Jonah Graduates from Joy School

I did Joy School with a couple other moms in my ward this past year and it was a lot of fun. It is definitely a lot of work (especially when you have to go throw up during free play time because of pregnancy nausea and teach when you're pushing 9 months) but the kids were darling and Jonah loved it. I plan on doing Joy School for Wyatt this year too, just have to find some interested moms. 

Funny thing, the caps and gowns in the photo lasted only minutes. One boy wouldn't even put one on and then the others were done with them before the "ceremony" was finished. Sure looks cute though.

Time to Play Catch Up

I haven't felt like blogging for a while, but I was hoping to make this a sort of journal for my family so it is time to play catch up over the next few days. 

First, a lovely invention by Max--ball on a string hung from the tree.

Allows Wyatt to hit the ball over and over and over and over and over without requiring an involved parent. When I say it that way it sounds kind of bad, but honestly this kid could hit a ball for hours if someone was there to throw it to him. I still play ball with him sometimes, but now he can go out and hit while I make dinner or nurse Emmett. The only problem is that sometimes Wyatt hits too hard or hits it when the wind is really blowing (which by the way it does here--one of our trees fell down on our fence last week, silly us didn't take a picture) and the ball winds up in the tree. Jonah helps with this sometimes since he is way less interested in batting practice than Wyatt. 

He's Here!

Our little guy, Emmett Stirling, finally arrived last night and he is perfect! I was induced (had my water broken) at 2:45 in the afternoon and he made his debut at 8:09 pm. I ended up asking for an epidural this time around, but he came so fast by the time I asked that I ended up going natural like the other two. Thank heavens it was quick. He's the biggest one yet weighing it at 9 lbs 5 oz. I forget how long he is--I think 21 3/4 or something close to that, but he's a big guy. Here are his first photos.

My mom was able to be there for the delivery because some great friends offered to let the boys stay at their house as long as it took. Luckily it didn't take too long. This is a minutes-old photo just in case the cone head didn't give it away.

The hospital caps never seem to quite fit my boys' heads. This one barely squeezed on.

Like I said, he's perfect. 

Mama's Boy

So still no baby yet. Max says he must be a mama's boy and doesn't want to leave yet. Max and I went to the doctor today and he said he would induce me as early as tomorrow morning, but Max has a final tomorrow at 1:00 and Thursday at 1:00 so we're going to wait until Thursday after his finals. I've never been induced. I'm more nervous for that than just going into labor on my own. This kid has to be big though. My belly is definitely bigger that it has ever been and supposedly babies can tend to be larger at lower sea levels. (I've heard this, but don't have any scientific evidence to quote so really I have no idea what I'm saying.) Having had two 9 lb-ers that came early I just wonder what that means for this one. 

Yeah...

So that widget says 0 days left till baby comes. Well, baby still isn't here. Since Jonah was 3 days early and Wyatt was 10 days early, I have to say that this whole waiting for the due date thing really stinks!

Easter

Finally getting around to posting about our Easter fun. We had a great time. Here are the boys and dad dyeing Easter eggs. I prefer not to get dye on the boys shirts so I make them take off their shirts and wear art smocks. I think it looks cute.

Max was working really hard on this egg so I had to show the finished product as well.

A friend in the ward has a park behind her house and so invited a few families over on the Saturday before Easter for lunch and an Easter egg hunt. It was great because we had considered going to a community hunt, but I know it would have been crazy. This was perfect. Every parent brought 15 eggs per child and then the dads went and hid them in the park while the kids played the game in the photo below, "What time is it Mr. Fox" where they get closer and closer to the "fox" until he says that it's lunchtime and everyone runs away screaming.

I love the completely uninhibited joy in the kids' faces. The only thing that matters at this moment is getting away from Mr. Fox and nothing could make them happier. 

After hunting and satiating their candy lust the boys wanted to play on the playground so I ended up with the baskets. Here is one of the few prego-belly shots we have of me. I've never been good about taking a lot pregnant tummy shots. Max keeps saying we should. We'll see.

