While we wait...

This post is more of a photo dump than anything from when we were waiting for our little Edwin to join our family. It was hard to make plans when we had no idea when he would come. Charlie was 9 days late and induced and Miles was 5 days late and not induced so I was really thinking (hoping?) that Edwin would come sooner. Maybe only 2-3 days past-due...that would be a dream. I felt incredibly lucky this pregnancy, besides being pretty exhausted at the end of the day, I didn't have much pain and I slept great throughout the whole 9 (10) months. I would have on and off again pelvic pain but I didn't even experience much of that in the last month. I think I owe this to a whole lot of walking and maybe some of the weekly swimming dates Max and I did. Anyway, it ended up being a huge blessing because the week between my due date and when Edwin actually arrived was incredibly busy and stressful with our business and the property we manage. Max was able to organize and prepare a lot more before the baby came which made the transition a little easier. But this post is to show some of the things we did in the meantime...

Max spent time pampering me with foot soaks and rubs, massages, tweezing my eyebrows, etc. getting ready for the big day. It was our way of having in home dates before our time was all dominated by a newborn. It's the best way to spend your time when you are patiently waiting for baby. 

We decided that the boys would love a foot soak as well, so we did a movie night with foot soaks. We watched the newer Annie, which the boys enjoyed but a few days later we made them watch the original movie because it is so much better. They loved that one too and have been singing the songs ever since.

We replaced our Kitchen light with track lighting. Max had to be creative with re-texturing and painting the area of the ceiling that the new light didn't cover so he made this contraption and convinced Charlie that it was our new light. Incidentally, I didn't take an after picture but we have a cool new light in there.

And speaking of dirty kitchens...We did our fair share of cleaning and organizing. And I found another chore that Charlie gets excited about. Hooray!
Lots of snuggles and book time.

We went to a glass art place so Max could try some glass fusing, which was part of a Christmas present. I ended up not getting a babysitter because we had used a lot of babysitters recently and I thought it could be a fun family event. We weren't able to be very close to see what Max was doing but we got to watch glass-blowing and play glass checkers, chess, and tic-tac-toe.

Charlie really loved chess and learned most of the names of the pieces and how to accurately set it up. Also, he learned how some of the pieces moved. Since this, he has played a full game with Max who coached him through it and he stayed focused through the whole game. Super shocking for both of us.

I had to do 3-4 non-stress tests (fetal monitoring). They oringianlly had me come in because I had the flu, then, during the first appointment. The baby's heart rate dropped for about 40 seconds so they wanted me to keep coming back. It was kind of annoying but better safe than sorry.

Some days the boys wake up earlier than us and they get to quietly read books. I liked waking up to this little guy reading in my room.


We went on lots of walks on nature trails or at the mall when the weather was bad. We did this when Charlie was in preschool so Miles got some good playtime in at the mall.

and playtime at the park.

We also have exciting projects going on at our house. Our goal was to have our upstairs bathroom done with a functioning tub by the time baby was born. It still isn't quite complete since the tile guy has been working on some of our other projects. But it was super exciting to see a new tub come in and the gross old tub go away. So the boys had to play in it.

Some day our little house will all be completed. And then it will be time for us to move.
And there were more mall walks and playtime...trying to get baby to come out. On my actual due date, Miles and I made it special by going to Dairy Queen. We've had a gift card we won for a Halloween costume contest. Max used one for a date with Charlie and I was going to use the other for a date with Miles. We were excited to see there was a Dairy Queen/Orange Julius store in the mall so I didn't have to get ice cream at 10am. haha! I know probably no one cares about these details but I like them so I'm including them.



Miles was a happy boy!

The day after my due date was somewhat sunny without rain and Charlie had been asking to practice his bike without training wheels with Daddy. So we decided to all go ride bikes and walk (in hopes to get the baby out)
Charlie did okay and figured out how to put his feet down when he felt off balance but gave up quickly to run.

Miles decided to run too and Max was abandoned with the bikes.

 

And some good bleacher jumping!


And yes, my kids probably watched too much TV when my body was too exhausted to do anything else.
But we also did a whole lot of fun indoor games...like I found these math puzzles I forgot I had.
And more puzzles.

And after being in the house so much we went out to feed the squirrels for a brief moment. Miles without pants and Charlie is wearing Max's shoes but we got about 45 seconds of fresh air.

And more indoor activities.

And then at 41 weeks we made sure to get some awkward photos in the cold rain.  I'm feeling pretty glad that the baby is outside of my belly now!

AWKWARD!!

 And then Miles wanted to try a couple pictures.

And then came the day before my induction. Baby still hadn't come and my induction was scheduled for Saturday February 4th. On Friday evening, My mom came to pick up the boys and take them to her house. They were so excited to have a weekend with Grandma and they were going to go up to Gwenevere's baptism on Saturday. Max and I decided we needed to leave the house since we were childless. We decided to go get hot chocolate then head to council crest park. It is the highest point in Portland with great views of the city. I was a little wary since it had been a little icy but we decided to try it anyway. We got there just fine but the gates were closed so we couldn't even go in so we started our way back down and accidentally ended up going a different way that was much icier and we slipped down a good portion of two hills. It was so scary and luckily Max knew just what to do so when we eventually came to a safe stop, we (Max) put our chains on even though we knew we wouldn't need them for very long.

On Saturday, we didn't have to rush to the hospital in the morning so we woke up slowly then went out to a breakfast diner that we've been wanting to try for awhile. I was honestly worried that my belly wouldn't fit into the booth but it fit just fine! haha!


