daddy's bday...

hannah grace

lily joy

taking a cue from his sisters, travis did not cooperate fully with the 3d/4d ultrasound. after a few shots he put his hands AND feet over his face and played ultrasound peekaboo with us. we did find out that inside me dwells a chubby faced baby boy with humongous feet.





a few more on flickr...

the movie though, is super cool. it's about 12 minutes long and you can see him moving, see his arms, fingers, toes and lots more. tomorrow i'm going to try to upload it but i don't know if i can bc it's in dvd format.

in case you care we got his carseat too it's this one.

his room may, i stress may, be ready by the time he graduates from high school.

my shower is this saturday...hoo-ra!

ok must go pass out now.

xok8

ever since i found out i was prego we have been having a debate about whether or not to have a 3d ultrasound. (in case you don't know what that is, click here.)

instead of a regular blobby alien ultrasound you get to see the baby better (if he cooperates.) here in monkeyville the hospital just has a regular 2d ultrasound, and they just do one at around 20 weeks to make sure baby has all his necessary bits and pieces. unless there's something wrong you don't get another one.

sooooo, scott and i have gone back and forth on whether or not to get a 3d one. one week we decide to wait and get surprised when he's born, the next week we change our minds and want to see him.

another big thing though is the moolah factor. 3d ultrasounds are not cheap. in this area you're talking about 200 bucks and up. yikes! however, i was looking up facilities on the internet and found out there's a place about an hour away that has a a weekday "quick peek" special. if you go on a weekday before 4pm, you can get it done for a hundred bucks. of course you don't get all the "extras" but you do get a few pictures and jpeg images.

ever since i found that out, the idea has been rattling around in my big ole head.

"a hundred bucks. that's alot of groceries/ gasoline."
"but this is the last time you'll ever be pregnant- wouldn't it be cool?!"
"yeah but can we really afford it?"
"technically we could squeeze it out if we eat only from the freezer for a while and don't buy anything extra at all."
"you'll have to take off work."
"what's one more sick day anyway?"
"um, HELLO, you're supposed to be saving your sick days for when you're out for the baby at the end of year."
"But i realllllllllllly want to."
"ok maybe let's think a while longer."

and so on and so forth.

what sealed it was at my last doctor's appointment he did a super fast 2d ultrasound to check the baby's position and i almost saw his face but he didn't go up that far- he was only checking the basics- heartbeat, etc. i went home and told scott that i definitely want to see travis. his response:

"what if he's like, weird looking or something?"
typical male.

it didn't take much convincing though so i called to make the appointment ASAP bc the best time to see the baby is up til 34 weeks and i'm 33 this week. we go TOMORROW to have it done and i'm excited and anxious at the same time. i think it's bc i never had anything like this done when i was pregnant the first time and it will only work if he's facing in the right direction. plus in some of the 3d ultrasounds i've looked at online the baby's face is squished so it does look weird and you can't really tell exactly what he will look like. but some are really cute.

plus afterwards we're going to the big baby store to get travis his carseat. which seems like a little thing but it's the last main thing we need before travis gets born-da-did, as the girls say. i think it's finally sinking in that a real live baby person will be here soon.

eek.

i've never had a shower.
nope.
never.

a baby shower i mean.
ha!
no really. i am super excited.

when i was pregnant with the girls i never had a baby shower bc they shipped me away early to be on bedrest near the hospital where high risk bambinos are born, which is nowhere near my house, and therefore nowhere near any people who would give me a shower or come to one.

if you're a dude i'm sure you do not grasp the importance of the female baby shower ritual, where grown women squish candy bars and/or mustard inside a diaper to simulate baby caca and then sit around eating those pastel buttermints and making "ooh" and/or "aawwwsocute" noises while watching the mother to be open presents containing various and sundry baby items.
but this time i'm having 2! two, do you hear me?! my sister is giving me one on april 28 and then in the middle of may my friend sue is giving me one for our church peoples.

why do you need a shower? you ask. don't you have everything you could possibly need for a baby since you already had babies?

well. apparently the way things work is that when you finally decide that you will never have any more kiddos and you give everything baby-related away, you will soon become sperminated. i never knew that, obviously. plus those babies were pink babies and this is a blue baby so very little of the very little i saved is usable for travis, unless i want to give him gender confusion issues. plus, scott would never go for his manly future baseball playing boy wearing pink ruffled bloomers, i don't think.

anyway the whole reason i'm telling you this is the invitations my sister bought are so adorable you must see them. they come flat and when you take them out of the envelope they pop up into a 3d teddy bear inside a crib.



pardon my enthusiasm and it could just be cuz it's MY shower but i think they're freakin precious.


added later: a few people have asked for a link to my registries. really, you don't have to do that.
no, really.
ok but if you twist my arm and you absolutely MUST, please email me (my email address is over on the left sidebar) and if i know you (as like a regular person who comes here) i will be happy to send it to you. this may seem weird and rude but i'm very private about my personal info here. xok8

the girls want to jump in every mud puddle they see. they're used to being told no to that of course, especially when they have their good shoes on. we skipped church today bc they had a runny nose and it was pouring off and on. since it wasn't too cold i bribed them that if they cleaned up the kitchen and living room which were trashed from 2 days inside, that i would take them out and they could jump in mud puddles. they also decided, though i told them not many bugs are out in the rain, that they needed to take their bug gear the easter bunny brought them.


