Try your luck at a game of chance!

Back by popular demand, we set up a baby pool so everyone can make a guess at our new baby's birthday, weight and gender.

Just so you know, the winner gets all three kids for a week.

Craft time- June.

Due to the fact that mama keeps turning the thermostat lower and lower (and doesn't feel bad because we live in a wonderful, well-insulated shady brick house!), we've been forced to spend the summer keeping ourselves busy inside. And the closer we get to having this baby, the grumpier mama gets (see the Taller Girls blog for the Grumpy Gertie story). So we need to find quiet entertainment for fear of getting thrown out a window.

Henry gets to stay up an hour later than me at nap time, on the condition he play quietly and mostly leave the grump alone. To help out with this, papa found an old MP3 player and loaded it up with Henry's favorite songs. One day, he kept himself happy doing a whole book of dot-to-dots while listening to a playlist consisting of the Beatles, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, and the Kinks.

Mama found a website that had graphing coloring pages. One page is a graph and the key tells you what color to color which square. Mama LOVED these when she was a kid and has many fond memories of doing these in 6th grade while Mrs. VonDeylon read books to the class after lunch.

Here's two finished projects. Henry also likes doing these and now mama needs to find more on the interwebs, which is proving to be difficult, because she doesn't know what they are called. Any help would be appreciated, all you teachers that read the blog!

I don't have an attention span like Henry's, but I did settle down for a little while to color my horsie book. Mostly, I just like moving all the crayons and markers from one container to another.

Have we told you about the CSA we joined? Miss Kerri found a farm that sells weekly shares for $10. And this isn't like the share we used to get in Wisconsin, that mostly consisted of bizarre, obscure vegetables, like ramps, sorrel, parsnips, and black radishes. This share is the bread and butter of CSAs and for each of the first two weeks, we've gotten no less than 20 pounds of tomatoes, a bag of sweet peppers, a bag of hot peppers, three cucumbers, and a big muskmelon. (Side note: no one calls them muskmelons down here. It's a cantaloupe, or else you get a crazy look.) So we've had to find something to do with all of this produce.

The tomatoes have been our first job. Not only do we have the 20 pounds from the share, we also get another 5 pounds or so a week from the three plants out back. We eat a ton and then mama tries to preserve the rest. The first week she dried a bunch on the food dehydrator and ended up with a little bag of "sun"-dried tomatoes. The next week she cut up all 20 pounds and made spaghetti sauce. She actually wasn't paying attention to the recipes she had pulled up on the computer and got halfway through a salsa recipe before it dawned on her that she was adding a lot of peppers and why were they calling for lime juice and cumin in spaghetti sauce? Luckily, she came to her senses in time and managed to salvage the sauce. Amazingly, the 20 pounds she blanched, peeled, cored, seeded and boiled cooked down to only about 8 pounds of sauce. Aunt Jenni says this is why pioneers had big gardens.

The real adventure has been the hot peppers. Miss Kerri mentioned to mama that she's dried them and ground them up for a super spicy pepper blend. Mama thought she'd give it a try and quickly poo-pooed all of the advice she saw on the interwebs about how hot a habanero pepper really was. So she sliced them all up, threw them on the dehydrator and was fine. About 15 minutes later, she moved the dehydrator outside because it was spreading some serious fumes around the house. Hours later she made the mistake of touching her eye with her hand and got a stinging surprise. But not too bad. the big shock came hours later when she went outside to move all of the dried peppers off the trays. I don't know what she touched, but she spent the rest of the night alternating rubbing her hands with baking soda and socking them in ice water. Never again will she turn her nose up at a hot pepper. They are now in a bag in the freezer and mama is too afraid to try anything with them.

Update: she did cut up a few more chili peppers for the sauce and found that Solarcaine aloe vera burn gel works well to counteract the juice. She's also sworn to never touch a habanero pepper again.

Bunk beds- Henry.

Big news in the Turner house! After months of watching Craigslist, mama finally scored us some bunkbeds that were under $100 and within an hour of our house.

