September

Alex at Michael's birthday dutch oven dinner- doing her fire dance!

So life didn't just stop after week 14 of Pregnancy.  I got feeling well enough to actually do things, but was still sick and lazy enough not to take pictures or write about them at all.
   The last 4 weeks I have steadily improved on the nausea front.  I still feel a tiny bit sick in the evenings- especially when I have sugar or milk before bed.  I also got this awful taste in my mouth that is only now starting to dissipate.  No matter what I did or ate, I would always taste it.  Gum helped but then I would get an upset stomach from that.  My Eczema comes and goes and nothing seems to be really helping.  Even the magic holistic cream I got from the hippy store.  But I found out after answering truthfully how I was feeling this pregnancy, to a few genuinely interested friends, that I have nothing to complain about.  My body doesn't try to kill of my kids, I'm not stuck on bed-rest in the hospital for the entire 9 months, nore do I have the urge to puke constantly after the 4th month.  Pregnancy isn't fun.  But it's a LOT more fun for me that just about every other lady I've talked to!
   Tyler and I also changed our minds on the who 'discovering the gender early' issue.  I don't know why, but the idea of having a little boy kind of stressed me out.  Every little boy I know is such a crazy little loud whirlwind- and my girls play so nice and quietly together- It makes me anxious thinking about throwing a boy in the mix.  We will of course be happy with whatever we are having, and Tyler really wants his little guy- but we decided it might be more fun to find out now.  Especially since the whole concept is confusing for the girls and I don't think it helps that we are just always calling the baby 'it'.
    Whenever I ask them, Heidi is very adamant (to the point of anger) that the baby is a girl, and Alex always say's it's a girls as well.  But if I ask what they want- Alex says she wants a brother, but Heidi is still feisty about having another sister.  It will be interesting to see!
   Tyler got requests to come interview at P.A. schools in both Maine and Pennsylvania!  We are very excited for him to go and knock their socks off, but not about the expensive plane tickets it's taking to get him there.  I feel confident he will be accepted, so now I'm starting to worry about the logistics of moving our family across the country- about as far away as we could possibly go- and stay in the U.S.A!  It will be an adventure for sure!
   Last weekend my Mother and Brother came to visit.  We had so much fun with them and it was of course sad to see them go.  We spent an entire day at Cornbellies- this fantastic fall themed giant playground.  Unfortunately I didn't take my camera.  The girls loved little Bridger to death and took advantage of all the attention from Grandma and Aunts and Uncles.  It was a fun preview of what Christmas might look like this year!
 
   We also "put the garden to bed" this week.  A process that involved tearing up everything and tilling it into the ground.  The garden had really started to produce tomatoes, big wonderful red ones, when it froze.  It was heart breaking- we spent hours collecting tomatoes the day before and had to leave so many big green ones, and ripe ones we just couldn't get to.  As we pulled up the plants it about killed me to see all the waste and potential that was rotting in the dirt.  We had previously dug up the potatoes.    Even though the plants had died 1/2 way through the summer, there were still quite a few to dig up.  The kids did a pretty good job of collecting the spuds while the adults each had a shovel to dig.  It took a couple day's work to finish but was well worth the peace of mind and delicious potatoes!  I'm still sad we didn't plant pumpkins, but I'm not sad we are through with the garden this year