they discover roly poly bugs under a cinder block and have to examine them...

peta doesn't want to know what they did to God's little creatures (accidently of course- too much enthusiasm with the tweezers.)

let's see what daffodils look like with a magnifying glass. and pine cones. and dirt. and mud. and our boots.


maybe you think i'm a bad mother for letting them outside (gasp), in the rain (double gasp), with runny noses (fainting gasp.)

but they're only 4 once and they needed to burn off some energy fer crying our loud. and it stopped raining anyway while we were out. i thought after the first 20 puddles the novelty would wear off but it didn't. (see clip below for live monkey puddle jumping action!)

afterwards they changed into nice warm clothes, got all cozy, and re-trashed the house.

what to do on a rainy day...

hannah grace had to be difficult this morning and tell me she didn't like any of the candy in her easter basket. lily, however, is a chocoholic after my own heart. if this child here isn't totally adorable, nothing is.


hannah changed her story later though, and munched down on chocolate after she had her church clothes on and got slimy chocolate drool all down the front of her dress. eek.

i'm such a bad mommy- i was so tired today- we went to VB for ava's 3rd birthday party yesterday and got home late- that i didn't even take pictures of them dressed up before church. but, since there was snow on the ground, it wasn't the usual springy type outfit. they had their striped mudboots on with their dresses. haute monkey couture at its finest.

here are some random pics-you can click to biggify them and on flickr there's some other ones too.
what our backyard looked like on easter eve


ava's party had a butterfly theme...


there was a big egghunt at the party in spite of the mud- here the girls and ava discuss their strategy before the hunt


lots of munchkins after the hunt right before baby lucas decided the egg hunt sign was the finish line that had to be crossed


and here's a picture my sis took of me helping, i mean, supervising the girls during the hunt. as you can see, travis is a big boy.



blah- it's back to school tomorrow. must go and have a few last minutes of mourning for the end of spring break.

oh i almost forgot- at church they postponed the egghunt til next week for obvious reasons but we had excitement anyway- the organist got locked in the bathroom between sunday school and church and it took what seemed like forever to get her out. it was super exciting for all the kids who were already wired on sugar to watch men try to kick the door in. they tried everything and finally had to take the door off its hinges. for some reason no one thought my "how many methodists does it take to get a door open?" joke was funny.

hope you had a hoppy easter!

xok8

let's all pause at this time and pray that my children will both make it through this week alive and with all limbs intact.
just kidding i wouldn't ever harm the precious pumpkins, those perfect princesses WHO HAVE BEEN DRIVING ME COMPLETELY BATTY FOR 6 DAYS NOW.
maaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, she took my book.
mom she won't let me have my turn on the computer.
mommy, i'm hungry.
mom, did you mean to lock me on the porch for three hours? ha! but the thought has crossed my mind.


we are all on spring break this week and the excavation project as i mentioned before is the room that is supposed to be the travis nursery. it was never cleaned out before i moved in and everything extra from my old house got piled on top. upon initial inspection it appeared that we could just haul the schtuff out and label it keep, give away, or throw away. yeah RIGHT!

this room holds everything from the girls' outgrown clothes (which i should state were not organized in any way, just chunked into bags and boxes) to my leftover food from when i was on nutrisystem to like 5 huge tubs of scrapbooking material from when i was obsessed with scrapbooking and had to have every sticker button and paper ever made for the hobby. and that's just the top layer. underneath that we have stuff that was in the linen closet when i moved in (fyi this was my grandmom's house), and layers of other stuff that we couldn't bear to part with. my grandmom threw nothing away. she has brand new towel sets they got for christmas in like 1969.

underneath all that, the contents of both dressers and the closet are pristinely preserved exactly as they were the day my grandmom died. so we're dealing with both physical and emotional pain here people.

i cannot claim to be doing any hard labor- my mommy is pulling everything out, then i go thru the stuff to see what to do with it. the first two days have been just organizing the girls' old clothes- i didn't throw anything away when they outgrew them. we have like 6 bags of twin stuff for ebay. i wish so badly there was a twins club round here. worst part, only one bag is ebay-able right now due to the season- all the others will have to be stored til fall cuz they're cold weather and what are the odds they will get sold this year? bwah!

i used to get excited about making money on ebay but it always turns into such a pain- wash, iron/press, describe, list, ship. and people get so testy when they win your auction and they don't get the stuff in the mail like, the next day or something.

(insert whiny part here) plus my back is killin me do you hear killin me! the whole right side is wacked out and i'm going to the chiro in an hour but one false move and it will be back out again.
(end whiny part)

on to a totally unrelated topic...
looks like easter in monkeyville will be f-f-f-f-f-reezing cold. scratch the original outfit, go for plan b outfit. wait, there's no plan b.

and in other unrelated news lily says to me out of nowhere yesterday "i hope that easter bunny peter cottontail* knows i want a blue stuffed bunny." (mother runs frantically around stores looking for blue stuffed bunny.) ha! found a super humongous one for 10 bucks and i got hannah a yellow one. no they don't need another stuffed animal much less a big one but you know...

*it took me a while to convince them that the easter bunny's name is peter cottontail not peter rabbit. i had to go through the whole detailed explanation then get the beatrix potter book out to show them.