.....

Thanks for all of the well-wishes, everybody! "Ed" is happily swimming around in his or her amniotic fluid...but not for long. Induction is set for tomorrow. Pray that it goes well! We'll keep you posted.

...and the verdict is in!

Hey all!

After a long-anticipated announcement today, we now know where we will be moving! I have been accepted into the Ob Gyn training program at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan! We are excited about the turn of events, although moving out of Minnesota will be a big challenge for us....we are both homebodys. And we have The Grandkids. However, the program and the community we will be moving into are both fantastic and I think we'll fit right in.

More info to come....

PS: Grandmas: we will only be 20 minutes from the DTW airport....we'll be there to pick you up as soon as you land. :)

PPS: Baby "Ed" is still in the cooker. We are due a week from tomorrow, induction is set for Friday the 26th is he or she isn't born by then. That gives me a week to pack up some stuff so we can get ready to sell the house! Our goal is to have the first showings on Holy Saturday. That leaves us with not much time and a LOT of cleaning to do!!!

PPPS: Just in case you were wondering...nope...we're not bored. We have enough going on to keep us "occupied." ;-)

Glacier

No, this isn't some glacier in Norway, or a panoramic of the Grand Canyon. It's the ice in the alley behind our house. That's a good six inches you're lookin at, folks. It's been a good year for the ice, apparently. Thank God it's finally melting.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

STAY-cation

On Monday evening, the four of us moseyed over to the waterpark hotel in town (the "edge") for some family time. It was fantastic. A cheap Monday night rate, lots and lots of swimming, pizza by the poolside, and a hotel room that was TWO rooms....so the kiddos could sleep on one half and Mama and Papa could watch endless South Park and Scrubs without worrying about little ears. What a great time.

Mary and Papa tried out the kiddie waterslide. Mary got a mouth and nosefull of water...and she grinned anyways!

Here's Mary's other favorite attraction: washing her hands. We don't have a sink at home where she can lay on the counter and put her hands in the water. She LOVED that sink. Almost as much as the pool.

If you can see it, please notice the digital clock on the back of Mary's chair. Mama and Papa were so eager to have some time alone that we put the kiddos to bed at 7:30 without a snack. Bad move, parents. At first, we simply heard giggles from their room. This turned into whines, and eventually into all-out wailing. After trying to get them to sleep for two hours, we waved the White Flag of Parenting and let them into our room. Then we enforced their victory by giving them chips and cookies.

Julia and Mary: 1

Mama and Papa: 0

Late-nite snack of victory.

Here are more waterpark pics. If you look carefully above Julia, you can see an orange cone. That thing held about five gallons of water and it dumped sporadically. Julia was terrified of it. Once she got up the stairs, life was good. You can see her crouching in terror.

Juila was terrified of the orange cone, but the waterslide was FUN! She even mustered up the courage to go down by herself. She did not, however, have enough patience to hold still for a picture of her face so this is all you get.

Mary loved to stroll through the water. We couldn't let her walk alone or she would trip and go under. Despite her efforts to drown, she never did show any sign of fear.

Four weeks and counting!

Stressed. That's me. Since Mike has already gone to bed and is too tired to listen to me rant (worked a ten hour shift today starting at 6am, then handbells, church, and choir, baths, two sick kiddos, and has to be at work at 6am again tomorrow!!) I decided to rant to my friends in cyberspace via the blog. Sorry I haven't posted recently. Our laptop computer broke, and I rarely get time to sit at the desktop in our bedroom because there are two little ones who love to empty out the contents of my jewelry box if I devote any moment of my attention to the computer.....

I will be finished with 36 weeks' worth of gestating come Saturday. That means there's four weeks til my due date. Also means I have four weeks (or less!) to get my act together before another baby comes. Oh my. I realized today how much work we have ahead of us.

When Julia was born, we had the nursery all painted, clothes neatly folded in the drawers, boxes and boxes of diapers and wipes ready, blankets neatly folded under the freshly painted changing table, and a big box of brand new infant supplies from all of the baby showers I had.

