Baby Prep

The baby's room is ready, the garden is put in, the house has been cleaned (a few times over), the yard work has been done (a few times over), the food has been bought and the clothes washed both many times over. Grandma Pat has come, and gone, yet where is the baby? He's still happily comfortable in Mom's tummy! Many walks have been walked, we even did some MC Hammer dancing and the Bunny Hop! It's almost comical. Not to diss walking or other natural labor inductions, but if you're body, or the baby, is not quite ready, you can do those things until you're blue in the face, and the baby will not come.

Luckily, we have our back-up plan. Jason is about to pick his mom and sister from the airport. They will have a crash course on the Victoria and Karissa schedule tonight and tomorrow, then it's off the the hospital bright and early on Tuesday to be pumped with pitocin, again. Unless, of course, baby decides his mom was right all along and he will come June 1, just like she said from the beginning.

Here's some pictures at Victoria's preschool graduation. It was very windy, so the paper grad hats didn't work too well!

Jason's Birthday

Jason's birthday was Friday. We celebrated it with a pizza special that included buffalo wings and bread sticks (of course I had to add veggies to the menu, I've got to keep the old hubby healthy!) We topped it off with his favorite-- carrot cake and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

He received new slippers, since his old ones had mouths and could talk, and a Chilean cookbook. He loves to experiment with cuisines from PR and Chile.

The best gift of all, in my opinion, was the fact that the doctor that day told me that I'm dialated to a "one" and am 80% effaced! So maybe this baby will come on his own after all!

Victoria is excited for cake.

Happy Mother's Day!

Victoria and Karissa each brought me flowers last night (they bought these ones with Daddy instead of picking them from the yard). Their faces were so cute when they gave them to me!

Today, Victoria wanted to serve me breakfast in bed, which wouldn't work with church starting at 8:30, so she brought me lunch in bed. It was so nice sitting in bed after church and eating while looking out the window at the blossoms on our tree! I'm sure Victoria and Karissa will help Jason make dinner tonight. I hope every mom feels as special on Mother's Day as I do!

My crown, from Aunt Auburn, says "Queen of Nice"

The Farm

We had the best field trip yet on Friday--we went to the Real Life Farm and had a dirty blast! It started with a hayride (which did not put me into labor as some people said it might, it was just not bumpy enough!) We then rode the horses and played on the playground, held baby farm animals like kittens, ducks, and bunnies, fed the babies and their parents, and milked a cow! Here are some of the cute pictures.

Karissa got to ride the pony.

The duck was eating my hair!

She was smiling at the goats, so cute!

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Here are some cute pictures of Victoria and Karissa with our blooming flowers. I try to keep them from picking all the flowers for as long as possible, though today, as you can see from their bouquets in the last pictures, they just couldn't resist anymore. The bouquets are a nice decoration for Mother's Day, at least. They also love all of our dandelions, which is good until they go to the weed-blow-around stage, then they get to blow the seeds around and we get to have the lovely "flowers" even more places!

"Tell the Story Of...."

These are Victoria's favorite words. Right now as I write this, she just said, "Tell the story of the princess." For the past few months she has wanted me to make up stories out of the blue about whatever is on her mind. Sometimes she does want me to tell her the story of The Little Mermaid or another known movie or story, but most of the time it is about something random. Like the time she said, "Tell the story of the bucket." The bucket? What bucket? Other common topics are: the butterfly, the princess, the flower, Yoda (our cat), Sponge Bob (don't even ask), and anything she is playing with at the moment. At least it allows me to use my oh-so-creative mind.

Lately I've been trying to encourage her to tell her own stories, which she does do. In fact, most of the time she takes over the story I start, usually because she doesn't like the way mine is going. One time she had a story going with all the characters known to her from books and movies. She was walking around, arms flailing, in her own story book world.

Last night Karissa was asking Jason to tell the story of the swan she was playing with. So now I'll have double duty. Who thought you would need a story teller's degree to be a mom?

Here's my creative cats on a stage at the museum.