My girls

When I was just shy of 18, I became a godmother for the first time. My oldest sister had her third daughter, Teresa Kay, who became my goddaughter. She was me and Joe's "practice baby" before we started having our own. Now she is growing up- she'll be 10 in a little over a week. Here are my three girls all together at her recent visit:

Teresa and Adelle:

If the shirt looks familiar, that is because it is. I knit it for Issy to wear two years ago. Here is the blog post about it. And yes, if you are keeping track, Issy was four when I made it for her. And I mentioned that Teresa is turning 10 soon. I made it a *tad* too big. It's ok, I have a better understanding of why gauge is important now :)

Once again, apologies for not blogging more consistently (especially to Mary- I know that drives you crazy!). If it makes anyone feel any better, it isn't out of lack of trying. I counted the drafts of blog posts that I have started and not published and there have been 6 since Adelle was born. This post, for example is dated July 31st, because that is when I started it. It is now August 16th. I'll try to be better, I promise :)

Life is going to slow down, for a while. But not really. We don't have any visitors for another month, so it'll slow down in that regard, but! our homeschooling year is starting soon. And in September, me and the girls are flying down for my sister's wedding. And some friends are coming to visit at the end of September. So no, I guess we aren't really slowing down :)

AND! in other exciting news, I started a sweater for myself. My sister who taught me to knit mentioned she was going to start Wicked by Zephyr Style and so I went to check out the pattern and loved it! (NB- For some reason, it won't let me link to that. Google it if you want to check it out, it is awesome!) I am doing it in Lamb's Pride Worsted in Misty Blue, I am so excited :) Anyone know if metal knitting needles are allowed on airplanes? I'll try to share some pictures, but you have seen my track record- don't hold your breath!

Thus concludes this edition of blog catch up :)

Fun with Grammie and Grandpa

At the beginning of July, Joe's parents had the chance to come and visit us and to meet baby Adelle. They are also Adelle's godparents, so we got her baptized the weekend that they were in town. Here are a few pictures from their visit:

The watermelon. We bought a big watermelon and Mom cut it up with the kids (and took out the seeds- bless her!). The kids snacked on quite a bit of it. A lot, actually. I think that they got their watermelon fix for the summer :)

I posted this a couple of times on Facebook but I loooove this picture, it is just too sweet not to post again. What a sweet girl!

Adelle's godparents

Normal

Not a new picture- it is from the night she was born, but I don't have a lot of pictures on this computer and I like to add pictures to my post :)

This the fourth time in the last week that I have started to blog only to be thwarted by my lack of creativity, my children or both. So let me try again.

Life is pretty good here. Miss Adelle just turned five weeks old on Saturday (ack! has it really been five weeks?!) and the new normal has now taken over for the most part. The kids have adjusted surprisingly well to our new addition. Liam is kind of scary sometimes because we are experimenting with cutting out his nap. Which makes bedtime much easier, but he is a beast from about 3-6. Sigh. I am hoping at some point, that will get easier. In hindsight, I suppose it has- he isn't scary *every* day from 3-6. Just most days :P

I am starting to feel "normal", body- wise. I think. I don't know, when you have been pregnant for the better part of a year, you tend to forget what normal is like. I am trying to work on my posture. Pregnancy really messes with my posture, since I have several months to adjust to a my center of gravity shifting and then *poof* it is gone. It is a very weird sensation, to go from having a big, solid belly full of baby to nothing. Since I am making the adjustment from pregnant--> non-pregnant anyways, I should work on it now. And can I just say, at the risk of sharing too much information, that I love being about to stay in bed and not having to get up to go to the bathroom 4 times a night. Awesome.

My Dad and niece are coming to visit at the end of this week and then some friends after that, so we are going to be all busy with visitors the next few weeks- yay! I figure we should get lots of visitors in during the summer months since no one will want to come see us in January and February :P (not that i blame them!) Now we just need to find some skiing friend who wants to visit in the dead of winter :)

Must go be productive while the baby is asleep!

The many faces of Adelle

She does the eyebrow thing fairly frequently.

Wrapped in her Mommy's "Bunny Blanket"*Yawn*

Gazing into each other's big eyes

Her brothers soothing her through a diaper change.

All dressed and making a face at Isaac

A dress from Mary

I can almost hear her thinking "Why is this lady always taking my picture?"

