Nursing Isn't Easy

I'm pretty passionate about nursing... in case you didn't know.  I love how it's just another picture of how perfectly God has designed us.  The ability to not only produce new life, but also to sustain it is pretty amazing.  However, I also know that doesn't always happen easily.  Like everything in life, you do have to work for it, and sometimes, for some people it's a lot of hard work.  Here's the warning, don't read any further if you don't want to hear about nursing in detail and just how hard it can be. 

This is just my story, it's not meant to offend anyone, but I want to record it, mostly just for myself, but also in hopes that someone might be encouraged to keep at it, even when it is hard. 

I've often heard, even read that nursing should be painless.  That hasn't been the case for me.  I actually did a poll on a forum that I'm on recently and discovered that in most cases, especially with a first child nursing can be extremely painful and challenging at first.  Good thing it is SO REWARDING that it's all worth it. 

My first was quite challenging.  It was painful getting him to be able to latch on properly, then I had a yeast infection, then I had mastitis (the same day I had to take my precious Patience dog and have her put down).  Finally, at about 8 weeks things started to smooth out and I was comfortable. 

Scott- about 3 weeks, quite the chunky little guy, and we thought he had a lot of hair!

My 2nd, it was also painful initially, but only briefly.  This time it was a combination of sore nipples and those horrible, but very important in a good way cramps that nursing induces to help heal the body. 

Blaise- about 3 weeks, with a lot more hair than Scott, at least on the sides.

My 3rd, was similar.  Except then he slept through the night...then he didn't... then he did it again... then he didn't... repeat for a few weeks with randomly sleeping through the night and just about EVERY time he slept through the night I got mastitis.  I learned something... Redmond's Real Salt cures mastitis, quick and easy.  1 Tablespoon of Redmond's Real Salt, dissolved in 1C hot water will flush your system and the mastitis will clear up in 24 hours.  Drink the whole cup of that twice the first day you notice symptoms and once a day for the next couple of days.  Remember to also keep massaging any red problem areas.  Someone also mentioned to me during this time that there's a supplement called Lecithin you can take to help prevent mastitis, but I never ended up getting it.

Michael- about 3 weeks, even more hair, and a big guy.

My 4th was a pretty miserable experience for a long time.  He came 2 weeks early, where all the others were born considerably after their due dates.  That means he was smaller.  He had a very hard time getting latched on, but once he was on he was fine.  He would do this head bobbing thing and kind of kiss my nipple, but didn't get down to business.  Surprisingly he never had a problem with weight gain.  When my milk came in, I was very engorged.  I called the lactation office and they were pretty much no help.  Once the engorgement went away I was left with horribly sore nipples.  After a couple of days they were cracked and bleeding.  It was pretty painful, to say the least.  Nothing was helping and I wasn't sure where to turn for help.  I was using nipple shields, but he still wasn't latching on like he should, so the sore spots were just getting more and more irritated.  I used plenty of lanolin cream, and rubbed plenty of milk in to help heal it too... all to no avail.  Finally, when he was about 5 weeks old a lactation consultant, who couldn't see us because she was sick with the flu, suggested using a triple cream- hydrocortisone, Neosporin, and an anti-fungal.  My pharmacist mother had a great time mixing it up for me.  After about a week of that things started getting better and by the time he was 6 weeks we were doing well.  This was my 4th baby, I really expected things to be going smoother and I told Cullen to remind me of the 6 weeks of pain when I started wanting another baby.  Guess it wasn't bad enough to make me change my mind.

Daniel- about 3 weeks, our bald baby, and you can see the thrush in his mouth.

Now for the long part- it's been 2 pages so far and it's another 4 pages in Word from here to the end.  The 5th time around, with a baby girl hasn't been much better.  She had a good latch starting out, being bigger certainly makes that part easier.   She also was born ready to suck on anything anywhere near her mouth, which is a good thing.  I got engorged again when my milk came in, but remembered to treat it with cabbage leaves in the bra right away and it never got too bad.  I had the initial nipple soreness, and the cramping, but I thought we were doing pretty good.  Baby girl was sleeping well at night too, going for a 5-6 hour stretch nearly every night.  I would wake up after 3 hours or so, feeling full and wondering if I should wake her, but I've always been on the don't wake a sleeping baby side of the fence.  At the same time with such a little one, I was hesitant to pump not wanting to mess with the supply or have to give her a bottle if she woke up right after I finished. 

