The past two weeks have been a bit wild.  Every day I’ve meant to write an update about what the kids have been up to, but every day it hasn’t happened… until today!  Yay!  The lack of writing is largely due to how absolutely exhausting the end of this pregnancy has been.  I have put life on hold for now until baby comes.  Right now, I’m resting a lot, eating a lot and loving my kiddos a lot, while eagerly anticipating our new member of our family.

The good part about “having” to rest, rather than run at life a hundred miles a minute is that I’m really savoring all the little moments with my kids and my husband.  Near our front porch we have a wooded area that our kids & their friends refer to as “the witch’s forest.”  This little “forest” keeps them entertained so often that we (& our neighbors) are very grateful to have been blessed with a real “witch’s forest.”  The other day all three of our kids were playing dinosaurs together in the “forest,” pretending that the sprinkler heads were volcanoes and that the small rocks were dinosaur eggs.  It was a somewhat rare moment where all three kids were playing together (no one fighting, no one crying over a toy someone else had that they wanted and no one “bugging” anyone else).  It was blissful and so fun to watch.

I took the kids to the Grand Re-Opening of TCBY.  We had so much fun together (especially since Vanessa & her girls joined us!).  TCBY was offering everyone free cups of frozen yogurt with any of their scrumptious toppings.  The kids chose strawberry frozen yogurt and piled their cups high with gummy bears and M&M’s.  Norah was the winner, though, for the largest variety of toppings: gummy bears, M&M’s, sprinkles, blueberries and strawberries.  Norah was quite the little star.  The professional photographer hired by TCBY to cover the event couldn’t resist snapping photos of Norah eating her frozen yogurt creation with her sassy glasses.  Tate and Claire LOVED being able to choose whatever toppings they wanted and they both downed their yogurt creations really quickly.  However, it took FOREVER for Norah to finish her yogurt, since she was absolutely insistent that she had to fish every last sprinkle out of her cup with her spoon and then even ended up drinking all the melted yogurt.  She savored every last bit and none of us could rush her.

Randy discovered last week that one of the break pads was missing on one of our cars (yikes!).  So, he set about fixing it, much to our kids’ delight.  They were thoroughly entertained watching their Dad fix the car.

This inspired the kids to take what they had learned and use it on their car, using Daddy’s jack to lift their car, too.

Saturday I took Norah to get her hair cut by her Aunt Crystal.  I love to keep her hair in a short, sassy bob and this cut was long overdue.  Norah was SO good the entire time during the cut!  She sat still and wasn’t too wiggly.  Crystal discovered a clever way to keep Norah busy: give her different brushes to brush her hair while Crystal was cutting it.  Crystal always does SUCH a good job with Norah’s hair; it looks absolutely adorable now!

After getting her hair cut, Crystal painted her toenails and fingernails.  This is the primary advantage to having a stylist for an Aunt (especially since their Mom isn’t very good at that kind of stuff).  My girls just love Crystal dolling them up and making them fancy.

Claire tagged along for this very reason.  She didn’t mind sitting through Norah’s haircut (& mine), as long as Crystal would be able to paint her nails, too.  Claire’s nails are getting big enough now that Crystal was able to paint a cute flower on her big toenails and her thumbs.  Claire is in HEAVEN with all this fanciness.

Tomorrow is the last day of holding baby in.  Finally after tomorrow I’ll be far enough along that baby can come whenever.  I wish I could say that I’m hoping baby stays cooking for awhile longer, but I’m completely worn out from the effort of keeping baby in.  Baby seems to be getting really crowded in there right now, too.  I’ve got a foot in my ribs and I can’t sit up straight because my body just doesn’t bend over all the baby limbs easily anymore.  I’m in the every-move-I-make-is-so-painful stage of pregnancy right now which means that I’m really not able to sleep very well, even though I’m always exhausted.  I know, I’m really selling the pregnancy experience to you, aren’t I (Kristina, you probably shouldn’t read any of this *wink*)?

My secret hope is that baby will come this weekend.  If you love me or have any kindness in your heart at all, you’ll hope this for me, too *wink, wink*.