I am a boring blogger

Sorry, folks. My blogging skillz (everything is better when you add a z to the end) have been somewhat lacking as of lack. Could be that I have a newborn and three other kids to take care of. Could be the fact that my husband has created a monster and got me to read the Twilight series. Could be that my camera makes me angry and I don't like the way any of the pictures turn out. Or perhaps I am just too lazy?

Life is, all in all, pretty good, I think. There have definitely been adjustments over the last few weeks, but I think it is going relatively smoothly. 3 to 4 has been easier than 2 to 3, for sure. Adelle, so far, has been pretty easygoing baby. So far is the key phrase here. I have had enough kids to know that how they are in the first few weeks is not necessarily indicative of how they will be in a few months. Case in point: Liam. Mellow little guy the first 4 months. And then, he started to move and the mellow was over. So for now I will be thankful for Adelle's chilled-outness and try not to anticipate the upcoming months.

We are all pretty smitten with her, she is a gorgeous little lady. The kids enjoy talking to her and holding her. I love watching her sleep, so peaceful and serene. She will be four weeks old in a few days, the time goes by too fast. We have been getting the first glimpses into an intentional smile now and then the last few days and she has cooed at me a couple of times.

The weather is now nice enough that the kids are able to play outside a lot and are enjoying playing in the sprinkler when they can. Lots of bike riding and walks. I love summer here- my only complaint is that it is too short!

So there you have it, the big update. I need to sift through my pictures to find some acceptable ones soon.

Well, I tried

On Friday night, while Joe was watching a "guy movie", I tried to blog. But blogger was being sooooo sloooooow, so I abandoned that project. BUT! We went to Yellowstone yesterday *and* Joe downloaded his pictures from our Father's Day picnic, so if you want to see some pictures, you can mosy on over to his blog:

Figment of Reality

More baby goodness

From this (taken the morning I went into labor, about 11 hours before she was born):

To this:

Snooze on Mama

Sweet cloth diaper-y goodness

In the sweater and hat I made her- it is still chilly here.

Love my Papa

Our sweet girl is here

Adelle Caroline joined our family at about 7:55 P.M. on Saturday, June 13th. Her birth was beautiful and at times, intense. It was miraculous and ordinary. A blessing.

She weighed in at 7 lbs 13 oz and was 19 1/2 in long. I will post more later when my hands aren't so tied up :)

I am patient, I am patient.

If you don't make fun of the dumb expressions on my face, I'll share a couple of belly pictures:

The belly, in all it's glory.

I am trying my hardest to be patient. It is working sometimes. About every third day, however, I start to think I just can't wait any longer. And yet, I have made it through several days like that so far :) The "It could be any day, but not likely for another week or three" thing can be emotionally tiring. So I have been trying my hardest to keep busy and to be grateful for this time. I find the days that I act and speak positively about the waiting, even if I don't feel it, are better than the days when I indulge my whiny and self-pitying side. Fake it until you make it, right?

The other factor in this situation is my utter lack of control over the situation. I find it fascinating that even with the vast knowledge we have about the human body, we don't really don't what exactly causes a woman to spontaneously go into labor. Yes, we know that it has to do with prostaglandins and oxytocin and various other hormones, we know that in normal circumstances the baby plays a part in initiating labor, but it is still pretty mysterious. So I sit here gestating, doing my part, but pretty much along for the ride.

And that is the best analogy I can come up with. It is like someone has told me that I am going to go on the scariest, best, most fun, sometimes terrifying, most exhausting road trip of my life. But I don't really get to know when it begins. I need to be prepared for it to happen anytime. I might be called upon this journey with little warning in the middle of the night. I might be given some signs in the hours proceeding so I can do some last minutes things. And labor and birth are just the beginning. After I do what amounts to the most physically, emotionally and spiritually strenuous work of my life, then I have a beautiful, soft, helpless newborn to take care of.

Sounds intense, doesn't it?

So I wait- as patiently as possible.

Craftiness, Part 2

In this post from May I had some pictures of Adelle's wool diaper covers and her newborn fitted diapers. I have been working diligently to make her some small fitted diapers (because frankly, my kiddos seem to outgrew newborn things veeery quickly). Here is what is completed so far:These are the ones that have been cut (well, one of these is fully cut and the other three still need an inner layer and a soaker) and are awaiting assembly. My goal is to have 12 of the size small. Getting there!

