As soon as Logan got the party invitation he knew just what he wanted to give his friend Rusty.  He drew sketches and pattern pieces, and then cut them out.  I followed his directions and did the sewing.  The arms and legs took a second try because they were too teeny to turn right side out the first time.  It was a good education in the importance of seam allowance.    There were very elaborate plans for clothes, but I talked him into something simpler– little bitty bat wings.

The word is that he’s well loved!

My parents came to visit and we packed as much into the short time they were here as we could.  Right after we picked them up from the airport we packed lunch and headed to Castlewood Canyon for a hike to the “rock forts” as my kids call them.

The next day our sweet Logan got baptized.  He planned the service himself, picked the songs, made phone calls to his Primary teacher and our Home Teacher for talks, asked his sister and piano teacher to give prayers.  Barry baptized him and he asked my dad to confirm him.  It was so sweet and beautiful and a wonderful reflection of Logan and who he is and who he loves at this time in his life.

I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get a picture and Logan and Papa together.

On the last day their flight didn’t leave until 9:00 pm, so we had some adventures that day too.  The weather was perfect for visits to Dinosaur Ridge and Red Rocks.

Our tour guide Dan-o-saurus took us back 150 million years to touch some stegosaurus bones.  You can then the bones from the rest of the rock because of their color, texture, and taste (so Jonah licked the rock).

Here are some dinosaur foot prints from underneath.

Logan is being stepped on by an apatosaurus.

Back in the 1930s when they were building Alameda Highway they uncovered this field of iguanadon foot prints.  The footprints are colored in with charcoal to make them more visible.  Pretty amazing, huh?

We made a quick stop at Red Rocks to see it, then wandered around Ikea for lunch on the way home.

We love you Granny and Papa!  It was so fun to have you here.  See you again soon!

So, princess Eva had a birthday today.  I anticipated having an emotional day, seeing how my last baby is crossing that bridge from babyhood to toddlerhood, but it’s been a sweet, relaxing day.  I feel good about this whole thing.  Good and complete.  Eva’s the other slice of bread to our “girl- boy- boy- boy- boy- girl” sandwich we’ve made here and it all feels just as it should be.

We didn’t do anything elaborate, just opened a couple of presents

She loved the teddy bear card from Grandma Croker.

The big kids read her new books over and over.  She loved the sound effects for the walrus in Polar Bear, Polar Bear What do you See?  best.

Ian, our resident crown maker made sure she was appropriately outfitted with a specially designed tiara.

That’s blowing she’s doing there,

and then singing and clapping in response to our singing and clapping.

Barry made an angel food cake from scratch.

We took it out on the deck and ate to the sunset.

Now we’ll all go to bed so happy we have our chubby, wobbly walking, bright eyed little Eva.

Happy birthday sweet heart!

(Just so you know– this post has ended up just being about my pregnancy and deciding where to give birth to my 6th and last baby.  I’ll have to write another one about the actual birth part.)

This birth story has been hard for me to write.  How do you put something so emotional and all encompassing into words?  It was both the culmination of the “growing babies and giving birth” phase of my life and the beginning of the life of one very unique (still) little person.

When Hunter was born and we came home that morning from the birth center I knew that he wasn’t the last.  It wouldn’t be the last time I heard those tiny, squirmy, squeaky noises nestled next to me in my bed.  It wouldn’t be the last time I lived in that miraculous and holy halo of discovery that a new spirit and fresh body bring with them to a family.

But the adjustment to 5 kids was hard.  All changes are, but I worried I couldn’t handle another baby.  I knew there was another one though.  A girl I thought… I hoped.

And then I was pregnant and not only had another little person to anticipate and dream about, but an impending birth to plan.  After having Hunter in a birth center I did not want to go back to the hospital.  I would have gone back to the birth center in a heart beat, but there is a totally arbitrary Colorado law that says a birth center can’t deliver past a 5th baby.  My options were either to just take the caregivers my insurance assigned, or pay out of pocket for a home birth.  For several months I felt like I kept having to make that decision, repeatedly falling back on the insurance assigned hospital, feeling torn about it, and praying some more.  Finally I realized that I needed more information about the home birth midwives that would be available to me to really feel at peace with any decision we came to.  I called half a dozen midwives, set up appointments, and Barry and I (with several kids in tow as well) drove all over town meeting and interviewing them.  We left the first of those meetings with a confident assurance that a home birth was what we needed.  That confidence grew with each midwife we met.  As a culmination to my childbearing I needed the friendship and care of a midwife.  I needed to follow my heart.  I needed this last of my births to be the peaceful, sacred, comfortable, natural event I knew it should be.  The money would work itself out.  We needed to live so there would be no regrets.

I’m used to making decisions that kind of go against the grain of the mainstream, but that can cause a lot of well meaning people get worried.  I am not a confrontational, in your face, take it or leave it kind of person– I just like to feel like I’m living with integrity, like my heart is at peace, like my actions coincide with my beliefs about how I should live and what I should do.  I can’t keep myself from worrying about what other people think, but I guess I worry more about what I think and what God thinks.  That’s why I homeschool.  That’s why I had a home birth.  What I do is not the right thing for everyone, I know.  I just have to make decisions that leave me with an internal sense of peace.  Once we decided Eva would be born at home and chose a midwife I felt settled.

