Party Time

Just a few pictures from Charlie's bowling party.  The best part? Not having to clean my house afterwards.

Eight

20 Things about Charlie Bear

1. He's a good big brother, most of the time.

2. His teachers all love him and I hear he's even charmed the secretaries at his school.

3. He is great at baseball and can bat both left and right handed.

4. He is sensitive, and dwells on things that he might have done, not quite able to let them go. Hmmm . . . I wonder where he gets that.

5. He has a VERY difficult time making decisions.

6. He got a cd player for his birthday and a case full of cds. He's been listening to the Muppet soundtrack to fall asleep to almost every night since. 

7. He asked me if it was weird that he kisses the baby since it's a girl. I think he's still traumatized by getting in trouble when Mckenzie kissed him on the bus in kindergarten.

8. He tells everyone that "homework" is his favorite school subject, and yet I have the hardest time getting him to actually do it. 

9. He's a great little reader.

10. He's decided his favorite movie of the moment is The Lone Ranger. He wants to be Tonto for Halloween this year, and since Peter is loving the idea of being the Lone Ranger, you may see us going with a western theme.

11. I cried once listening to the Frozen soundtrack (stupid pregnancy hormones) and since then he's started randomly singing Let it Go or Do You want to Build a Snowman to try and see if he can get me to tear up.

12. He decided on a bowling party for his friend party. Pics to come on that later.

13. He over-thinks things quite often. He was having a hard time at basketball because of all the rules- like when you can and can't hold the ball. It stresses him out. But once he stopped thinking about it so much, he wasn't half bad.

14. He's so excited to be in cub scouts and can't wait to get started on his Pinewood Derby car for next month.

15. He likes learning the weekly vocab words at school, and throws them into conversations, making him sound even more grown up than he already does. 

16. He loves legos, and is getting pretty good at following all the instructions by himself. He only needs help once and a while trying to find certain pieces.

17. He has started helping me cook and is getting pretty good at flipping pancakes and making mac and cheese. He calls it Homemade, even though it's just the Kraft box.

18. His hair grows twice as fast as Peter's does. And it sticks straight up in the back when it gets too long.

19. He has been saying, "Oh my gosh!" a lot lately. He said it's because his aunt Aubrey says it and he can say it with her exact voice inflections.

20. He still has all his baby teeth, but he has two that are loose and can't wait for them to come out. It doesn't bother me though. If he's anything like Mike and I were, his new smile is going to be a lot scarier once those adult front teeth grow in.

Didn't think we had it in us

So they say it's a girl. I believe it . . . mostly. Sitting at the ultrasound was surreal. She checked the gender first thing, and when she said girl I immediately started crying. But I've been crying at EVERYTHING this pregnancy. It was a weird feeling to be so excited about a girl, and yet to mourn my all-boy family. And then I decided it couldn't really be true. I made her check about eight times and she kept saying, "Yep, it's still a girl." She was absolutely 100% sure. I told her I'd believe it when I saw it and she made me promise to at least take something pink to the hospital with me.

We stopped at the craft store and bought pink balloons to bring home to the boys. We let Charlie and Peter take the morning off school because they were so excited. It turns out that Peter thought we were bringing the baby home, but he figured it out quickly. Because we were so sure it was a boy, my mom had the boys get everything blue they could find and decorated the living room with it. There were blankets, bowls, spoons, toys, tissue boxes strewn all over the room when we came home. They saw us getting out of the car with the pink balloons and totally freaked out. My mom was sure that there was a blue one in the middle and we were just tricking them. Charlie is a little disappointed, but mostly just astonished that he is going to have a sister. Peter doesn't really care as long as he doesn't have to share a room with it. And Squish . . . well he'll figure out that there is a baby coming. For now, he is just loving having the balloons to play with.

I gotta say that as surprised as I am, I'm glad to finally have an answer as to why this pregnancy is so different. I've been way overly emotional, crying at stupid movies, Disneyland commercials, while singing at church, and even just dropping the kids off at school. And I'm still sick, mostly in the evenings. I'm so done with all of it, but I'm trying to enjoy it since, barring an act of God, this is my last time doing this.

In an attempt to avoid the whole, "we can't leave the hospital until we pick out a name" situation (which we've done three times), we've tentatively decided to name her Caroline. We're about 90% set on it. Mike has always wanted a Katie because it sounds to cute with our last name, but I'm not a huge fan of Kaitlyn or Katherine. So I figured as long as it starts with the same sound, Mike can call her whatever he wants. It could change and maybe we'll just name her Katie, but it feels nice to have something mostly decided.

My mom took me shopping on ultrasound day to buy something to help it sink in. It was so much fun to sift through all the cute girl stuff, but I'll admit, even in the girl section I was drawn to mostly blue and green.

Four

We've got little boy number four on the way. Okay, so we don't know it's a boy yet. My ultrasound is this month, but we're assuming. I saw something once about how the more kids you have of one gender, the less likely you are to get the other gender. Evidently with each kid the odds plummet. So we're truly planning on a boy. We've always said that we thought four was a good number, unless you asked me in the weeks after Charlie was born because I was certain I was never doing it again. But before that, and since then we've been planning on four. I've liked a lot of families with four kids and I like the age gap we're looking at.

The boys are super excited. Charlie really wants it to be a boy this time. Last time he cried because it wasn't a girl and asked if we could trade babies with my cousin who was having a girl and had all girls. He just thought that was the perfect solution. Peter doesn't care what it is as long as he doesn't have to share a room with it. He really is a go-with-the-flow type of kid. And Squish doesn't get it. Well he did point to my stomach and say, "Baby?" but then he did the same thing to my toe the next day. He'll figure it out soon enough.

So anyway, the official due date is June 30th. Let's hope the next few months pass by quickly!