Hair today...

Gone tomorrow....

We all knew The Hair needed to be tamed at some point, and yesterday was the day!  He did very well during the quick buzz, and we think he looks pretty cute with his new haircut.

My plans to post a new picture every day in Advent kind of petered out, but I hope to keep posting every couple days, if not every day.  The boys (and David) start their Christmas break tomorrow, and I get a little break from my teaching job :), so we're all excited about that.

Pizza party

I am home alone with the 4 boys this weekend (I think this was my first time home alone with all 4!) while David and his mom went to pick up her car and other belongings in Ohio.  In years past, I'm pretty sure I looked at a weekend alone with the kids as being more stressful and exhausting than fun and enjoyable.  But this time I adjusted my attitude ahead of time and that really did make a difference.  We had a great day.  I like the fact that I am raising four children that I genuinely enjoy spending time with :).  I know, it's supposed to be that way, but it's a neat feeling nonetheless!

Today I set out to have some enjoyable one-on-four time with the boys and also to get some chores done, and we succeeded on both counts!  We: watched Saturday morning cartoons, ate french toast picnic-style, played 2 board games, tried to start a fire in the fireplace (we didn't succeed at keeping it lit, but we had fun and made lots of smoke trying), brought a box of emergency firewood into the garage, cleared a space in the garage for David's mom's things, organized the space where Mom and Dad will stay when they visit next week, vacuumed, cleaned dining room chairs, had popcorn and hot chocolate while watching Animusic, printed out interesting Lego instructions which the boys used to start new creations, filed their existing Lego instructions, conquered my Mount Paperwork, gave baths to 4 boys, made pizza, ate pizza in pajamas and sleeping bags while watching a movie, and attempted to allow the boys to have a "sleepover" with their sleeping bags on their bedroom floor.  This last one was a flop since they were making a ruckus and keeping each other up way too late, but otherwise ot was a full and productive day, and I had lots of big boy help getting the chores done.

Great name for a local orthodontist

I drove by his office and his name and profession made me smile.  It reminded me a little of the Amigone Funeral Home in Buffalo :).  I love quirky or funny profession/business names!

School days

Quilts

David has two aunts that sew gorgeous quilts  and have given each of our boys a quilt when they were born.  Thank you, Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Madeliene!

Most wonderful time of the year

Two wheeler



Asleep amidst the chaos.



After months of practicing on his balance bike (my frugal version = a regular bike with the pedals temporarily removed), Thomas mastered his 2-wheel bike yesterday in about 10 minutes!  He was so excited!

Two-car garage

Our dear friend Jackie passed along this cute reference: one tooth missing= 1 car garage and two teeth = 2-car garage :).



You gotta be tough if you're the 4th boy

We were out of town for the weekend, so I missed a couple of posts, but here is a video to make up for it :).

http://youtu.be/3H0UmoQeh84

On the move

Sleepy Bear

We spotted this lovely rainbow from our front door yesterday (and this picture doesn't really do it justice).
It was also Jack's first reconciliation day, and so the rainbow in the sky seemed especially fitting.
Jack did great, was the picture of composure, and is eager to go back again soon! 

Brotherly love and pom-poms

New Year's Resolutions

I'm especially excited about Advent this year -- a new Church year, a new mass translation, and all the new adventures we have to look forward to in MD.  At the same time, I miss our family and friends and I am trying to think of ways for us to stay connected on a day-to-day basis. 

So, I've decided to make a new year's resolution that I hope will bridge the gap a bit.  I plan to post a new picture each day in Advent.  I can't guarantee that I'll be able to post much more than a caption for each picture, but I hope the pictures themselves will tell the story of our daily adventures.

With that, here is the first one:

"All I Want for Christmas" -- Jack just lost one of his top teeth and the other one isn't far behind.  You can already see the permanent tooth coming in.  Jack was very pretty brave when David extraced the loose tooth with a floss lasso (the tooth had started to turn a creepy shade of blue-gray, so we all agreed it had to go!). 