For only $50, we got this very sturdy bunk bed. Granted, it looks like it was built for a college dorm room, was moved to a fraternity house, then thrown off a roof while it was on fire. But it is very sturdy and perfect for a bunch of kids who will probably trash it anyway.

It came with boards to put under the mattresses, but we had some plywood cut to put over the boards, just to fortify it. And papa drilled some new holes to move the rail up a few inches. I've already moved into the top bunk. It's awesome. June is really excited to sleep in the bottom bunk, but we haven't gotten her a mattress yet. And frankly, mama isn't really that excited about June moving out of her crib. We'd like to keep her in there as long as we can.

Mama and papa didn't just buy the bunk beds for us to share. They also bought them so eventually the new baby can sleep in the crib. And that leads to their really ambitious master plan- to put all three kids in one room.

It's all very complex. We have two bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. Mama refuses to sleep downstairs for fear that zombies and serial killers might get here through the ground floor windows. I'm the next logical choice, but I refuse to sleep without June. And there's no way they'll let June roam the downstairs alone.

So until it becomes very clear that this is a bad idea, mama and papa are going to try and get us all into one room. Frankly, I think this has more to do with papa not wanting to give up his office and mama not wanting to give up her craft room/guest bedroom.

The beach!- June.

Since we moved to South Carolina, mama has been making a joke about the criteria we have for new friends. You have to have at least one of the following:

1. A pool.

2. a boat.

3. A beach house on the ocean that you're willing to let us use free of charge.

Number three is kind of hard to come by unless you're independently wealthy and much, much older than us, so we haven't had much luck with that one. But we got really lucky when we met Miss Kerri. Not only does she have a pool (and has graciously let us use it all summer long), her parents own a house on the lake complete with a dock and a boat!

Last week, they invited us to take a ride to a little island in the middle of the lake that is good for swimming.

Henry swam a little, but spent more time as the safety police. He tried to lift Andy off the boat before someone came to help out.

As usual, James and John were eager to jump right into the water.

Even Christopher had a good time, probably due to the fact that the water was so warm it was like taking a bath. It was a cool day- only in the high 80s. Miss Kerri commented that she thought it might be a little cool to swim. That's her Texas blood talking. By the time we finished lunch, it was climbing into the 90s and mama was getting much too hot to be outside in the bath water.

Initially, I just played on the beach and refused to get in the water. But mama picked me up and took me to swim for a while. In no time, I was back to being a water baby. I really like beaches because no one had to hold me.

And once I got into it, there was no stopping me. Someone did have to stay close to me though, because I'd start fake falling (whoa, whoa whoa!) or floating on my belly and a big wave would come in and I'd go under and have to be stood up.


You can imagine how much sand was inside my suit when mama peeled it off.

James and Andy's grandpa's boat was awesome. It even had a table on it, so we could eat lunch on it. After lunch, everyone got back in the water, but Henry stayed on the boat. He was worried that someone might start walking backward and accidentally fall off the front of the boat. So he stayed on to make sure everyone was safe.
And for probably the first time in 10 months we've known them, Andy and I actually noticed each other! We played a fun splash game, which worked out well, because neither of us are very good at splashing or hitting our opponents.
Now this is what I call a perfect morning. James' grandpa let us each take a turn steering the boat. And when we got back to the dock, we each took turns jumping into the water. Well, we all jumped in except Henry. He climbed down the ladder.

Thanks so much for the great morning, Miss Kerri and Mr. and Mrs. Worthy!

VBS- June.

You might notice that mama is really starting to catch up on her blogging. Miss Juliet told her that you can schedule blog posts, so count on a new post every night at midnight this week. Hopefully this will catch us up before the baby gets here.

Last week, Henry had a new Vacation Bible School to attend. This time, it was the Presbyterians. (He's now at the Lutherans' Tuesday/Thursday program for 4 weeks).The Presbyterians put on a good VBS, made double great by the fact that our friend Miss Kerri was helping teach all week and picked up Henry every morning. Plus, they really know how to move an afternoon pick-up line. Take some notes, Methodists.
At the end of the week, they had a program to show off all they'd learned. It's easy to pick out Henry in the crowd. Since he registered late, they didn't have time to order his shirt.

