Yohan

Tuesday marked one month since giving birth to my second boy, Yohan. I know im biased, but isn't he adorable?

My first was born a week early and I (stupidly) thought my second would be early as well. I spent that last week certain I was in labor nearly every evening. My mom was in town and we would watch Father of the Bride 2 or Columbo while she rubbed my feet then I would go to bed thinking, "this is it". Every night we reminded Elijah that we might not be there in the morning and every morning he would come in disappointed we were there... without his little brother. I am sure I was more disappointed than he was. I was beginning to get rather grumpy despite the fact that it wasn't even to my due date yet. This is us on Wednesday. I was so sure I was in labor. but was only 2 cm....

I tried to eat a whole pineapple to bring labor on, but all I got was a raw mouth and angry stomach.

Finally on Friday afternoon I realized my contractions were consistent again so i began timing them. After about 2 hours of them being 3 or 4 minutes apart we left for the birth center. I wanted to stay home longer as it felt more natural to me to labor at home. Last time we had a home birth and it just seems like the right place to be. However, I knew my parents were worried I wouldn't leave in time and would have the baby at home. Unattended. No thanks :O)

Also, bad weather was coming so it made sense to head out.

Before we left my mom rubbed my feet between contractions and then my dad prayed for me and the baby. Those are two of my favorites moments in this experience. So thankful to have had them here.

I was not nearly as far along as I had hoped by the time we got to the center, but I was far enough for us to stay. I look back on those first few hours fondly. I was the only one in labor so we had the place to ourselves. We walked the halls, stopping for contractions and frozen grapes. By the way, I highly recommend frozen grapes as a snack during labor.

We had a photographer there and she captured some really beautiful pictures from the labor. These are some of my favorites.

A few hours later the bad weather arrived. There were tornados just outside of town, some not too far from where our photographer lived, which brought some anxiety to all of us. I knew Elijah and my parents were fine, but I still worried some. It was quite surreal being so far into labor (9cm) and watching an electrical storm light up the sky through the glass french doors. I am certain this slowed my labor down. I don't know how long I was stuck at 9cm for, but it was a number of hours. Our sweet photographer ended up needing to go home before the delivery, but I am so thankful for the pictures that she got. Mike was amazing the entire time and I feel like many of the pictures she took really capture that. I don't know how he knows what to do, but he does. Seriously, he is a better birth partner than I would be.

It wasn't until after they broke my water, which I am generally not an advocate of, that I progressed to 10cm. My main memories of the labor experience after that point are of me loudly calling out to God to "PLEASE GET THIS BABY OUT" no joke. I was so quiet and calm with my first labor and this time I think I spent a couple of hours pleading with the Lord out loud to pull him out. Right.Now.

And then it happened. At 2:20am my sweet little boy was born. Pulling him up out of the water and onto my chest was amazing. It is bizarre the energy rush you get after giving birth. I went from falling asleep sitting up in the birthing tub between contractions to being wide awake and excited within minutes. The first thing the midwife pointed out when I lifted him up from the water was his chin dimple. I still can't get over how much I love that dimple. My guess is I never will.

He was 8 pounds 14.5 ounces when he was born and 22"long. Plus, he was born on his due date!

Sadly, we didn't think to have anyone take a picture of us just after he was born, but we do have these two. In the first one I am on the phone with my dad telling him about the birth. It's not a great photo but I like it and the second is right before we left the center.

My parents got to stay with us a full week after he was born and this was a HUGE help. I am so thankful for that time with them.

Then the next weekend my sister and her kids got to come stay with us and that was so wonderful as well. It was so fun having all 5 cousins together.

He is now a month old and on one hand I feel like time has flown by, yet at the same time I cannot imagine not having him here. There is a small part of me that remembers how good I had it sleeping through the night and doing whatever I wanted much of the time with just an independent 4.5 year old to hang out with, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Yohan is sweet with a raspy voice. He is wide eyed and is curious about what goes on around him. He has just started intentionally smiling this week and most of his smiles are reserved for his big brother. You can already tell he looks at Elijah differently than he looks at everyone else. It is beyond precious.

With the assistance of Mike, Yohan spent much of his third day in the outside world inside of this dump truck being pushed around by Elijah who "delivered" him to us over and over. Then we did a similar picture with our photographer :o)

Elijah loves being a big brother. He loves to hold him, bounce his baby seat, and even helps clean up his ever present spit up, which I don't even like to do.

I am tired and sometimes a little cranky and I miss having a personal space, but I am thankful and happy and so blessed to have such a wonderful group of family and friends and especially my beautiful boys.

Our first family photo.

And last but not least, just for kicks, a picture of our tree that fell over, bounced off the house and onto our fence during the storm. Thankfully it didnt do too much damage to the house, especially since my parents and Elijah were in the room where the tree hit.