Speed of life

We all continue to do well here at the Campbell household.  We've been healthy, the number of cardboard boxes in the house is slowly decreasing, and life is moving forward.  We've registered at what seems to be a lovely parish here, and we are starting to meet people and put down roots.  It is such a relief to know that we can get involved and become invested in this community beyond just 6 months!

There is definitely less free time now than there used to be (at least for me), but I can say that although I am busier and more tired than I would like, I am very happy.  It seems like I literally have to move very quickly during the day to get things done in a timely manner, i.e. dashing between the fridge and pantry for speed cooking, hussle cleaning, running up and down the stairs for items, etc. but it works and by the grace of God I have the energy for it.

Davy is charming us all with his big smiles and adorable coos.  His smiles are hard to capture on camera, but one of these days I'll get a good shot and post it.  The boys love making him smile!  I am so grateful for the gift of siblings (well, except for when they try and kill each other, but you get the idea).

The older boys entertain me with their boyness.  A continuing mealtime debate here is who is the better superhero -- Spiderman or Superman?  And what would happen if Superman and Darth Vader fought each other?  The boys don't help cook, they excavate the flour and sugar with the measuring cups.  They don't draw pictures of people and houses and flowers -- they draw tank fights and fighter jet battles.  They don't play house -- they invent a land called Janada (Japan + Canada) that grows kryptonite and makes it into sandwiches in case Superman comes around (they are decidedly anti-Superman in Janada).  It's all a little foreign to me, but I am greatly amused by the way their minds work!

Anyway, my time on the computer is up, but I hope to post more pictures of all the boys soon!

More photos

I owe this blog a meaty update post, but it will have to wait until my brain cells have recovered from the move and the sleep deprivation a little bit :).  In the mean time, here are some recent photos of the kids.  Jack was Black Spiderman for Halloween, Thomas was a Scary Skeleton, and Peter was a Phoebe Giraffe.  They had lots of fun wearing their costumes (Peter is actually wearing his right now!) and getting lots of candy.  We're all doing well, but are still unpacking and trying to get a routine back in the midst of it all.  Thankfully, we're all healthy and are enjoying our new home and neighborhood.

Photos

Apologies for taking so long to get these posted!  We're all doing well, but I seem to start a project or task and then get distracted and it takes forever to get back around to it.

Baby David has arrived!

Baby David arrived at 11:34AM this morning and weighed 8lb 8oz, and was 21.75 inches long. It was a quick and easy delivery, and both of us are doing very well. I could not have asked for a smoother or more peaceful delivery, and I feel great! Little David is very cute and strongly resembles his brothers. He wins the "hair of the month" according to the delivery nurses. It is quite the impresive mop. And he does have eyebrows :) (Peter had big hair, but was severely eyebrow deficient for a long time!).

If all continues to go well, I should get to go home from the hospital sometime on Friday. They do have free Wi-Fi here, so hopefully I can post a picture of him soon.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!

Practicing Patience

Baby Davey (Or Davy?  I'm not even sure how we're going to spell that!) seems to be very comfortable right where he is, despite numerous signs that labor is supposedly just around the corner.  Today I'm 3 days late, which isn't too bad, but it feels like an eternity!  I am trying hard to be in good spirits, but I'm getting a little discouraged and more than a little uncomfortable.  My mom, David's mom, and David have all been very good about helping out with the kids, the house chores, encouraging me to take long walks, etc. but I feel like we're all waiting for this big event which could happen at any given moment.  There's sort of a palpable tension in the air, and it's starting to wear on me.

The good news is that the end is in sight --- my doctor won't let me go overdue past Saturday, so I just have to endure the rest of this week, at worst.

Today is the feast day of St. Francis, who I chose as my confirmation saint.  It would be a good day to go into labor, right?  :).  Or at least a good day to have an extra treat.  As always, your prayers are appreciated and we'll update you when there's more news.

