End of an Era

In September we will have out grown our current cars and so it was time to sell one of our cars and buy a van.

In 2003 I (Paul) bought a 1993 Honda Accord, the same type of car my parents had when I was in high school. It has been a great little car with lots of memories. I remember taking a road trip to Pocatello, ID with Vanessa and my roommate Stephen. We were visiting Vanessa's roommate who had a crush on me so Vanessa and I hadn't gone public with our relationship. Instead we sneakily held hands while Stephen zoned out in the backseat.

That same summer we took another road trip with my brother Mark to Phoenix to visit my sister and meet Vanessa's family for the first time. It was on the way home that I first told each other that we loved each other.

We brought Asher home from the hospital in it...well you get the point. That car has come with us through every step of our lives together.
Well, we got all the little problems fixed in preparation to sell it, and then it was running so well that we figured it didn't make sense to sell that one. Instead we decided that we might as well cash out the value in our 2003 Accord.
So today we traded it in and got a 2005 Honda Odyssey. We had been looking for a van with 8 seats and dual power sliding doors and this was the least expensive of all the ones we had found and it also had leather, 6-disc changer, automatic climate control with three zones, and alloy wheels. Vanessa and I really like it but the kids love it. They think it is Disney Land on wheels. When I got home from work we all sat in it and figured out all the features worked, while the kids climbed from row to row to row and back again. So it is the end of an era, but we are excited to run our two vehicles into the ground and not buy another car for years.

Happenings

Everything has been going really well in our world. I am now well into my second trimester, and FINALLY my morning sickness is subsiding and I am getting some energy back. I was starting to worry that I was just really lazy and that was just how I was going to be forever, but I am feeling more like my old self again which is a relief to my entire family.

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon, but my kids seem to coordinate and decide who gets to be naughty and who gets to be nice in any given stage. Asher has been impossible for probably about 6 months now. I love him like crazy, but he hasn't been cooperative, or obedient, he found pleasure in tormenting Maddie, and seemed to refuse to use the toilet just to spite me. conversely, Madeleine has been a little angel. She has been obedient and remorseful when she did something wrong, and was just sweet as can be.

Overnight about two weeks ago, it was like bizarro world and they switched places.

Asher has been so much fun to be around. If I am just taking one kid on an errand, I claim Asher. He is curious and sweet. He tries to make Madeleine happy. Whenever she throws a tantrum, he runs and gets her a glass of water or gets her favorite stuffed animal. He has mostly mastered potty training (after 10 months!!!). He has become a snuggler again, which is really nice. He has also been really excited about the baby and he likes to ask about it.

Madeleine on the other hand, is definitely turning two. Her favorite words now are MINE and NO! She delights in naughtiness. We were at a store with a motorcycle displayed and I told her not to touch it. She looked right at me, ran over to the motorcycle, glowered at me and reached out a finger and touched it. She has also been picking fights with Asher. If he asks us for anything, she immediately yells NO! And he gets so upset, as if she has any say over the matter. It's funny though because at the same time that she is asserting her independence and testing her limits, she has also been really needy. She wants me to be with her all the time.

Being a mom is so interesting. Sometimes I feel like I have the greatest developmental psychology lab in the world.

The weather is starting to turn nice again. It is such a relief to send the kids out to the backyard where they can get dirty and tired like kids should. Asher has been refusing to wear any shoes other than snow boots all winter, even though we only had snow on the ground for about a week. In celebration of spring, we took the kids to get sandals. It was warm outside and Asher was in shorts, but he still refused to wear sandals instead of boots. I bribed him with giving him his shoebox if he would wear his sandals. He agreed and now won't wear anything except for his sandals even though it had been raining for the last two days.

Sporting some new gray hairs

Baby #3 is already grounded for a month.

I had an appointment with my Dr. today and at the end they tried to listen to the heartbeat with a doppler. The Dr. was able to hear the heartbeat last week so it was supposed to be even easier to hear since the baby has grown so much over the last week and a half.

Well, the nurse practitioner tried for five minutes with the doppler and couldn't find a heartbeat. Then she went and got the "Super" doppler and still couldn't find it. She said that she would go and find their portable ultrasound machine and be right back.

She left and I started crying. I am nearly 12 weeks pregnant they are supposed to be able to hear the baby now easily and heard it clearly last week. I was certain something wasn't right. 5 minutes later, the nurse practitioner was back with the ultrasound machine and the Doctor.

As soon as he put the machine on my abdomen the baby and heartbeat were visible. I couldn't believe it. Twice now I've been convinced that the baby wasn't okay and my little trooper has proven me wrong. The Dr. even said that at this point, there is only a 1/200 chance that anything could go wrong. I wish it was 1 in a million, but I will gladly accept my 99.5%. That is much better than the 50% that the Emergency Room Doctor told me. The baby has grown so much! Its arms and legs were much longer and its head was more proportional and my last ultrasound wasn't even that long ago. Sadly, no picture as their printer malfunctioned, but I am so happy I don't really care.

Also, no more bed rest and I get to be just as active as I normally am. Which at this point in my pregnancy is slightly more active than a nauseated sloth.

Asher who is convinced that Monsters are real and like to hang out in his room, has up to this point looked at me like I am ridiculous when I talk about the baby in my tummy. Today on the ride home from his friend's house, I told him that I got to see a picture of the baby in my tummy and that it was sleeping, but the Dr. had to wake it up.

