Catching Up Is Hard to Do

As usual, lots of pictures...

Noah's school picture, Kindergarten

He picked out his own outfit, for the record. They got an exemption from "standard school attire" and yet both of mine basically chose to wear it anyway...although Noah's shirt wouldn't have passed since it has stripes, but he chose a collared shirt, after complaining about having to wear one for the previous 123 school days.

Madeline's school picture, 2nd grade

Madeline insisted on fixing her own hair. In fact, she had me braid her hair the night before so that it would be wavy for the pictures. Notice the bang-ettes that she has sticking out there. No, of course she didn't get annoyed by hair hanging in her face because she did not pull her hair back one day like her mama told her to and decide to create those herself at school while she was supposed to be doing her schoolwork. Why would you think such a thing?

Noah loves his Leapster. This is him playing one of the 3 new games he got for his birthday. He was showing it to Poppi yesterday, and Dani mentioned that he does love his video games. He quickly corrected her that it is NOT a video game, it helps him LEARN. See, the brainwashing has worked so far! By the way, this picture was before the much-needed haircut of '08.

Over Spring Break, I had high hopes of sleeping in letting the kids watch tv all day being a good mom and doing some fun things. Fortunately, Dani came home and rescued took the kids to her house for 3 days, so I can still imagine that it would have been possible for me to do all those fun things I was planning! I let the kids each have a special day where they got to pick the "theme" of the day. The pictures above are of Noah's day, which centered around the PBS show, Word World. Which was great. Because a kindergartener should be all about words and letters and such. Except that I have never actually watched Word World, so I had no idea what he was talking about. Fortunately, Target exclusively carries Word World paraphernalia of all kinds, so I was able to check it out on my hourly daily weekly visit. I had plans for an art project but we settled for watching Word World (I know, could I be more creative?) and making letters of our names out of homemade store-bought pizza dough. They did really enjoy that, and I should do fun (simple) things like that more often with them.

Madeline's was "American Girl", which meant we had petit fours and lemonade like one of the girls in one of the books, and, because she was a super-reader and read THREE American Girl books--and remembered that, OH YEAH, she does like to read after all-- we rented Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, which was such a good movie. I assume this is true, although I opted out of actually watching it with them in favor of doing something productive like watching Oprah doing laundry baking homemade bread doing pregnancy Pilates window shopping on Ebay. And I have no pictures. And there was also supposed to be an art project associated with this, but tv and food are obviously more our speed.

Jack's day was supposed to be Batman/Superman, which I was going to parlay into a "colors" theme, which was also supposed include an art project. I know you're not believing me about the art projects now, but I have the washable paint, brushes, and posterboard stashed in my closet to prove it! I don't think we got to any of Jack's day, but that's what happens when you're the 3rd child. But I do have 17 colors of jello in my pantry. See, I have plans.

"I know you put me to bed 30 minutes ago, complete with 5 rounds of 'Old Macdonald', 7 minutes of prayer assuring God that I am NOT scared of ducks, shadows, or my closet, a sip of water, a trip to the potty, washing my hands, various types of kisses (the Batman kiss, the dinosaur kiss, the pterodactyl kiss, the ee-ii-ee-ii-oooooo kiss), and some silliness about if I get up, I'll get a spankin'....but I AM JUST SO CUTE I could not bear to keep me away from you any longer. Really, Mommy, you deserve me."

Spring has sprung, at least around here! I hope to post some of Madeline's nature photography soon. These were mine, taken with my Canon PowerShot A720IS that I bought myself for my birthday. It's no SLR camera, but it has good (meaning easy to adjust) manual options, should I ever actually learn enough about photography to use them. Really, it's on my to-do list. But for now, the auto setting works pretty well!

This is Madeline prepared to brave the 55 degree weather to play. She wanted to document that (1) she is wearing both a t-shirt AND jacket bedazzled IN PINK with "Princess" and (2) wearing her Hello Kitty sunglasses on her head make her look like her mama. And her mama would like to point out that she is pretty thrilled that her daughter still purposely does things to look like her mama. And it almost makes me forget how I dislike those bang-ettes. But who wouldn't love this precious little princess??!!

My 30 week (actually 31 1/2 weeks, but you would be shocked if I was not late, wouldn't you?) appointment went well. Except that my OB, a self-proclaimed "Nervous Nellie"--although he's a man, so would that be "Nervous Norman"??--was concerned that the "gas and bloating" I've been experiencing since he put me on iron supplements, and the corresponding colace and metamucil, could be contractions. Just so you don't worry, it was just gas and bloating, and the general crampiness of the 3rd trimester. He "checked" my cervix, which is high and tight, as it should be, and the heartbeat was normal on the doppler. He then put me on the monitor for 15 minutes (lying flat on my back), which showed nothing, except that when the baby kicked, it kind of went up. Which could, in some circumstances, be construed as a contraction. So, I was sent for an ultrasound, to check my fluid (I feel like a car) and cervix, and again got to lay flat on my back for 30 minutes or so. Everything was fine. And I even got some cute pictures of the fat little boy. Except that he kept his hands (and at one point a foot) up over his face the whole time!

By the time we got to the 4D pictures, after she'd checked EVERY SINGLE part of his body and mine, I was really feeling bad because I had not eaten since breakfast AND I had been on my back for about 45 minutes. Not a good combo. So, although the ultrasound showed everything was peachy, I was sent to the hospital (attached to the dr's office) to be monitored AGAIN (an additional 20-30 minutes flat on my back) with the possibility of getting a shot of something to stop the imaginary contractions. Fortunately, the L&D triage nurse had a clue and recognized that I was NOT having any contractions, so she called my dr and he agreed I did not need the shots. But, long story short--too late for that--everything is fine, I'm now pre-registered at the hospital, and I now am the proud owner of a prescription for pills to take should I start having contractions early. Which, in a few weeks, judging by the fatness of those cheeks and arms, might not be such a bad thing. We may be looking at a record-setting birth weight here, folks. Jack holds our family record at 10 pounds even. So I'm pretty much praying to go into labor a little early...as opposed to the eleven day overdue Noah! Lord, help me!