Here's the kids showing off their moves! This week's theme was "Baobob Blast," and had an African animal theme. Henry did a great job with all the moves, but was clearly distracted because he kept watching us to make sure we were watching him.

This may be one of the most bizarre things we've ever seen. A story of the crucifixion of Jesus set to "We Will Rock You." We're not sure if "We Will Praise Him! Whaaaa?" is what Queen had in mind when they wrote the song, but kids really liked it.
Henry was in the 5 and 6 year old class and brought home some great artwork. Here's his Baobob tree. There was another Henry in his class, so he became Henry T. (Remember when everyone though Henry was an old-fashioned name that no one would ever name a baby?)
And here's a picture that Henry drew of himself driving a dump truck. We were really impressed.

One surprising thing that came out of this week was that Henry has never really had the chance to hang out with 5 and 6 year old before. So he came home saying things like "I'm going to punch you in the face, June!" and spent most of the program's after party chasing and wrestling the other Henry. They said they were trying to put each other in jail. This is very un-Henry- like behavior. But we've also been assured that this is what 5 and 6 year-olds do. Not that the punching comment didn't land him an instant time-out.

My first sewing project- Henry.

Mama's been using her nesting energy and insomnia to her advantage and has been sewing like crazy lately. And I have been desperate to try out the sewing machine myself.

And check out mama's new machine. She got it from Grams and PawPaw for Christmas. This has been a little bit of a sore spot for mama and papa. Mama previously used a sewing machine that papa got her when they were dating (he even got up at 5am on Black Friday to buy it for her). Papa's a little hurt that mama got rid of it, but mama assured him that she used that machine to its full capacity and it is now completely used up. So much that she hasn't sewn hardly anything since we left Wisconsin. So it is nice to have a machine that works again.

I bugged her so much about helping her sew that she finally caved in and said we could do a project together. I closely examined all the fancy stitches and picked out the perfect one.

And this is what we made! It's a dinosaur pillowcase for June's tiny pillow.

While mama held the fabric, it was my job to push the pedal to control the stitching. I didn't want to use my foot, so I put it on the table and used my hands instead. You can tell when I had fun playing with the speed of the stitching, but overall mama thought I did very well. And June likes her new pillow too. She refuses to sleep on it, but mama does find her baby doll propped up on it and covered with a blanket every morning.

Spoiled rotten- Henry.

Mama is worried lately that perhaps June is receiving special treatment. As the first child, it was all rules, all the time with me. But June has the perfect set of circumstances- first, she's a girl and super adorable; second, she's the second child and mama and papa have mostly given up; third, the new baby is almost here and mama is just too tired to care anymore. That's how June gets away with stuff like this:

Yup, she's eating cereal at 10:30 in the morning while watching episodes of Dora on the computer while wearing her Precious. This never would have happened to me. Next, they'll let her eat crackers on the couch.
The Precious has become a real problem lately. June insists on wearing it every day. This is all new to mama, as I've never cared one way or another about clothes (except costumes, which I hate). Everyone assures mama that it's totally normal for a kid June's age. So mama tried to go along with it and said June could wear whatever she want. So June picked the Precious 4 days in a row. It's absolutely beautiful, but not really the most practical dress for going out in. It's enormous (and hangs down to her belly button) and mama doesn't want it getting super filthy. So after 4 days, mama shoved it in the laundry bin and told June to pick out something else. June picked out a vintage 28-year-old mama dress complete with long sleeves and lace collar. But mama let her wear it. Now mama has cleaned out the closet of all impractical and out of season clothes, so she doesn't have to fight June anymore.