RoseMarie- less than 24 hours, nice and chubby at birth!  And wow, yes, lots of hair.

Not surprisingly with such a sleeper, when she was 6 days old I got a fever, which means mastitis.  I drank my real salt and massaged and things seemed to clear up.  The next day I felt fine, even though the red spot was still there.  The day after that though, 8 days old, I had a fever again.  Now I had 2 red spots.  I drank more salt and on the recommendation of the lactation consultant, who wasn't sick and saw us at the Breastfeeding Support Group, I resolved to drink the salt daily for a full week to make sure things cleared all the way up.  Baby girl seemed to be gaining weight well, a little slower than her brothers, but gaining- despite the fact that she nursed for a very long time during the support group meeting, but didn't take in nearly enough.  The next day the first spot had cleared up and was gone, but the 2nd remained. 

RoseMarie- 10 days, cuteness.

Fast forward a week, she's now 15 days old and the spot is still there, possibly a little bit bigger, I am still feeling feverish off and on, and during the support group meeting we found that baby girl was actually losing weight.  I figured it was about time I just went to the doctor and got antibiotics, but the lactation consultant pointed out that antibiotics clear an infection, not a blocked duct, so they would only need to be repeated if the duct didn't clear.  She recommended a few things to get the duct to clear... soak in hot water with Epsom salt, twice a day, and continued massage.  She thought this would clear it up in a day or two.  She also recommended a few things to get baby girl back on track, noting that the problem was that she wasn't doing much swallowing- compressing the breast while she's eating, supplementing with pumped milk (I always have a considerable excess, and typically pump once a day, after she finishes nursing in the morning and get 4-5 oz), and waking her to feed her more frequently. 

RoseMarie- 2 weeks, skinny cuteness, as she was getting much longer too.

I gave her 1-2oz from the bottle after nursing twice the day after that and only once the following day and she seemed to get the idea and do a better job with swallowing.  I did also try to disturb her more frequently, but still only managed to get her to nurse 8-9 times a day.  I had definitely given up on the don't wake a sleeping baby mantra and we woke her every 4 hours during the night (though sometimes it took 40 minutes and lots of cold water to wake her.) 

The salt seemed to help my breast feel better (softer), but the next day I had a higher fever, 102.  I decided I needed to go get antibiotics anyway, but didn't get in til the next day (Thursday, day 17).  I also still had a red spot, so on Friday I talked to another lactation consultant from the same office who said the next thing to try is soaking a rag in Castor Oil, applying that to the spot and applying heat on top of that.  I tried the Castor Oil a couple of times, but I still had a fever, nursing was horribly painful, and the red spot had become much larger and very swollen.  We passed a miserable weekend (and had people in town visiting, wanting to help, which I didn't respond well to- I'm not a very easy sick person.)  By Sunday (day 20) it was difficult to get her latched on, because it was very swollen.  Once she was latched on, it was horribly painful to take her off and remove the pressure.  I was pretty certain that the infection had abscessed at this point and did my research to find out what the course of action would be.  I was still trying to massage a little bit, and made one or two more attempts with the Epsom salt and the Castor Oil.  We skipped church, and I had Cullen skip too to stay with me, which is really saying something if you know us. 

Monday I still had a fever- for the 6th straight day after being on antibiotics for 4 days.  The fever was responding slower to the ibuprofen, so I was feeling much worse though.  Plus, Monday morning any fears I had that it had abscessed were confirmed as  it broke through the skin during the night, and it was oozing some when I woke up.  I called the doctor, knowing I needed to see a doctor, but they said that my favorite midwife had an appointment available!  I figured that would make me feel better and she would get the doctor if she needed to. 

We had a friend come keep the boys and Cullen came with me to the doctor.  Baby girl was hungry, just as they put us in an exam room, so she was nursing when the midwife came in- all cheerful as usual.  She could see around her head the edge of the red spot and immediately started with we'll get you on some antibiotics for that right away.  I laughed, seriously, and pointed out that she couldn't see anything yet and I was already on antibiotics.  She went and saw another patient while we finished nursing.  When she came back in, she moved here from England in 2005,  she saw it and said, "Bloody Hell!  I've never seen anything that bad in my life."  I laughed again- I told you I knew she'd make me feel better.  Then she promptly went and got the doctor, who immediately said, "Call the surgeon."

