Pumpkin Patch

We went to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch this weekend. It may be the last weekend for Sam as an only child so we wanted him to have a lot of fun and get a lot of attention.

Sam was especially excited that his best bud Hagen went with us. Here they are posing with Dora and Diego.

We got lots of great pictures of Sam playing in the different playhouses.

They had a bunch of bounce houses and inflatable obstacle courses and slides.

Sam loved the big slide and wanted to do it over and over again.

Sam saw an older kid basically jump from the top and thought that looked like a lot of fun.

We asked Sam if he wanted to go run in the pumpkins and he took off. He ran all the way to the edge of the patch and then ran back.

Sam humored me by pausing a few moments for a picture with Mommy.

We didn't plan it, but Sam and Hagen were dressed in coordinating Halloween shirts.

They had lots of picnic tables set up and vendors selling food.

Of course Stephanie and Hagen had to pose with the Star Wars characters!

They had horses, turkeys, a pig, and a huge tortoise.

I think Sam and Hagen would have jumped the fence to see the horses if we had let them.

They had a cool teeter-totter and all of the kids were fascinated by it. I used to love the teeter-totter when I was little, but you don't see them much any more. This one went really high in the air.

Yes, I'm huge. None of my clothes are long enough to cover my stomach any more.

Say pumpkin patch ...

PUMPKIN PATCH !!!

Sam insisted that he go on the merry-go-round. That was obviously a job for Daddy. Nevermind the fact that I am pregnant, but that's also how I knocked out my front tooth in the second grade. Sam looked like he was having fun at first, but he got dizzy pretty quickly.

Sam was fascinated by this "peanut" shaped pumpkin.

Clowning around in the pumpkin patch.

A tickley kiss for Mommy.

We had to get Chris out from behind the camera for at least one picture with Sam.

Other than the "peanut" pumpkin, Sam just wanted a small pumpkin that he could carry. They had these great little wagons for towing pumpkins, but Sam thought it was a better idea for me to give him a ride.

Monkey see, monkey do.

Shawn and Hagen chewing hay at the end of the day.

We had planned on going to the pumpkin patch the weekend before, but we got rained out, so Hagen came over to play.

The bounce house was a big hit, especially the part where the boys battled the daddies with the stuffed animals.

They didn't want the fun to end.

Hiding in the cabinet was a lot of fun too.

Trauma

Sam was at home with me all day Friday. His school was closed for parent-teacher conferences. We met with Sam's teacher in the morning and she had lots of good things to say. The summary is that he prefers math to reading and needs to work on holding a pencil. She said if she gives him a choice he will always choose the math activities, but he has trouble transferring that work to paper. The main issue is that we can't really tell which is his dominant hand. It still appears to be his left hand, but he's still switching back and forth. The picture above is from his build-a-book kit that he picked out at the book fair at his school.

I printed out some worksheets and worked with him yesterday and today, and I think he does a better job with his left hand. He refused to try to use the scissors with his left hand though.

So here's the trauma ... Sam and I made a batch of peanut butter cookies. Sam did almost everything himself: measured, stirred, scooped out the cookies, put them on the tray, did the criss-cross with the fork, used the spatula to take them off the tray and put them on the cooling racks, and then put them in the cookie jar. He was very proud of himself. Chris walked in the door just as we were putting the second batch in the cookie jar. Sam gave him a cookie and Chris raved about how good it was, so Sam was doing a little happy dance on his stool, put his hand on the cooling tray, and it slid off the counter and Sam fell over backwards from his stool.

I picked him up right away and Chris went to get the ice pack. When I pulled my hand away from his head it was covered in blood. Sam was crying "Mommy, Mommy" over and over. I was completely freaked out at that point. Chris got a flashlight to check for concussion and determined that he was okay. I insisted that we take him to one of the Acute Kids Urgent Care locations. It was hard to keep him awake on the way there even though it was just ten minutes away. He perked right up when we got to the doctor's office though. They had lots of new toys to play with.

The doctors and nurses were amazing. Sam was so brave and never complained. After they cleaned his wounds they decided the scratch on his chin would be glued and held together with a Steri-Strip, but he was going to need two staples on the back of his head. They numbed his head with lidocaine ointment before they put the staples in. The funny thing was that he didn't want a band-aid. Sam loves band-aids, but he didn't want one when he actually needed one. He ran around the rest of the night acting like nothing was wrong, but he had a little freak-out when he saw his chin in the mirror that night. His head was still bleeding when he went to bed so Chris put a bandage on his hair. We woke him up twice during the night to check for any signs of concussion.

We had to skip soccer today, but it was hard to keep him from just running around the house. The doctor just stressed that we wanted to prevent him from reinjuring his chin since that would prevent it from healing well with minimal scarring. We have to go back in 7 to 10 days to have the staples removed.

Here are some random pictures and videos from the last few weeks ...

Sam is going to be Spiderman for Halloween. Of course he had to try the costume on as soon as we got it. He was running all over the house, so this was the only picture that wasn't a total blur.

