Seeing Santa at the Durham

We bought a Durham pass at the end of last year and wanted to use it before it expired. Benjamin and Ryan went the wrong direction after the football exhibit and missed the dirt. I was expecting there to be a place to dig, but it wasn't very kid friendly so Benjamin didn't miss much.

Ryan had a Freemason meeting this evening so he rode with us to the museum and then one of the guys he used to work with picked him up.

We had hot chocolate first before getting in line to see Santa.
The boys were very patient while waiting in line to see Santa. They had a coloring table 3/4 of the way through the line which Alexander enjoyed. Benjamin tripped over a little girl and was grumpy.
Fruit snacks did the trick so Alexander wasn't grumpy for this photo. Alexander was a little nervous about sitting in Santa's lap, but didn't mind Mrs. Claus. I coached Benjamin about what he was going to ask for Christmas from Santa before we got to him, because last year B. forgot to ask him and had to go back and there was no WAY we were going to stand in line for another hour. I love the power of suggestion... I asked Benjamin if he would like to ask Santa for a scooter (Which happened to be the gift waiting for him back in UT) and he bit off on the idea!
Santa had Comet and Cupid with him. This is Cupid. Benjamin was hoping Rudolph was going to be there and wondered where the other reindeer were.Santa's sleigh.

Benjamin Has His Daddy's Ear For Music

Benjamin definitely didn't get his ability to reproduce a melody from me. I'm not sure who taught him the Army Song because Ryan said it wasn't his doing. It must have been my mom while she was visiting for Thanksgiving.

BYU vs. UNLV Football

We signed Benjamin up for the Cosmo Club and we got a four Football tickets (probably a good thing we waited until BYU dropped four games in a row and people were giving away their tickets because to site said we'd be getting 2 tickets). There are also 7 Basketball tickets which we'll be using. Due to my Army Drill schedule, the UNLV game was the only one we could go to. So I spent all week trying to get Benjamin excited about the game. I was successful as you can see from the picture.

The other two tickets for the game I gave to one of the guys in my Chaplain program and his wife and one of her friends came. Thankfully, she has a Droid phone, because if she had not loaned it to Benjamin for him to play a bunch of games on it, we probably would have come home at half-time. I was able to keep him there the whole game.

Once Benjamin got bored of the phone, then he began to slide down the banisters at the stadium. He did that for the majority of the fourth quarter. But, I still got to watch the game. Hopefully, my son will begin to enjoy watching college football. We'll see if he is any better with Basketball.

Halloween 2010!

The boys and I went to the student center for the Spooktacular on Thur evening while Ryan was in class. I was lucky to get out the door at all so the boys were some of the only kids there without costumes. Alexander ate more tootsie rolls than I could count and Benjamin really enjoyed the bounce house.
Alexander wasn't too excited about getting his face painted, but he endured it.
The boys sharing candy.
James was along for the ride.
I didn't get a picture of Benjamin at his preschool party, but he didn't have his costume on while I was there. Apparently, he was really excited about the cupcakes all morning, but then didn't even eat his during the party?! Sometimes I don't understand that kid at all.