When Mary was born, it was more of the same: neat piles of baby stuff, all ready to go, as good as done. Only thing different was there was less new stuff and I didn't bother buying newborn diapers. And we even booked a grandma to be at our house starting three days before my due date to watch Julia, just in case.

We have none of that ready for poor baby "Ed." (Reminder: Ed's gender is unknown. The girls call my belly "Ed," and the name has stuck. We pity poor Ed when she comes out a girl!) ANYWAYS, we have very little ready for baby Ed's arrival. Jenny's parents gave us a dresser, which is still sitting dusty in the basement, and we still have to buy the contact paper to go in the drawers. I have no idea where the baby clothes even are (in a tupperware somewhere, I assume...) and I haven't even BOUGHT DIAPERS yet! If Ed were to drop by unannounced tomorrow, we would be up a creek without a paddle. I would have to send Husband to Target with a list and a credit card whilst I birthed our baby. And I guess Julia and Mary would have to go with him, since we haven't made a plan for their care during the delivery, either. Better to have them destroy a toy display at Tar-jhay than witness the "miracle of birth." I should really call our babysitter.

To add more complication to the situation, we have a LOT of things up in the air right now: Match day is when I find out about if and where I will be resuming residency come this summer. That will dictate where we move to come end of May/early June. That also means we have to sell our house, which also should get done soon...but I guess it will have to wait until after "Ed" is born, given that we don't even know IF we're moving until Match day rolls around...which is March 18th. Reminder: Ed is DUE on the 26th, but I will probably get induced earlier given that "Ed" is off the charts in size (was 20 inches long at my 30 week ultrasound...which is quite large.) So, if I get induced, I'll probably be in labor on Match Day. Oh the glory! I'll have to get our laptop fixed soon so I can log onto the internet and find out where we'll be spending the next few years...between pushes, of course.

To make things even more exciting/crazy/ohmygoodLord, we don't know the sex of the baby, we don't know when the heck we're going to be able to have the baptism (Annie, our chosen Godmother, can't get any days off), and we have no idea how we are going to pack and move the contents of our entire house to some undisclosed location hundreds of miles away while taking care of an almost 4-year-old, an almost 2-year-old, and a brand new infant!

I think I might need prozac. Or speed. Or meth...or something. Caffeine can only take this woman so far. Perhaps I should invest in an espresso machine. I doubt I"ll be able to leave the house to hit Starbuck's or Caribou after Ed makes his or her gender and personality known to the world. I'd better start sleeping now. Gotta store it up.

Baby Ed, at 30 weeks

Modern technology never ceases to amaze me.

Yesterday, I remember being annoyed because my iphone's internet connection wasn't fast enough for me download a pizza place menu so I could to call in a take-out order from the interstate. I stopped and thought of how silly it was for me to be annoyed. I have this little box-shaped phone thing in my hand that can surf the world wide web from almost anywhere. I can get up to date news from around the world, and I can upload (or would that be "download?") pdf files of pizza restaurants from miles away, order a pizza, and pay for it...all from my phone. It seems rather peculiar that I can walk into a place I've never been and see folks whom I've never talked to...and have them know exactly what kind of pizza I want and to have made it ahead of time. whoa. Sci fi movie? Not anymore.

This morning, I wasn't exactly sure how to find the babysitter's house to bring Mary to, so I typed the address into the thing and within two seconds, it showed me exactly where I was, and where I needed to turn to get where I was going. Again, no futility here. Had it been a few years ago, I would have done the Sarah thing...drive around until I finally discovered Crescent View Avenue. Because of technology, Julia got to preschool and Mary to the babysitter, and thus I made it to my appointment...on TIME!


This morning, I went in for an ultrasound at the OB's office. They were able to get an amazingly clear picture of our baby's face using SOUND WAVES. It was incredible. They can put an ultrasound probe on my belly and bounce some inaudible sound waves off of the baby through my anterior abdominal wall and then a computer takes the data and....zap! A picture of "Ed." More amazingly, the tech was able to copy the images to a disk within seconds so I could put it on my home computer and post them to the internet. In less than two hours, we have digital images of Baby's face plastered all over the blog.

