39 weeks- Henry.

You have have noticed in mama's effort to get the blog up to date, she been scheduling out one blog post a day. Well, mama is afraid that this baby may actually be born on of these days, so she's putting up the last three posts, just so she's all caught up. That's pretty lucky for you, especially those of you that still haven't updated your blog (Uncle Kevin and Uncle Adam!).

Here's your punishment:

Ack! That's a huge white belly! We try not to get too graphic on this blog, but mama just had to post this picture. now that the baby is too big to really move around much. This kid really can reallydo a number in there. Now that the baby is bigger, it spend most of its time trying to stretch out. So mama is lopsided most of the time, like in this shot where it just can't seem to get comfortable. At any given time, you can usually feel a knee or elbow sticking out at a weird uncomfortable angle.

Here's a slightly more appropriate picture. Mama at 39 weeks (at least her belly is covered). We could resist getting one more shot with the bump sign, even if mama is a big, sweaty mess. We think the doctor has given up hope of mama going early. She's 2 centimeters dilated and the baby is all the way down. This has been hard on mama because now it's head hits all the nerves going into her legs, giving her shooting pain if she stand up for too long. Over the past few days, mama has really been tired. Our good friends in the neighborhood have been really good about keeping all of us busy. And when mama is moving, she feels good. But yesterday, June and I went to school and this morning I went to the lake with John, James, Christopher, and Andy. And mama has found on these days when she's just bumming around at home, she tends to feel much worse. Or maybe that's because she could be just days from giving birth. You decide.

Here's a video for the strong of heart out there. Warning: there's a big belly moving around in this video!

This is humiliating in a number of ways. First, it's hard to find an angle to take a belly video that isn't completely unflattering. Second, it's harder when you're wearing an enormous purple mumu (it's hot down here, okay?). Third, if you look close, you might be able to see the Taco Bell stain on her belly from the run for the border she sent papa on earlier. Finally (and we don't think this is humiliating at all), that IS the Highlander theme song playing in the background. Mama finished Season 3 this week. It was so awesome, it's no wonder the baby was so worked up!

A boy and his bike- June.

Every since the Tour de La France, Henry has been dying to get out on his bike. We've gone to Clemson Elementary a few times to ride because the parking lots are fairly flat.

And we've been riding around our neighborhood too, which is not even close to being flat. Henry is getting much more bold about coasting down big hills and will ride very slowly down every hill but one.

And while he's trying harder to ride up hills, a one speed bike just won't get you over some of them. He and mama had a big fight this week about pushing his bike up the hill. He thought she would do it, and she got selfish and said she couldn't push a stroller, a belly, AND a bike up a hill. Eventually, Henry pushed his own bike up.

Henry's next big wish is for lights on his bike so he can ride at night. Papa said yes to the lights, but no to riding at night. At least we can see that his reflectors are working.

Check out my cute monkey jammies! Mama found I'm much happier if I get to hang out for a while in my jammies instead of getting dressed. So she's been much more liberal with pajama wearing. For instance, it's one 1:30 and I'm still wearing my "Dora precious" purple nightgown.

On Wednesday, mama finally came through on a promise she made Henry months ago- to take a bus ride! We met John and Christopher at the grocery station and we all rode on to campus to the Hendrix Center (the new student union). We ate a packed lunch, then headed to the campus ice cream shop and all got cones!

The boys were very excited that they got to ride in a seat together with no grown-ups. It was a great trip. All 4 kids were well behaved, if a little wound up, and the whole trip only took about an hour and a half.

This morning, Henry went to the beach with our friends while mama and I stayed at home. Mama was up at 5am having a few contractions and she thought today might be the big day. So she took the opportunity to FINALLY pack her bag for the hospital. Then the contractions stopped. But it was nice having a quiet morning and not have to spend it sitting in the hot water at the beach. So thank you, thank you, Miss Kerri and Miss Juliet for taking Henry with you.

Since I've had to ice my ankle at night, papa and I have spent some time on PBSkids.org playing the Super Why! Alpha Pig letter game. I'm up to about 75% accuracy. I like working on letters so much that I play the game by myself with our Boggle set. I even quote Alpha Pig by saying "Nooooow, where's the letter F?" "That's great!"

Crafts and such- June.

Henry is on to his thurd church school of the summer. This one runs every week on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. James, John and Andy all go too, so we've been carpooling. We really need to get a picture of 5 kids between the age of 2 and 4 and a half shoved into one van. It's really loud. But I think all the moms are enjoying not having to drive to Seneca twice a day.
Henry has brought home all kinds of cool crafts. Most of them are hanging on the wall in our bedroom. But there have been a few more delicate pieces that just couldn't be saved. This octopus is great, but the paint is flaking off the foam, so it got a picture and met its fate.