They called and arranged for us to get in with the surgeon right away, so we drove across town.  If you want to skip the part about the actual surgery, skip to the next paragraph now.  The surgeon came in and looked at it and said, "That hurts a lot doesn't it?"  Um, yes.  He said it needed to be cut open and drained.  There was a lot of pus right under the skin right there that needed to get out.  We could go across the street to the hospital and do general anesthesia or go down the hall to their surgery room and do it in the office.  Immediate is always better right?  Cullen promptly excused himself to the waiting area.  I waited for a while in that really really really cold room.  When the surgeon came back he said he would give me a local anesthesia, but it probably wouldn't do anything.  I couldn't feel that needle at all and I couldn't feel the incision at first either.  Yes, I watch, I can't help it.  The nurse kept telling me to lay my head back and that I didn't need to look.  The surgeon was right, there was a lot of pus.  It also hurt a lot, as he had to press on it and even dig his finger down in it to break it up and make sure to get it all out.  The incision was a little over an inch across (and it's on the underside of my breast.)  He didn't stitch it up, so it's been kind of spread out in the middle and oval shaped.  He did put in a little tube to make sure it kept draining and one stitch to keep the drain in place.  He had said I would feel better immediately.  I did feel better, but had a different kind of pain- like right after you fall off a bike and skin your knee, it stings for a little bit kind of pain.  It was a definite improvement. 

When we left the office, we were both crying- I was upset because I had to cancel my trip to Tupper Lake to come back to get the drain out (seriously, hormones make you emotional over the weirdest things) and Cullen was upset because I had had to deal with that, and have surgery, and because I was upset.  

RoseMarie- 3 weeks and 2 days, even cuter?

The surgeon had said that I couldn't nurse on that side for at least a couple of days.  I asked about pumping and he said that was fine as long as I dumped it, the concern being not wanting to get the infection into the baby's mouth.  I wasn't brave enough to pump right away though, so I just hand expressed some a few times that first day, then I pumped twice the 2nd day- ouch.  I had her back on nursing the 3rd day after the surgery and it was fine.  A little annoying with the drain hanging out and trying to keep that covered and away from her, but it felt much more like nursing should.  I think I said that to Cullen at least once that week- finally, this is what it's supposed to be. 

It has now healed up nicely, just a little scab left after 3 weeks of healing from the inside out to make sure it's clear of infection.  Now I look at my sweet 6 week old girl while she nurses and smile contentedly.  This is what it's supposed to be like and we are going to thoroughly enjoy the rest of her first year and beyond- as I informed Cullen, who has a 1 year rule for nursing, after all this I will do absolutely nothing to encourage weaning.  

RoseMarie- 5 weeks, 3 days... and we're golden finally.  Really enjoying staring at her sweet face.

There you have it, that's how we spent the month of August and that's why I dropped off the face of the planet for a few weeks.  We are back.

All Ready

Okay baby... we're 38 weeks now and everything is ready!  I'm hoping baby El will wait at least another week (which is when Grandma gets here to help), hopefully 2 weeks and be born after Michael's birthday, but we are ready either way.  Finished this about a week ago- this one is special because it matches cousin Temperance's (slightly different, just the number of each color and the backing color) and it was made from fabric my grandpa brought home from Vietnam.  It was kind of challenging working with the fabric and I'm not sure it's going to hold up as well as the other baby blankets, but it's finished, and I like it :)  

The "nursery" is also ready... it's still the guest room, but the crib is in there, along with my rocking chair, and everything is clean (bedding and clothing).  We have been gradually been relocating some of the "stuff," mostly books, we keep in that room to free up space and make it more "Baby El's room".  We have diapers.  The blanket to the left was made by my niece Elizabeth (pretty impressive, she's only 7), and she and Connor also made (at Build a Bear) the big elephant stuffed toy.  Baby El's stuffed elephant from us is packed along with everything else we'll need for the hospital.  We'll move the other little elephant (from Aunt Jesse) to the car seat- which is already installed in the van.   

The cradle is in our room, taking up space.  Probably a good thing, as I'm pretty sure it's helping Daniel a lot with the reality of what's happening- not that he won't be rather shocked!  

Can you guess how many of these little things were NOT done when Daniel decided to show up at 38 weeks and a day?  Lesson learned.  Now we'll just enjoy our days at the pool (if the weather would cooperate a little more) and hopefully manage to be rested as well as ready when the big day arrives.  Not that life is ever dull here... ongoing projects still include me working on the finishing touches of planning for our school year, and Cullen working on planning the next Disney trips.   Oh yeah, and occupying all the big boys :) 

Now and Then

Wasps love our screen porch.  They are not very successful at setting up camp there though, because our boys spot them and insist we spray them immediately... to the point they won't even go outside if there's a wasp on the porch.  