And now, may I present the latest "pics" of baby number three, gender still TBA. He or she was swimming happily and posed for a few pictures.

PS: Baby is rather large (measured at 33 week size on 30+5 weeks...) so there will be another ultrasound around 38 weeks. More pics to come! And boy am I glad I'm seeing OB...they aren't afraid to induce you at 39 weeks if they think the baby is big. Halleluiah!!!!!!!!!

Many things

Hi fam and friends,

I thought of a new year's resolution today. I am going to quit feeling guilty for violating any or all of my self-imposed deadlines that don't mean much in the grand scheme of things. I hope you know what I mean. (I wish I could include things like, " wash the dishes" or "bathe the children..." but I must admit that good hygeine does matter in the grand scheme of things.)

The first thing on the actual list is being the mom that blogs every cute moment of her childrens' lives in order that it might be saved in an e-archive and simultaneously warm the hearts of blog-viewers everywhere. Eau Contrare. (I KNOW I spelled that wrong. Here's to not feeling guilty for refusing to call Mike and ask him the correct spelling.) I have friends that do keep blogs like that. It's amazing. They take beautifully candid photos and post them every day. They also change the color scheme/background of their blog to match the color scheme in the photos. My blog background is white. This is already a set-up for failure, since it is a RARE day when my kiddos are still in white by the time I find the batteries for the camera and snap a picture. By the time I get organized enough for a candid snapshot, the white is now eau de ketchup or eau de fingerpaints or eau-de-violaceous-diaper-explosion-cause-I-fed-Mary-too-many-blueberries.

So there's my New Year's resolution. I also plan on embarking on a new residency and making myself into a more patient mom and a successful ER doctor (my new temporary employment until I hopefully embark on a career as an obstetrician.)

Here are some entertaining bits that happened over Christmas:

Julia and Mary got what they wished for....and prayed for....and God granted them seven times seven more than their wishes. Yes, it's true...our house has been invaded by Barbie and her herem. I do believe we have gone from one to fifty of them over the course of one week of Holiday. I lost count. I also lose my patience every time I step barefoot on one of their shoes and the tiny high heel tries to puncture the bottom of my foot. @%#@*&!!!!!

Annie and I took Julia and Mary to see an exhibit of Sue, the T-rex, in St. Cloud. It's a replica of the most well-preserved T-rex skeleton in the world. We spent a LONG TIME explaining the skeleton to Julia, talking about everything from herbivores and carnivores to death and dying and why everything eventually will leave behind a skeleton and a pile of dust. She was intrigued. I *thought* she was listening to us. The tour guide even took a liking to her and made the remark that Julia should consider a career in science. I was so proud....... I thought Julia was going to be able to lecture everyone at preschool about meeting this archeological masterpiece. And then as we were leaving, I told the girls to say goodbye to Sue. Mary called,

"Bye bye Soooooooo."

Cute. But then the aspiring archeologist child yells,

"Buh-bye Alligator!"

So much for my budding scientist.



Last Sunday my mom and I took the kids to church at the hospital because their mass is at 1030...not 9:00 like the other churches we go to. We sat up in the balcony. The sanctuary was filled to the brim, with patients, their relatives, a few nuns, and lots of hospital employees in scrubs. The balcony was rather empty, so I let the kids wander a bit and look over the edge. Julia was outright naughty. She loves to yell SHHHHHHHHHHHH....which comes out VERY LOUDLY and is heard by all. During the Gospel reading, Mary spotted the nativity scene at the front of the church and started bleeting, "JESUS!" She was SO excited! She found Jesus! She was not going to keep quiet about it either, even with her sister SHSHSHHHHHHHHing her louder and louder by the minute. When we went by for communion, she got a closer look at the creche. I saw a look of terror in her eyes, and she began to yell, "JESUS!!! OWIE!!!! HOT!!! HOT!!!" As I tried to quiet her down, I glanced at the nativity again to see what she was yelling at. Sure enough, somebody had placed a little tea light candle about 2 inches from Jesus little hand. Mary, who had become a bit too famliar with candle flames over the holidays, was voicing her concern for Jesus' hand. She didnt' want him to get burned, too. How thoughtful!