My birthday and some math!

Today is my 30th birthday! Happy birthday to me! No I am not depressed. I actually feel just fine about entering a new decade. So as a present to myself I am up early enjoying some time not being a wife and mother and having fun with math. Vi Hart (my favorite math blog) recently posted some fabulous videos that not only are about math, but about my favorite part of math, the golden spiral and Fibonacci. And they are all about math in nature! Biology is my second favorite subject, but the study of plants seemed to be the most boring part of Biology. If only we had studied plants like this! Anyway, I do not know Vi Hart personally but I am considering these videos a birthday gift to myself. I repost here for your enjoyment! (Of course I realize most of you don't care but I'm posting anyway). Happy Birthday to me!

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Part 3:

Christmas and Birthday

Well December has come to an end and we are just now catching our breath. December is a crazy crazy month for us. Between lots of extended family who live far away and want to see us for the holidays, a hubby who gets no vacation time (hospitals don't shut down just because it's a holiday ya know), squeezing in our own holiday traditions, and wrapping up the month with Keziah's birthday, - well let's just say the month was as exhausting as it was exciting! So here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse into our holiday.

Christmas eve at our house wasn't actually on Christmas eve since Michael Paul was scheduled to work. But it was just as special. We eat a special dinner, light our final Advent candle, read the Christmas story from Luke 2, and open a couple of presents. One of the traditions my parents did with us and I am continuing is getting new pajamas on Christmas eve. Keziah loved these and pranced around the house saying "I cute" all night.

After we put the little one to bed, it was time to play Santa - something I've been looking forward to for years. The best part is getting to be the first one to play with all the new toys. Michael Paul had to give that new tricycle a good test-drive.

Christmas morning came and we had quite the smorgasbord under our tree. This shopping cart as well as a new doll stroller were the big hits with Keziah.

I have to draw your attention to her "superman" attire. She got big-girl panties in her stocking and insisted on putting them on over her pajamas. It was really cute. You can also see she was taking off with some of the presents and a few of the wise men from our nativity! So adorable!

But the biggest hit has turned out to be the fisher-price english tudor house that was mine as a kid. If you are close to me in age, you probably remember this house. And yes I still had every single piece of furniture and all the little family. It is in great condition and I am so proud to be able to pass it along to my own daughter. It just delights my heart to see how much she loves it. She plays with it for hours every day.

And as for my favorite gift, Michael Paul made this fabulous mantle for our fireplace. (Our fireplace didn't come with a mantle which I have always thought was odd and I've been asking for this since we moved in this house a year ago) It was up just in time to hang our Christmas stockings from it. My husband is quite talented!

And we wrapped up the month with Keziah's birthday. Can you believe my baby is two? Wow, how time flies. Last year we had a muppet themed birthday party and Keziah would have been content to have another. She has become obsessed with the muppets lately. And to be honest, we are thrilled. We love the muppets too and they are way cooler than most tv characters that kids get into. So here she is modeling her new muppet jacket:

Doesn't she look big? We had a small celebration since most of our family couldn't make it this year. (We've pretty much decided that in the future we are delaying the official party until January). But I did make her a chocolate cake with a bear on it. She's recently latched on to a stuffed bear and gotten into reading Care Bear books. So we did try to pull in something other than muppets. She blew out her candle all by herself and dug into her cake.

We thought this shirt was all too appropriate for digging into cake. In case you can't tell, that's Miss Piggy on her shirt.

We wrapped up the evening with a few gifts.

Keziah opened so many gifts throughout the month, we were kinda worried she would come to expect this as a normal event that's supposed to happen every few days. She has enough new toys to last for the next year for sure!

A fun month! But we are thankful to be back in the calm normalcy of everyday life. I'm looking forward to a few peaceful weeks before our world gets rocked again. Our little bundle of joy is just a few short weeks away from making his/her grand entrance. Hopefully I'll get a pregnancy update out soon. And an updated belly picture!

It's beginning to look a lot ...

...LIKE CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Our tree is officially up and our house is decorated.

Thanks to all the 'help' from a certain eager little girl.

We have been enjoying the advent season, lighting candles in our advent wreath, reading our favorite Christmas books and watching our favorite Christmas movies. Keziah is old enough to really get into it this year. She loves our nativity scene and often reminds me "shhhhhh, baby sleeping." But my favorite part so far was her bringing me the baby Jesus yesterday and putting him under my shirt while informing me, "baby need nummies." This is looking to be the best Christmas ever! I can't wait to see her reaction Christmas morning.

Michael Paul and I have jumped the gun a bit and gotten him an early Christmas gift.

Look closely at his hand. That's not an ordinary wedding band. Yep, that's a tattoo.

So there are three tattoos in particular that Michael Paul has always wanted, but for one reason or another has never gotten around to getting. And one of them was to have his wedding band tattooed on his finger. He figured since that one was partially a gift to me, he should have it done first. And so he did. A little early Christmas present for himself!

