Easter Part 2: Easter Egg Hunt at Dendi and Bapa's subdivision

On Saturday evening, we went to a very well run community Easter Egg Hunt at Dendi and Bapa's subdivision. Community Easter Egg Hunts make me leery. They seem to be poorly organized, not enough eggs, too many kids and too much chaos. Fortunately, this one was the polar opposite. They had the hunt separated into different age groups, and the three and under group was corralled inside the tennis court. There were far more eggs than the kids could ever want and everyone seemed happy, relaxed and not rushed. Most importantly to Eli, the eggs were filled with plenty of chocolate.






We went back to Dendi and Bapa's house for a pizza dinner and some time to unwind. Dendi had been gone for over a week, visiting California. Eli enjoyed getting to spend some time with her. By the end of the night he seemed tired and uncharacteristically cranky. He came over to cuddle and I noticed that he was burning up. Then, I remembered that he hadn't slept well on Friday night and when I went in to settle him back down he complained of a tummy ache and he felt hot then, too. When we got home I took his temp -- it was 101.5! I felt bad, he'd probably been sick all day long. But he had seemed fine, so I hadn't even noticed.

Easter Part I: Easter Egg Hunt at Grammie and Babo's

I know I've been bad about keeping this blog up to date... Here's a pregnancy update... I've been having lots of contractions, in fact last night we started timing them. They were coming fairly regularly, but they weren't increasing in intensity, so I knew it wasn't the real thing. On Monday, I went to see Heather. She said that I'm progressing, I'm about 1/2 cm dilated, 50% effaced, and it took me another two weeks to get this far with Eli. She said that my cervix has moved into place, which means that these contractions are productive ones. She said that she could see me in six hours or in three weeks, there's no way to know.

We had a fun-filled weekend full of Easter festivities. We started by having Eli hunt for Easter eggs at Grammie and Babo's house on Saturday morning.





After the Easter Egg Hunt, Daddy, Eli and Babo worked on a new puzzle and Grammie got to spend some quality reading time with her boy.

More Baby Girl Love and A Brief Hospital Stint

On Friday morning, Eli and I went to play group. I am so impressed by his progress in such a short time. When we first started going to play group he would want to be held going in, and he would stick very close to me at all times. He was obviously a little overwhelmed. This Friday, he walked right into the house and started playing, he didn't care where I went. The cutest part of the play group was more baby girl love. Eli showed lots of love for baby Lauren. Here are some pics, and I'm hoping again, that this bodes well for our baby girl.





Friday night was interesting. I had contractions for over twelve hours, they weren't big contractions, but they wouldn't quit. Here's a 36 week belly shot that Scott took right before we headed out, only a few minutes before the contractions started.


In the morning, Scott told me to call the midwife, since they had gone on so long. The doctor on call wasn't concerned about the contractions, but then she started to ask a bunch of seemingly unrelated questions about my general well-being. She didn't like any of my answers. I had a bad headache with the contractions, I'd been really nauseous all week, my stomach was generally on the fritz, I had a dizzy spell after Yoga, and I had had a high (for me) blood pressure reading a few weeks prior. She told me I should go in to the hospital. We ended up spending about three hours at the hospital. Everything was fine, and it turned out that she wanted to test me for Toxemia, so I guess it was good to make sure everything was fine. Hopefully, we won't have any more hospital visits before she's born.

Shopping Cart

Our newest find from the thrift store -- a Little Tykes shopping cart. The last time Scott, Eli and I went to Imagine It, Eli discovered their store and shopping carts. He LOVED the shopping carts. As he's always loved pushing things, especially his mower, it wasn't too surprising. When we got home, Scott started researching toy shopping carts. He figured since Eli loves to mow to Kroger, if we bought him a shopping cart, he could be useful, too. The Melissa and Doug shopping carts from Imagine It were about $50. So, on a whim, Scott called my mom to ask if they had any shopping carts at the thrift store. They did have one, and I've never seen one there before. It must have been meant to be. And, of course, the thrift store price was less than a tenth of a new cart. Whoo hoo! We tried it out as soon as we could, that afternoon after our nap.