My pregnancy was a good one.  I was tired and swollen, of course.  I often reveled in the thought that “I never have to do this again!”  I felt thankful for my body that has so reliably grown all my babies.  I felt sad for dear friends and sister in-laws that struggle with difficult pregnancies, or no pregnancies at all.

On Saturday mornings I went to prenatal yoga classes at real yoga studios.  Oh I loved that!  Often during those classes I felt a call to teach prenatal yoga myself, to share my experience of birth and breathing and parenthood with women on the cusp of the most monumental changes in their lives.  I filed those thoughts away, wondering when I would have the time to revisit them.

As my due date approached I started freaking out.  I don’t know how else to put it.  My mother in-law and sister in-law were scheduled to arrive August 24th.  My due date was on the 17th.  4 of my 5 previous births happened 5 or more days before my due date and so I was confident that I’d have at least a week with my own mom before Barry’s family came.  I wasn’t having much happen though.  No nights of 4 hours of continuous mild contractions only to peter out in the morning like I had for nearly a month before Logan, Ian, and Hunter were born.  I had near emotional breakdowns every other day or so and was filled with so much anxiety that I would have a house full of visitors that didn’t know I was having a home birth in my home when I went into labor.  Finally I just asked my mom to come the weekend before my due date whether I had a baby yet or not.  Surely she would be born while my mom was here– right?  And it would be so nice to have here experience the birth with me, since she had never had the chance to see any of the others.

She came, we kept busy, and my due date came and went.

Eva’s working on her walking skills.  She’s 11 1/2 months old now.  She reminds me of Jonah in so many ways– nearly the same birth weight (8 lbs. 4 oz. for him, 8 lbs. 5 oz. for her), super blonde, a big space between their two front teeth, and waiting until 1 year to walk.  Jonah took his first really independent steps on his first birthday.  Eva’s taken one here or there, but she’s not ready to be on her own yet.  She just likes to push her little wagon until she bumps into something.  Making enough noise does what is needed to get someone to turn it around for her.

Today Barry and I had a conversation about the difference between messy and dirty.  You see– I have these voices in my mind that tell me that in order to be the “true mom” my house needs to be clean and orderly at all times.

This is a problem.

For starters, being tidy is not natural to me, never has been.   Also I like to make things.  Actually, to put that better I need to make things.  Making things makes a mess.  And then there are the children– the SIX children that live here and NEVER LEAVE.  They read books and leave them places.  They build legos and leave them places.  They make block towers, and take off socks, and draw pictures and cut paper, and heaven forbid– they EAT, which leads to dirty dishes.

Orderly at all times in this house is completely unrealistic– and unnecessary.  DUH!   Messy is one thing.  Blocks don’t take long to pick up, dishes get washed and used again, books get reshelved.  Neat and orderly can only be a reality around 10 pm when kids are in bed.  As long as our house isn’t DIRTY, as long as bathrooms are sanitary, dust is kept reasonably at bay and floors are unstickified on a regular basis it’s all  okay.

TAKE THAT NASTY VOICES OF PERFECTIONISM!  Dirty = bad, but a little mess never hurt anyone.  (Well, not permanently.  Stepping on a lego is pretty painful.)

It does take a little effort to keep on top of the dirtiness, though.  Here’s what works for me:  The house is divided into 6 zones (not a new concept, but such a good one) and we work on a different one each day of the week.  I have the Home Routines app on my iPhone, but I never use it.  I just make a list in the morning of what I want done in the day’s zone on some random piece of paper I find, have each of the 3 older kids pick 2 chores, do 2 chores myself with little kid help, and that’s it.  We don’t live in pristine conditions, but nothing is gross.

Today the entryway got freshened up.  The stairs vacuumed, the front porch swept, etc. etc.  Logan got the chore everyone wanted.  He got to freshen up the entryway chalkboard.

“Instead of defining yourself by your successes, define yourself by your traits…” is one of many great thoughts by Lori in this post.

While Barry’s mom was here we also spent a weekend up at the YMCA of the Rockies.   We stayed for 2 nights in one of the hotel-like lodges (sans air conditioning and TV or course), and ate all our meals in the camp cafeteria.  That’s a pretty easy get away– no food to plan or pack.  My very favorite thing there is the Craft and Design center.  Maybe when I’m old I’ll get to stay there all day a weave a basket or something.  We also drove around Rocky Mountain National Park.  It never gets old.

I love this picture or Eva and I with our squinty eyed smiles.

Do you hear the ECHO… echo… echo… echo?

There was mini golfing.

Soooo big!

Elk in the middle of it all.

Crafting.

From squatting

to standing!

Cafeteria food with a view.

At the playground.

Barry’s mom came and stayed from July 4th until the 30th and we packed a lot into that month.  One day she treated us to a ride on the Pikes Peak cog railroad.

I spent most of the trip snuggling one feverish little person or another so I handed the camera to Brenna (I think Barry took a photo or 2 too).  Hunter and Eva slept most of the train ride, partly because they didn’t feel well, but also because of the elevation, I think.

This place above is called Inspiration Point.

It was a fitting trip for that month of patriotism because it was up on top of that mountain that Katharine Lee Bates penned the lyrics to America the Beautiful.  On a clear day you can see 5 states– Kansas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and of course Colorado.