We really loved this piece. Henry glued down the sand, laid the play-dough grass and painstakingly set up the straw fences. Then they put the animals in their zoo! We were sad to see this one hit the trash can, but every time it got moved, everything fell over and mama felt too bad to see Henry try to fix it over and over.
Henry's teacher pulled mama aside to tell her how good her was a coloring and putting puzzles together. That's our engineer. He's giving the 350 piece puzzle another go and this time he's done most of it on his own without mama having to separate out the different colors. If you'd told us a year ago that our spastic 3 year old Henry would mellow out into this patient craft -loving, puzzle-building kid, we'd never have believed you.
Exciting thigs are happening for me too. I've graduated to a cup! And am pretty pleased about it, if I must say so.
I'm pretty good about being careful, but did have an accident last night that involved spilling a full glass of milk into mama's lap. Needless to say, we got sent outside for the rest of the night.
Also, this week I got to go to school with Buster! Mama signed me up for the 2 year old class to have some piece and quiet before the baby storm hits. When mama dropped me off Tuesday morning, i ran straight to my class with Andy and didn't even look back. Henry did tell mama that about halfway through the morning, June started crying and they brought me into his class. He said that as soon as I saw him, I yelled "Buster!" and was just fine. I played in his class for a few minutes then they took me back to my class. The teachers didn't mention it to Miss Kerri at pick-up, so the rest of the day must have gone just fine.

Here's a video of Henry and I playing our new counting game. As you can imagine, it got very loud as it went on.

Back to the farm- Henry.

We had the best weekend. For the first time in about 6 weeks, it actually just rained instead of dumped a huge thunderstorm. And we haven't even seen very many of those. Mostly, it's been hot a dry. After a rainy morning, it was only in the high 70s. And though it was really muggy, mama wanted to get outside. And what better place to go than the blueberry farm?
Besides just blueberries, which we all LOVE, we tried our hand at some new fruit. Can you guess what this tree produces?

Figs! I was very eager to try them and ate 2 or 3 out in the field. We picked a couple to bring home and munch on, but didn't have the got to bring home enough to experiment with.

June picked for a little while, but was mostly content sitting in the grass eating the "burries" papa picked for her.
Blueberries are past their peak, so we had to go looking for the bushes with the really big berries I liked. But there are still hundreds on every bush. The owners told us there are still a good 3 or 4 weeks left to pick. Mama wants to get back out there at least one more time.
Everytime we moved to a new bush, June would follow us and, inevitably, drop her bowl. But she got most of them out of the grass.
After we were done with the blueberries and figs, we also picked grapes! I was so excited that the grapes they planted were called Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune. We bought the Venus grapes and have already finished those. We also bought 8 pounds of fresh Jefferson peaches from another nearby farm. And they are so good, mama has declared she'll never buy a bland peach from a store again!
When we got home, we all partook in our new favorite activity. Our driveway is in desperate need of repair and is crumbling constantly. So we like to join papa in the ritual of picking up the little pieces of asphalt and throwing them down the driveway.


Someone needs to teach June not to throw rocks in the yard.

Just like me when I was 2 and a half, June has suddenly started talking up a storm. She's really saying a lot these days. And when she's not talking, she's singing one of her two favorite songs- Twinkle, twinkle little star or the ABCs. Lucky for us, both songs lend themselves to accidentally being repeated over and over and over.


It took us a while to find a shoe to fit over her cast, but we found a tennis shoe that works. She usually wears her tennis shoe on her left foot and a dainty sparkly shoe on the other. It gets us plenty of weird looks. So what do you think? Is the cast slowing her down? We don't think it is much, but it does seem to be helping. Yesterday, she pointed her toe for the first time in weeks. It's been stuck in a flexed position since she hurt it. And the cast doesn't seem to be hurting her dramatic skills either. Check out that "fall" at the end of the video.

Around home- June.

The problem with a very large, slightly immodest dress is that it is very easy to lose food down the front.

Found it!

Did I say slightly immodest? I don't know why mama doesn't let me go out looking like this!

When Buster was at his summer school, I hounded mama for 20 minutes with a purse full of toy food, yelling "Pack-pack! Pack-pack!" It took her long enough to figure out that I wanted the purse to be my backpack, just like Dora's. The good thing about a huge dress is that you can shove a purse in the back and it holds quite well.

I like to take my favorite song and make it my own. I was singing "Baby, baby, baby. baby," but I've tired of all this talk about a new baby. Don't they know I'm the baby around here?

Here's mama's 38 week shot. She was all dolled up to go out to eat with her mom's club. Look at how tan that pale girl is. And that's with regular sunblock. But she's still pretty pale compared to most of the ladies around here. Her doctor did ask why she wan't tan this summer. Yikes!

She had her 38 week appointment and there's no progress to report. Her doctor offered again to induce if she wanted to have the baby now. But now we're holding out for Grams to get here on August 9th, so we don't have to worry about finding babysitters for me and Henry.

We'd also like to send out a big thank you to all of our local friends in Clemson. Apparently, the chock of seeing us eating Arby's on the blog was too much and we got no less than 3 invitations for supper or lunch last week. Thank you to everyone that fed us delicious meals so mama wouldn't have to cook- the standards for healthy and delicious have gotten pretty low over here!