There's some back story here if you don't know Michael Paul that well. Since he is a nurse, he is constantly washing his hands at work and his sensitive skin and allergy to all types of gloves make the skin under his ring really irritated. So he really can't wear his ring at work. Even at home, most of the things he found himself doing in his spare time, from chopping wood, to working on our cars, to woodworking on his lathe, were things he'd rather not do with his ring on. Even playing guitar sometimes it would get in the way. So basically he was constantly taking it off, setting it somewhere and losing it. Thankfully it has always turned up. But we would go many days sometimes wondering where his ring had disappeared to. Not to mention, now we have a little raccoon -um I mean toddler in the house who likes to take off with shiny objects and hide them places. Suffice it to say, it was annoying always trying to keep up with his ring. So he decided to just make it permanent in the form of a tattoo so he wouldn't have to worry about it as much. He does still plan to wear his wedding band when he can. But it's nice that there is always a 'ring' on his finger when he can't.

It's mostly a gift for himself, but it is partially a gift for me too. Symbols are really important to me. Maybe it is because I am a concrete sequential type personality or maybe it is because I find it difficult to articulate the things that are most important to me. But to me the ring is a beautiful symbol of all the mysteries of marriage I could never describe in words. So it always kinda bugged me that Michael Paul spent so much of his life without wearing his ring. It's not that I felt we were somehow less married. It's just that I really like seeing that ring on his finger every time I glance at his hand. And now I always will.

So that is our fun Christmas gift this year. We have a few small things for each other, but mostly we are excited about Christmas with Keziah this year. Kids really do make Christmas so much more fun!

Happy Advent Everybody!

Six Months and My Predictions

Well, I am officially six months along and into the third trimester now. I have to say I am a bit bigger than I was with Keziah at this time. That's a good thing. I actually had trouble gaining weight with Keziah. And I'm trying to maintain some kind of milk supply since Keziah is showing absolutely no signs of weaning anytime soon. But she is getting rather frustrated with my short supply. Whereas a short supply during pregnancy encourages many children to wean, Keziah simply sees it as a challenge to take on. She seems to be certain that she can bring in more milk by nursing constantly. So it definitely looks like we will be tandem nursing come February.

Speaking of February, I thought it would be fun to make some predictions just to see if mama's intuition is in any way accurate. I could be completely wrong, but it's still fun to guess. So here are my guesses and the somewhat weird reasons behind them. First of all, my birthdate guess is February 26. Partly because I have a feeling I will go past my 17th due date. But my main reason is this: So we have this little antique calendar thing where you have to flip the card everyday. Michael Paul got it at an antique store several years ago and we were actually very good at keeping up with changing it.

Anyway, when Keziah came along, it didn't get changed for a few weeks and then it just felt wrong to change it. December 28 was the day that changed our lives forever. In a sense, time stood still on that day. Neither of us could bring ourselves to change it. So it stayed at December 28 for a full year. We even packed it away like that and moved it to NC with us and then set it back out still saying December 28. Finally on her first birthday, we decided it was time to start changing the calendar again. And so we did. The only problem was that in our new house the calendar was on a desk in the hallway where we didn't always see it and so sometimes we would forget to change it. Then we both just forgot about it all together. Fast-forward to early June when I find out we are pregnant again. Of course one of the first things I did was get online to figure out what my due date would be, and we found out we were expecting a February 17th baby. Of course I immediately thought to myself, well it will be a February twenty-something baby. Several weeks later, Michael Paul happened to notice our little calendar sitting in the hallway. We hadn't changed it since Feb 26. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe something deep down in us knew that that date would be another "time stands still" date and so we couldn't change it. So now our calendar sits at February 26. Thus my somewhat hokey reason for predicting that day.

As for gender, my prediction is a girl. For one, I've always felt like a 'girl's mom' and would be perfectly delighted to have a house full of only girls. Secondly, Michael Paul had a pretty vivid dream a while back in which he found out I was having a girl. Michael Paul is not one to have prophetic dreams or to have pregnancy dreams. I for one have pregnancy dreams all the time. Both with Keziah's pregnancy and this one, I've had several dreams and sometimes it's a boy and sometimes it's a girl. So I don't trust my dreams. But I'm going to bank on Michael Paul's since he has only had one and it was pretty vivid. And thirdly, my sister is predicting a girl, so maybe there is some twin intuition there as well.

And finally, my weight prediction is 8 pounds. I don't really have anything to go on other than the fact that Keziah was 7 pounds 10 ounces and I think this baby will be a little bigger.

So there are my predictions. I could be completely wrong on all of them. But it will certainly be fun to see how it all turns out.

Halloween Fun

Keziah really got into Halloween this year. She's really into giraffes and ballerinas at the moment, so naturally she went as a giraffe ballerina!

I just love the way her little giraffe tail flopped around on top of her tu-tu.

And I'm pretty confident she was the only giraffe ballerina this Halloween as I basically combined two costumes for her.

We enjoyed Halloween at the huge Fall Festival that our First Baptist Church puts on for the community. We don't actually attend FBC. A huge church isn't really a good fit for our family. (We really love the intimate feel of our small church.) But you got to hand it to the mega churches for their family events. They have the budgets and space to really put on a spectacular event. This festival had EVERYTHING! Keziah had a blast. So many firsts all in one evening!

