Kai speaks!

Kai talks quite a bit... and he is hilarious! Some recent quotes:

"Mom, I want you turn my hiccups off."
"Pillow, don't be sad. It's fun uh go bed."
"I hear something through my ears."

The Names

When planning for our fourth baby, we knew that if we had a boy, it would be tough to name him. We've already named three boys, after all, using a total of six names. We also have sort of a pattern we wanted to follow of using a family name for the middle name. So when we found out that Noah was indeed another boy, we got right to work to finalize our choice of his name. We also decided to keep this name a secret until he was born, as that is something I've always wanted to do. We've always known the sex of the baby ahead of time, and we know they're going to be big. With all but Alexander, we've even known their birthdays ahead of time. I wanted there to be some element of surprise in the birth announcement!

Alexander Matthew's name came from simply two names that we liked, Matthew being my brother's name. We later regretted using Matthew as Alexander's middle name only because we would have loved to use it for one of our other son's first names, but felt it was a little weird (for us) to do so. We wanted to call him Xander, which we did and still do. He has started to go by Alex at school. Maybe it's due to the great flow of his name, but he gets a lot of "Alexander Matthew!" when he's in trouble.

Jack was, again, just a name that we liked and could agree on. His middle name, Justin, is of course after his father. I sometimes call him JJ. People do sometimes ask if Jack is his real/full name or just a nickname. 

I've loved the name Kai for a while and I'm not sure how we made it to our third son before using the name. I had really wanted to use my mother's name, or a combination of my mom and Justin's mom's names (possibly Karelyn), if we had a girl. When we found out that wouldn't happen (and we thought Kai would be our last baby), I loved the idea of using a "K" name for our son, to honor my mom Karen. Kai's middle name is Damon, which is a sort of combination of both our fathers' names, David and Vernon.

For Noah, we weren't sure what to use as a middle name from the family because there really weren't any other men that we felt strongly about naming our child for. (Not to say there aren't tons of other men in our family that we love and respect!) Honestly, we weren't sure what to use for either name! Since Justin's name is used as Jack's middle name, we thought it might be fun to give our fourth son my initials, an "E A" name like Etan Andrew or Elijah Avery. In fact, at one point we "shook" on Elijah Avery being his name, but after a week or two we just didn't love it and didn't feel that it quite fit with the other boys' names. We decided to drop the idea of an "E A" name and just give him any first name that we liked and give him an "E" middle name for me (Elizabeth). Since he is named for me, we thought it was interesting that both of our nurses during his delivery were also named Elizabeth. We decided on Noah for his first name, which I've always liked. Noah means "peaceful." I ran across the name Everett while browsing through the "E" boys' names, and I really liked the sound of it and thought it went well with Noah. I also liked that it means "brave," which I thought offered a good balance with "peaceful." A little boy with three older brothers will need a little bravery!

I'd love to hear stories of how your kids were named! Blog it or leave the story in comments!

Kai is two!

We're very excited for Kai and Noah because, with birthdays only 4 days apart, they are birthday buddies! On April 14th, Kai turned two. He is very, very TWO. He celebrated with a shopping trip with Daddy, where he picked out a big Muno pillow/doll to go with his Brobee one. (Muno and Brobee are characters from a kids' TV show, Yo Gabba Gabba).

We also gave him his favorite dinner of chicken nuggets, followed by cupcakes for dessert.

Kai is a big talker, knows how to sing his ABCs and count to 14, and is starting to use the potty. He loves Yo Gabba Gabba, Winnie the Pooh, Barney, and Elmo. His favorite things to do are to play outside, do puzzles, read, and play with Magformers. He has the most gorgeous eyes and adores all his brothers. We love you, Kai!

Noah Everett Has Arrived!

On April 10, 2012, our newest little bundle of joy arrived: Noah Everett.

We arrived at the hospital at 5:30AM (sooo early!) for the scheduled induction. To our surprise, things went quickly and I had been admitted, examined (2cm dilated and having contractions), and had Pitocin in my veins by about 6:15AM. As with Kai's delivery, I was already in the early stages of labor so we were able to skip the first stage of the induction, saving us several hours. We are SO lucky!

We had a great nurse named Elizabeth, who was wonderfully cheerful, thoughtful and helpful. Our doctor was Doctor Melnick, of whom we are not fans.We got the impression that neither Elizabeth nor our anesthesiologist liked him much, either.

By about 8AM I was 3cm dilated and just chilling. We figured the baby might not be born until late afternoon and I worried that labor could even progress into the night. But, around 9:30AM the doctor broke my water. That is when things started to happen very quickly. The contractions started to intensify. I got my epidural and the pain subsided again. By 10AM I was at about 5cm and just a bit later (I started to lose track of time by this point), the contractions started to become very painful... then extremely painful. I thought the epidural just wasn't working well and told the nurse I was fine. Justin said, "Um.. are you sure?" and I admitted that the contractions had become very painful. The nurse examined me and I was already fully dilated! This couldn't have been later than 10:30, so I had gone from 5cm to 10cm in just half an hour. No wonder it was painful!

Nurse Elizabeth called for Dr. Melnick, who had me start pushing... then left the room randomly (like I said, we're not fans). He came back a few minutes later, but really wasn't much help. The baby's nurse arrived and was coincidentally also named Elizabeth.

Noah Everett was born at 10:54AM. He weighed 9 pounds and 9 ounces and was 22 inches long. He was (and is) perfect in every way. He looks a lot like Jack did when he was born.

Everything went very smoothly for the rest of our stay at the hospital. I was soon transferred upstairs to the maternity ward, but I didn't stay long! Noah and I went home the next afternoon to introduce Noah to his brothers and start the next phase of our lives.

Mom Outnumbered, Indeed.

Spring Break Fun: Movie Night

I wanted to make a real effort to make Spring Break extra fun for my kids, because I know that soon we will be somewhat restricted with our activities due to having a newborn. One activity that the kids were the most excited about was to have a movie night with friends. So we invited three families of our friends (who also happen to be neighbors) over for pizza and a movie (and popcorn in the lunch bags). The kids were totally thrilled and completely adorable. We had these eight big kids who actually sat and watched the movie, plus three toddlers who roamed and played. The moms were able to relax and chat a bit, too. It was a great success and something we absolutely must repeat!

Spring Break Fun: Egg Hunt

Every year since we've moved to Frederick, we've had an Easter Egg Hunt with our Tot Lot friends. This year we had gorgeous weather and the kids had fun as usual. Kai was especially excited to be searching for CANDY! He had to be reminded to just stick the eggs in his bag and go for more, or he probably would have stopped after each egg in order to eat the candy!

Jack's Field Trip to Fountain Rock

Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying Jack on a preschool field trip to Fountain Rock Nature Center. They saw a presentation called "Going Buggy," all about different sorts of bugs. The kids were hilariously obsessed with stinkbugs, and learned that in some areas, people actually cook and eat stink bugs. The cooking apparently gets rid of the smell. Jack actually took in a lot of information from the presentation and has been sharing it with Alexander over the past few days. Most interesting to him were the ways in which different bugs protect themselves.

After the presentation, the kids had time to explore the nature center and take a walk to look for bugs and signs of bugs. It was a nice time, especially to have something special for Jack and me to do together before the baby is born.