Over 40

And I still look like this:

Today was promising, maybe due to the effort Bill and I have dedicated to natural labor induction.

This morning I woke up contracting, and it continued through math and piano and my walk to the OB/hospital. After I had walked home again (appointment next Mon to check on the baby), I was in real pain. So I made cookies with the kids and shampooed the carpets up and downstairs where the cat has thrown up recently and called Bill and told his voice mail that this might be it and breathed and relaxed and unclenched my jaw and changed diapers and put people to bed and noticed that I had been contracting 4-7 minutes apart or over 2 hours. GREAT!

Then I fell asleep on the couch, and there is nothing more to tell. Tonight, more natural labor inducing....

What's up?

Spring



We can tell it's spring because all of the trees have put on their wedding dresses. We took a driving tour of the cherry blossoms in Washington DC today. Unfortunately there was no parking, so we were not able to get out and walk and hopefully encourage labor while we enjoyed the view.

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Gardening Unit

We started planting seeds for our gardening unit yesterday. Maria is showing how to wintersow tomatoes. We also started violas, marigolds, peppers, tomatoes, and strawberry plants inside the house. Our bulb planter has started to bloom.

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Chess Club

At Chess Club yesterday, Anthony had moved up to an orange rook, and Thomas had moved up to a orange knight. The lowest rank is pawn, then knight, bishop, rook, and queen at the top. Each piece is then broken down by color in rainbow order with purple being the lowest color rank.

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Safety Cecilia

Do not attempt Story Time without proper equipment!

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Everyday Math

This week the boys have been struggling with math problems like 573 x 22. They are supposed to estimate first, but sometimes the estimations are off by several thousand. To make them feel better I explained that the bigger the number, the larger the error margin can be and that at Bill's work they are often much further off than a few thousand. When Bill got home and saw their math estimations, he said, "At work, anything below a million would be rounded to zero."

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Still No Baby

I'll be 40 weeks tomorrow.

Egg Hunt

Smiling, shrieking,


Laughing, looking,

Running, racing,

Collapsing, counting

Christ is Risen!

Indeed, He is risen!

Happy Easter!

Egg Dying

This is one of those lots of prep for a few minutes of joy activities.

I seem to have missed taking a picture of Anthony. I'll do 2 tomorrow. ;)

Easter Preparation

After my midwife appt. on Thurs, I truly expected to spend Good Friday in the hospital meditating on the crucifixion. No such luck. However, our whole family participated in Holy Thursday and Good Friday services together which was a wonderful blessing. I was begged by Fr. Gary not to come to Easter Vigil if I think I may be in labor as he promised to run in the opposite direction at the first sign of my distress. Dr. Mike offered to help, unabashed that he holds a doctorate of military history and not an MD. In the end though, the midwife's help, if it was going to work, should have worked by now, and it hasn't. Bill is taking the 3 big kids to the Vigil with him, and I'm staying home with the little guys to rest and let Fr. Gary have a worry free evening.

Today I am deep in preparation for Easter morning.

Here's our to do list:

• Take out Easter baskets and plastic eggs for filling


• Boil more eggs for dying later today


• Supervise Anthony making banana bread for tomorrow's breakfast


• Send Bill to Easter Vigil rehearsal and the commissary


• Iron church clothes


• Remembering the unwritten regulation that chaplains' assistants only serve RED juice on Easter, apply Scotch Guard to church clothes


• Bless the downstairs Flylady style


• Find Divine Mercy novena meditations so we can start (only a day late)


• Shampoo livingroom carpet (this is the only carpet that escaped my extreme nesting which got the Spring Cleaning done last month)


• Teach the boys to play Speed Scrabble


• Set out Resurrection Story eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide


• Go swimming

Last Thorn

I was overwhelmed with good deed doers yestrday as everyone realized that we were down to the last thorn in our crown. With each child's diligence in acts of charity throughout Lent and James's helpful handfuls when no one was looking, we managed to empty the crown before Easter.