belly, but for how much longer?

I thought I should probably take a belly shot as I haven't done that much with this baby. I have been 37 weeks as of Monday and had my appointment today. I am 3cm dilated, 70% effaced, and the baby is at 0 station. Any baby preditions for date of arrival, weight, length? Let's hope they were right about a girl b/c we have no baby boy names lined up. I have more "clues" to help guess the date of arrival, but we'll have to discuss that over email as Mario doesn't like sharing some stuff on blogs.



I realize that many women can walk around this ready to go for several weeks. With Joey, I hadn't felt really active contractions that kept going, so we decided to have my water broken. When I checked into the hospital I was 6cm and 80% effaced. I usually have quick labors, but I think I could also say that I have technically LONG labors. It depends on when you start the clock for labor... 1 cm, 2 cm? cx where you cannot breath? I guess for me the early stuff goes mostly unnoticed. Anyway, this girl will arrive when she is ready. And the braxton hicks I have been feeling have been a nice wake up call that she actually could arrive soon. So at least now our bags our mostly packed, she has clean clothes, and a clean car seat. We even have her special blanket picked out. It has been Joey approved.

Furry Friends

The Kazas aren't the only ones with woodland creatures in their home. Ours happen to be squirrels living in our attic. We know where they are getting in (at least the obvious whole) so are prepared to seal that up. But first we have to remove the little furry things. It seems the $35 trap works and the boys enjoy checking out the squirrel. We have a few videos of Joey talking to the squirrel too. This was the first one we caught, and Mario relocated him last night. Today we caught squirrel #2 and I've just returned from a LONG drive to make sure that he won't come back. Hopefully we only had 2 and can patch the whole this weekend. Tabitha and Babu, if you find any more of God's outdoor creatures in your home, you are welcome to borrow our trap.

On a fun note, my friends had a baby shower for Erin and I (the two girls in the middle). She is due January 18th (MJ's due date) with baby #4 (a boy). Actually, out of the 9 friends attending, 4 of us our pregnant. Mindy and Tara are next, but we will have other showers for them later. I'm really upset that I didn't turn to give you a good belly shot. I swear, I am HUGE, but she is all out in front of me.

Blue or Brown

Wow, I am having trouble making even the smallest decisions here. We are attempting to get our kitchen put back together after the new paint job, and these window treatments are hard for me.

Our color pallette in the kitchen is not ideal, but we seem to have the green from the counters, the brown from the floors and the cabinets, white trim, and then our light table (which we don't really love but just happen to have). Some might even add the silver from the stainless steel and fixtures/knobs. We're thinking of either going navy for the other color for the other color or a chocolate brown.

Navy:
seems to highlight the blue walls more
pros - the table will sort of work still; we have blue dishes/accent stuff already
cons - will the room be too blue?

Brown:
seems to leave the green counters as the dominant "color" of the room
pros - a more subtle look, i get to buy new pic frames and a new clock
cons - I don't think the light table works; so we'd likely spray paint it (it was a $150 IKEA table and as temporary of a purchase as it was, it's lasted 7 years and we don't mind if we get rid of it eventually).

I know it's hard to tell from these pictures, do you have any oppinions?

Weird doors are gone!

I need to get some after pictures of the office; though it's not all-together yet because we've already begun removing the weird doors in the boys room. An annoying sheet-rock issue which needs multiple layers of spackle has set us back a little. But it will get done. In the meantime, the boys room in slight disorder; but they are surviving.

Have you ever seen anything so odd? Those doors go to one of the 3 bedrooms upstairs... why?

Mario thought it was weird that I was taking so many pictures of this project.


Just before I took this one he said, "We are so getting a nail gun"

MJ has been working on building a fence out of the railing that used to be behind the doors.

Good thing we have a pretty tall ladder.


Our family is doing pretty well. I'm realizing that this baby may be arriving soon as I will be 37 weeks on Monday. I was just about 40 weeks with both MJ and Joey, so I think I still have more time, still, spending a bit of time nesting for her is probably a good idea.

Joey is talking more, and he has a very adorable voice. I'm a bit sad that "Mommy" sounds more like "Bobby", especially since not only does he point out trucks, but he can even give them different appropriate names such as dump truck, backhoe, bulldozer. I think his most favorite thing to point out in the car is McDonald's. It was hard to tell what was getting him so excited at first, but after passing our 5th McD's and here him squeal with excitement, I put 2 and 2 together. I didn't think we went there that often, but my guess is he remembers the yummy chocolate shakes that our family will occasionally share. He still loves cars and does most things holding on to one or two. He's great at playing with and entertaining MJ. It's really fun watching him run over to MJ and tackle him or give him a big hug, just because he feels like it.

MJ seems to be growing so quickly. It's fun to see how his mind words, but also a little challenging as he really tries to negotiate using some pretty intelligent logic. He LOVES Mario's leafblower and will talk about how he should be able to use it, or pretend use it. On particularly bad days, I've had to make a rule that MJ is not allowed to even mention daddy's leaf blower or he will have a consequence (after dozens of attempts to have me get it for him). Thankfully, his intellectual skills understood how serious I was so that he wouldn't talk about the leaf blower all day. Now, he wakes up in the morning but subtly asks if he can talk about the leaf blower. He really enjoys all of daddy's tools and will sit and read the Ryobi manuals. He calls them his magazines and really loves them.

