February 23rd

What a great day! First, I got a few blissful hours of alone time for my midwife appointment and 20 week ultrasound, which went terrifically. Everything looks great, and even the fibroid the tech had spotted at eight weeks seems to have disappeared. I consider myself very lucky. I put the ultrasound pictures up on our fridge and as Brian and I looked at them together, I asked, "Can you believe that whoever that is, we're going to love them as much as we love our kids right now?" This baby has sneaked up on us, it seems. With all the busy life of the past couple of months, it's been growing under the radar. I can't wait to meet him or her in July!

 

 

When I got home, it was naptime for Neva, and William asked to make a card for Lake. He had heard that her pictures, which she had been drawing to send as thank you notes for Christmas present, had been destroyed when her baby sister crawled into her tent without a diaper and peed all over them."I want to make her a card to help her feel better," he said. So we colored her some pictures and drew on the backs, and these were the notes the boys wanted to send. It was utterly hilarious when I asked Barrett, "What do you want to say?"and he piped up, "Dear Lord..."

After Neva's morning nap, it was off to the library to pick up some materials we had ordered online. (In the picture above, they had been pretending to pull the books off the shelf.) Of course, we couldn't ONLY pick up our 15 holds, and we left with a duffel bag of probably 40 books. It never ceases to warm my heart, how much my boys love books. While I was checking out, they both just sat peacefully on the couch and looked at books. While William and I were picking out the books he wanted, Barrett kept running up with random books in his hands, like young adult novels and youth chapter books about sparkly cats. "This could be great!" He would exclaim. 

 

Next to our tiny Addison Library is a tiny park. It was the perfect day for it. It's so tiny that I have almost never seen anybody else there, which suits me perfectly as I am learning more and more I prefer to be alone. And oh, we had so much fun. We brought Barrett's new birthday toy from Aunt Bit and Uncle Phil and Imogen, a bubble blowing gun. I'm telling you, this thing was super cool! I wanted a turn so badly but I had to let the boys do it. :-) William said, "It's like a slushious gun!" (From a movie called Home with a flying car that shoots bubbles from its exhaust.) Barrett couldn't quite get the hang of it and preferred to run around in the sunshine trying to pop the bubbles William shot at him. It was perfect… Both boys had an occupation and there was no fighting. Unfortunately, Neva was kind of a cranky pants, at the park at ALL DAY LONG. She really needs to learn to walk. She does not like crawling around, but wants to follow us everywhere. A couple of times I would prop her up on a picnic table and run over to the edge of the woods to help Barrett pee, and I would hear her cranky cry as she followed on her hands and knees, getting herself all wet and muddy. Girlfriend really needs to learn to walk. Her mom is getting tired of hauling her butt around!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The swings were my lifesaver, as it was the only chance I really had to put Neva down. Barrett absolutely love the swings, loves them as much as William hates them. Such an odd couple they make. I showed Barrett an underdog, and he kept shouting, "Can you do a dogger dog again?!"

We got home in time for naptime and time to clean up for daddy to come home. After dinner, we spent some low-key family time and then headed upstairs for bathtime. Typically bathtime is a fairly relaxing period, but as per usual today, Neva was NOT happy. I had reached my max capacity just in time to lay the kids down and have a long, philosophical discussion about the Bible with William. (He stays fairly quiet through the day, until bedtime hits and he is full of deep questions that would've been perfect at a family dinner, during which he instead fooled around on the bench and made faces into the mirror.)

"Mom, why did God make the world? What is it here for? What is it supposed to do? Is Satan real? Is he on this world? When Satan tempted Jesus, did Jesus draw pictures to make him go away? Jesus told him, 'You shall only worship the Lord your God,' so does that mean Satan worships God? When Paul got into a boat and went to Rome, did he do it because God told him to? We know Satan isn't real because David killed Goliath and all the sin, right? When Adam and Eve left the garden, did they still worship God? Did people eat other people when they stopped following God?" There was more. I really tried to answer each and every question as thoroughly as I could, so Neva and Barrett were both fast asleep by the time I climbed back down the ladder and headed downstairs to take a shower and finish cleaning up the kitchen. At 10 PM I fell into bed, horizontal for the first time all day, and conked out.