I carved pumpkins with the boys on Friday evening while Ryan was at work. I've never used a pumpkin saw before and it was great. Benjamin wanted the Jack-o-Lanterns to look like one on the knife package and on a Halloween frosting tub. They lost interest before the second one was carved, so I finished it on Sat morning. I've never left so many guts in a pumpkin before, but it still worked out fine. I'm glad I brought the electric tea light candles with us when we moved.
So, on Friday night, I was cleaning out the diaper bag and removed the harness because there's no way Alexander would willingly wear it. Benjamin saw it and wanted to know if it still fit him and if he could wear it. It did fit and so instead of being a Knight for Halloween, he wanted to be a dog (probably in part because we wouldn't let him take the sword out of our apartment). I cut out felt ears, spots, and a tail and thought it would be cute if Benjamin wore a sweater... so we were already to go with the costume, except Benjamin misplaced the harness... so 5 minutes before heading out the door to go trick-or-treating he wanted to go back to the knight costume.
I wasn't sure if Alexander would be able to go with because he was napping. He woke up about the time of the costume change and ended up being the dog, which was a bit fortuitous because I'm sure he wouldn't have kept any part of the knight costume on.
The nice thing about being in Utah is that there isn't a question about Trick-or-Treating on Sunday... it's just expected to happen on Saturday. They had trick-or-treating on campus from 4-6 so it was an early evening, but it was also raining so it wasn't the most pleasant evening to be out. I ended up staying home with the baby because of the drizzle.
Ryan and the boys didn't make it out the door until after 4:30 and were home before 6. There was a ward Halloween party that evening, but the boys were tired and we normally start their bedtime routine at 7, so we all opted to stay home and have a little family party by drinking apple cider and reading spooky bedtime books. The boys also reenacted trick-or-treating by knocking on the bedroom doors and having Ryan and I "reuse" their candy.These are cupcakes I made for the ward party. I'm still figuring out our gas oven because they we slightly over-baked. (I've never had the cupcake papers separate from the cake before.)This was Benjamin's favorite piece of candy... a lollipop with a bony arm for a stick.
Alexander was eating a full sized tootsie pop and drooling/dripping it all over the apartment.

James is 1 Month Old!

It's hard to believe it's been a month since James was born. In some ways baby #3 has been the easiest for me to care for because I'm now comfortable in my role as mother (e.g. I finally know how to get a baby to sleep without nursing him). Other than trying to balance the needs of 3... especially when they're all crying at once, and Alexander is not sleeping through the night and wanting to "nap" (i.e. nurse) ALL the time, the adjustment to 3 hasn't been too bad.


I'm trying to revel in James' babyhood because I'm not sure if there will be a #4. At the moment, the plan is yes, but not for another 3 years or so. I want to know what James will look and be like as a little boy, but I'm not willing him to grow up any faster than he already is.

James' Blessing Day

I forgot to take pictures until after I had already changed the boys out of their church clothes. We got them redressed, but didn't get a group photo.
I couldn't have staged this one better myself!
At some point we gave James a binky (He won't take one very often) so of course Benjamin and Alexander needed one too.
My silly babies. Gramp has a Benjamin growing out of the back of his head!
Gram thinks James looks like Benjamin did as a newborn. There are similarities... more so than between James and Alexander, but also a lot of differences.
Here's a photo from Benjamin's blessing day:

If Benjamin were a girl...

Hopefully the title of this blog post won't embarrass Benjamin when he's a teenager.

I didn't realize how dark my hair already was by the time I was in preschool.

I was torn about getting copies of Benjamin's preschool pictures because I wasn't expecting them to take pictures and he had pictures taken when he turned 4 in June, but I'm glad we got a copy.

Wow, Benjamin's photogenic! (and not just because he's my mini-me :) He looks like an angel.

I'm feeling old... I showed Benjamin the preview of this post and he asked me if the pictures of me were taken before there were cars and trucks!

Another Speedy Delivery

Today we came into the hospital for a "scheduled induction" hoping this baby's arrival would be less of a photo finish than Alexander's. I was 40 weeks and 4 days and dilated to a 4 and 85% effaced just like last Thursday, so my body hadn't been doing much contracting over the weekend (which was pretty strange after all the contractions I had 2 weeks ago).
I am not into baby bellies in the least bit... I think it looks like a beer belly on me, but I figured we needed a photo of it anyway before things kicked off.
I checked my e-mail while we were waiting for the midwife and nurse to come back.

Sarah, the midwife started the pitocin at around noon at a two. Four is standard (and women sometime get cranked all the way up to 20), but she figured once my body got a "whiff" of the pitocin, it would just do it's thing. The first hour seemed to go pretty slow. I ate some chocolate pudding, because although instructed not too, this place is way more "medical" than my previous delivery experiences... And pudding is a liquid!?

Allie, the assisting nurse increased the pitocin to 4 and then around 1330, Sarah broke my water and I think I was still dilated at a 4. Sarah said to call her when I needed labor support because that's what midwives are for. She was over at the clinic across the street, but had a light patient load this afternoon, so she wasn't too concerned about getting back over here.

