Ready or Not

It's the final countdown!

Doo doo doooo dodododoo, Doo doo doooo dodododoo

(For the record, you are only cool if after you read "the final countdown", the song started to play in your head. I know this to be a fact because I said to Jake the other day that we were in the final countdown and he started to hum the song. This proved that I am not a total geek.)

We are in the final countdown. 3.5 weeks or less. I had my 36 week appointment today and everything is looking good. Baby is head down and its little head couldn't be any lower, something I've known but was glad to have confirmed. I am dilated to one cm but that means very little as there are some women who can walk around at 3-4 cm for a month. But everything is starting to feel ready and the nurse practioner does not think I will make it until my due date (thank goodness!).

And I think we are finally ready around the house. I have been busy cleaning everything from kitchen cupboards and walls to setting up the glider and baby equipment. Laugh at me all you want for washing all the cabinetry, woodwork, and walls in the house but I challenge you to go do it to your own house. Yeah, not so funny once you dump your dirty water out now is it?! I didn't think our house was that gross but was proved wrong.

Our living room looks like Babies 'R Us puked in the corner. I will have to do some rearranging to find better places for the bouncy seat and such but for now just want it out in the open so I know where it is. Especially the car seat. If Jake has to bring it to pick us up from the hospital, it better be out in the open where he can find it or we'll never be able to come home!

The changing table is ready and stocked. We have at least a month's worth of diapers piled up underneath the crib. I also sterilized all the bottles today so they are ready to go as well.

That green and white yarn has been turned into a hat. I wish I could take the credit for this but you will recall that I said I had a back-up plan. The wonderful Grandma Mary whipped this beauty up for me in no time. I took her the yarn and pattern and she had this in the mail to me within a week. She even made the flowers that came included in the pattern so if it's a girl, I can just sew them on the hat. Don't despair though, my crocheting aspirations are not over. I found an easier pattern to attempt and will be making the brown yarn into a pompom hat. I have purple or blue yarn to create the pompoms after Finito arrives and makes known its gender.

The only thing that isn't ready for the baby is its name. Jake and I couldn't find ourselves more at odds with what to name the babe. What he likes, I despise and vice versa. At one time, we had agreed on a boy name but Jake has been trying to renege on that agreement. He likes a certain devilish name from a scary movie that I absolutely refuse to name my child. We have no clue for a girl. So while everything else is ready for little Finito, his/her name will be a game time decision. Otherwise, we are ready for the final installment to make his/her appearance. Let the clock run down and quickly!

Royal Dinner

The night that royalty joined me for dinner. Two princesses and a ballerina.

Yes, Carter is wearing a pink dress. Yes, Carter needs a brother. Here's hoping we are that lucky!

Monkey Wrenches

Life does so love to throw us a monkey wrench every now and then. (monkey wrench - where did this term come from?) This week, we've had two already.

The first was when Jake and I didn't win the MegaMillions. Not only did we not win, but two lucky mongrels did. We had already outlined the rest of our lives with that jackpot and it's so crushing to know that some other person gets to live my dream. Aside from a dream mansion, an Escalade (the only luxury car I can think of that would fit all 6 of us), and numerous condos in warm locations, we were also planning on having a live-in nanny. These kids have been trying my patience the last few weeks and that was really the biggest perk I was looking forward to in winning. My only consolation is that the stupid lottery pot only got $3 from us. Neither of us like to carry around dirty cash and since that is all I had in my wallet, 3 tickets is all we got. $3 for a couple nights of dreaming big and the crushing blow of reality, I guess it was probably better spent than on renting some crappy movie. I've heard your odds of suffocating in a vending machine are greater than your odds of winning the lottery so I'm going to start reading the papers for vending machine deaths.

The other monkey wrench is of the more serious side. My plans for school this spring have fallen through. Normandale won't give me any more finanical aid since I now have over 150 undergraduate credits and I don't intend to finish my program through their school. If I was getting an Associate's that they offer, then they'd help me out but since I was just taking the general education classes that were necessary for MSU's Education program, Normy won't help me out. The lady said I can still take classes at Normandale but I'd have to pay for it myself or put it on a credit card. She actually suggested a credit card. Sure woman, I'll pay 15% interest to attend your wack-a$$ school (wack-a$$- a "gangsta" phrase Jake and I like to use for anything that doesn't make sense).

My original plan was to take the 3 semesters or so of generals that I lacked and then transferring the credits to MSU for their Education program. Since all my other undergrad work was done at MSU, I figured it would be the easiest place to get this major done as well since all my credits will count. MSU recently created a Twin Cities campus in Edina but only offers the classes for the actual Education track there. They don't have history, science, or health classes up here yet but those classes are required before a person can start the block system for teaching. A major catch-22.