No turning back now

David's mom arrives tonight and my mom arrives on Friday night to help out with baby stuff, kid stuff, moving stuff, and hopefully have time for some pleasant visiting on top of all that :). 

I had to drive up to Columbia today with the boys to pick up the lease so we can sign it and make things official with our new home, and it hit me kind of hard all day today that this was going to be the "end of the Campbell status quo as we know it".  Not that the past 2 years have been exactly "status quo" for us, because they've actually been pretty crazy with all the relocating and everything.  But we started out 2 years ago in David's rotation program as a family of 5.  We've traveled together and bonded together amidst our adventures and misadventures in Buffalo, Colorado Springs, and 2 Virginia locations as 2 adults and 3 kids.  One major constant for the past 2 years has been our little nuclear family, and now we're about to totally change the dynamics of that constant.  And now Help is on its way for the imminent baby delivery, which just makes it all the more real that everything is going to change. 

We will be a family of 6, and we'll have a newborn in tow with all the feeding, changing, and sleeping demands that newborns come with.  I'm not really worried about things being worse than they are now (although I know the first few months will be more difficult as we all adjust and are sleep-deprived).  It's more like I'm already starting to miss the routines and normalcy that we've grown comfortable with.  I can take the 3 boys out on big or little errands by myself (which I remember seemed SO daunting when Peter was tiny!), and I feel confident that they will behave well, and if they don't, I can handle it.  I think right now I feel the most confident and calm in my mothering and teaching career than I ever have, and I'll miss that feeling!  I know I'll get it back eventually, and of course our family will adapt just fine and it will be hardly any time at all before we feel like our family was never complete without baby David.  But, still, it was an odd and slightly bittersweet feeling today that there is no turning back from this point.

That being said, I wonder when baby David will make his arrival!  No feelings yet that things are getting close.  It's a huge relief that we have family arriving in town that can wrangle the bigger boys while David and I go to the hospital.  We had some friends from church offer to help out, but I know the boys will be much more comfortable if they can just be at home instead of being juggled between various people's houses.  Plus, I worry a bit about making sure everyone is up to speed on Jack's nut allergy and someone doesn't accidentally forget about it.  I felt terrible a couple of weeks ago when we got sandwiches from a sandwich shop, and the boys had little bags of potato chips, and I noticed *after* Jack had eaten a good handful of them that they were cooked in peanut oil!  He was fine, no reactions (I've actually heard that peanut oil is usually refined to the point that peanut proteins are filtered out), but it bothered me that it escaped my radar when I'm supposed to be most on top of it!

We will keep you updated when anything interesting happens.  In the meantime, we appreciate your prayers for healthy and safe delivery and a good adjustment for all of us.

Summer Rambo

For me, the words "summer rambo" immediately brings to mind something like the image below:

How could they not?   What else could a summer rambo possibly be?

As it turns out, the house that we'll be renting in MD is on a street called Summer Rambo.  We found out a couple of days ago that they accepted our rental application and now we just need to sign the lease and we're al set!  We're really excited because we think it will be a great house for us. 

The street name, though, really puzzled us, because it just seems like "summer" and "rambo" don't have any business being thrown together like that.  Granted, we have come across much worse street names in our travels (Purgatory Dr. and Deliverance Rd. in Colorado Springs, and even Maleady Drive in VA reminded me too much of "malady").  Still, it seemed like there must be an interesting story behind Summer Rambo.

We learned, actually, that it's a type of apple.  Many of the streets in that area are named after apple varieties, and someone picked Summer Rambo for our street.  Now, why in the world someone decided to call an apple Summer Rambo is beyond me, but there it is.

So, David has a great job, we have a house, and slowly but surely our to-do list is growing smaller and smaller.  It's been quite a while since the stress in our lives has been on the decrease rather than the increase, and the change is very welcome.  Next on the list is having this baby!  I'm due exactly 2 weeks from today, and I'm starting to get a little restless.  My body is kind of limping its way through these last weeks of pregnancy.  I'm healthy, thank goodness, and the important stuff like blood pressure are normal, and I'm even keeping up OK with taking care of David, the boys, homeschooling, the house, etc.  But everything seems harder with a big, cumbersome tummy in the way, and I'm just plain tired.  :).  Again, that's par for the course at 38 weeks, but it's humbling!