Now apparently, if there's a wasp in the backyard it's not such a big deal.  In fact it makes them feel somehow powerful and manly to try to attack wasps they spot in the backyard.  We've explained to Scott in particular, countless times, that wasps will leave you alone if you leave them alone.  He doesn't seem to care.  I went outside earlier this week to check on them (Scott, Blaise, and Michael) and from the safety of the part of the porch that is not screened in, they were bombarding a pair of wasps working on building a nest in our bird feeder, with EVERY toy we had in the toy bin.  Mean mommy that I am... I made the big ones (Scott and Blaise) go pick up every toy, carefully of course, and thankfully no one got stung- though maybe that would help drive the lesson home?  They reminded Daddy to spray the wasps as soon as he got home.

The whole saga reminded me of a quite distinct, and somewhat embarrassing moment from my own childhood.  My cousins and I were at my grandparents house, which means we were out in the yard playing... I might have been 5, but just barely.  It was my brother, sister and I and our cousins Buddy and Somer.  Grandma's house, back in the early 80's, was a ranch... no side porch, and I can't remember if the pond was even finished at the bottom of the hill at this point.  We were playing on the hillside, probably near the clothesline, which was pretty much the edge of what actually got mowed.  At the top of the hill, not far from the corner of the house there was a post in the ground, with a bucket turned upside-down on top of it.  It wasn't something we were interested in.  Until... Grandma made a point of telling us not to go near it because there was a beehive inside it.  Buddy (who would have been just barely 7) wandered up the hill moments later to investigate.  Never wanting to miss anything, I followed him.  Don't worry, I know better than to follow Budd now :)  There most definitely was a bee hive in that bucket.  We pretty much got swarmed and chased, and ended up with at least 10 or so stings each.  Fun times.  

I'm not sure that Scott and Blaise believed me when I told them this story the other day... but hopefully, they won't end up with a similar story of their own.  

After escaping that opportunity to get stung by a wasp, Blaise apparently found another and was more successful.  Thursday they asked to go to the park and practice riding bikes.  I had to work myself up to getting to there (loading all their bikes into the car, doing sunscreen, and whatnot is just not an easy task at 37 plus weeks), but we made it.  They rode laps around the park for 40 minutes or so.  I felt light-headed, probably from the heat, so we had a little snack and a drink.  I noticed a huge swollen spot on Blaise's hand and asked him what happened.  He had no clue, so I showed him his hand.  Still no clue.  I made a mental note to watch him closely for any other reaction to whatever got him and checked to make sure it didn't hurt at all.  No hurts... nothing.  Benedryl at bedtime and again this morning.  Here's his hand a day and a half later... the swelling has spread from a spot about the size of 2 quarters near his middle finger, to pretty much his whole hand.  He was having a hard time picking things up this morning.  

Lovely right?

In other news... Happy Birthday USA!

Say Fireworks!

We celebrated the 4th by going to the town program in the morning.  The town does a nice presentation and short talk at one of the big churches downtown.  Love living in this small southern town :)  Then a processional over to Main Street, led by a bagpiper, for the firing of the cannons.  Can't beat cannons, in the eyes of little boys.  They also had fun playing at home and having Daddy around on a Wednesday... though that totally threw me off for the rest of the week- what day is it now?

Michael riding his horse named Scott

 I love when they play this game... it reminds me of a clip in the Snider Years (a home video from when my dad and his brothers were kids, right up through when I was a kid).  My uncle Doc (the 4th brother) had a hat collection and in this particular clip, my dad was his horse as he modeled all his hats for the camera.  I'm thinking my dad was closer to 10 years old though and Uncle Doc was around 5- technicalities though.

Check out the size of those ice cream sundaes

 The rest of our plan for the 4th was to actually go to the Knights baseball game and see if the boys would last for the fireworks after the game.  Then it clouded up quite a lot while we were eating dinner and the radar showed some pretty strong storms headed towards the stadium.  We decided we'd wait and try to make a game this weekend instead.  Cullen, genius that he is, managed to make Scott be okay with this change of plans and not totally melt down.  In fact, he even got away without spending as much.  His idea was ice cream, which if you know Scott at all, is his heart language.  Then he convinced  him that we should go to the grocery store and get stuff to make our own sundaes, because that would be better than Maggie Moo's, Cold Stone, or wherever.  Most importantly, he didn't disappoint.  Do you see the size of those ice cream sundaes, sitting in front of my little boys.  They ALL ate every last bite.