Sometimes I want to hit myself over the head for being so darn efficient. The reason I need almost 3 semesters of generals is because the first time around, I was able to avoid many of those classes. By the end of my freshman year, I knew business was the route I was going to take. I also studied the general education requirement sheet until I had the thing memorized. MSU had certain areas that needed to be filled and specific classes that would meet those areas. Rather than take a class that met Goal 3, a class that met Goal 5, a class that met Goal 8, and a class that met Goal 9, I found a class that met Goals 3 and 9 and another class that met Goals 5 and 8. So I kept my generals to a minimum while still meeting the requirements. While I was so proud of myself at the time for my efficient use of time and credits, I didn't realize it would come back to bite me in the behind someday. I should have known that graduating in 3.5 years with a double major was too good to be true.

While this new hurdle certainly doesn't mean that education is completely out for me, it does mean that I can't finish up those missing generals at Normandale and transfer them to MSU. Any other community college is out as well for the same reason. The biggest downer is that the Normandale/MSU plan was the least expensive. The U and Augsburg have education programs I've looked at. Both actually offer a Master's program for those that already have a Bachelor's in something else and just need licensure in education. However, both programs would probably take me 3-4 years since I'll still need some generals before starting the ed program and then at least another semester or two to finish up the Master's work after student teaching. Also, while MSU was $, the U is $$, and Augsburg is $$$. I haven't yet decided if a career in teaching is worth paying big bucks for the degree when I already have two majors to fall back on.

So I'm back to square one where I was this past summer when Jake started asking me what I plan to do with myself career-wise. To be honest, I really don't know what I want to be when I grow up. It's a hard decision. Teaching is a good career in that there are summers off with the kids and the actual teaching schedule is set each day. The downside is that there is a lot more prep work and behind-the-scenes things that teachers deal with that you don't think about. While they only work 9 months of the year, they cram about 11 months of working into those 9 months. I'm not sure I really want to come home every night and still have lesson plans to prepare and papers to look over.

I'm looking again at pursuing my MBA. Business really does interest me and there is so much more to it than just "business". Some schools even offer MBA programs with a specialty area so I could concentrate my MBA on something in particular. Jake thinks Accounting is the way to go. Which ironically was one of my original majors until Habib, the scariest professor at MSU, turned me off of it with his guerilla teaching tactics. There are also a lot of schools that offer MBA programs entirely online so I could complete this without ever setting foot in a classroom. Which of course is appealing when the contrast is that many of the generals and methods classes for the education plan involve actual class time, meaning babysitters and inconvenient meeting times.

Growing up is such a hard thing. Just when I had finally made up my mind to take one path, the road has to fork and I have to decide again which path I want to take. Not to mention that now that I've finally rediscovered my OCD organizing tendencies, I'm bored out of my mind with no school work to do. There is only so much cleaning and organizing a house can take.

The only people who seem to be upset by this monkey wrench are Jake and I. My mom has taken the philosophical stance that maybe this is a sign that I need some time to focus on just having the baby around. If I didn't know better, I'd be convinced she's wishing a fussy, colicky baby on me. My father-in-law has said that taking a semester off with a new baby is probably a wise decision. I think he's relieved to not have to watch 4 terrors every Monday night when I was supposed to have class. Jake and I are not fans of speed bumps in our road which is why we are quickly coming up with Plan B's. So while I now have the next month or two off, depending which route I take (either the education or MBA route), I will be starting something up later this spring again. I'd hate to fall back into my old pattern of sitting around doing nothing and so I must keep this going while I'm in school mode.

Now I just have to decide what I really want to be when I grow up.........

Dr. Carter

Ava and Carter had their three year check up in early December. Shortly after, playing Doctor became the new game of choice. The two took turns being the doctor and patient. Jake, Ellie, and I also had to play patient many times. Finally, we suggested that they use the baby dolls as patients as there were only so many shots and blood pressure checks that we could take!

So Carter became the doctor and Ava became the concerned mother bringing her baby in.

Carter knew all the steps to follow for the check-up. Both kids did get a little excited when it was time to give us our shots. Sadistic little beasts!
As far as their appointment goes, since I don't think I ever posted the results, both are growing great.

Ava was 31 lbs and 37 inches tall, both of which place her in the 50%ile for her age.

Carter was 41 lbs and 40 inches tall. His height had him in the 95%ile and his weight is basically off the charts!

I can't get over the fact that there is now a 10 pound difference between the two! And poor Ellie only weighs about 5 pounds more than Carter and is only about 6 inches taller. It won't be long until he surpasses her! Carter can already take Ellie down and pin her down so it will only get more interesting from here!