*our photographer is Emma and if you live in the Knoxville area, she comes highly recommended!*

Easy, Fast Fun with the Boy

So I am realizing more and more how fast and easy it can be to do fun things with kids. Thanks to my parent's being teachers and good at encouraging that kind of thing and thanks to far too much time spent on the internet, specifically pinterest, it has been rather easy for me to pull up projects or crafts to do with Elijah that make the day special. And, honestly, that entertain him and prevent tears over the fact that i cannot play wrestle or cars for hours on end. Or even minutes at this point. Today was a day where I decided to do multiple projects throughout the day until my husband got home.

-5 minute project: First things first, we made an Ant Restaurant.

I saw got the idea from this site, which i use as a resource often. We raided the kitchen and picked out 6 foods for the ants varying from honey to avocado to leftover spanish rice. Then we came up with a hypothesis of what we thought the ants would eat the most of on the menu and what they would eat the least of. We took it outside and put it in the sun. We checked on it throughout the day and after 6 hours of business and not a single customer in sight, we decided it was still too cold for ants. Kind of a bummer, but it was still fun. And it took... maybe five minutes. At most.

-5 minute project: Next up, we turned our hallway into a road. Well, it already served as one for all kinds of cars, remote controlled and otherwise, today we just made it look like one. I wanted to give him some inspiration to play on his own and i saw some tape sitting on the desk. So we took a few minutes to make this.

I didn't even do the middle line, i just ripped it off and he laid it down, which he thought was totally fun. He used this road over and over today, including while i took a 40 minute nap. Well, he probably was only using the road for half that time, but either way, I got a nap! Tomorrow I think I will turn it into a "school time" thing by adding letters and numbers to the pieces of tape in the middle. Not sure exactly what we will do with that, but certainly there are all kinds of ways to make it educational!

-3, 10, and 10 minute projects: One of the biggest hits today was his new pirate sword. It is one of the most basic things you can do and he was thrilled. He found a big(ish) stick and a smaller stick. I used some twine to tie them parallel and viola! A new pirate sword, rugged style!

We continued with the pirate theme by making this spyglass. Basically you cut a hole out of a paper or plastic cup, stick a toilet paper tube through the hole, and decorate! We skipped a couple of the things on the directions from the site just cos our way was simpler. He painted the spyglass and we checked out our restaurant while it dried. I drew a couple rings around the top and he had another accessory for his pirate attire. Lastly, we made a treasure map. I did a very rough sketch of our house and he decided where the treasure would be hidden and we made the map take the follower throughout the house in circles before coming to the "X". Lij also did a Pirate Elijah work sheet from this great site while i sketched the map for him.

So we hid the "treasure", which was his new spyglass and a picture he drew for Mike, and checked on our restaurant again. When Mike got home Pirate Elijah greeted him and gave him his map. 2 minutes later it was over with and Elijah had so much fun he said it was, "like a birthday party".

None of this took any real effort from me. It was all done with stuff we already had, and it made our day fun and special. Special is something I am trying to make every day as I know this time alone together is going to be gone any day now once this baby decides to be born.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today's Smoothie...

Why? Because I am always thirsty. I have always loved smoothies, but with both pregnancies I have craved them almost constantly. I almost never do the same one twice and am always on the lookout for different ingredients.

Today's smoothie was really refreshing and would be great in the summer especially.

Here's what I blended together:

A handful of spinach

A few ice cubes

About 1.5 cups of Almond/Coconut Milk I just discovered at a health food store. I often buy them separately but this blend is delicious! Coconut Cream would be great, too.

About 1/2 cup pineapple (frozen, fresh, canned, whatever :o)

About 1/2 cup pineapple juice

1 ripe banana broken into pieces.

It is green, but tastes similar to a pina colada.

Delicious!

just a hint...

So I haven't been posting them but my very artistic husband has been helping me document this pregnancy with the weekly produce/size of the baby. When it is all said and done I plan to post the whole set, which I am pretty excited about, especially since I haven't seen anyone do it before. Here is a hint of what it is like (from last week):

35 weeks and the size of a butternut squash....

Happy Friday!

Fizzy Science

Today I did *not* get to sleep in. I still decided to make great effort not to be grumpy about it... once I had coffee and a banana muffin, that is. Yesterday's fun activities inspired me to continue my list of fun things to do with the lad as it is another late work day for my husband so I might as well make it fun for both of us, right? I mean, if he had siblings to play with I would honestly probably be significantly less hands on with this kind of thing. But he doesn't (yet) so instead of being begged to play cars for hours on end, this is how I would rather roll. And I admit, I do really enjoy these kinds of things.

