if a natural birth has never crossed her mind. It is filled with real women’s hopes and fears and accomplishments. It is very easy to relate to each one of them and it gives me the confidence that I can do it too.

The book is broken down into four sections: birthing naturally with a midwife, birthing naturally with a physician, birthing naturally with a doula, and birthing naturally unassisted. It makes it very easy to find women who fit your situation and see how their stories played out. I jumped straight to the physician section because I knew those were the stories I needed to hear. I needed to hear that it can be done in a hospital and you are allowed to stand up to hospital staff when they disagree with you. It also gives great ideas on what to do once you get to the hospital. One woman wrote a short version of her birth plan to give to the nurses. Once the nurses found out she wanted to do a natural birth a few of them didn’t want to be put on her service. Now this sounds harsh, but I would rather find the nurse that actually wants to help me at the very beginning of labor vs. having conflict during labor. This lady ended up with wonderful nurses who supported her because she planned ahead.

It is also interesting to read about other people’s choices and how they are different from mine and why they went a certain route. I am doing a VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean), so I knew from the beginning I wanted to be at the hospital. But it is still very inspiring to read stories about women who have given birth at home and other places.

Sweet Pea loves to dress up!!! I am constantly finding him in hats, our shoes, and our clothes. Unfortunately I hardly ever have to the camera ready to capture the new look he has come up with. Here are two I did manage:

It’s time for me to seriously get a dress up box going.

A few days ago we came back from the store and Sweet Pea wanted to help put things away. He insisted that he could carry the huge box of tide all the way from the front door to the kitchen. I was a little skeptical because that thing is heavy! But he picked it up…and carried it all the way to the kitchen grunting like a football player the whole way. Of course he took it to his kitchen and not mine…but I was proud anyway.

My mom was here the past couple of days and Sweet Pea had the best time! They read and played pretty much the whole time. Here was one of the games they came up with:

Sweet Pea set up all his friends at the little table and he and Nana cooked for them! Sweet Pea went back and forth from his kitchen set multiple times cooking new items for them to try. It was great fun to watch!