He said "Momma, the baby was sleeping in your tummy? That's so funny!" Baby Susie sleeps too!" (Baby Susie is my friend Janna's baby)

Then Maddie started singing "Baby sleeping in the tummy" for the whole ride back.

All in all, it has been a good day. Thank you for all of your prayers and good wishes. I am so happy to be having this baby, even if he or she is a bit of a troublemaker.

My Favorites and Thanks

I have bugged Vanessa for a long time to put together a list of blogs to add to the Favorite Links list. Seeing as I (Paul) am the one posting this you can see how successful I am at nagging. I know Vanessa loves linking from blog to blog like Tarzan swinging through the jungle, but yet our blog had one lone link, essentially creating a cyberspace dead end. So I went through the short list of blogs that I check and tried to sift through the blogs that Vanessa checks and compiled a list that are on the left.

I apologize to anyone left off the list or if I misspelled anything; that is the problem with having me put the list together, but I figured it was better attempted and incomplete than empty. Let me know and I will add you to the list.

I also wanted to send out a thank you to friends for helping us out this week. Sunday night was a stressful time to say the least. I called our friends and home teacher the Gibbs to see if they would watch our kids and without hesitation they said yes. When we dropped our kids off minutes later (~9:00pm) Michael told me, "Just pick the kids up in the morning. It doesn't matter if you are only at the hospital for 20 minutes, just pick the kids up in the morning." It was one less thing we had to worry about that long night. By the way, Michael, if you are reading this, I would have to check the home teaching equivalency chart, but I think one emergency overnight children watch counts for 6 months of visits.

Then the week wore on and the symptoms persisted and Vanessa was put on bedrest. When the Primary President called Vanessa on Primary business all it took was Vanessa mentioning bed rest and a few minutes later dinners were setup for us for that night, the rest of the week and early next week. We got tons of calls from ward members wanting to know if they could do anything for us. People helped where they could but their love and concern were really a support to us.

I would like to thank everyone by name (I even tried in a draft) but there are just too many people. So here is a generic thank you to everyone. It means so much to us. Thank you.

Well blog posts without pictures are boring, so here are some pictures from last Sunday.

Best Christmas Gift Ever!

I've neglected to mention the very best Christmas Gift we got this year! On Christmas morning we found out that we are going to have another baby!

I was going to wait to tell Asher because I didn't want him to spill the beans, but I couldn't wait any longer so I told him the next day.

"Asher, there's a baby in my tummy!"
Asher looked horrified and yelled "Mama! Don't Eat BABIES. We eat FOOD not BABIES!"

I tried to explain to him that I didn't eat a baby, but that babies grow in my tummy, but he was still too mad at me for eating a baby to listen. At least he has a good sense of right and wrong. I guess I can leave him alone with our new addition and not worry that his hunger will be too much and he'll snack on his sibling.

A few days later I tried again and told him that he was getting a new little brother or sister. He got really upset and told me that he just wanted Madeleine. He was really mad at me about our conversation. When Paul or I tried to bring it up he would say that he just wanted Madeleine and not a new brother or sister. Then it dawned on us that he thought we were trading Madeleine in for a newer model. At least he wasn't overjoyed at this concept.

We tried again and told him that Madeleine was going to get to be a big sister and that finally made him happy. We asked him if he wanted her to have a little brother or sister. He said "I want her to have a sister so I can have two Madeleines!" Awww.

I tried to make this post on Sunday, but right after I posted it, I thought I started to miscarry, so I had Paul delete it before we went to the emergency room. It turns out that our baby is healthy and wiggly and happy in there, but I am now on bed-rest at least through the weekend. I am going a little crazy and so are Asher and Madeleine, but the Dr. is pretty sure that the baby is going to be just fine.

My church is taking great care of us, and I am trying not to notice the crumbs and toys all over the floor that I am not permitted to do anything about.

Update

Sorry for the long blogging hiatus, I guess I haven't felt very bloggy lately. Paul has been home so much more and it is making my job ten times easier. The kids can really feel it when Paul is out of town or just not home as much and it makes them much more emotional and destructive than usual. I LOVE having him home.

Our kids have grown and changed a lot since I last updated.

Madeleine is talking so much! It's fun to hear her say new things every day. She speaks in sentences, although amusing sentences. She says things like:

"Shut it the door"
"Take a bath with the water"
"Pretty in the hair"

She loves meeting new friends too. A man canvassing for dog licensing came by and she started talking his ear off. "HI HI HI! My momma's right here, my momma's right here. HI! My momma's right here!" So different from Asher. Actually it was quite an event for Asher too. He couldn't wait for Paul to come home so that he could tell him 20 different times "A man came by and momma told him we didn't have a dog, daddy!"

She is really into being pretty right now. She has three different hats; a viking hat my sister brought home from her mission, a princess hat, and a fireman hat. We almost always see Madeleine wearing one of these hats, and she will come up to us and smile so that we tell her she is beautiful. She always wants a bow in her hair and wears blankets around her shoulders and sunglasses too. She just loves to dress up. It's interesting to experience having a girl after a boy. They really are so different.

Asher hasn't changed as much, but I think his imagination has developed a lot more. He has been having nightmares about monsters. I am not even sure how he knows what a monster is. I think the only monster he knows is Cookie Monster and he's not really scary, unless you have cookies that you don't want to share.

He is a sunbeam! He has struggled going to sharing time, he loved nursery and is having a hard time not playing with toys as much. Paul has taken him to Sunday school a few times and he's seemed to realize that sharing time was infinitely better than Sunday school, so he goes grudgingly. He really loves his teachers and class and loves to share what he learned that day.