On Easter morning, I was fighting a cold, the boys were both sniffly and Jonah was coughing, and it was Stake Conference...needless to say, we didn't end up going. We had an Easter egg hunt in our backyard as soon as the boys woke up--6:45 and then I was exhausted by about 10:00. Max took the boys on a walk to Mormon Handcart Park. (That's close to going to church, right?) Here are some of my favorite photos from their adventure. 
Jonah and Wyatt are really great friends right now. They play together all the time--fight together too--but mostly it is play. It's great to let them go out to the backyard and hear them making up games on the trampoline together.

I frequently get asked by strangers if they are twins. It is usually when they're sitting down since Jonah is a bit taller than Wyatt, but they do look A LOT alike. 
Oh, and last but not least, a Stirling family tradition--the egg tap. Each person holds an egg and on the count of three you tap the taller ends together. The egg that ended up "winning" this year was the Family Egg--one that Max wrote all of our names with white crayon on before dying it. It beat out 11 other eggs.

Spring Break and My Awesome Husband

I haven't been much for blogging lately. I think it is partially because Max and I have separate sides of our computer. I use my side mostly for Boot Scoot Bikes business stuff, but his side has all the family photos. So if I want to blog with photos, I have to go to his side, but then when I'm on his side I have to re-log in to blogger as me and not him. I know, I know, is it seriously that big of a deal to log into his side, sign out and then sign in of blogger to post? Have you seen that "everything's amazing, nobody's happy" clip from Conan O'Brien? I think my laziness falls under that category because that whole logging in and out ordeal takes all of about 1 minute.

Anyway...we've been doing some fun stuff since it has warmed up on a few select days, so I thought I'd try and record some of it. We went to the Coralville Lake spillway with some friends and let the boys run around. Don't worry, the lake isn't right on the other side of Wyatt. There is a parking lot that the lake has to flood first before water could go over the spillway. It is just a few feet down--it would still not be a great fall for a little kid, so that's why he's holding Daddy's hand.

There was a big pile of bark that ended up entertaining all the kids and Max for a good 15 mintues.

During Max's spring break (He had a whole week off! We're not used to this both being BYU grads) he took the boys camping over night. At first it was just going to be Jonah, but when we all went out to set up--before I went home to sleep on a real mattress (I'm not a wuss, just 8 months pregnant)--we could tell Wyatt was going to be devastated if he didn't get to sleep in the tent. So Max had both boys and they had a great time. 

Max is such an incredible dad. When he walks in the door from school the boys start screaming because they know it is play time. He gives them airplane rides in the laundry baskets--complete with the captain speaking over the intercom to ask where they want to go (usually the park or the museum) and to tell them at what altitude they will flying and whether or not any food will be served on the flight. He jumps on the trampoline with them even when his back or hip might hurt a little. One of their favorite games is "Whoa." It involves them slithering down as far as they can into their sleeping bags and having Max bounce them as high as he can. He makes up elaborate stories about a bear named Terrence who comes to play in the backyard--sometimes Snowman, Monkey, and even Santa Claus show up in the stories too. He takes them to parks and even tonight, he got all the fishing stuff to head down to a nearby pond for an hour before bedtime. I'm sure he'd be a great dad to a girl too, but I know he is a perfect boy dad, so our third little guy, who comes in just about a month, is lucky too.  

This last photo is in Nauvoo. I really wanted to go to the Nauvoo temple before having this baby because I know how hard it is to go with a nursing baby and we're only here till next June. I got to go to Nauvoo with my family on a church history tour when there was only the empty temple lot. Then, I got to go back with the BYU folk music ensemble group I played with while the temple was under construction. Now I've seen it fully completed. It is exquisitely simple and beautiful inside. It felt good to be in the temple. It's a couple hours away so we made a day trip out of it during Max's break and he took the boys to see some of the Nauvoo sights while I went to the temple. Here they are with Duke and Don who pulled them in the covered wagon. I think this was their favorite part, although Jonah has played with the sisal rope he got every day since then.