Papa is officially done school as of last Thursday and back at work. This is a huge load off me as he's now 10 minutes away not an hour! An hour is a LONG time to wait for someone when your last labor was only 3.5 :) His score on his final 2 year test was 98! Yes the man is brilliant and I'm super proud of him. His lowest mark for the course was 96 so his over all score will be HIGH.
Papa spent the better part of a day getting the travelall 'up graded' with a new ignition system, better tires, and a new seat in the very back of the cargo area for the boys. I need to go take some pictures yet and I'll post them when I do. Needless to say it was a much needed change as we would not have been able to fit the baby car seat in the truck without a new seat. Both J and L can use a booster seat now so they have their own 'boys' seat in the very back. Papa got the seat out of a Yukon suburban and it has it's own seat belts with shoulder belts! Lack of shoulder belts has been a rather annoying problem with booster seats and so it's super nice to have them right in the seat for the boys to use. Now our travel all seats 9.
I've had a burst of energy this last week and gotten quite a bit of the house cleaned, organized and other wise put away. It's truly amazing how fast a small trailer gets cluttered, and dirty with 6 people living in it!! I've been able to keep up on the laundry and dishes with the boys help but a few other things had started to slide. Thankfully a small trailer also is less to clean and doesn't take very long to clean up :) I also got a bit of bread frozen for later and a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies (6x) baked and frozen. I'm not doing as much storing up as I have for other babies as Papa is home for supper every night and will take a week off when baby does come. Besides that he loves to cook :)
Papa is doing all the outside chores except feeding the calves in the morning including watering which is SO nice. I do need to go out and cut my spinach before it bolts and thin the beets which is a ME thing as Papa doesn't know beets from radishes.. and I'm not joking. The other day I sent J out to pick me a radish, I actually wanted a bowl full but he wasn't sure where they were so I wanted him to get one to start, and he went and looked and couldn't find them. So J asked Papa to help him and they found them but 'they were all too small mom!' I was confused as my radishes are all a very nice size and I was JUST there so J and I went out to look and SURE ENOUGH they'd been pulling beets!! Papa said he thought they looked funny for radishes!! My beets were planted thick so I could freeze some beet leaves while thinning them out so they didn't harm anything. My lettuce and spinach are both at an eatable stage and we are enjoying them.
The kids and I set up the playpen with the bassinet in it some time ago and now we have clothes, blankets, sleep spot and the car seat all ready for baby! We had fun finding, washing, folding and putting it all away for him. Now all we need is a baby :)
The playpen is set up in our room and Papa and I have been using it as sort of a store all for the last little bit. I guess I'm ready for baby as I panicked just for 2 seconds the other day when I saw a heavy blanket over the sleeping area.. OH NO the baby!! Then it hit me.. Is still in your womb!!
I spent part of yesterday in the birthing room at the hospital having a non stress test done on baby.. because I'm now overdue they like to check up on them regularly. Always before when I've had one they've done them in the ER but I guess it's changed since R and now they do them in the labor room. I must say it was very strange to be in the labor room and NOT be in labor. There are only 2 rooms and a birthing room in our small hospital and I was in the smallest one.. where I gave birth to both E and R. I truly did not remember it as that small. It's tiny! But I like it anyway and have requested it for this birth as well. The non stress test was fine and if I continue to go overdue they will bring me in for another one next week. My doctor is out of town so I have another one I like quite well, hopefully she will be as good as mine when it comes to overdue babies and labor and delivery.
Several weeks ago I had a quick ultrasound in the ER just to make sure little Baby J is head down. He had been flipping up and down for a while and my doctor wanted to 'make sure' he was head down. He was, but I was amazed at how little they can see with a ultrasound at that age.. the baby is SO big that all you see is bones and blobs.. we had a super hard time finding the head but we did find it and so we are good to go.
Papa just realized the other day that this baby has a chance to be born on Papa's birthday or very close to it. Unless Baby J is born 9 or 10 days late he will be the 1st one of us to double up on a birth month. Sharing with Papa. If he is late he'll be born in July and then we'll have January, March, April, May, June, July, and October.