Multi-tasking, a common site around our house - working on the computer and watching TV.

Here's a video of Sam dancing to the music from a baby toy.

Here's a video of Sam playing a computer game.

Ladenia

I saw this recipe for Ladenia on Kalofagas and thought it would be a lot of fun to try to make it with Sam.

Sam is a great helper, especially in the kitchen. He wants to do as much as he can. He mostly measures, pours, and stirs. This becomes a challenge most nights for dinner since I don't want him any where near the stove or a knife yet. It does give me a wonderful excuse to make desserts though.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow. It is similar to pizza, but it is definitely not pizza. I would say it was a cross between focaccia bread and pizza. We added feta cheese to ours and had grilled chicken breasts on the side for dinner.

Here's a close-up of the finished product mostly eaten.

Rainy Day Memories

When I posted about Sam playing in the rain last week, I mentioned that I used to love to play in the rain. I ran across this picture this week and thought I'd post it. It's me and Andrea with our cousins Caren and Chance and our neighbors Marcus and Justin. I'm the one on the far right. Andrea is on the back left. I think I was about six and Andrea was about three. We're sitting in our cousins' driveway which just so happened to be across the street from our house. My favorite thing to do in the rain was splash in the big puddle that always formed in Aunt Ruby's driveway (our neighbor, but not actually our aunt).

36 Weeks - Almost There!

I'm 36 weeks along and feeling extra large. I was doing great until a month ago, but I think I've put on 10 lbs in the last four weeks. You can really see it in my face. My hands and feet started swelling this week too, and that was one milestone I was hoping to avoid this time around.

We're naming the baby Benjamin, but we plan to call him Ben. Sam really seemed to get a different attitude when he could start calling him Ben instead of "the baby."

I'm sitting here on the couch and Ben is doing somersaults. I swear Sam didn't move this much. We're convinced he's coming early, though we really don't want him to come too early. It looks like he flipped the last time we went to the doctor, so the doctor doesn't think he's breach any more. We are scheduled to be induced on Monday, October 19th (Pops' birthday). The original due date was Saturday, Oct 24th.

We drove past the hospital after Sam's soccer class a few weeks ago.
Me: Look Sam, there's the hospital where you were born.
Sam: It is?
Me: And Ben is going to be born there too.
Sam: But, Ben is in your tummy.
Me: I know, but he's going to come out in a few weeks.
Sam: But, he will break you!
Me: (after laughing) I'll be okay, Sweetie.



We've been getting things ready for the baby for a while now and Sam has really been helping out. Here he is helping Chris build the cradle.



We decided to have a cradle and changing table in our bedroom since we're in a two story house with the nursery upstairs and our bedroom downstairs. I don't really have any interest in going up and down the stairs for every feeding all night long. I took this picture with a wide angle lens so it makes the cradle look larger than it is.



Sam also helped us build the swing. He loves playing with the swing. I keep walking by and finding new toys that he's put in the swing: cars, alligators, etc. He especially likes to turn on the music and sing along to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I've also caught him trying to climb in the swing which is not so great. I really like this swing because it has an AC adapter, and when it is plugged into the wall you don't have to reset it every seven minutes to keep it swinging and playing music.



After we got through putting the swing together and taking a few pictures, Sam crawled under one of the dining room chairs and started crying. It was the strangest thing. It was like it finally clicked that we are going to have a baby and everything won't be about him any more. He calmed down pretty quickly when we started telling him stories about when he was a baby and showing him pictures of him in his baby swing.



I had one last lunch out with the ladies for a baby shower last weekend. We had so much fun, the food was great, and I loved all of the cute baby gifts of course! We were sitting around the table doing the normal talk about babies and it hits me -- I'm really about to have another baby in a few weeks!



Later that evening Chris was taking pictures of my big belly when Sam wanted to get in on the action.



Of course Mimi had to join in too!



When we did Sam's nursery, we went all out and put up wainscoting and chair railing and painted the whole room. With this house being so new we really didn't want to start any remodeling projects. I compromised with a few color blocks to make things standout from all the beige.



I taped off the wall, but the paint tends to bleed a little since the walls are textured. I'm a perfectionist so I had to go back and touch it up.



Mimi kept Sam entertained while I painted. He pulled out all of the baby books and got Mimi to read them to him.



With Sam's nursery, my arts and crafts project was the Latin and Greek alphabet border. This time we wanted something much less permanent (we used Liquid Nails to attach that border to the wall). After thinking about it for way too long I decided to copy a series of canvas paintings from the Pottery Barn Kids catalog. I might have even ordered it from the catalog if I hadn't waited until it was out of stock to decide it was what I wanted.



Here's a picture of the finished nursery. The theme is ABC's and 123's.



We still have the same nursery furniture. We just changed out all of the bedding.



I spent many hours in that rocking chair for two years. Here we go again ...



Here's the changing table. The bathroom is to the left and the closet is to the right.



This is a close-up of the chick hatching series of paintings.



Here's a close-up of the toddler quilt which we are using as a wall hanging.