In other big news this week, we've hit the enormous deductible for our health insurance, so mama decided now was the time to finally get my ankle looked at. She was convinced it wasn't broken, but also sure that we'd find out something awful was wrong with it just when the baby was born. So we visited the doctor, who confirmed with x-rays that it was indeed a very bad sprain. In an effort to facilitate healing, they ordered me a very tiny air cast. I was not pleased when mama first put it on. But Buster decorated it with some horse stickers, so it's not too bad. I wear it all day, except when I'm in bed. When mama or papa have to put it back on, I yell "No horsie foot!" but I haven't tried to take it off yet. To be honest, it hasn't really slowed me down much. Hopefully, it's the key to finally getting this foot back working again.

Kefu comes to visit- Henry.

We've been pretty good at procrastinating all summer. But last week, mama realized that my buddy Kefu would be returning home to China soon.

So she called up his mom and asked if he could come over for one last playdate.

We had a great time spending the afternoon together.

We played with all of our toys and built a huge marble run.

You can see how happy I am, not only to have my friend over, but to be skipping naptime too.

It has really been remarkable how much Kefu has changed this year. When we met him, he knew very little English. Now, he is fluent and even had to help translate for his mom.

Kefu's mom came over for the afternoon, too. She and mama had a good time comparing how different childbearing and childhood is between China and the US. For example, since she found out mama was pregnant, she couldn't believe that mama was planning on taking care of 3 kids by herself. (And she couldn't believe mama also cooked and cleaned too.) She told us that when she was pregnant, her parents moved in and stayed until Kefu was almost a year old, just so they could help out. (Hint, hint, Grandmas!) She was also very surprised that mama put June down for her nap and June went to sleep on her own- and in her own bed. Apparently, Kefu does not. Mama wonders if many of the differences are attributable to the fact that single children of single children only get one child themselves. If we only had one kid on our family, things would probably be a lot different too.

While the moms yacked, we tried to find new ways to load up the marbles. We use trucks to dump the marbles in and then I had to show off how the set glows inthe dark by closing all the blinds in the house.

Before Kefu left, mama wanted to get a picture of us together. Come on, mama.

Okay, fine. We were so glad to get to see Kefu one last time before he went home. And we already got the email saying they were back safe in Shanghai. Hopefully, someday they'll have the opportunity to come back to Clemson again.

Grumpy Gertie.

Okay, bloggers. We didn't want to say it, but this is getting out of hand.

Check out that countdown on the sidebar. 8 days to go. And if know mama, things are getting pretty desperate over here. She likes being pregnant and generally enjoys having kids, but pretty much ANYTHING puts her in a bad mood these days.

Today, we haven't helped much, because Henry used his chair to grind fresh blueberries into the grout in the kitchen and June demolished many huge piles of freshly fold laundry in a jumping contest. Add on to that the fact that air conditioning set at 74 degrees is still too hot, and you've got a major Grumpie Gertie on your hands.

Here's where you come in. Why hasn't anyone updated their blogs??!?!?!?!?! For some of you, it's been weeks. Others- months. this is simply unacceptable. Since we're still trying to catch up, mama has agreed not to immediately stop posting. But she does have the following threat:

Unless she sees some action out on the blogosphere, we're not telling anyone when we have our baby. We don't want to ruin this for everyone, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

So it's up to you. We've seen your kids. They're adorable! They say the darndest things! Please post something! Otherwise, you might get a grumpy mama on your doorstep, and unless you've got a frozen coke to fend her off, may God have mercy on your soul.

Truck Day at Chick-fil-A- June.

Let it be known that we can't say enough about Chick-fil-A. Their food is beyond delicious; they have an awesome indoor playground; and they are constantly handing out free food coupons. But now we have two more reasons to love them. First, they are frequently sponsoring some kind of theme day in order to hand out free food. for example, a few weeks ago, they hosted "Cow Appreciation Day." If you dressed like a cow (we taped spots to our shirts), you got a free combo! And that was for everyone! $20 of free chicken is enough to make mama love you forever.

The second reason we love Chick-Fil-A is because the two local franchises host a ton of family events. Last Saturday was Truck Day in Seneca. They had the local fire department out to show off their fleet. Henry took his own truck to join in the fun.

I got my own hard hat and went to work in the sand boxes. Mama really wanted us to play in the water they were spraying from the back of the truck, but neither of us would go in. Even though it was 100 degrees and we were standing on the blacktop for a long time.

The Seneca FD also brought out their fire safety education trailer and we got to see a demonstration about fire safety in our homes. We've since installed two more smoke detectors in the house and mama and papa are doing some research on the best way talk to us about what to do in case of an emergency. Any suggestions on good websites or resources?

Here's a funny story from later that morning. It got too hot for mama to stand in that parking lot, so we decided to visit a local toy store. Since this baby is coming soon, mama thought it might get us in the spirit if we picked out a present for the baby. When we got to the store, they had a train set up, so we spent the first 30 minutes playing with that. Finally, mama convinced us to stop playing and start looking for a present. She was not pleased at all when I plopped myself down in front of the horse display and wouldn't budge. Henry, on the other hand, tried to be a little more discreet. He (unsuccessfully) tried to convince mama and papa that a new model train set would be the perfect gift for a baby- in four and a half years. How convenient. Mama gave up and instead let Henry pick from a predetermined set of toys that she had chosen online. This time, he picked the right one and everyone was happy.