Her prefolds came on Tuesday and I took some time yesterday to embellish some of them. I just cut out some flannel and sewed it on the middle panel. Simple, but I really like the way they turned out. So now she has seven embellished prefolds and eleven plain ones:

Back in February right after we found out that the baby was a girl, I bought some onesies to turn into t-shirts to wear with her wool diaper covers. This project has been met with mixed success. Being a relatively novice sewer and not really taking the time to research it, I didn't realize that working with knits is different than working with other fabrics. So I charged ahead and pretty much mutilated the first onesie I tried to hem (the purple one on the left). So I not-so-skillfully covered my mistake with purple rick-rack :D I think that might be the "we are staying home today shirt". Although, perhaps not surprisingly, Issy really really liked it. My girl likes sparkly things ;)

I am pleased with how to the other two turned out though. Have to learn somehow, right?

My house is so clean, I scare myself

Anyone who knows me well, knows that my house is not always particularly tidy. It typically isn't awful, I just have a hard time keeping up with the clutter (um, and fur) that seems to accumulate when you have three kids, two adults, and two dogs sharing a house. The nesting has been fierce this time though, so my house is ridiculously clean. Vacuuming on a regular basis, making sure that the kid's rooms are tidy and beds are made. Sweeping. Mopping. Laundry washed, dried, folded and PUT AWAY (the put away part is often my downfall) I realize that my housekeeping standards will relax once again after the baby is born, so I am trying to enjoy it now :)

A side note: A sign that you don't vacuum enough- when you tell your four year old to clean the toys off the floor of his room so you can vacuum, he replies, "Oh, who is coming over?" Ha!

Pictorial proof that my house is very, very clean right now. Our family room.

The basement, complete with clean toy area.

And a gratuitous shot of my fantastic bathtub, because I talk about it a lot. It makes pregnancy a whole lot easier.

Up next in the ridiculously productive nesting blog series: More cloth diapers for the baby. 14 out of 18 are complete!

Mother's Day Hike

For Mother's Day, we got to go on our first family hike and picnic of the spring. It was a lovely day and a very enjoyable stroll through the woods.

Everyone is all ready for the hike!

Picnic first

They spotted me. Joe has better pictures of our hike, but I don't think he has put them on the computer yet.

Playing in the backyard.

Mother's Day flowers from my in-laws. They were gorgeous!

Snuggling with Papa.

Tattoos. This made them extremely happy. It is the little things :)

Foxy Mama

36 weeks

I don't recall the last pregnancy that I felt this good at this far along! Will try to update in the next couple of days with what we have been up to the last few weeks!

Craftiness!

I still have a couple of posts to finish up my Kansas pictures, but I am now getting behind on blogging current things, so here are some things we have been up to lately.

The nesting is in full force! Starting in my second trimester, I began to knit a wool diaper cover stash for the baby. And here it is! I can't promise that I won't knit anything else (in fact, as I was going through her dresses, I realized I really don't have a blue or green one, so I might need to do make those) but this is a good start I think :) She has two Sheepy sacks in the top corner for easy nighttime diaper changes. The four covers next to those are size small. And the ones on the bottom row are all newborn size. My sister Michelle knit three of them and gave them to me when she found out she was having a boy- lucky us :)
I have also been working on sewing some cloth diapers for the babe. Here are six newborn size fitted diapers (absorbent but not waterproof- used with a cover, for those who aren't familiar with diaper lingo) I have four size small diapers completed, and I am aiming for twelve of those. I am going to get some prefolds and contours and viola! diaper stash complete!
Here is my trusty little sewing buddy. He likes to sit by my sewing machine on a stool and watch me as I sew, and on occasion "help". He must be growing up because up until recently I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that he would sit next to me for what amounts to 30 or 45 minutes at a time and just chat and behave himself. *sniff* My baby is getting so big!

He really likes the cloth diapers for "Baby Dell" He is holding a whole stack of them here.

While I was in Kansas, Joann Fabrics was having a sale on their snuggle flannel, in all sorts of cute prints . Who can pass up a bargain? So I bought some that I hemmed and made into receiving blankets for when the wee one is born. When she outgrows the need for receiving blankets, they can easily be recycled into material for larger cloth diapers.

Here is a blanket that trimmed with ribbon, similar to one I made for a friend a couple of months ago.

All my little helpers. They were enjoying tea and trail mix while I cut out some fabric.

Zoo Trip- Part I

We had the opportunity to go the zoo a couple of times while we were in Kansas. This day we went with some friends on a very warm but windy day. We kept it relatively short (a couple of hours) but the kids had a lot of fun. Here were some pictures from our day: