Ok, ok people! simmer down! I know, you've been checking our blog every 15 minutes each day to see if we were going to post family/belly pictures. Well you can now rest knowing sure enough, we are. I know you are wanting the really intimate ones where Mike caresses my belly. There might be a taste of that, however there are no bare bellied ones. I'm sorry.  We got those when I was prego with Ivan. However, I am willing to post them upon special request.

My  good friend since about birth took these for us and did a great job. It's hard to get kids to cooperate, Jack was really sick that day and it was quite windy out, so I was doubtful.... but she is great and got some good ones despite all that. So glad we did it. Thanks so much Mik!

So here, baby girl Balle, is what yo mamma looked like with you inside and what your cute brothers looked like before you joined them.

(while most people post 1 or 2 pictures, we post 29 or 30- you are welcome)

Back to the drawing board! What's your opinion?

Well we are back to square one with names for the baby. We've both always really liked the name Halle, however it just wont' work with our last name. Spelled the same, but pronounced diff. That's just a recipe for disaster. Other than that we really didn't have any girl names up our sleeves. When we found out it was a girl our top names were Emily and Leah. Then Emily kinda evolved into Emery, which I really like and liked before we got married, however I really want it pronounced Em-er-ry rather than Em-ry. I also like Addison. As we talk about it more seriously we've kinda cooled on Emery and on Leah. Mikes not in love with Addison so the top name right now is Emily. We want to use Mikes mom's name, Sharon, as a middle name so it needs to go with that.

Do tell us!!! What are your favorite girl names? Knowing that we may use it, so don't give it if you plan to use it. :) And we are just thinking out loud and want to see what's out there so don't be sad if we don't use your suggestion. :) But we are to the point where we are looking for suggestions. Any????

There's no wrong way to eat an orange....I guess

Ivan LOVES oranges. I peel one and he takes a piece and  eats it.

Iiiiiif this is what you call "eating." So I just patiently wait while he "eats" his slice and then puts it back on the plate and takes another one, until he has gone through them all, and then I eat his left overs. The whole time he's "eating" it he comments about how he loves oranges and how mmmm juicy they are or how sweet a certain one tastes or how tart one might be. Really Ivan? Can you even tell by that suck off the top? Jack on the other hand eats the whole slice right up. (there I go again, making it sound like Jack is better)  ;)

A good day

A good day is almost better to me than a spectacular day. Those kinds of days are surely exciting, but I like the peace and comfort and goodness that comes from a "good day." Most days I consider normal..... that is, when I'm not pregnant, but the fact of the matter is, I am pregnant, with a case of the irritables. That makes most days hard, emotionally and physically (with a large belly to work around). But, Tuesday morning we got up and made cookies and drove up to salt lake to kick valentines to both sets of grandparents. It was nice, not a lot of whining in the morning.

When I was young I loved valentines at school, but after school we'd make valentines for our friends in the neighborhood and put them on the doorstep and ring the bell and run. I loved that. So Ivan put the cookies on the doorstep and we hid and watched grandma and grandpa come out and pretent to be so surprised. Oh the boys were so cute. We visitited my parents for a bit and then went and did Mikes parents. We had some time before we had to get back for Jacey at 1:00 so we went in and played a while. I sat on the couch and before I knew it I was asleep. Ahhhhh that might have been what made the day so great. I can't remember the last time I took a nap. I don't know what it was, but man that was a nice, much needed, rest. Then when we got home and walked in the house Mike had taken a break from work to sneak in and leave this on the counter. Surprise! Flowers for mom and balloons for the boys. That was better than the nap. And the nap was good! Then we watched Jacey for the rest of the day and it was just a good day! 

 Since we had Jacey Valentines, we didn't go out that night. Her parents offered to watch the boys if we wanted to go out another night so we planned to go to dinner Wednesday night. Mike was planning on that and I decided to plan a surprise candleight dinner at home instead. Sometimes it's nice to be at home with no kids. We were pretty good at this sort of thing when we first got married. We are going on 5 years now and saddly it gets less and less so I was determined to bring back those memories for us. when he got home I had these paper rose peddles leading from the garage door into our bedroom for our dinner. It was darker than the pictures show and the candles looked awesome.

 It was a great dinner and time together. We were able to talk about each other and just enjoy each other. After dinner we went to Emmets for ice cream, but they were closed so we ended up at Arctic Circle for a sunday. Enjoyable, enjoyable time.

Here's to a "good day." Happy Valentines 2012

The funny thing is.....

as a baby, Ivan was far from the "baby" I make him out to be in that previous post about the boys. I did make him out to be kind of a baby didn't I?  But really, we never felt like we had a baby with Ivan..... Until now :). He does whine ALOT and he wants me to hold him rather than walk himself into another room. When Jack hits him he sits there and cries about it and I'm like, "Ivan, you are bigger than him and older than him, move away from him, rather than sit there like you can't move and cry while he hits you!" He wants me to feed him. He wants me to get things for him.  He must be making up for that first year. He was holding his little head up by the time we left the hospital, probably because he weighed close to 9lbs. When he would lay on his back and you would hold his arms and give a slight little tug like you were going to pull him up he would try and pull himself up. At 2 months he was trying to get his little hands to work (i'm reading all this out of his baby book) and cooing like crazy, rolled over at 3 months, sitting up at about 4 1/2 mo and up on his hands and knee's at 4 months rocking back and forth and then crawled by 6 months. No biggy. Until Jack came along. I'm pretty sure he was still sleeping 23 out of the 24 hours in the day at 3 months. If you laid him back like we did Ivan and tugged on his arms to pull him up he and his head would just flop backwards like a rag doll. Didn't roll over or show any sign of it till he was 6 mo. At 9 mo he was doing the army crawl, but not a full on crawl. Comparing the two I thought for sure Ivan would grow into this strong, independent thing and Jack would be the one I'd still be feeding and carrying around at age 3. well was I ever wrong. :) Jack can do it all by himself and I keep praying Ivan will learn.

Ivan's high level education

Ivan is really enjoying his little preschool/play group. I don't have to give any words of encouragement or coaxing to get him to go. He is happy to go.... and not just when it's at our house. It will be fun to look back one day and remember some of the things we've done so I try to take a few pictures.

We each end up doing it once a month at our house, so here's to September and the letter E.

 Here's to October and I can't remember what letter we had or what fun things we did, but they did get to wear their costumes.

 Here's to December and the letter M

 They are acting out different M words. I can't quite remember what they are though

 That's a manger if you can't tell

Which brings us to January and the letter Q and also stars

3 out of the 4 moms are pregnant. Heather just had her baby a week ago. She came to pick up the kids Wed at 11:30 and I ask about her due date and she told me it was that Sunday, but then made a little grunt sound like she's having a small contraction and then mentioned ever so casually that she thought maybe he would come before Sunday. I found out  later that she had her baby at about 3:00 that same day. Whatta champ! I'm due next and then Emily is a few months after.