So we've spent the last week adjusting to having another little person in our family. Allie is wonderful and perfect and she is doing her best to make the adjustment as easy as possible. Noah has been a tad clingy and has stepped up his nursing quite a bit, but overall even he is dealing with it much better than I expected. The real test, however, will come tomorrow because I will be alone with all three children all day for the first time. Eek. Wish me luck!Emma started preschool on Thursday and I think it was a success. She clung to me and cried when we left, which was hard. We did wait out in the hall long enough to hear her stop crying almost immediately, and by the time we picked her up in the afternoon, she seemed very happy and excited about her day. Although I've always wanted to homeschool and am sad to be giving that up, I know this is best for her right now. I'm certain most of my next year will be spent nursing babies, changing diapers, and trying (and probably failing miserably) to keep up with the housework and I don't feel like I can offer her the stimulation she needs while being preoccupied with those other things.

Isn't it such an amazing miracle that what looks like thisone day, can become thisthe very next day?!

Alexandra Jane was born at home at 10:07 p.m. on August 14th after four hours of labor.She is a perfect angel and we are all (except maybe Noah a little bit) enjoying having a newborn around again.

Does "blah" count as a legitimate word? If so, Noah has his first word! He says it every time I change one of his poopy diapers so he apparently knows what it means!

No baby yet. Last week was kind of rough, but today I am feeling good and full of energy so I am looking forward to a better week. My worst problem right now is that even my biggest shirt no longer fits me, and as far as problems go, that one is pretty insignificant. Here I am at 39 weeks. It's not the prettiest picture, but at least you can get the idea of my general humongousness.Emma has decided that she is too old to call me "mommy", and will now refer to me as "mom". She still forgets and called me mommy about half the time, though. I don't know where she got the idea that "mommy" isn't cool. The other day a couple of her friends were over and every time they walked through the room, she pointedly said, "Hi, mom," just to reinforce the point, I guess, that she is now sophisticated enough to call me "mom". She has also always called Steve "papa" and she still does that, but I have recently heard her refer to him as "my dad" when talking to other people. She is trying to grow up so fast!

To add to her grown up status, she will be starting preschool next week. It's only two days a week, but I can hardly believe she is going to be gone from home so much. I'll have to pack her a lunch and I've been thinking about how I can make it waste-free. I ordered a pattern for insulated lunch bags and sewed her one of those. I also bought a couple of reusable sandwich wraps, and a couple of stainless steel food jars so I think we are all set for lunches. She is very excited about bringing her lunch to school. We also purchased her school supplies last week and I think she has packed and unpacked and repacked her backpack about twelve thousand times by now. I really hope she likes it as much as she thinks she will!

Saturday was Steve's and my fifth anniversary. I woke up in the morning just as he was walking out the door. I asked him where he was going, and when he replied that he was going to work (without any mention of our anniversary) but would be back around 3:00, I snapped something at him and closed the door. I took the kids to the grocery store and spent most of the time trying not to cry, thinking that I was going to be spending my anniversary alone with the kids while my husband, who apparently had no idea that it even was our anniversary, spent the day at work. I wasn't going to call him, but I couldn't hold out very long because I called him as soon as we got home and I think it was probably only 8:30 by then. He was totally surprised that I was upset, and in fact he really did have no clue about the anniversary, but he said he would pack up and come home right away. I'm so glad I called instead of sitting around and sulking all day. When he did get home, he spent the day painting our kitchen, which was a perfect anniversary present.

Last time we painted our kitchen, we wanted something bright and cheerful so we picked out a nice green that we thought would look great. Trouble was, once it was actually on the walls, we realized that our nice, pretty green was actually more of a neon green and pretty awful looking. We decided to repaint it right away.Fast forward about three years (which is "right away" in terms of our remodeling timelines around here) and we finally have a much more reasonable color in the kitchen. It's maybe a tad brighter than I wanted, but it's a huge improvement over the fluorescent green we used to have. We always seem to spend less than a minute picking out paint colors, so maybe we should learn our lesson and spend some more time on it next time.