Miriam

So I started having contractions similar to when I was in labor with Isaac. Although I know that every labor is different, for some reason I assumed that this meant the entire thing would be the same as Isaac's.

I began with the back labor, as I always do. Wednesday night, my mom spent the night just in case. I was up quite a bit with contractions about 5-7 minutes apart for much of the night, but eventually they moved further apart and I got some sleep.

The way I have known when to go to the hospital with the other babies was if I would lay down and contractions were STILL close together, then it was time. With this one however, I would lay down and they would be 15-20 min apart, but REALLY intense, 1 minute long contractions. When I would walk around, they would be 5 minutes apart.

So confusing.

I took some Kali Carbonicum, but it may have been too soon because I didn't feel the baby rotate like I did with Isaac (a truly bizarre but amazing feeling).

Finally, at about 11am we went over to Special Beginnings to get checked (we saw Becky Lopiccolo on the road on the way there), and I was a good 5 centimeters. I thought this was great and would have the baby pretty soon. With Isaac, I was 6 centimeters when I got to the hospital and I had him about 1 hour later.

This time, I was checked again at the hospital (about 12pm) and was 6, so I was thinking I would have this baby by 1:00. Not true! I was 8 centimeters for the next 2 hours!!! NOT FUN!!!

I guess it is never a good idea to have a time in your head that you will be finished and keep looking at the clock.

Max says that every time I'm in labor I say two things: "I can't do this!" and "I'm never doing this again!" This time I also said, "remind me next time to get an epidural"

When all is said and done, however, it is SOO worth it. We had a baby girl! The midwife and the nurse said, "dad, what is it?" And Max said, um . . . . is it a girl?, completely dumbfounded. The nurse said it was the funniest reaction she had ever seen.














Every time we have a new baby, I forget many things like how much breastfeeding hurts, how many diapers they go through in a day, and how tiny they start out. They always make the current "baby" seem like a giant. Miriam was 7 lbs 4 oz, so she was by far the smallest. 1 lb is a huge different at that age, so it was a little bizarre to have such a tiny baby.

songs on repeat

For quite some time our boys have loved to put random CDs in the CD player. They quickly decide which song they like on that CD and then put it on repeat. We have gotten so used to this, that half the time we don't even realize the song has played over and over until the 10th time. We start singing to it and then say, "wait, haven't we already heard this a bunch of times".

When Luke was 2 1/2 he was already obsessed with star wars and wanted to march around the house with the Darth Vader theme on repeat ALL DAY LONG!!

Then there was the Guster song, "c'mon" where as soon as we would play it, Luke and Andrew would drop anything they were doing and start giggling and running circles around the house (this song was mainly popular when we were in the townhouse). We have a video of this.

Then there was "word of the Lord" from the Seeds Cd. It was the first song on the CD and we could never make it past it because it would immediately get put on repeat. If I tried to switch it to "For it is by Grace you have been saved through faith", they would start screaming "NO! I DON'T LIKE THAT ONE!!!"

Of course there was the Beatles song that Chup-pop made popular around here - Beep Beep. It sort of became Chup-pop's theme song, and therefore went on repeat all too often.

Probably the oddest one they put on repeat was Kiss, "I was made for lovin you" They played this ALL DAY Every day for a while, to the point that Max would get home and it would STILL be on and he would say, "has that been on ALL day?" It would just fade into the background for me so that I barely noticed it anymore. This also happened with a Veggie Tales song. . ."we're going to the promised land. . .in the promised land, you're gonna be so grand, you'll have a . . . it'll be so great, oh we can hardly wait, cuz we're goin to the promised land."

The most ANNOYING songs were on the Baby Loves Jazz CD that Eric gave them. WOW! I still can't believe how annoying those songs were! And of course the ones they put on repeat were the WORST ones on that CD- Ten little monkeys, but much worse than that was the
scat song. It went something like this "I was scattin real fast, and du du du du du who who who who" (monkey sounds), and other animal sounds throughout the song. It was just painful to have this one on repeat, but Luke loved it and even knew most of the words one time when we asked what they were saying in that song.

The Mariah Carey Christmas song

I know there are more songs they obsessed over that I can't remember right now, but I just wanted to look back on these one day.

more Lukey obsessions

Luke will often become suddenly obsessed with a particular thing where he speaks incessantly about it and can’t sleep because of it. He just HAS to have it RIGHT NOW!

Obviously, we can’t always give into his immediate desires, but his persistence definitely gets to me after a while, causing me to actually WANT to get it for him, not because I’m tired of hearing about it, but because I know how much he will appreciate it and play with it.

Luke has always been so appreciative of every gift we have given him, thanking us profusely for it for several days or even months after he gets it, so he really is a joy to buy for.

One day he was at the Lopic’s house for a short time and was already obsessed with GI JOE, when Becky showed him Transformers because she just knew he would love that too (as if he needed one more obsession!) So he came home non-stop talking about how he HAD to have a transformer. Obviously I wasn’t going to go out and buy one that second, so he was asking me to MAKE him a transformer!! Now how was I to do such a thing?

 He was to take a nap (but couldn’t go to sleep unless he knew I would at least attempt to make a transformer). I ended up spending the entire nap time figure out how to make a transformer. It actually turned out kinda cool. I made a paper firetruck with the wheels and front of the truck attached with metal brads so that they could turn. When you turned the wheels and the front of the truck it turned into the arms, feet and head of the transformer. Not bad for a not-so-creative mama.

Luke has always been into animals since he was about 2 years old, but a couple he just HAD to have were a snow tiger and an owl. He must have seen a Marty Stauffer episode about a snow tiger because out of the blue he became obsessed. Where would I EVER find a snow tiger though? Low and behold we see a snow tiger just the right size while Max and I were in Ocean City. It was actually one of the prize options at a games booth, but we just asked the guy if we could pay him for it instead of play the game for it. It was so fun to surprise Luke with it the next day.

 The other animal he had to have was an owl that we saw in a gift shop on our way to Philly in the fall of 2010, which my mom ended up getting him a version of for his birthday. He still sleeps with both of those animals a year later

A few other obsessions were that I make a ninja turtles mask, a darth Maul mask (I spent about an hour one day drawing a detailed Darth Maul face on a paper plate and then it barely got used), a double bladed lightsaber (2 dollar tree lightsabers taped together with ducktape), and of course . . .

Jango Fett- probably the most obsessed he’s ever been about ANYTHING. Out of the blue he started talking about Jango Fett and how he is his favorite character and HAD to have a Jango Fett! for 2 days straight he wouldn’t stop talking about it, and again couldn’t fall asleep because it was on his mind so much. He kept begging to go to Walmart to buy Jango. Finally, I told him I would call walmart and see if they had it just so he would go take a nap, and we told him that Daddy would look for it on the way home. When Max got home, he said that they didn’t have Jango Fett anymore and boy did he get Luke good! That was one of the best surprises ever!

  However, Isaac took quite a liking to him and quickly became Jango-obsessed.  He was not even 2 years old yet, but would sit for an hour or more at a time playing with this action figure!  He has some of the best fine motor skills for a 2 year old.  He also loves taking apart the little legos. 
Probably the oddest obsession Luke ever had was that of wanting me to make him and Andrew a diaper so that they could pretend to be babies. I finally caved into his incessant bugging and pinned together two cloth diapers so they could crawl around like babies!

Winter fun 2011

The boys have gotten really into coloring these days and its really fun to watch them.  They have completed entire coloring books, which I didn’t know was possible!  When they’re not coloring, they’re reading or dressing up in costumes!