Makes for happy boys...

Yes, he ate a lot of ice cream... and wore a lot too.

 We concluded our evening with fireworks on YouTube.  One of the many ways the internet simplifies life (or allows us to think we're living, when really we're just sitting here letting other people live for us.)

The First Hot Dog

 Time continues to fly by, faster than I can write about it- or even take pictures anymore!  So here are 2 big stories, a baby update and several shorter ones mixed in, with lots of pictures.

    

#1-

We celebrated Blaise's birthday (May 7th) with our dear friends in Indiana on a camping trip with "rabid raccoons."  

Random raccoon picture... the ones we actually saw were fat raccoons, apparently this campground keeps them nice and "healthy."

It was a blast, as usual.  The campground was very nice, but we discovered we weren't the only campers... the first night it wasn't as noticeable, all we saw were raccoon footprints all over our coolers and tablecloth in the morning when we got up and moving.  The 2nd night and the 3rd night... well, you really couldn't avoid them.  First mistake was putting the kiddos to bed and hanging out by the campfire without turning on the big spot-light we'd brought with us.  It was very relaxing and a nice end to the day.  Until I heard footsteps on the gravel behind us.  Expecting to see one of our sweet children, who were having a hard time going to sleep, I turned a flashlight on and was quite surprised to see- not more than 15 feet behind us and between us and the kids a raccoon investigating our biggest cooler.  This was just a little surprise and after some joking about it, I reassured my friend that, "If it comes back now, with the light on and all 4 of us sitting here not so quietly, it's probably rabid."  Famous last words... very soon after that we spotted another raccoon sneaking across the creek towards our campsite from another direction.  The evening quickly escalated into raccoon chasing excitement.  Armed with gravel, upon hearing the raccoon on the gravel behind us again, Cos turns with fury in his very being and runs (faster than I've seen him run in years) after the raccoon up the hill, yelling, "I'll get you buddy!"  He successfully cornered that particular raccoon up a tree, less than 10 feet from our tent.  We called it quits and turned in for an "early" night, hoping desperately not to have to get up in the night.

The next night our friends the rabid raccoons came back earlier to visit- so the kids even go to see one of them.  After it got fully dark and the kids were all in tents, I went to check on our little guys and remind them to lay down and go to sleep.  Cos went to check on their littlest too.  Cullen and Rachel were sitting by the picnic table (we'd switched campsites to avoid being flooded with the rain that was in the area).  Rachel saw something behind Cullen and figured it was either Cos or myself sneaking around trying to scare them.  Nope- it was a raccoon, close enough to Cullen he could have calmly put his hand down and patted it on the head.  Rachel was frantically pointing, "It's right there!!!"  Cullen is casually looking behind him, saying, "What?  What's right where?"  As he gets up and takes a few slow steps away.  Thus Raccoon hunting round 2 began.  Both of the guys armed themselves again with rocks and all the best flashlights and circled our campsite, occasionally shouting, throwing a few rocks and shining lights everywhere (the campground was empty by this point, which probably just drew the raccoons out more.)  Rachel and I are standing near our fire and I kept thinking, "Okay, guys over there, flashlights over there, these raccoons are totally going to come startle us..."  Finally we sat down- can only stand for so long you know, after spending the day camping, hiking, creek-walking, etc.  Sure enough, within seconds of us sitting down a raccoon was at my elbow, pawing at one of our bigger trunks full of gear.  Another early night and we didn't even get to play Settlers of Katan on this trip!  No sooner were all the adults zipped securely in tents than the raccoons started fighting one another outside of the tent!  I'm told they actually bumped into our friends tent and when they shined a light out at them to "chase" them away, there were at least 3 fighting by our fire over whatever scraps the kiddos dropped.  

#1a-

Of course, Blaise also wanted a birthday party at home, with a cool cake... we finally got around to organizing that nearly a month later and he had his friend Matthew over for a splash in the baby pool party.  I think they all had a great time.  The cool cake has a pool of Jello Jiggler in the middle with plenty of candy decorating it.

#1b-

We had field day with the local homeschool group on May 11th and called that our last day of school.  It was a great year and I am loving the homeschool life.  We are now enjoying our summer of reading and fun and also getting geared up to do 1st grade AND Kindergarten, oh AND nursing newborn in the fall.  Should be a fun and busy time.

