Life is wonderful, for the most part, these days. May finds us with Lincoln about to graduate preschool. Jackson becoming more mischievous everyday. I am 29 weeks pregnant with our third baby. Stephen is busy as always with the spring season at Paintball. We are in the midst of selling our house and gearing up to build out at the farm. Life is BUSY! But good!
Lincoln is 2 weeks away from being done preschool. He had a pretty good year. It was a battle getting him out the door most mornings - he is not a morning person. But he always had a great time at school. His teacher talked to us a few times about how quiet Lincoln is in class and how she would like him to relax more. So its been a process of us encouraging him to talk nice and loud to Mrs Geradts and other kids in his class. He's getting there :) He continues to amaze me at what he is learning from life, from us and at school. Literally a sponge. Letters continue to not be his strong point, but he is brilliant at building with duplo and lego and loves hot wheels and dinosaurs. He also can have the WORST attitude ever, and it can be very frustrating to deal with. He gets his mind set on something he wants and when we say no he does not take it well. We are trying to be consistent and cut out how much time he spend on the computer and ipad. Its much easier now that summer is here to keep them busy without all the gadgets! He has been our biggest challenge as parents, wouldn't should be surprising since he is the oldest and is the first to introduce us to the next stage of development.
Jackson continues to keep me on my toes and about 2 heartbeats away from a heart attack! He is 3 now and is only about 27lbs, which is really small for his age. Most 2 year olds are bigger than him. We recently under went a round of blood, urine and xray tests that would ordered through a pedatrician. We are still waiting for the results. It was not fun for him or for us to have to put him through all that, but we are thankful that we live in age where we might have some answers as to why he isn't growing. He is still mischivious as ever - likes to let himself out of the house if I don't keep the doors locked. Loves to climb up on my counter and eat sugar out of the sugar bowl or try to cut up his own orange, in the mean time cutting himself. Or how about the time he grabbed my longest knife and waved it up and down singing "I got two pickles, I've got to pickles,". Never. A. Dull. Moment. But at the same time he is my cuddliest, sweetest, most darling little boy. He likes to take my face in his hands and give me the sweetest 3 yr old kisses. He is ALWAYs good to cuddle, and most times his wrestle time with daddy will spontaously turn to cuddle time when mid wrestle he lays down on Stephens chest and snuggles in. He eats, breaths, and sleeps dinosaurs. Its amazing how many dinosaurs he can identify. Of course his ultimate is T-rex King of the dinos! "Draw T-rex mom!" Which is always followed by "Draw spinosaurus!" and then without fail "Draw stegosaurus!" He also has recently developed a love of transformers and I will often hear him, when playing buy himself, commanding his dinosaurs, to "Autbots! Transform + roll out!" He lowers his voice so deep, its darling :) For the most part he is a fairly obedient child, and is just starting to discover what asserting his own will is like. It will be an interesting next 6 months! He is the reason parents have developed leashes - he is wild and unpredictable, always marching to his own beat.
Stephen and I found out we were expecting in November. After holding our breath for 13 weeks we received an ultrasound and verified the baby was healthy and growing. We were so releaved and said many prayers of thanks. Its been a good pregnancy, but I'm not sure if its because its my third pregnancy or if its because I am just getting older, but i sure don't remember it being so hard on my body! I've had low blood pressure, which thankfully straightened itself out. I know have low iron, which I need to bring up before birth in order to reduce the chances of bleeding too much. I always get a sciatic nerve in my pregnancys, but this one seems to be the worst. Granted I am running after 2 (sometimes 7 if I have all the kids I babysit) and we have been packing, and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning as we try to sell out house. So I have been demanding a lot of my body and back. We are all anxious to meet this little one, feel incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to bring another one into our family and are all rooting for a girl :) Even the boys want a little sister. Lincoln sees that math just doesn't make sense - 3 boys in our family and only 1 girl? We need a girl mom! It has been amazing to watch Lincoln fall in love with this baby, as my tummy gets bigger and baby gets more active. He daily asks to give the baby a hug, wrapping his arms around my belly. He will talk to the baby saying "Hey! Are you a boy or a girl?" If I tell him the baby is kicking he eagerly trys to feel too. He has come to terms that it might not be a girl and told me the other day, "Mom even if its a boy I will still love that baby!" And he has also told me "Mom, I am going to love you so much more when you bring that baby home!" or the classic "Mom, I'm going to still love you even when you tummy gets this big!". Jack has been surprisingly indifferent, and actually a bit annoyed. This big belly gets in the way of his cuddling and mom isn't nearly as fun now that she can't wrestle or be jumped on! But he LOVES babies so I am sure he will warm up to his new sibling once he/she is here.
We are excited to be finally building our own house, and are blessed to be able to do it on Stephen's parents land. We have our house listed and are believing for a sale quickly so we can start selling. Winter threw us off a bit this year as it just kept going! We didn't see all the snow gone until the end of APRIL! And its only been gone from the farm since mid-may! We had record breaking amounts of snow this year. So everything is behind from getting the land subdivided to listing our house (we kept waiting for the spring market, except Spring just wouldn't come!)But we are hoping to start in the next couple of weeks and are really excited. It will be crazy with welcoming a new baby in the middle of it all. Especially since I won't be able to help as much as I would like too until probably a month after the baby comes, but we believe this is the right timing and the housing market is really strong here so we should do well on our house. We hope to have chickens, goats, a big garden and to really become more self reliant and get back to our roots. we want to raise our children working hard, doing chores, playing outside all day long.
So that is where we are in May 2013! I'm looking forward to no longer watching kids and just focusing on my, soon to be, 3 blessings!
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