Mae Catherine Waters

Baby Sister aka Baby Girl (for the 1st 2 or 3 days of her life Ben didn't know her name since this is all we call her) has arrived. After 2 days at the hospital of being induced she arrived at 12:29am on Monday October 11. I spent the previous Friday at the hospital from 7:30am till 4pm being induced, and while it started contractions every 15min apart it didn't start 'active labor' so I was sent home and scheduled to return Sunday. So back in I went Sunday at 7:30am again for another attempt. Finally by around 9pm that night they classified it as active labor so I happily requested my epidural and felt nothing the rest of the night :) I was ready to deliver by 11pm (maybe earlier since I wasn't feeling a thing I don't know, but that's when the nurse checked me and discovered baby girl was ready to come out) but the doctor was doing a c-section so I was told to not push. No problem for me thanks to my wonnnderrrfulll epidural. Shortly after midnight the doctor came in and started getting ready for the delivery - and 3 pushes later there was our baby girl!! 7lbs-9oz and 19.5" long.
Already we can tell she is SO different then Benjamin - this girl SLEEPS!!!! She sleeps through the dog, ben, nursing...I keep waiting for it to end (yes I'm pessimistic) but I am currently LOVING it!

AZ Museum for Youth

For another Friday activity in September Benjamin and I headed to the AZ Museum for Youth with his friend Jonathan. I learned after the Children's Museum that if I wanted to rest my feet it was definitely better to do activities with friends of his! J and B are night & day in terms of personality (J can stand quietly and fish for 2hrs!! while B you have about 2 min if you're lucky...) but as long as we choose places where it's okay for them to set their own speeds they get along amazingly! We spent about 2.5 hrs here, then we took the boys to a McD's playground where they ran for another 1.5 hrs almost. And yet my son didn't nap when we finally got home....
Ben is showing off his 'monster mask' he made at the museum. He loves that mask!

Camping with Jonathan S

In mid-September Sam and Benjamin headed up North for another weekend (1 night) of camping. There was just 1 other boy there this time - Ben's good friend Jonathan (and his Dad). They had a wonderful time and I was able to spend my 2 days grocery shopping and freezer meal making before Bens sister arrives! Sam had Ben in the same clothes the whole time so while I was grateful I didn't have a ton of laundry when they returned - WOW were those clothes a mess!!!
This is a rare sight to see with our boy :) I think he got pretty wiped this camping trip!!

Children's Museum

Since chasing after Ben in the house and getting up & down off the floor has become more difficult we have been trying to find fun activities to do with him elsewhere. This week I took him to the Children's Museum with a couple free passes I got from the library. We spent 3hrs there and he LOVED it since it's such a hands on type of museum.
My plan of sitting and letting him run and expend his energy did backfire slightly on me as after going through this above climber by himself for about 30 min he did beg me go with him - and you can't say no to that :) For the most part I was able to stand and walk through it but he did take me through a few the wood tunnels where he could stand....and my belly & I attempted crawling. 2 weekends ago we had tempted an indoor aquarium here - but there are no pictures of that as we managed to do the entire thing twice in about 30 min. The only thing he really stopped for was when he could reach in and pet the star fish, otherwise he had no patience to stop and look through the glass and preferred to just run through the place. Luckily there was a playground at the end he played in for 40 min or so!

Baby Girl - Week 35

I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes a couple weeks ago which means we had another ultrasound for baby girl to check out her size. She was just like Ben and refused to move her hand away from the front of her mouth :) For a while she also had a foot there....They think she is currently 6lbs-4oz and her body size is measuring 1 week ahead so she will probably be close to 9lbs. However, Benjamin measured 3 weeks ahead in these later ultrasounds and he was 9lbs so I'm not too worried about her being super large. Plus Benjamin's head size was measuring probably 5 weeks ahead and her head is right on track (or a couple days behind) - so THAT will be easy for me!!

Preschool

Technically Benjamin's 1st day of preschool was back in June when he started the summer preschool 2 days/week but since that was more of a summer program, I consider Tuesday Aug 31st to be his official 1st day. So below are 2 pictures: day1 of preschool, then day 2...
After day 1 picture I decided he needed a trim. Well he decided (with a bit of coaxing from Sam) that he needed to look like Daddy. He is pretty thrilled to have short hair like daddy and I just miss the crazy hair :) This picture below is from the weekend right before where he was assisting making pancakes - that's just awesome morning hair!

Darth Vader & Batman Playdate

Unfortunately this good friend of Benjamin's has preschool usually on Fridays (my day off) - but when we CAN get together the boys have an amazing time!!

Out of Africa Park

We decided to take advantage of a 1/2 price August deal and take Benjamin to the "Out of Africa Wildlife Park" a couple hours from here. He enjoyed a lot of it, but did start to get bored and just wanted to 'walk and not stop and look at the animals. And there were lots of cool animals to see- tons of tigers & lions, rhinoceros, lemurs, reptiles, bears, jaguars, wolfs. His favorite parts were definitely the feeding of the giraffe, petting a camel, feeding & petting the deer & emu , and watching the tiger show (although he wasn't quite able to sit through the whole show). As long as he could interact with the animals he was happy.
I was envious of this tiger. 7months pregnant in the desert heat is...well HOT :)

Bowling

Back in July Benjamin went to a birthday party for a friend of his and went Bowling for the 1st time. He definitely enjoyed it :) Luckily for us he didn't clue in that if you paid attention to the score it really is a competition as he has an OBSESSION about winning (from getting his shoes on 1st, into the house 1st, finishing his meal 1st, or really winning a game) and gets very upset when he doesn't. Yes we are trying to work on this extreme competitive streak.

San Diego and Legoland

Shortly after returning from our Canada trip, we headed to San Diego for a family vacation. We spent 2 FULL days at Legoland and Benjamin had an amazing time. He definitely had more energy than we did!
This next ride was 1 of Benjamin's favorite rides. Luckily he was big enough to do it without us. It would bring him high up in to the air, then drop him down, to go back up and do it again and again and again.....I think he went on this ride about 5 times. Any rides that were super fast or caused his stomach to drop were definitely the most loved. Since I was pregnant, Sam got to enjoy those favorite rides (the rollercoasters) and I got to enjoy his other favorite type of ride- the ones that involved us getting soaked (which I don't enjoy at all!). After our full day at Legoland, we would return to the hotel around 4:30 at which time Benjamin would beg us to go play at the hotels water park and pool. The pool water was heated but I have no idea how he could play for an hour in the water park portion as that was freezing!!! Legoland also had a giant water park in which he played for an hour or more each day we were there. Man it would have been nice for him to share some of his energy with us!
Our last day in San Diego we spent an 'easy' morning playing in the hotel pool and water park then headed to the beach for the afternoon.

Number 2

Well now that I am up to date - that brings me to our latest news. October 12th (or around then) Benjamin will be becoming a big brother! He adores babies and I'm hoping that continues to last when his little sister joins us. So far she is measuring pretty much on schedule (unlike her brother who was already ahead in size at this time) and I'm happy to say her head isn't measuring as big as Bens so I'm hoping for an easier delivery :) However she was EXTREMELY active in the ultrasound (and I've been feeling her move/kick for about a month now) and was talking/singing/yelling up a storm, so I'm thinking I may have another high energy child!