What a Dirty Trick!

 

Surprise! I'm still pregnant! It appears that this Halloween I was Tricked and not Treated :( What a dirty trick my body played in making me think I would deliver super early! 

I have now resorted to bribing Tate with candy if he comes before Halloween, but he hasn't taken the bait yet. Maybe he's a salty/sour kinda guy.......

The one thing keeping me from going insane with this waiting game is this little goof ball.

 I sure do love this little guy.

I am eating up our last few days of one on one time and he is keeping me very entertained.

 These shoes have become Collin's obsession! They were handed down to us from some friends. The only time they come off is when Collin gets a bath. As you can see, he even sleeps in them. This has occurred three nights running so far.   

 Monday night we kicked off our Halloween celebration by letting Collin wear his costume while we watched Monster House. 

 And then we ate freedom pops in honor of the Presidential debate!

Collin's new favorite place to sit is in Tate's car seat. He thinks all of Tate's things are new toys for him. Won't he be surprised in a few weeks time?

School

School was very lax again this week. We ended up not doing half the things I had planned but Collin didn't seem to mind. Most of the time he was more interested in playing with his trains than he was anything else and there was NO WAY I was gonna interrupt a two year old who was entertaining himself and playing quietly. I'm not crazy! :)

Tuesday: D is for Dots

 The color was orange this week so of course we had to play with oranges. Collin got a nice surprise when he tried to bite into the peel. I explained that these were oranges and then asked him what color they were to which he replied "green" (face plant in palm)

 After rolling them back and forth for a while Collin found other uses for them. After they were thoroughly bruised and beaten, we ate them!

 Collin definitely prefers them without the peel :)

 I have no idea where I found this connect the dot page. I went back to look for the site and couldn't find it anywhere! I liked it because it only had the numbers 1-10 which are the numbers we're working on.

 Then we decorated the letter D with dots.

 Wednesday: D is for Dinosaur
What a fun day this was! I froze two of Collin's small dinosaurs in ice the night before and then let him try to break them out with a tiny screw driver. We ended up having to run hot water over them to get them out, but Collin was still captivated by the fact that his toys were in ice!

 We eventually rescued both dinosaurs, much to Collin's delight. Next time I'll put hot water in a squirt bottle and let Collin melt the ice himself.

 And of course we had to get all his dinosaurs out and play with them. My dinosaur (raptor) kept getting brutally attacked by two leaf eating dinosaurs. Very ironic I know, but when you're playing by a two year old's rules there's little you can do but play dead :) I also let him watch Dinosaur Train. ( A favorite of his)

 For the color orange we did pumpkin bowling! I plan to do this during Singing Time this Sunday and wanted to try it out. So Collin became the Guinea pig.

 Love these little pumpkins! I found them at Target for $2.

 Thursday: D is for Dog
We did a tracing page with the number 6 this day and he also traced the letter D so I didn't bother taking pictures. We were suppose to play a game with bones that I stole from the PA site but we never got around to it because our daddy surprised us by coming home super early!!!! Playing with dad is much more fun than school anyways.

 Early that day though we had gone outside to do an activity in Collin's water table but it started to rain on us so we had to come back inside. (That's why Collin looks wet.) Fortunately, I had found a fun orange ball in the dollar bin at Target so we just came in and played with that instead.

 Collin was pretty excited about it. I love the action shot on the left. Thank goodness it's a squishy ball because he was throwing that thing everywhere.

Friday: D is for Ducks

We went and fed the ducks at the park and then I let Collin play for a while before we went and ran some errands. Since tomorrow is our Trunk or Treat at church I've decided to just skip school for Sat.

Many of my ideas for school were copied from the Preschool Alphabet website which you can find here.

We're Back!

 Life has returned back to normal for the most part and we couldn't be happier!

 Of course there are some moments I wish I were still on bed rest so that others could clean up messes for me ;)

This is why you don't go and check facebook "real quick" while your children are awake. 6 mini muffins and he didn't even save me any. Can you believe that!?

 I know I've posted these kinds of pictures before of Collin wearing his dads shoes but when he put his dad's basket ball shoes on and tried to walk, it was too funny. I had to take pictures! 

 School

Before I went on bed rest we had just started working on the letter C. Four weeks later and we finally finished! Since we were kinda all over the place with this week of school I'll just post the pics.

 C is for Cookies:

I got this coloring sheet off the PA website for Collin to color. And then we were suppose to make cookies together but surprise! I ended up having to go to triage for a few hours that day so the cookies had to wait for another day.

We did however read, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. You can't study about cookies and NOT read that book.

 C is for Chalk:
I think the PA website had something like C is for clouds and I felt like the activities wouldn't work for Collin so I changed it to chalk.

I had some chalk that I use for craft projects so I let Collin draw a picture on black construction paper. He really got in to it.

 I also let him take a glow in the dark bath with a yellow glow stick for the color yellow.

 C is for Cheerios:

And since the color was yellow and the shape was hearts, we killed two birds with one stone by gluing yellow hearts on paper.

 C is for Cats:
I found this hanging cat craft here. Collin loves cats so this was pretty fun for him.

 And then I had him put colored heart stickers on a black heart. (This was so cheap but so entertaining.) What is it with kids and stickers?

 And that's as far as we got :)

Freedom!!!!

I'm free! For the past three weeks I've been on strict bed rest due to early contractions and the fact that I started dilating. But today marks my 37th week (full term) which means? I'm free!!!!! I'm so excited! 

And I feel so blessed to have had such wonderful family and friends to help with Collin. The hardest things about bed rest for me was surprisingly not the being in bed all day part. Just ask Michael, I LOVE to sleep. Ok, even that got tiring after the first week, but my body really needed it and I felt better when I rested so it was worth it. 

No, the hardest part was sending Collin away each morning and then not seeing him again until 8 that night. I missed him and sometimes even felt guilty that other people were having to watch him while I just stayed in bed all day. Collin however was thrilled! A new house and new toys to play with every day? That's any kids dream and he was always so excited to leave every morning. That actually helped. If he had cried and not wanted to go I would have felt even worse! Another thing that helped was the fact that I really trusted everyone watching him and knew he was in good hands. 

So I have to give a huge Thank You to all those who took care of Collin when I couldn't.

Like my wonderful, wonderful in-laws who not only watched him but also sent dinner home on several occasions!

And 

Jen Lee

Krystal Arnoldson

Sarah Lambourne

and Heather Hall

for all taking turns each week to make sure I had every day covered. 

We owe you guys big time :)

I also have to give major thanks to Michael who ended up being both mom and dad for three weeks. He seriously had NO time for himself but never complained or made me feel bad. He didn't get home until 7:30/8:00 every night and would cook dinner, clean and put Collin to bed (a major feat in and of itself) and then he had to study his Seminary lesson and then hop in bed himself. Oh, and did I mention he planned the meals and went grocery shopping too!? Maybe I should rethink this whole deal and beg my dr. to put me back on bed rest....I had it good ;)

 I knew I married up years ago, but these past few weeks definitely solidify that fact.

Now we can get back to life as usual and I can FINALLY clean my house! 

Now that it's safe to actually bring on early labor, it probably won't happen. 

I can still clean the bathroom and try though :)