He is also a pretty good engineer. I think he and Patrick would get along well with their building skills. I was particularly proud of this work machine he created on his own. It's been a couple of weeks since the guys came to remove our trees with their mulcher and dump truck, but MJ made one on his own. It even comes apart just like the mulcher/dump truck they had.


I wish I had a better angle of the truck they used.

Moving past the pain

Mario and I decided to drown ourselves in work last night so at least one good thing would have come from it. We painted the kitchen windows (finally), and all the trim and ceiling in his office. Hopefully, we'll have the walls and everything else done tonight. In more of an effort to remind ourselves of happy times, I searched through recent pictures and thought I'd share them with you.

As you know, our tree fell down a couple of weeks ago. Here are the before and after pictures... we had 4 trees from the front removed (2 overgrown arborvitaes, the Bradford Pear, and an illgrowing Magnolia that was in the wrong place) and 2 volunteer Mulberry trees in the back. (I'll have to get pictures of those later). We have moved a dogwood from our backyard to the front, and a lot of the neighbors have already complimented the new look.


I'll have to get a better after picture, but the dogwood is pretty much where the shovel is.


It was quite heavy... I only helped lift a little. Mario really did all the work on this tree transplant. I stomped the dirt down to get rid of air pockets, but because we also watered it (to help remove the air) I was really stuck in some yucky mud. It felt like a messier version of squashing grapes into wine.


The boys are really enjoying helping out in the yard. We used this mulch from our tree removal to mulch the path in the woods to our church as well as some other trees in the yard.



We (well, I should say Mario) realized the not-fun parts about living on a large property with lots of trees...there are many leaves. He didn't really get all of them, but was making an effort so our baby grass would grow better (which it is looking very nice).

Joey is an interesting kid. We think he was trying to be a football player.

Halloween fun

The boys had a fun Halloween this year. In the spirit of buying our new home and fixing it up all the time, we were a construction crew family. Mario and I used similar outfits when we went to his company's Halloween party. Our neighborhood has a block party in our cul de sac where parents hang out and several homes (I think it was about 9) brought bowls of candy for the kids to hit a bunch of places at once. They appearantly upped things a bit this year and added several blow up things included a haunted house thing. MJ wasn't so into the scary stuff but it was impressive. Some of the adults dressed up, so we did too (not that it was too difficult to throw that stuff on). It was nice getting to meet more of them.MJ was totally excited about trick or treating. Joey liked it well enough, but wanted to eat the candy as soon as he got it. Also noteworthy was the suprise that our parish priest answered the door once. I actually knew the rectory was down the street in our neighborhood, but kind of forgot about it until then. And yes, they gave out good candy. :-)

Joey was not very cooperative with his hat or belt, but I wanted to try to get another picture of them. Actually, he wouldn't hold still, but seems to like the flashing light of the self-timer, so I set it up on a chair and moved over to the side... yep, MJ is smiling at me and not the camera.

Update

About 10 days ago, a little voice in my head told me to try to put Joey to sleep in the other twin bed in the boys' room. Mario has been pushing for this move for awhile now since MJ was 15 months old when he climbed out of his crib and got a big boy bed. Joey is 20 months old, but such an amazingly good sleeper that I didn't want to tackle the difficult transition to a big boy bed yet. (This was a nightmare for us with MJ). I must have been feeling ambitious b/c I tried it one Saturday night, and wouldn't you know it, Joey stayed in his bed! I could go on and on about this amazing phenomenon... sharing personality differences and all sorts of things; but the bottom line is, Joey still sleeps just as well as before. He falls asleep fine at night, and still takes 2-3 hours naps and just sits in the bed waiting for someone to come get him once he wakes up. I anticipate this ending sometime soon when he realizes he can climb out of bed, but I think he's just one of those kids who just likes to sleep.

MJ hasn't had a bed rail for a long time now, but when he saw Joey had one, he wanted me to put the other one back on his bed. The crib is still there, just in case, and I think it provides nice separation for them and is still familiar.
This is just a random reminder of how sometimes the boys are very cooperative. I can be rushing around doing whatever it is that mommies do, and then come to see my kids quietly entertaining themselves. (It's harder to get pictures of them going crazy - but this does happen to them, and I'll try that next time).
Here is the beginning of our serious of pictures from our visit to Uncle Luke's seminary. It was a beautiful day, and we were so happy that he was able to host us and give us a tour of his life at Mt. Saint Mary's. We are lucky to be so close to him.

MJ with his new 3 favorite library books by Peter Sis.
My boys (before Joey tries to dip his arm in the water.)
They were so cute and adventurous, but I wished I could have had them sit still for more pictures.

Joey wasn't the most cooperative, but we did manage to get one picture with Godfather Luke.


I think it's funny how we separated by families mostly, except for Tommy and MJ. I think that would be a fair trade (maybe not for Tabitha & Babu).


.... in other news...

The punches keep coming with this house... we learned early on (but not early enough to ask the sellers to get of it as some buyers do) that we have a dreaded Bradford Pear tree in our front yard. These are known to grow like crazy, get very top-heavy and then crack. A "tree guy" who did some other work, mentioned we might need to do something about this tree soon. So, Mario and I began thinking about it, and had decided at some point we will be getting rid of this tree. The wind decided that timing for us today as it blew down half the tree. I guess it's nice that it landed in our front yard (definitely better than on our cars) though if it landed on our house, I think our homeowners insurance would have paid to have the tree removed. We moved our cars already, just in case the rest of the tree once to join the half on the ground.