Water out the Wazoo!

With each pregnancy, it appears that things just start happening earlier and earlier. For instance, my belly button started to pop at 16 weeks with Xander, 12 weeks with Keegan and 9 weeks with this one. I felt the baby move earlier with each pregnancy too (19 weeks, 15 weeks and 13 weeks respectively). And of course, I show earlier!

Much to my chagrin, braxton-hicks contractions have begun earlier as well - 28 weeks with Xander, 22 weeks with Keegan and 18 weeks with this one. For those of you that don't feel any hint of a contraction until you go into labor, count yourselves blessed. They aren't exactly painful, just very annoying. But then I didn't feel labor (even pitocin induced) hurt all that bad until I was nearing or in transition.

Sunday evening, we had a bit of a scare. I was having mild contractions every 3-5 minutes for about 2 hours. They went away as I fell asleep, but started up again in the middle of the night when I woke up thinking that they were gone. So, I've been in touch with my midwife and we will be monitering things a little closer. For now, I'm trying to rest a little more and drink a gallon of water a day. I found this really helped last time along with the side benefit of reducing swelling. The only thing it did not reduce was trips to the bathroom! ;)

Fall Fun!

I love fall. Although we don't experience fall in the stereotypical sense, it is still so refreshing to finally have a break from the blistering heat of summer!

In an effort to try and explain the concept of fall and harvest time to the boys, we went to a farm that has a pumpkin patch (of sorts) and a corn maze.

Xander enjoyed picking out his very own pumpkin!

Although I wouldn't recommend this with strollers EVER again, we still had fun at the corn maze. If it hadn't been for all of the contractions, I probably would have just packed Keegan on my back. The boys still had a fun time running around and inspecting some of the corn that was still on the stalks!

And we even found a fuzzy caterpillar. This little guy was very fast. Xander loved having the chance to let him run up his arm!

For some reason, I waited until the end of our day (right before naptime) to try and capture a cute picture of my two boys amidst the pumpkins. I'll remember next year to try this when they are fresh!

This place over on Power and Warner had such a wonderful mix of things to do. There was also a sand pit for the little kids, a cow barrel "train" ride, a jumper, small petting zoo, tractor to climp all over and a miniature hay barrel maze. We'll definitely be visiting this place again next year! We also went and painted our pumpkin with some friends and then had some other friends over the next day to bake and decorate fall leaf cookies!!!

YUM!

Some things never change...

There have been a few times in my adult life that have surprised both myself and my family. For instance, I was never into writing growing up and yet I ended up with a job in fundraising for pro-life groups where writing played a critical role. Ironic.

I was also never really into sewing growing up. I knew how, but only did it when absolutely necessary and to this day have a mental block on figuring out patterns. I'm much more into trial by error. So it was ironic that I started my baby carrier business. I did it because I fell in love with carrying my babies close and wanted to share this love and opportunity with others.

This leads me to a sad confession. Due to my dislike of sewing, when my mom stopped sewing my AWANA patches on in junior high I resorted to 'gasp' gluing them on! Of course, I would usually wait until an hour before we needed to leave, so I would try using the glue gun. This resulted in accidentally gluing the sleeves together one time and then burning myself while trying to glue them on while wearing my shirt. Stupid, I know. If the sleeves glued together, you'd think I'd have deduced that the piping hot glue would go thru the shirt and to my arm...

Well, not much has changed. I am once again in charge of attaching patches to Awana uniforms. And what did I do? ...Wait to the last minute and resort to glue. Thankfully, I've discovered a wonderfully fast-acting fabric glue that doesn't burn.

Dairy Learning

October has been "Farming" month for Learning Day. I've gone all out and really tried to incorporate our theme into everything that we are doing. We've been reading A LOT of books on all aspects of farming! Raising dairy cows is one kind of farming that is really common down where we live. So we decided to tour a dairy. Superstition Farms is a small (approx 1000 cows) family owned farm. The brother, sister and mom ran the tour! We had a blast and I highly recommend this as an outing option for those here in Phoenix. I learned so much about cows! (For instance, milk cows only get 2 months "off" during the last two months of their 9 month gestation perios and have a new calf about every 2 years starting at 2 years old. As a nursing mom who is currently "off" while growing this new little one, I found this quite interesting.) The tour made me wish that we new someone who farmed. I loved the pace out there and wish I could expose my boys to it more often.

Here we are at the entrance!

The mom is talking to us about chickens. The kids got to sit on hay bales and learn all about the different animals on their farm and both see and touch the different kinds of food that a cow eats. I had no idea that they ate such a complex diet. Xander did very well sitting and listening. His brother on the other hand just wanted to run. I ended up pouching him so he'd stay put.

Here the boys are getting ready for our hay ride tour of the actual dairy. Since this is a working farm, we toured this way so as not to disturb the cows or workers...After the hayride tour, we had the opportunity to feed the animals. Even Keegan got a piece of the action. All of the kids LOVED this part!

Xander laughed each time and thought it tickled. We fed a cow, goats and the horse.

We ate a yummy picnic lunch there and the boys enjoyed flavored milk from their Milk Bar!

If anyone has any ideas for creative outings for preschool aged kids, I'd love to hear about them. It's exciting to watch him absorb everything!