#1c-

Scott and Blaise enjoyed another season with Victory Sports playing baseball this spring.  We played Blaise up, so they could be on the same team and I was the assistant coach... I didn't think head coach would be a good plan for someone in their 3rd trimester.  It's coach pitch/tee-ball and they both did great.  Blaise frequently refused to run the bases- if he hit the ball straight to one of the other teams players he would assume they would throw him out and not bother- nevermind that in this league at this level, it's kind of up to them whether or not they actually are "out," because the whole side bats every inning and they don't keep score.  

#1d-
My Uncle Todd came to Clemson for a family event and brought his family, so we had a nice day in Clemson visiting with my cousins and Uncle Todd and Aunt Kathy and Aunt Kathy's family.  Can't beat Clemson Ice Cream :) and my boys had a great time playing baseball with Uncle Todd, bet he was pretty tired when we left.

#2-

In early June we took our last big driving/visiting trip.  We headed up to NY for a weekend to see friends and family, with our usual stops in Maryland to break up the drive.  Conveniently we got to see LOTS of people, which of course, is the whole point :)  I'm going to go with less words, more pictures for this one...

We stayed with my Grandma Jill and her sister "Granny" Annie in NY.  Our first full day though, we headed upstate to meet up with some camp friends at Camp Pattersonville (shameless plug- if you have a 7-14 year old, it's the single BEST camp on the face of the planet, if at all possible, send them, http://www.camppattersonville.org/home/).  It was kind of a rainy day, but I figure I've survived that at camp before, so off we went.  We enjoyed a very short visit with some very good friends, who if they happen to read this will get a real kick out of where the title for this blog post comes from if they can mange to read that far.  Unfortunately, in wanting to visit and having 4 little ones and remembering suddenly how many mosquitoes are at camp early in the season, I totally forgot to get pictures.  But I was so thrilled with how comfortable my big boys were at camp- they ran off with DZ (who is the same age as Blaise) and played the whole time.  

Then we visited with Uncle Guy, Aunt Fran and my cousin Emily and her family.  What a great visit- it's been a while!  

Jessica was also in town so we finally got to see little Temperance again.  She's growing and cute as can be... also pretty stubborn and still looks exactly like her daddy, who she gets to meet in person VERY SOON!

Uncle Doc kindly threw a cookout party for the Snider family and we got to see many we hadn't seen in a long long time and many we'd seen fairly recently.  Uncle Rich looks a lot like my Dad (aside from his pony-tail)...  hadn't really noticed that before, though as my other cousin and I observed a year or so ago, all 5 of the Snider brothers are looking more alike as they age- it's kind of wild.  

On the drive back, we made a special stop at Cullen's Uncle Buddy's to see the family and Grandma in particular.  The boys wasted no time, after the dog jumped in the pool, getting soaked themselves.

#2a-
Ah... finally back home.  But we left Scott in Maryland with Cullen's parents for his annual solo visit.  Then had a crazy week ourselves, teaching afternoon swimming lessons and then literally running straight to an evening VBS and finally getting home around 9pm.  Blaise was up pretty late all week.  Michael was pretty offended we wouldn't let him come every night (he did get to come the night Cullen was out of town), he says, "I big."

#2b-
We survived and Cullen's parents brought Scott back.  They had a delightful 2 night boat trip, enjoyed all kinds of junk food, and hit the jackpot with foreign coins while sorting baby bottles for the Care Center Fundraiser.  Now to finish getting everything ready for Baby El and rest while we still can.

#3-
Baby El seems to be doing great... still very active.  I'm pretty much exactly the same size, shape, and everything else that I have been with the boys and this pregnancy has been most like Scott and Michael.  So... I'm guessing it's another boy.  Finally got out of Michael that he thinks it's a boy too, the rest are hoping for a girl, as is most of the rest of the family.   Although, the extended family on the Snider side seems to think a 5th boy wouldn't be that surprising.  I did mention that my dad was the oldest of 5 boys right?  Anyway... go make your guess, before I enter it for you ;)  http://expectnet.com/game.php the game name is ElephantKeen.  If you think you need to see me and you haven't recently, look at the pictures above... there are quite a few.

We are on down to our last month-ish until we meet this new little one.  It's funny, in the past I've always figured the baby would come around a week after the due date, but after Daniel came almost 2 weeks early, I don't even know what to guess.  I wouldn't mind an August baby though, so everyone has their own month- though I think 8 days late might be a stretch.