Conversation with Ava

Ava and I were cuddling on the couch the other day. I asked her what we should name the baby. We went through a whole list of possible names: Ava, Carter, Ellie, Mommy, Daddy, Aladdin, Dopey, Snow White, etc. She shot all the choices down until she finally decided that Sleeping Beauty would be a great name for a baby sister.

I asked her what we should name the baby if it is a baby brother instead. She has been adamant from the start that this is a baby sister.

Ava told me that we don't need a name for a baby brother because this is a baby sister.

Me: "But what if it's a baby brother?"

Ava: "I don't want a baby brother. Baby brothers are yucky. If it's a baby brother, I'm going to puke on it!"

I guess we know how she really feels!

Our Christmas Fun!

We had such a great time celebrating Christmas! So much fun that it has taken us this long to recover enough to get the pictures on the computer. Here is our fun in a nutshell:

We started the Christmas celebrations by celebrating Aunt Holly's 30th birthday on the 21st. Her actual birthday is the 31st, New Year's Eve, but since she lives in Arizona, we celebrated early. Here are all of us with Holly and baby Olivia.

We had so much fun playing with Olivia now that she is about 15 months old. This is when Ava and Carter took turns kissing Olivia. She loves to kiss! Mom didn't get over there in time to get the kissing shots but here's Carter laughing after another big smooch!

Ava and Carter on Christmas Eve getting ready to open their first presents

This is Ava's Barbie and you can see how she is watching Olivia while she plays with it. Reminds me of how Ellie watches Ava when A has something of E's!

Trying out Dad's new shades

The Ladies

Our family Christmas on Christmas morning

"Oh I love them so much" she said!New shoes for the American Girl doll

So it begins.... She got a Justin Bieber cd and a Taylor Swift cd

The awesome doll beds that Grammy made for Kit and Ava's doll Krissy

Ava's new chapstick. And if you look closely at Carter's face, you will see that he is distressed. He got a Buzz Lightyear to go with the Woody doll he got for his birthday. He's trying to find Woody but can't follow my simple directions and is starting to get upset!

Kit got purple glasses too!

Everyone had to test out the new paints as soon as the present were unwrapped

We had a great Christmas!

Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful presents!

On another note, I have to state that Jake wants it known that a good 50% of those presents were from us. I never counted how many there were total and figured out a percentage, so we'll just go with it. He was very offended when I claimed that we weren't responsible for a fair share of those gifts. He also wants it put out there that we managed to spend only about $20 of our own money for those presents. The rest were purchased with gift cards that Jake received for doing an outstanding job closing loans and all that jazz! He's managed to get almost $1000 in gift cards since August just for being great at what he does. While we'll still have to claim that amount on our taxes, it is awesome to get a gift card with several hundred dollars on it to use for groceries and presents! Plus, Uncle Sam usually cuts us a check back anyway so we have been loving all these extra bonuses. So an extra big thank you to Jake for working so hard for us and being rewarded with more than enough perks to take care of Christmas!

Now we are just trying to survive the rest of this week post-Christmas. The tree and decor is already packed away. The carpets have been shampooed thanks to Rich. The kids are playing with all their new toys and driving me crazy! I think all of us are looking forward to next week when we can get back to our regular schedule of school and preschool. And we are gearing up for the next big adventure! 5 weeks and counting until baby!

Merry Christmas

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care



The Menards beauty with several bare spots (note to self: go to a tree farm next year) is decorated,

redecorated after taking a spill courtesy of Ellie and Carter's shenanigans (6 broken ornaments plus 2 a couple days later when Carter just couldn't help himself and plucked them off the tree and threw them onto the wood floor),

and piled with presents underneath. And for the record, we don't spoil our kids and buy them gobs of gifts. 50-70% of those gifts are from my parents. It does, however, make Jake and I look good since it appears they all come from us!

There are no worries of a white Christmas this year. With an 11 inch snowfall and a 17.5 inch snowfall the following weekend, the ground is pretty well covered.

To top it off, we woke up this morning to an additional inch or two. Santa will have no problems landing his sleigh this year.

Ready or not, Christmas is here. We have visited all the grandparents/great-grandparents. Tonight we will go to church and sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. (I really do hope that the twins will start singing it. They say they will!) Afterwards, we will head over to the Wendorff house for our Christmas there. Tomorrow the kids will open the presents from us and my parents and we will chat with the Ramaker side on skype. If today continues to go well, Santa may even stop by our house tonight and bring some presents for the kiddos. I'm not sure what I'll do when I can no longer use the threat of no presents from Santa if they can't behave. The holiday season continues to fly by faster and faster each year. It's hard to believe it is here already.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!

From the rhyme Ava and Carter learned at preschool: "Tick tock goes the clock. Time for Jesus's birthday!"