Mama doesn't feel much like cooking anymore, which means we get to eat out more! Last week, papa brought home roast beef sandwiches, which we both loved! And mama and papa feel much better feeding us roast beef than McDonald's chicken nuggets, so they only feel moderately guilty about how bad our diet has gotten.
One night, in an effort to pry the Precious off June, mama found an Evie hand-me-down in the closet- a Dora nightgown!
June was pretty stoked and now requests her "Dora Precious" every night. This works out nicely for June, because it is a rare day that June is up before 10am. She must have mama's night-owl gene in her, because it always takes her at least an hour to calm down after she goes to bed- no matter what time she goes down. And this results in the late mornings. But it works out well for the Turner summers. Mama is also not sleeping well (thanks, baby Gus). She usually is up til past 2am, then tosses and turns (slowly) until around 6 or 7, then finally falls asleep for a few hours. Papa has been great and gets up and spends a quiet morning with me while the girls sleep. We are all going to have a very rude awakening come September while school starts back up.

One morning when I was at Vacation Bible School, June wore her Dora nightgown all morning and sorted beads into little bowls. She accessorized the outfit with two mismatched rainboots. She had been wearing her old rainboots, but they are now painfully small, so mama had to dig out her new boots for this fall.

Here's an old video we forgot to post from when we were home in Marion. June is getting very good at sound effects and even came in and fired a squirt gun at mama complete with Star Wars blaster sound effects. Where does she learn this stuff? I still don't even understand that guns shoot anything but water.

This movie is only 3 seconds long, but has a very brief payoff at the end. And this was probably June's only smile all week. It was a rough one in the Turner house. June was in a terrible mood. She didn't want to get out of bed. She didn't want to wear what anyone picked out. She didn't want to eat what we gave her. And all of that was sandwiched between major whining and temper tantrums. Not our normal Gugger.

Though she can't really communicate to tell us how she's feeling, mama and papa think two things are at work. First, June likes routine. We had a nice schedule going all year. They dropped me off at school, headed to the gym (or just "Donna" as June calls everything gym related, in honor of the wonderful woman who runs the day care). Then they came home and Junie got to watch a little Dora while mama took a shower. It was fun and predictable. But this summer, there is no schedule, so June is all out of sorts.

Second, and we could be wrong, but we think June knows something is going on. Although we don't think she understands that a new baby is coming, she senses things are rapidly changing and she is NOT okay with that. In an effort to curb her anxiety, mama and papa have been trying to give June more special one-on-one time. This seems to be working and she's been much more pleasant in the last few days.

Full term!- Mama

If you've been keeping track, you know that this week officially means this baby is full term! This means that at 37 weeks, the baby is considered fully cooked and the doctor won't do anything to stop it if I go into labor. It also means that if I doesn't answer the phone, people immediately call my cell phone. And if they don't receive an answer on the cell phone, they immediately assume I'm in labor. This is also the time I intentionally stop answering the phone.

It also means I get to neglect the blog and fall weeks behind, and no one has really called to give me a hard time about it (besides Aunt Jenni). And when I do start to catch up I get to write a really long self-indulgent post about my reflections on this pregnancy. Get your reading glasses out.

Here I am at 35 weeks. Like I've said before, this pregnancy has been much different. Due mostly to the fact that I've continued working out regularly and continued taking afternoon naps (with much more regularity), I think my spirits have been much better (though papa may tell you otherwise). But now that I'm only 3 weeks away, all bets are off, and I've entered what Aunt Jenni lovingly refers to as the "Grumpy Gertie stage." So I apologize in advance to anyone who might be unintentionally inflicted by a bad mood in the next few weeks.

The biggest difference has been the fact that this kid never stops moving! Sensitive Dr. Hearn again told me that it's because my body has been stretched out so many times, I'm essentially a worn-out rubber band that can't go back to its original shape. (Big self-esteem booster!) Thus, this baby has free range of my insides. It's proven rather uncomfortable as I often get a foot stuck in my rib cage. Or worse, it feels like the baby is reaching it's hand around my side and trying to pat me on the back. GG Parsons even told me that he's seen a lot of pregnant ladies, but he's never actually seen a belly move from across the room like mine does. The good news is that the baby must be big enough that it's stopped moving quite so much in the past week. But it still does a number on me when I lay down at night. Who needs sleep anyway?