Anyone local reading this... if you're interested in bringing meals after the baby comes that would be fabulous!  Also, if you are going to be in town and wouldn't mind suddenly having 4 extra boys in your home for about 24 hours (or if you'd like to come here and hang with them-kind of complicated since I know no one really has space for 4 extra car seats, so you'd totally be pinned down) we'll be looking for someone to call when labor happens if it happens before 9am on July 18th.

#3a-
A couple of weeks, okay, maybe more than a month ago now, I said, "Last one in their PJ's is a rotten corn dog."  It's an old phrase from Camp Patt.  Guess I wasn't really thinking, because boy did these boys latch onto that phrase.  Now they race to be the First Hot Dog instead of the Rotten Corn Dog.  There are worse things right :)  I have to admit it totally makes me laugh every time... which is pretty much at least twice a day.

I'm tired... all that updating.  I'll add captions tomorrow- if I remember, otherwise, enjoy it as it is and just guess what the captions should be.

Church

Lately we've been struggling some with our home church... it's a strong church for the most part, but as it's made up of sinners, as all churches are, there have been some minor imperfections.  In thinking things through we've been looking at what are the critical aspects of a church home, both in general and for us specifically.  And yes, we have started attending a church much closer to our home, though we will terribly miss our church family we've been with for the past 5 years.


The Gospel, of course comes to mind quickly as the number one requirement of any church.  By the Gospel, I mean that the teaching of the church emphasizes, consistently, that All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).  I could throw in a few other points to the Gospel that I believe to be very foundational, but those two Scriptures sum it up quite well.  I honestly don't think it matters in the least whether you believe you'll meet your dog who passed away last year in heaven or not, or whether you were baptized as an infant, by sprinkling or immersion, if you believe in a literal 6-day creation (as I do) or some other length of a day not defined version of the story- I really don't think these kinds of things have anything to do with your eternal destination and once we arrive in heaven, well- I really don't think we'll even care what the answers to any of these questions are.  For the record, we've been in the PCA denomination since college, though that's not where either of us were raised, and we mostly subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism, although we don't participate in infant baptism (but this isn't about that.)


The other things that define a church these days, well, it's a little more vague how important or not they are.  But here are a few of the things we consider important...


The worship and music.  We look for a church whose worship music really sings the praises of God.  There has to be depth.  I love old hymns for the depth, but there are plenty of contemporary songs that have depth as well.  We do find it a little annoying to be singing contemporary praise songs that grab one line and repeat it over and over and over and over again though.  We all enjoy a praise band with drums and guitars- the boys especially, but I don't think that's necessarily critical.  It is critical that the praise band isn't there to put on a show for the congregation and be applauded after every song.  They should be there to worship God Almighty, not draw attention to themselves.


The feeding of ourselves and our children of the Word comes to mind as another important role of the church in our lives.  This is one we've been struggling most with lately.  I grew up with Sunday School for all ages, between worship services.  The trend now seems to be "Children's Church" for kids through 2nd, or 5th, or whatever grade- DURING the worship service.  This is a huge problem for me.  My boys NEED to be in worship with us, regularly- and I firmly believe all children do, though I can see why many prefer to send them off to Children's Church.  There is a new book coming out on this topic, titled Children in Church, published by Great Waters Press http://childreninchurch.com/... I just got my pre-reading copy and can't wait to hear what they have to say about the topic and making it work practically.   For us, we would also like to be able to have our kids in a Sunday School class, studying the Word with their peers and participating in the fellowship of being around other believers just as we do.  


Aside from the kids, we want this combined fellowship and study time for ourselves on a regular weekly basis as well, which makes adult Sunday School also critical to us.  


Small Groups- we love our small group and getting together in homes with other families.  We feel like this is important for our whole family and something we all look forward to.  Again, back to that fellowship thing.


Outreach- so far most of my points have been about us and what we need from the church.  Well, it's true, we believe the main purpose of the church is to support the membership.  Then it becomes the responsibility of the membership to reach out to the community and everyone they interact with on a daily basis, fulfilling the great commission of Matthew 28.  If you haven't been well-fed it's pretty challenging to attempt to reach anyone else.  I am constantly reminded of a Children's Sermon that Pastor Kazen gave when I was in Kindergarten (yes, I remember it distinctly, even though it was that long ago and I was that young.)  He had a basin of water and a sponge.  The sponge was us, we showed up in church, at Sunday School, etc and soaked up all the water and then gradually squeezed it out on everyone we came in contact with during the week... but then the sponge was empty again.  Not perfect, but a good illustration- if you don't have it, you can't share it.  This is not to overlook that it is the calling of the church body to reach out to the community, so we like to look at what we are doing as a church body to actively reach out to the community... it's been a struggle for us, living in a different community than where our church is located to be actively involved in much of what they do for outreach- though we do some of our own outreach (admittedly, not enough) in our community.