The contractions were getting stronger and then almost unbearable. I asked Ryan to call Sarah. Ryan really was a great coach, so I'm not sure that Sarah could have done much that Ryan wasn't already doing.

Allie came and measured me again and I was dilated to a 7 around 1430. I was not looking forward to the next 3 cm AT ALL. I was having a hard time relaxing and again unsure if I could do it without drugs. That should have been a sign of transition (as with Benjamin), but it seemed too soon. Allie said, "I think you've got less than an hour"... and within 10 minutes it was another "I have to push" from me and Allie said "Don't push"... and I pushed. And once again (as with Alexander) the baby crowned while I was standing up. I only made it onto the bed on all fours (not intending to give birth that way, but it was a fairly comfortable position). By then I had pushed out the baby's head and then I didn't have another contraction for about 2 minutes and it was making Ryan and Allie nervous just seeing the baby's head hanging out, but then the contraction came and I pushed him out. By then other nurses had arrived and Sarah showed up in time to deliver the placenta. She felt really bad to have missed the baby's birth.
Baby Lewis #3 was born at 1451 MST weighing 8 pounds and 20 inches long. We were pretty sure we would name the baby James, but he didn't look like a James, so we're not sure if we need to pick a different name or if he will grow into it. We're waiting until at least tomorrow to decide.
Ryan said he doesn't look like a father of 3, but then he keeps commenting on how old he looks and all of his gray hair, so I'm not sure what a father of 3 is supposed to look like. I am glad he's finally realized how thin he looks after losing almost 30 pounds in the last ~4 months.Gudrun our next nurse thought I was being really antsy about getting my IV out, but why keep it in longer than necessary? I also wanted a shower right away. I don't see a need to stay in a hospital gown if I'm not sick!
Grandma brought the boys over after dinner to meet their new brother and to have Family Home Evening. They were pretty excited about the baby.
This is the first time my mom has been here on the day one of our babies has been born. She looks like a proud grandma of 5. This baby also happens to share a birthday with his cousin Maxwell who turned 9 today! It will make Baby Lewis' birthday easy to remember.

A Weekend of Free Food

Ryan has sworn off the Graduate Student Society because they didn't hire him when he applied for a job, but I'm actually glad he wasn't working for them on Friday night. Ryan was at work though, so I took the boys alone to their opening BBQ. I ran into some of our friends while waiting in line and they (and their daughter, Maggie, who thinks Benjamin is cute. Ryan says that means there's hope for Benjamin to find a wife... not that we're in the market :) helped entertain Benjamin, because we had to wait quite a long time.

There was a required RSVP and sign in sheet, but they still ran out of food. We lucked out and got some of the last sloppy joe sandwiches. Benjamin was still hungry and ate a styrafoam cup full of meat before we left, while Alexander had a cup full of corn. People were waiting for pizza when we left at 1930... I'm glad Ryan wasn't the one in charge.
Yes, it was a night later than usual for the boys. We ran into Cosmo on the way out and Alexander ran away from him. I'm thinking he won't like Halloween this year.
On Saturday there was an opening social/carnival for our housing complex. This is Benjamin on the "train". It was quite funny that the cars were made from 50 gallon water barrels. Only in Utah?!?!
Alexander was taking a nap and Ryan was helping our neighbors move for the first part of the event. We should have gotten hot dogs first, but we decorated a cookie and ate cotton candy instead!We waited in line for a long time to get balloons made. Benjamin was very patient. We had a balloon sword made for Alexander too.
Alexander didn't miss too much because of his nap. That's a big cookie for a little guy.

Ryan arrived just in time for the tug-of-war. He was excited to be on a winning team.

Big man in a little barrel...Alexander wasn't impressed with the "train ride".

Saturday night, the stake hosted a Chinese "mid-autumn festival". There was really yummy catered Chinese food and desert was shaved ice covered in sweetened condensed milk, bananas, strawberries, and chocolate syrup. Delicious!

The boys made panda bear heads out of paper plates, which I should take a photo of before disposing of them.

Sunday evening, my visiting teacher brought us a very tasty potato soup for dinner. It was SO nice to not have to cook ALL weekend!