This post has no pictures, but it’s totally worth reading. I promise!

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.

thankfully, my husband is an engineer

So, if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that often when I show you a finished project I say something like, “I’ve been making this in my mind for a long, long time,” or “I’ve been dreaming this up for a couple of years,” or something like that.

Well, this is no exception.

We were living in a tiny apartment in Alabama in the beginning of our summer of transition to Denver when a good friend sent me this link with exclamation points and excitement that I HAD to make one– it made her think of me. And I completely agreed that I NEEDED one somewhere in my new house, whenever it would be that I got settled. Since we’ve been here (for 2 1/2 years) I’ve been imagining those little birds in corners and bedrooms and had settled on just the place– a corner of the front room above the love seat that needed a little color.

But now that it’s made it is a little big and I’m afraid it would swing into the blinds or the bookshelf and be too much of a temptation for the climbing 2 year old to bat at. At the moment it is hanging in the doorway between the front room and my art room, but I’m thinking today I’ll put up a hook over my drafting table and let the birdies live there.

I’ve been on a bit of a spring-cleaning/ redecorating kick lately with a long mental list of things I want to do around the house and this was one of those things on the list. In a burst of spontaneity the other morning Jonah and I went through my scrap bin with bird pattern in hand and found pieces that were the right size, cut them out, matched them up, and whipped up some birds. That went really fast– especially with his help stuffing them. With all that built up momentum I gathered some sticks at the park the next day and started sewing birds to branches– only to have them hang upside down like bats. I discovered I needed to put some weight in the bottom of the birds so they weren’t top heavy and to use screw eyes to secure string to the branches so they wouldn’t twist. I dedicated the next day to ripping out tail seams and spooning in rice, then attempting to hang and balance it all again– to no avail.

Finally, when Barry had a free night we tried it all again. We found a few helpful things:

-Attach the birds to the branch with wire instead of sewing them on so they are easy to reposition.

-Thicker branches twist and roll less than skinny ones.

-We ended up using thin picture wire instead of invisible thread to hang the branches because it was more stable.

-Once we found the perfect bird positions we squeezed a little hot glue in to keep them there.

So, now it’s done and so fun to look at! When my art room is all decluttered and organized I’ll need some photo documentation, so I’ll show you its permanent home then.

a super-duper Four Fusion

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!)

hipsta

Barry surprised me with a new phone on Monday. The one had was from 2003– but his is the one that really needs replacing. We got it when we lived in Albuquerque– so 2001 probably? It has a greenish screen with pixelated gray text. He had to hold the battery on with tape for a while until he found its discarded twin in a box of junk and switched batteries with it.

Anyway, as I was saying, I got a new phone. It’s pretty cool. It’s an iPhone 4. It can do everything but fold laundry. If you find the app for that make sure you let me know.

I’m having fun with the Hipstamatic. Changing lenses and flashes and film with a flick of my finger is so fun. I’ve never been much into technology and games (except for tetris while I was supposed to be writing papers in college), but I have to say this gadget is pretty cool. I mean, it reminds me when it’s time to take kids to karate– my hand written paper planners could never do that for me, so even things that were written down in multiple places would get forgotten.

And my kids can’t keep their hands off of it. I told them I will not put kid tempting games on it because it needs to be a PHONE– but maybe I could find a good knitting app…