Sometime back in September Ian came down the stairs in the morning with something to tell me.  “Mom,” he said, “we’re going to have a girl baby and her name is Eva.  She is going to be zero and she’s going to have a pink shirt that is a dress.”  He told me about our girl baby every day for at least a month.  After a few days her pink shirt that is a dress also had butterflies on it.  He would talk about where she would sleep, where she would sit in the car, how she would fit at the dinner table.  Sometimes I wondered if he really knew what he was talking about.  Other times I just attributed it to the imaginary friend stage he was in.

Barry and I had been talking about whether or not it was time to add another child to our family.  He definitely had that “someone is missing” feeling.  I guess, maybe I did too, but I also wasn’t quite sure if I could really add another child to my plate.  If there was going to be another baby I really, really wanted it to be a girl.  I read books and charted my cycles all summer, but it wasn’t until the fall that I felt like I was ready to try and would be fine with whatever Heavenly Father sent us.  I would certainly do my part to make the odds for a girl as high as possible– but if a boy was what really needed to be added to our family, then that would be perfectly okay.  So, for the first time ever, we actually tried to get pregnant.  It took a few months, and on the month I actually ended up with a positive pregnancy test I had absolutely no signs of ovulation.  My certainty and plans were completely thrown up in the air!  How could I know if our timing was right?  Were the odds of having a girl really in my favor?  I was convinced that I’m just meant to be the mother of one girl and lots of boys, and since I was trying to manipulate things and take matters into my own hands Heavenly Father just had to intervene.  He must have different plans.

But still, through those sick and tired days (read Christmastime) Ian still talked about our girl baby and her yellow hair and pink dress and where she would sleep.

And guess what?  That little Eva is 20 weeks along, kicking around in my tummy.  We had an ultrasound today and 2 sonographers corroborated the evidence.  There were no little boy parts (which I am very accustomed to seeing) just 3 little lines that are the tell-tale signs of a little girl!

So, I’m announcing to the world that the 6th little Croker person will be joining us at the end of the summer!

Ian’s little Eva was not just an imaginary friend.  She’s his sister– and he knew she was coming all along.

Meet Four Fusion– our resident super hero who just turned 4.   He picked the name (with help from his sister and a dictionary and trying to find a word that started with F that sounded good with 4) just for his super hero birthday party.  Barry was in charge of the cup cakes and I was in charge of the super hero costumes.

I made a dozen little capes,

and a dozen little masks.

The little supers all drew their own super hero emblem on the back of their capes.  (I can’t take credit for the genius idea though, I found it at Creative Kismet while I was asking dear Google how I was going to make a super hero birthday party really fun for 3 and 4 year olds.)

Brenna and Jonah created Super Hero IDs for everyone to color and fill out what their name and super powers were.

We attempted to play some Super Says,

but ten 3 and 4 year olds have attention spans about the length of one stint of standing on one leg with one arm in the air.

So they mostly just went wild in the basement.

The kids loved their capes and the really hard-core heroes loved their masks too.  The felt was a little itchy on their faces– so if you want to try this I suggest using craft foam or something else that wouldn’t stretch out on the eye holes and wouldn’t have the itch factor for the masks.

Happy Birthday super guy!  You really are one of the cutest people that have ever existed.  We love your imagination and your strong will.  We’re so thankful you were born– and especially that you’re ours!

(I think every one of these pictures that I picked for this post were taken by Barry– so thanks Barry for being a good photographer!)

We played a game of pictionary, pulling words out of a bowl and drawing them for all to guess.  The big kids thought Ian’s drawings were too cute to erase until they were documented with photos.

After he was done drawing each one he insisted on copying the word from his slip of paper.

Can you stand the cuteness?

He was much more eager to erase than anyone else was.