At doctor's appointment last week, my doctor seemed very confident that I'd be able to have a successful VBAC.  He was much more reassuring than the previous lady doctor I saw, so it was a great visit.  It was just what I needed to hear.  Now I just hope that my body and the baby cooperate, if possible, so that I go into labor on my own before I go overdue.  I really don't feel like I will last 2 more whole weeks (but that might just be wishful thinking!), but I also haven't had any indications that labor will be coming anytime soon.  We'll just have to see.  It's exciting that whatever kind of birth I end up with, we only have at most about 2 more weeks of waiting!!

This week is a busy one.  David has his graduation from his rotation program on Wednesday night, and if I haven't had the baby by then, I get to go to the graduation dinner and celebrate with him.  I'm excited -- it's been a long road!  David's mom and my mom are also coming out to help this week, and I have another dr's appointment and a drive up to MD to finish up our lease paperwork.  I hope the next update will be a "we're going to the hospital" or "we've had the baby" post!

Less than three weeks to go

We've all been doing well this past week.  David has been working very hard at his job -- lots of stress and long hours -- but he is hanging in there.  The boys have done well with school this week and are getting more and more excited about Grandmom and Grammy coming out to visit within the next couple of weeks, and of course baby David arriving.  There is a fair amount of surplus craziness around here that I'm sure comes from our upcoming move and the baby's arrival.  It's a double-whammy of change for them, and we're all feeling the stress a little.  I'm trying to be extra patient and understanding, since *I* have trouble not being anxious and grouchy and I'm an adult with lots more reasoning power and life experience.  We're all excited, though, and looking forward to when the dust settles after October.
We took a trip up to Columbia on Friday and found a great home.  We put in an application and we'll see in the next few days if they'll accept it.  We have high hopes -- but we're not actually starting our lease until the end of October, so it's possible that they'll turn down our application in favor of renters that can actually move in this month.  We'll see.  It seems like there are homes that get put up for rent each week, so I'm confident we'll find something good even if this house falls through.

The boys are getting excited about Halloween and have picked out their costumes.  Jack wants to be Black Spiderman, Thomas wants to be Darth Vader, and Peter wants to be a Phoebe Giraffe :).  I'm excited because I'm actually going to try and make their costumes this year.  Last year I ordered them last-minute from Wal-Mart because we had just moved and it was the easiest solution, and I think the year before that I had pieced some makeshift costumes together a few days before Halloween, but I didn't give myself enough time and my sewing machine was also broken -- so they didn't turn out too well.  Not to mention that we were in Buffalo, and it was freezing cold and drizzly and no one was answering their doors when we went Trick-or-Treating!  That was a pretty sad Halloween!

So, I decided it would be fun, economical, and a good waiting-for-baby distraction to work on the boys' costumes over the next few weeks.  They're excited because they get to add in their input and help customize them.  I found a bunch of clearance clothing items online last week and once they arrive we can add the fabric paint and embellishments and see how they turn out!

Other than that, I have a dr's appointment this Wednesday and hopefully we'll hear more about our rental house by then.  I'll do my best to post an update!

One wait down, another to go

We decided that relocating to Columbia, MD for David's work is the best decision for our family now, so the waiting and agonizing over which job would be best is finally over. It is a huge relief to have made a decision, but it was so difficult! When we left CA two years ago for this program, I had the expectation that we would be returning at the end to pick up our lives there where we left off, with maybe a raise and promotion for David. It wasn't really a possibility in my mjnd that we would not be returning.

It was heartbreaking for us to learn that the job climate and job future for David's line of work in CA and in many other areas is very shaky right now, and to return at this point would not be the wisest decision for job security.

