Nothing much...

Well nothing much has been new here lately. Scott is still out of town following the Pope around (ok, I guess technically, the Pope follows him). The kids have enjoyed getting to play outside in the beautiful warm weather and we have enjoyed many days in the yard and at the park. Oh, and Harbin really enjoyed playing football with the neighbor boys the other day- he just had to get his helmet!!

I have ordered the bedding for Catherine's new room (see the pic) and plan to paint pink and white stripes under the chair rail in her room and paint above the chair rail pink. I am hoping to make some fabric flowers to match the one on the throw pillow to hang on the walls. Anyways, all is a huge "work-in-progress", and I will post new pics as new stuff happens.

Harbin is completely potty trained during the day now and it's so much nicer than changing diapers all the time. He is very good about telling me each...and...every...time...he...has...to...go :)

Catherine is walking everywhere and even tries to run a bit sometimes. She is getting pretty independent which is helpful, say at the park, where she can climb and play by herself; however, not so helpful when she insists on changing her own diaper or wiping her own face after a messy meal.

Well, off to procrastinate cleaning!

The mom.

Make Room for Baby

Well, it's official- I am nesting... which can I say is much more work with the third baby on the way. With your first child, you have one nursery to paint, one bedroom to arrange furniture for, and one room to decorate. With baby number three, everything is getting flipped around and the work seems to be spread across three rooms now!!! I suppose one could argue that I have the two sets of "extra hands" this time around and that it should be easier this time.... ummm....yeah.... no comment.

Anyways, over the last week, Scott (yes he's been home for an entire week straight) and I have been working on rearranging some of our stuff and some of our rooms. In order to make room for Lydia, we are moving the kids to new rooms, new carseats, and new stages in life!!!

I guess it's true that first babies get all the new stuff, since Harbin is the one getting the new while we move Catherine and Lydia into his old. We bought a new carseat for Harbin the other day that converts into a booster seat for when he's older. It's quite an elaborate thing and looks a lot like a race car seat- which would be HIS favorite thing about it. Catherine is now in Harbin's old seat, and the infant carrier is washed and ready for Baby Lydia.

Our house has recently been under some major home improvements. With the new addition to our family, we decided to make better use of our space. We have been finishing up the bonus room and preparing it to be Harbin's new bedroom/huge playroom. Scott finished up some trim work around the window and bookshelf and I painted two of the walls blue to make it a bit more "boy". We still have to install carpet and the baseboards as well as paint all of the trim.

Catherine will be moving into Harbin's old room, and of course, you know I can't leave it blue. So, I will be priming and painting the walls this weekend in hopes of making it a bit more girly!! I am thinking of going with brown and pink, but we'll see what happens.

When Baby Lydia arrives she will get the current nursery. It seemed silly to mess with something that works so well now. I have moved all of Catherine's clothes into her new closet and plan on the girls sharing a closet for now. In the meantime, I have taken over the nursery closet and made it my craft closet. I am pleased with the way it came out and hope that it will make getting to my craft stuff a bit easier than before.

And, finally, God has his timing (and thankfully it was sooner rather than later)- Harbin has now been diaper-free (with the exceptions of nap and bedtime) for a little over a week. He has done well at home and seems to do fine out and about too. We are so excited to be able to use that money towards buying newborn diapers for the upcoming baby- I figure, why rebudget for only two months- I'll just get ahead on the newborn diapers.

Catherine has been walking majority of the time now, even at home. This is a huge help to me, who seems to be getting larger, yet strangely weaker, by the day. I am officially in my third trimester (29 weeks) and although I am still feeling great, carrying her all the time can get tiresome!!!

Anyways, I hope to post more pics as we continue these improvements. The pics on here now aren't great, but that's because all of the furniture is in the middle of the rooms and it makes taking a pic difficult!

The mom.

Easter Dresses and Egg Hunts

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!! Ours was filled with three days of egg hunts, two days of church, and sugar-fed celebration!

On Friday, the kids, "Farmer", Baby Wesley, and myself attended the Easter Eggstravaganza at the Centerville Community Center near my house. WOW was it crowded! Harbin "hunted" three broken eggs with no candy, and waited in line FOREVER to bounce in the bounce house. The kids did enjoy the farm animals like the goats and bunnies. I was also able to catch a few good pics of the kids dressed up for the hunt.

Saturday was much more laid back. Daddy came home that morning and we joined some close friends of ours for lunch and an egg hunt at their house. Harbin and Sam didn't come up short on eggs this time and Catherine even snagged a few for herself. Later that evening the kids got to meet the Easter Bunny at Farmer's neighborhood Egg Hunt. You can see how enthused the were...

Our church had three services this year, one Sat. night and two Sun. morning. The choir sang in all of them, so I was busy a lot throughout the weekend. Sunday morning was rushed since we woke up 5 minutes AFTER I was supposed to be at the church (darned alarm clocks)!!! Needless to say, I was able to get ready, get a few shots of the kids opening their Easter Baskets and make it to the church by 9. Scott did a great job getting the kids all dolled up in their Easter best and joining me at church 20 minutes later.

Sunday afternoon we had a great lunch at my mom's house followed by more Easter surprises and, of course, EGG HUNTS!! Two of the guys from Scott's unit- Mike and Mike- joined us for the egg hunt. By this point in the weekend, Catherine had the hang of the hunt. She would hold Scott's hand, walk to the next egg, promptly let go, squat down, pick up the egg, put it in the basket and return to finger holding position, ready to walk to the next egg!!

Enjoy the pics. I should have them all up on Shutterfly soon with a link on the right.

The mom.