When we were up in Columbus for Soldier Day, I actually thought I was going into labor for a while. My back hurt, I couldn't breath and I thought I was having contractions. As it turns out, the baby had decided to turn over. It stayed head down but went from facing right to facing left. It was pretty uncomfortable, but once it got flipped, I felt fine and it actually felt good to have my other side kicked and punched. The next day, we went through it all again when the baby flipped back. Now it's back to abusing my internal organs on my right side. That weekend, the baby also pushed so hard with a hand or foot that Aunt Jill was able to feel all the the bones in it's fingers (or toes) through my skin. That's pretty cool (and a little weird).

.

You might remember that with Henry and June, my worst complaint was the constant gall bladder pain. Something about being pregnant (probably the little feet kicking all the time) makes my gall bladder swell up and throb mildly, but nonstop. I'm glad that this baby is carrying so low that I haven't had as much pain. There were a few weeks it hurt, but overall, nothing like the last two.

Grandma took this picture at 36 weeks. We stole the idea from our friend Juliet's blog. It was too clever not to copy.

After Henry and June were born, I remember thinking immediately, "I can't wait to have more kids." And while I do enjoy being pregnant and love me a good baby, I'm certainly not feeling the same sentiment this time around. I think three may be our limit. (And Brandon has started yelling it from the rooftops that three is him limit.)

My body is starting to tell me that it has done its job and is done carrying around babies. I'm exhausted all the time, but can't ever seem to sleep (which is why it's after 1am and I'm still up). And chasing two other kids doesn't seem to help either.

Then there's the guilt for the two other kids. I've really got to give it to Henry and June. They've hit a great age and have spent all summer being so good to me. It's so darn hot that we rarely go outside. (I actually yelled at Henry for taking too long to get the mail because I thought i was going to pass out after two minutes in the afternoon heat.) So the kids are cooped up in the house all day, trying not to go too stir crazy. June is very good about playing by herself and Henry has engaged himself in a variety of projects (there's a post coming up about that soon). They generally play together without any major arguments. Henry is very good about distracting June from whatever major car parking endeavor he's working on and June is learning to leave his toys alone when he's playing with them.

But sitting inside all day, every day does tend to get boring and kids need to burn off their energy. Brandon has been great about getting the kids out of the house or just giving me a break so they can run, scream and wrestle the energy out.

My last guilty feeling for Henry and June is that we've largely left "baby mode." It didn't feel this way when June was born, even though Henry was just a couple months younger than June is now. Now we're going to have to go back to morning naps and nursing and carrying enormous diaper bags full of supplies. I didn't realize how independent we've become in the past months. Skipping an afternoon nap isn't preferred, but both kids can survive without one. I don't know if our new baby will be that flexible.

Up until a few weeks ago, we've barely done anything to prepare for the baby. I do have some diapers and the car seat is out in the garage. Last week I cleaned out the kid side of the attic and washed all the baby clothes that work for a South Carolina summer. Not surprisingly, most of our tiny baby stuff is fleece and corduroy, not our top choice for 100 degree days. But we've got enough little t shirts to get us through until we find out if we need boy or girl clothes. We also pulled down bouncy seats, bath tubs, and our massive collection of bibs and receiving blankets, though June has claimed everything as a toy for her baby dolls. The supplies often get pulled out of their temporary storage place in the guest bedroom for playtime. And since June is still in her crib (I'd like to keep her there until she starts to climb out-hopefully forever), this kid is sentenced to sleeping in a bassinet in our room until a bed opens up.

My doctor says that he expects labor to go fast with this baby (hooray for my old, worn-out body!). With a 35 minute drive to the closest hospital, that should make things exciting, especially because we've going to have to take the time to pawn the kids off on our friends. (Luckily, we're up to 4 families that have offered their babysitting services. You better not all be busy on the night I go into labor!) Don't worry though, I don't expect this baby is coming anytime soon, as much as I'd like it to. I'm expecting this baby will go right up to its due date, if not over, just like its older brother and sister.

More fun with Grandma- June.

Since we had all this fresh fruit, we had to do something with it!

On Sunday morning, mama and Henry got up early to make blueberry muffins.

Henry poured all the ingredients into the bowl and even cracked the eggs on his own. (A skill he's worked very hard on.)