Other things... organization, church structure/leadership which varies between denominations, communication, fellowship- because you can't mention it enough times.


That's probably enough words from me for now... what are some important ones I missed?  Thoughts?

Reading Party!

Okay, so what if it's 2 weeks later... we had our Reading Party.  I guess you could say it was our version of Kindergarten graduation.  Scott completed his reading program- we used The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, by Jessie Wise.  I really liked how thorough/complete it is and I appreciated the fact that the whole thing is scripted, even though I didn't always use the script.  It took Scott about 2 years to go through the whole thing, with breaks as needed.  He is definitely a reader now!

So what does a reading party look like?  First people have to show up... in our case we planned it for a day when Grandma and Grandpa would be here from Maryland and then Aunt Jesse and Temperance were also available to come.  Then it's all about food, Scott's a boy you know.  We did pizza and I let them make their own this time.  No pictures of that, because, well there's 4 of them and I kind of had to be helping them the whole time.  Daniel didn't quite get it though, he just wanted to eat the toppings.

While the pizzas were cooking, Scott read us a story.  He chose one of our library books that we had out that week- Pilot Pups.  It's a good one for little kids as there are relatively few words and the story line is cute.  I think he noticed the "few" words and decided it was easy... not exactly, some of those words were on the challenging side, but he did a great job sounding things out and read us the whole book, by himself.

Grandpa and Blaise listening.

Aunt Jesse and Temperance listening, or maybe sleeping?

Well... not everyone was listening, Daniel had other things in mind.

After he read to us, we gave him his new Bible and a certificate of Achievement for his hard work learning to read.  The Bible:  We had decided, actually a long time ago, that when the boys learn to read we would get them their first real Bible (meaning an adult translation of the entire text of the Bible, rather than a story Bible, reader's version, or mini-testament.)  With the changing of the NIV last year, I wondered if that was still the "best" option out there and asked around a little bit.  My main thought being either get the NIV 1984 (which was pre-liberal-revision, sorry if that's too strong for anyone) or the ESV.  I have heard such good things about the ESV, but never read it myself, so I couldn't really compare yet.  I asked a few friends- okay basically a huge percentage of everyone I know, thank you Facebook, now go away and stop sucking up all my time!  If you responded to my inquiries there, thank you for the input :)  In the end we decided on the NIV 1984, because... first of all, most of the Scripture I have memorized is from that version and therefore most of the Scripture Scott already has memorized is also from that version, and then because I decided to get myself an ESV Bible, so next time I'll be able to compare for myself.  So far, I think I still prefer the NIV.  I would really love to learn the original languages and read it in it's true wording someday.  For now, I'll continue to remind the boys- all of them- that the Bible wasn't written in English and so we have lots of different translations to consider.  Thankfully, God speaks through them all.  

Back to our party.  By that time, our pizza was ready.  We enjoyed it and then got to the good stuff.  ICE CREAM.  Ice cream beats out any other dessert in Scott's book.  When asked what he wanted for his special dessert that was it, hands down.  I DO have pictures of that... 

Amazingly neat about it, because they don't want to lose any.

Very confused about the whole cone thing and he wouldn't touch it til we gave him a spoon.  It's definitely a unique technique.

Focused... until he bit the bottom and it started dripping in his lap. 

Certainly happy about it in the end!

 After that it was baths and bedtime... here are a few other recent pictures as bonus.  

Scott reading the bedtime Bible story one night.

Michael built a tower with all the blocks.  It was very neatly stacked.  His brothers decided they wanted to be in his picture too.  

Baby Temperance... she's just too cute not to put a picture of her here.  We are enjoying every moment we get with her.

Since his party, Scott has really become much more comfortable reading.  Instead of reading lessons, he just reads for a little while everyday to me and lots to his brothers, when he doesn't think I notice.  He's been reading "The Dragons of Blueland" a sequel to My Father's Dragon and today he read 3 Chapters by himself, while I got dinner ready.  I think we're on a roll now.