Anyways, yesterday had more of a math/numbers focus so today we went with science. Fizzy Science to be exact. Before we got started I looked up why vinegar and baking soda react the way they do, then I explained it to my son as if I had known all along. I kinda doubt he grasped the dual reaction thing, but you know, it's all about exposure, right?

Our first two experiments were done one right after the other, not only to see how the two ingredients responded to being combined, but also to contrast the difference between adding the vinegar to the baking soda and then vice versa. He was pretty excited to get started.

Both were a lot of fun and *super* easy. He especially loved the color mixing part of the prep. Adding the colored vinegar to the baking soda was more of an art project for him. It fizzed enough to be fun but he really liked the color aspect of it. However, the second part, where we added the baking soda to the colored vinegar really got him. He expected less of a reaction and got really excited when it started overflowing over the muffin cup. Even after both projects were done he had fun moved the different colors to different cups and making it fizz as long as it could. This is something we will definitely do again. Great rainy day project. Or a great take it outside on a nice day project.

A couple of hours after those, we did one last "fizzy science" experiment. I got this idea and directions from here. Read the order of doing it at that site, but basically you use these items:

Take it outside and put them in the bag in the right order, then watch it explode.

okay, so ours was a bit of a bust. It looked like there were two tiny holes in the bag so the pressure didn't build up like I had expected. And then, in his true style, my son didn't have much of an immediate reaction. He likes to think about things before really showing what he thinks... oy

All in all they were all three fun and educational and something I hope to do again. Especially with an un-holy bag.

PS Sorry about the video being sideways and poorly recorded! No idea how to fix that....

Fun Day

Today my son slept in. I thought for sure he would be getting up soon after my husband left for school/work, but instead he slept in until 8:50AM! I was thrilled. I decided to reward him with making today really fun. It is probably my job as a stay at home mom of one to help make all of his days fun, but that doesn't always happen. Especially with it being chilly out and my being very pregnant, and only knowing a handful of people in this town who don't work all day.

I definitely play with him and do activities with him, but I feel like at this point much of my time is spent trying to figure out how I will get through the next few (or many) hours until my husband gets home or until bedtime. I know this is normal for stay at home parents, but I am also realizing more and more how numbered our days are of it just being Elijah and I. Very soon we will have another one that will be with us constantly and while those will be special days, I do really want to cherish this one on one time with my eldest. SO back to my being determined and motivated to make today fun.

Almost everything I decided to do was activities I found on Pinterest. If you don't already use it, you should. It's amazing. A major time waster if you let it be, but fabulous and quite useful nonetheless. I spent about 15 minutes looking stuff up and just a few minutes prep time for each one. And then I became Fun Mom :o)

But first, we started our morning with tea time and a bit of watching Green Eggs and Ham.

After taking this picture I realized he needed a hair trim. So we did that and then got on to the more fun stuff. I let him choose what order we went in. First, he chose this project.

It was so easy! Basically you just cut out your shape out of colored construction paper. Then, using a q-tip and baby oil you can "paint"your designs onto the shape. We taped some twine to the backs and then hung them in the window. Unfortunately the sun has yet to shine through said window today, so we are still waiting on the finished product. I have to say though, if you do this, use lots of oil. we kept ours a little thin in most parts and I don't think those will shine through as much.

Next, we did this. My son doesn't have a nerf gun (yet) so instead I gave him a straw and made the object of the game be to blow the lego men off without knocking over the cups. Then he decided to make a second tower and compare knocking over his lego men to his dinosaurs. Turns out dinos are much stronger. This kept him busy long enough for me to do some dishes and make lunch. And now there are lots of little towers around the living room and I kind of love it.

After lunch we kept with the lego theme and printed out this cool coloring sheet. Instead of doing sums with dice, we did more number identification using the cards from this game. Whichever card he picked he got to color once he matched it and could tell me what number it was. He tends to get bored with coloring quickly but he loved this one.

After that, we moved to the other side of the table where I had placed this worksheet and some coins. We talked about the different sizes of the silver coins and how many go into the dollar. He filled in all the spots and found that we only had $2.65...the downside to not planning ahead.

Lastly, we kept the money theme going and went to play in his room. He has been really into setting up "toy stores", which he also calls "a different kind of Target" and has us come buy things. We always just pretend the money part. Today I gave him some coins and I was the shop keeper. Each section cost a different kind of coin. He came in, learned the cost of each item, made some thoughtful purchases, sorted through his money, then paid his bill. We did this probably 10 times and I let him keep part of the change for when he goes to a real store.

After all this it was time for quiet time, which just ended as I am typing this. It has been a fun and educational day but I honestly cannot believe it is only 4PM and I still have a solid 3 hours before my husband comes home! Movie time... :o)