Here's Eli starting out on our journey --


And, finally pushing his full cart to the check out.


I was impressed by just how much Eli's cart could hold, and we got lots of appreciative glances, comments and smiles. We've already taken the cart back to Kroger once, and I'm sure that's only the beginnning of many, many trips. The joys of living close to the grocery store...

Daddy's Volleyball Game

Scott played in a charity volleyball game on Tuesday night. His school staff, Braelinn Elementary, played another local elementary school staff and the proceeds went to Relay for Life which benefits Breast Cancer Research. His team has been practicing every day after school for over a month. I think it's been great exercise for him as well as a good way to burn off some steam after school. In some ways I think he was a little sad to play in the culminating game, but I think they will continue to play at least through this month.

On Tuesday night, Dendi and BaPa picked Eli and I up and we all went to the game together. Eli was really excited to see Daddy play. We bought him a black pom-pom (his second favorite color, his first is yellow), and he yelled, "Braelinn, Braelinn, Braelinn!" and clapped along with the crowd. But, very quickly it became obvious that is was WAY TOO LOUD in the auditorium and he wouldn't last long. In fact, it was so loud that Scott said the team couldn't hear each other to call plays. Next time they plan on using hand signals. Not being a fan of loud noises, Eli wanted to leave, so Dendi and I took turns taking him to walk around outside. Even though I didn't get to see Scott play a whole lot, what I did see I enjoyed. Here are some pictures from the night.

Eli sitting on Dendi's lap.


Eli and I were practically celebrities, as we're related to the famous Mr. Moore (he is the only full time male teacher at his school). I was greeted by random children and we had our family picture taken multiple times by people I had never met.



Here's Scott in action


Finally, possibly Eli's favorite part of the night -- throwing his pom pom around after the gym had cleared out.

Baby Girl Love

Eli continues to LOVE girls. He is especially partial to baby girls. Which hopefully bodes well for our little package. I took these pictures at the Chick-Fil-A play place last week. He was happily playing with the other kids when this little baby girl walked in. Then, all he wanted to do was "love" her. Fortunately, he's outgrown his "leaning" -- sorry Ella! Now, he just wants to gently hug his objects of affection. This little one was hilarious, at times she seemed annoyed by him, but then when we told him to leave her alone for awhile she complained until he came back.

Imagine It with Dendi

Time flies, and I'm playing catch up again. I'm feeling preoccupied all the time, I'm sure my thoughts are somewhere between Eli's needs and our soon to be new baby girl. Also, I'm tired, not horribly so, but I nap when Eli naps and when I put him to bed at night I don't have energy for much besides a little lazy TV viewing. All of this hasn't left me much time for my blog. Additionally, unbelievably, my nausea is back! I can't believe it, I'm feeling about as big of a house, I have to pee constantly, and I'm nauseous too??? I did research it on the internet, and turns out, some women (lucky me) notice a return of nausea as the pregnancy hormones peak again. Fortunately, today was much milder than the last few days, so maybe I'm moving in a positive direction. Let's hope. All in all, except for these minor grievances I'm feeling pretty good. Especially, considering I have about 4 1/2 weeks left. Whoa! It blows my mind.

Okay, so those are all my lame reasons for posting something from last Tuesday. Eli and I went to Imagine It with Dendi and had a ball! I always love that place, and it was fun to show it to someone else and watch her enjoying him. Here are my three favorite pictures of them together at Imagine It.

Here are Eli and Dendi on the crane at the ball machine.


Playing with the giant Duplos


Getting in a little reading


Here are two new finds from that day: giant Tinker Toys and bubbles. The Tinker Toys are actually PVC pipes, he was fascinated and very serious putting them in their appropriate holes. I thought the bubbles were ingenious. One of the employees used one of the big fans on the ball machine to blow bubbles for the kids.