However, David received many excellent job offers from the MD and VA area, and business is much better out here. He accepted a great position that is very stable and interesting, and will be good for his career. We drove up to the Columbia area and it is very nice and family-friendly. Our next step is to find a rental home there and plan our move.

With that behind us, we have one more big wait ahead -- I'm nearly 37 weeks pregnant so baby David could come at any time. His checkups have being going very well, and my ultrasound yesterday estimated that he is currently 7lb 8oz, which is a little big for his gestational age, but not terribly ginormous. We'll just have to see if my doctors will want to schedule me for a c-section of if they'll let me deliver on my own. I'm getting excited about meeting this little guy finally and recovering from whatever delivery I have so I can start feeling like myself again. Between my large tummy and my achy hips, I have developed quite the waddle! But I'm doing well, all things considered, and have been pretty busy putting together my hospital bag, cleaning house, and arranging emergency childcare if I go before my mom and David's mom arrive. It is hard for me to believe that whatever happens, I have just about 4 weeks left at most before baby David is here!!

And we wait

All is well with the Campbell household.  School started in full force on Tuesday, and it seems to be going pretty well.  I'm tired, though!  Wrangling lessons for 2 kids and managing a 3-year-old is a lot of work!  Thomas is so excited to be in Kindergarten, and he is taking to his lessons very well.  I'm realizing that he really did absorb a lot while sitting at the school table last year, because a lot of the early Kindergarten work is actually a review of things he already knows.  Jack is also doing well, although he has more academic work than Thomas (as he's supposed to!) and sometimes the amount of it frustrates him when he'd rather be playing.  I completely understand -- it's hard for me to be a cheerful and patient teacher when I'm tired and feel like my work load is too high, too :).  But he is settling in well and I think it will just take a little time for everyone to get used to the new routine.

I'm so glad we'll have a good couple of months of routine schooling under our belt before the baby arrives.  I know we'll have a chaotic few weeks while we're all adjusting to having a newborn around, but I think (I hope!) we'll hop back into regular life more quickly since it will be habit by then. 

We continue to wait to hear about David's job offers.  Our hope is that we hear something next week and can begin the process of making a decision, but it could push out further than that.  It does appear that all of David's hard work in networking and cultivating excellent offers is just about done.  Now, HR and the various sites have to do paperwork and things on their end, and then we'll hear something.  So, that's a relief.  I'm also glad for the distractions of home schooling and preparing for a new baby because it doesn't give me a whole lot of time to obsess over all the endless possibilities!  I know once we make a decision about where we're going, we'll have a lot of preparations and trickle-down decisions to make, so I'm trying to enjoy this forced lull because the storm is coming :).

I don't think there are necessarily any "easy" scenarios.  If we go back to San Diego, we'll have a cross-country road trip to plan with a newborn, plus a couple of weeks of limbo before our house will be available to live in.  If we don't go back to San Diego, we have to decide if we can afford to keep the house in CA as a rental or if we'll be forced to short sell it (enter possible real estate lawyers, discussions with our mortgage company, etc).  And, at same time, we'll have to find our own housing in whatever city we will be in.  I know we'll make it all work out and we'll be just fine, but I think we're all really looking forward to Thanksgiving this year.  We figure by then, we'll be settled in nicely somewhere, all the uncertainties and decisions that we're facing now will have been dealt with, and we'll be out of the crazy first 6 weeks of newborn babyhood.  We can just sit back and enjoy a our family, a good feast, and be thankful for David's great job and for making it through.

We'll update everyone when we have more news.  We can't tell you how much your prayers mean to us.  I'm about 6 weeks from my due date (how did that happen?!?) and without your prayers I'm sure I wouldn't be nearly as calm and at peace with everything as I am.  Not to say that I don't have my moments (I do!  Sometimes I want to hide and just be pregnant and have nothing else to think about right now!), but I really do feel the grace of God holding us up through this.

Just for fun, here is a picture of my pregnant-tummy buddy:

Vacation photos!