The food was good!

When we got home we showered, finished packing my hospital bag and called to see if the hospital was ready for me to come in. They said they were still pretty busy and they would let me know when it was a good time to come in. So then Max did a traditional "child birth braid". I just gave it that name right now, but he's always done my hair for when I am going to have a baby! We also cleaned the house like crazy so we could come home to a clean house.





After my braids were done we still had time so Max took the opportunity to get more work done before we had to head to the hospital and I rested some more. About 2:30 Labor and Delivery called and said they were ready for me...so we made our way to the hospital and the rest of the story will be in the next blog post.

Snowed in!

At the beginning of January we had a huge snow storm. Portland hasn't seen a storm like this since 2008 which is the same time Max was trying to drive back from Utah to propose to me, and he was the last car to get on the freeway before they closed it. Anyway, the snow started coming down on a Tuesday night. It ended up being a great night where our house was already clean so once the kids were in bed we made hot cocoa and cuddled on the couch watching a movie. This isn't that rare of a date, but it seemed extra cozy being in our warm house with the snow coming down. About 1am our power went out, I was still awake and just plugged in my phone thinking "I hope this gets charged in case the power goes out." Within 2 minutes the power went out! Ugh. I didn't sleep much being paranoid about all the things that could go wrong. I was recovering from the flu and super pregnant (still am, thanks for wondering) Our house gets really cold since our furnace needs electricity to turn on and run the fan and we don't have a fireplace. I was worried about us being too cold and worrying that it would take forever to get the power to get back on since we live in a little strange pocket of Portland and there was so much snow that the tree limbs were falling all over, knocking down power lines. When we all got up in the morning the power was still out and our house was cold! We ate some cold cereal for breakfast then bundled up as much as possible. We stayed inside and played games and Max had a big long wrestling match with the boys to keep warm. I sat in my many layers and moped about the cold. We didn't want to take them out to play in the snow because it would have been too hard to warm up. Apparently the wrestling wore Miles out because he just fell asleep in Max's arms, he rarely naps anymore so this was surprising.

I had this awful trapped feeling the whole time. We were prepared with food, but I didn't like being cold, and being super pregnant with the flu made it seem pretty difficult to try walking to the nearest grocery store (or anywhere warm) in a foot of snow. I think I was getting anxiety over the whole situation. Charlie and I prepared a picnic that we could go eat in the car where we had a heater and a way to charge our phones. It took awhile to prepare and Max cleared a path for us to walk to the car. Throughout the morning Max had been calling some of the neighbors to make sure they were alright and had everything they needed. (all while I was having my own pity party, haha) Sometime in that process he was talking to one of our tenants who said they hadn't lost power at all. At first we thought that was really weird so Max got the idea of checking our electrical panel in the garage. The next thing I knew, the power was back on. When he came back in the house he said he hadn't even gotten to the panel, he was just reaching to open it when the power went back on. Weird, then we remembered that our neighbors electric wires went underground and ours didn't, but still super weird! Once our picnic was prepared, the power was back on so we decided to have a living room picnic while Miles continued to sleep on the couch. The power had only been out for about 12 hours but we were so so so Happy that it was back on! Miles woke up sweating as he was really bundled and I had cranked the heat up. Later in the afternoon, we decided to go play in the snow as it was more snow than the boys had ever seen. 

We could only find a clear ruler but the snow was right around 11 inches.

He was sure excited!

Our own little winter wonderland. Since this was day 1, and we now had power and heat, it was more enjoyable. (I wasn't thinking the same thing a week later)

The boys got to "work" shaking the heavy snow of the arborvitae trees.

And making some pretty great snow angels.

And they made a slide!

We didn't play much in the snow the following days. Charlie's school was canceled for over a week. Max worked a lot from home and I wasn't going to attempt to play in the snow without Max's help. haha! But we did make it out again after we found our inner-tubes, and we made snow cones! We had some great icicles. some got much bigger than this but this is the only photo I took.

Our little snow cone restaurant.

Collecting the clean snow for snow cones.

They couldn't decide if they liked them or not...yet they kept eating them.

Off to find a good tubing hill!

We went over to the church near our house and found a hill and the "sledding" was much better this time.

This is an evil smile while he holds a snow ball behind his back waiting for his brother and daddy.

"Penguin-ing"

And there is nothing like knocking your children down with an inner-tube...Charlie seemed to love it!

He thought it was hilarious...so Max kept knocking him down in the snow.

Miles would fall down and act all helpless...it was kinda cute...kinda!

Sometimes I think it is so funny to see the similarities between Max and myself and our children. We noticed this a lot more during this snowstorm. Charlie is so much like Max where he is happy doing whatever he is doing, for example, playing in the snow. He would have been happy out there for hours and hours. Miles is more like me in that he decides he's done and then gets grumpy. haha! Miles came inside with me while Max and Charlie continued to play. There are a lot of other similarities but we'll save them for another day. Anyway, we had a whole lot of indoor activities too...Here's a glimpse..

This is how Miles flicks marbles and I love it.

There were a couple times we put chains on the car and ventured out because we couldn't handle the "stuck at home" life. The most dangerous part of our drive was the road/hill leading up to our house. We made it to costco and the library as well as home depot, target, and visited the properties we are working on. Exciting right? haha. Charlie was so excited to finally go back to school and we were so excited to not feel so stuck after a week.