Her first bouncy castle:

Her first Hay-Ride:

Her First Pony Ride:

This was especially a huge hit with her. She LOVES all animals. She's never met an animal she's afraid of. She just squeals with joy over the sight of any animal. When she saw the ponies, she went crazy. The hardest part of the entire evening was waiting in line for the pony ride. Check out how she is only hanging on with one hand because she had to pet the pony as she rode.

And it was over way too quickly. Michael Paul had to pry her off the horse, which resulted in quite the tantrum until we ran to the next bouncy thingy which was this huge slide. Then it was all smiles and squeals of glee again.

She would have happily done the slide by herself if she could have gotten up the ladder. But Michael Paul went down with her anyway. He actually had to hold her back when they got to the top or she would have just dove right off by herself. This child is not afraid of anything!

We went on to do some more bouncy thingys including an obstacle course that she got stuck in. So Mommy went in after her. Then Mommy got stuck. Let's just say those things were not meant for pregnant ladies in heavy winter coats. Then I was laughing at myself so much, I just couldn't get over the four foot wall and all these eight year olds are passing me. Don't you wish I had a picture of that. I eventually got out.

Inside the gym was a special pre-school area including this roller coaster thing: Another huge hit for her!

And a little ball pit:

We even got an official family photo. It's really bad. Next time we'll do the official photo first! But I'll post it anyway

And as we left we got a bag of candy. To finish off the evening, Keziah got her very first dum-dum sucker. A fun time was had by all!

Craggy Gardens

Michael Paul's parents have been visiting us the last couple of days. The highlight of the visit was a trip to Craggy Gardens where we captured these adorable pictures of Keziah on top of the world. It might look like she's about to fall off a mountain, but I assure you she was perfectly safe! I've been really wanting a new banner picture for this blog and I got the perfect one yesterday. Here are a couple more photos:

Keziah just loved walking around on this rock wall and feeling the breeze. It was a gorgeous day. I love that pensive look on her face.

Half Way

Check out that belly! I am a good bit bigger than I was when I was pregnant with Keziah - I wasn't even really showing at this point last time. I am officially 20 weeks pregnant today. Which is supposedly the half way point, but I doubt I am really halfway as I fully expect to go past my due date. I have actually been feeling great and those wonderful nesting instincts have kicked in full swing. I just finished unpacking my last box of baby stuff today and putting things away.

Speaking of unpacking baby stuff, I am pleasantly surprised with how much gender neutral stuff I have. I somehow remembered having mostly girl stuff, even though we didn't find out the gender. In actuality I did receive a lot of gender neutral stuff as shower gifts and hand-me-downs before little Keziah came. But as soon as she popped out, I was flooded with more hand-me-downs and gifts of girl stuff and I had so many clothes that I really just kept her in the girl stuff. I found a ton of gender neutral stuff that had never even been worn! So I think I am pretty much set. And in case you are wondering , no we are not finding out the gender this time either. I expect to start getting that question a lot. I don't really mind the question though. In fact, I love it when people ask, "what are you having?" because then I can answer, "a human." hahaha!

Michael Paul is preparing in his own way. He bought another umbilical cord knife. Keziah has a special knife that he bought to cut the cord with and he is going to give it to her when she is older. So he is going to do the same thing this time around as well. Michael Paul is also really hoping to catch this baby. He didn't get to last time because Keziah had two nuchal arms so my midwife had to give a little help in order for Keziah to be born safely. He expressed his desire to catch this baby at my last appointment and my new midwife is totally supportive. So we are hopeful for that.

Keziah seems to be grasping the concept rather quickly. I talk to her a lot about what's going on with mommy and why my belly is getting bigger. She points to my belly and says "baby" and has even done the same to other pregnant women. So she does seem to get that a big belly means a baby is growing inside. She has been extra interested in her baby dolls lately and we've been practicing 'gentle touches' and 'being sweet' on her baby dolls. I'm hoping all our practice will pay off. Yesterday Keziah had lifted my shirt and was patting my belly when Michael Paul said, "do you want to hug the baby?" and she put her cheek on my belly and her arms around me. It was so cute.

I'm not really having any inklings or gut feelings about the gender of this baby. We are pretty decided on a girl name but have yet to find a boy name we agree on. I wouldn't be surprised if we still didn't have a boy name when the baby came. Hopefully if that is the case, we will have a girl! Well, we are going to have the guess the birthdate, weight, and gender game again. Last time we played this at all my baby showers and some of my students at the time joined in as well. I had close to 100 entries and would you believe the winner was Michael Paul's mom! Seeing as how I probably won't have showers this time around I thought I'd let the fun happen on the blog here. So all you have to do is leave a comment here or you can email me your guess. Guess gender, weight, and birthdate. Children are welcome to play to, so if my nieces, nephew, cousins want to guess, go ahead. Just list off each person in your family's guess. And just in case you think past history is a good predictor, Keziah was at least a week late and weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz. Oh and my due date is supposedly February 17. Michael Paul is pulling for February 29th because he thinks a leap year baby would be awesome. OK, have fun guessing!