What's the best part of baking? Licking the spoons afterward. Henry spends the entire time asking if he can lick the spoon. Mama says he can when it's done and if he asks one more time, she's going to lick it herself.

That's usually when he quits asking.

We had some friends over to watch the final World Cup game because Mister Mark was the only one we could find who was interested in soccer. He brought James over and eventually Andy came over too. I slept through it all, of course, which is really saying something for 3 boys who tend to get crazy around each other. They actually played so wonderfully and quietly together while the grown-ups watched their match. They were all working on puzzles when a spontaneous concert erupted.

Grandma and Henry had a special afternoon when they drove to Anderson to go see Toy Story 3. It was a big deal not only because they were both excited to see a movie (with popcorn!), but Henry also got to skip his nap. It must have been good, because Henry was so tired afterward he fell asleep and even stayed asleep when Grandma parked the van in the garage (another Turner first!). Thanks for the movie date, Grandma!

On Monday night, Aunt Linda drove down to spend the night with us before she and Grandma headed north again. We decided to go for a walk and a bike ride. Henry made it about 4 houses down before he started getting whiny. He eventually had to be taken home and put to bed early for being such a grump.

I made friends with all the neighborhood cats. "What a pretty kitty! Bye bye kitty! Go see the doggies!" It was still really hot, so it didn't take long for me to decide I didn't want to walk either. So mama had to carry me back and throw me in bed with the other grump.

What was Grandma's favorite part of her trip? All the crepe myrtles that are flowering all over the Carolinas.

Grandma got one more chance to spoil me before she left. I was sitting up in my bed well past 10pm, so papa decided to rescue me and brought me downstairs for a movie and a cuddle. Needless to say, this isn't something he and mama agree on, but Grandma seemed happy to give me one last squeeze.

One last extra big thank you to Grandma for coming down to visit. Her trip wasn't solely recreational. While she was here, she refashioned our old Wisconsin bedroom curtains for bedroom. And she spent the greater part of a morning helping mama wash all the woodwork and light fixtures in the house. (Why did we get a house with chair rails, crown molding, and 1,000 six panel doors?) Thanks a ton, Grandma. The work was a lot more enjoyable with someone else helping.

Blueberry picking with Grandma!- Henry.

We were so excited when Grandma Seibert decided to come down to see us for a long weekend. She and Aunt Linda decided to drive down to Charlotte to see our cousins Andy and Miss Christina. We hope that since they have a new baby coming, Grandma and Aunt Linda make the trip more often.

We picked Grandma up on Friday night and brought her back down here to show her what we Southerners do in the summer.

It was supposed to be cool on Saturday, so we decided to head out to the blueberry farm. Our neighbors had the same idea and we got to see our friends James and Andy!

Andy and I had a great time riding the bear.

The blackberries were just getting ripe and the blueberries were literally "dripping from the bushes," as the farmer told us.

Of course, I was a big help and filled up my tupperware with the biggest berries I could find. And when the sun started getting too hot for Grandma, I found the best spot so she and mama could sit under the blueberry bushes and pick. Really, all you had to do was give a branch a shake and they'd fall right into your bowl. By the time we finished, we'd picked over 12 pounds of berries.

June was not interested in picking. She was mad that the blackberries were on the side of a hill and didn't like all the condensation on the grass. Plus, we think her ankle was still bothering her. So she ended up leaving with Papa because we realized we hadn't brought any money and they had to go find a cash machine.

We ended up calling the doctor about June's ankle. They told us that it would take a long time for a sprain to heal because kids tend not to take it easy. They did tell us to start giving her some ibuprofen and try to ice her ankle. We've been doing it for a week and it's starting to get better. Do bad June dropped a bottle of applesauce on her same foot and now has a big bruise to cover up the swelling.

It must have been very axhausting for June because while we were eating lunch, June fell asleep on the couch. Never has this happened to a Turner kid. June is seriously the laxiest kid of all time.

After naps, we went for a swim down at James and Andy's house. June insisted on being wrapped like a burrito in her Dora towel.

On our way home, we came across the biggest bug ever.

Seriously, what is this thing?