19w4d

As each day brings us closer and closer to Michael's arrival, I find myself just amazed at how utterly different this pregnancy is in just about every single way. There is an optimism and a hope that replaced the hopeful anxiety of Bobby and Maya's pregnancy, the fear of Alexander's pregnancy, and the naivete of Nicholas and Sophia's pregnancy.  As each day passes without issue, the belief that July 10th will be here before we know it (in 18w2d, actually), and the journey there will be, by far, the most normal of any of the kids- from Michael's conception to his birth.

It catchs my breath to think about it, and brings tears to my eyes to think that, finally, after what will be fifteen years of trying and trying and trying, years of heartbreak and loss and just hoping beyond all things certain that our children would be alright, we are breezing through a pregnancy that we never thought would be possible, experiencing things that I never thought were part of my future. 

It's amazing and wonderful and bittersweet, all at the same time.  It's a gift.  Truly, a miraculous gift.

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Our house is starting to resemble the house of people getting ready for a new baby.  We're talking about plans and things to do and when.  There are baby items here and there: a running stroller in the garage... gifts from the kids on the ottoman in our bedroom... a little elephant Peter brought back from his business trip for the baby... and our recent purchase- clothes.  TONS of clothes.  I found a great steal on Craigslist of 0-9 months clothes and bought them over the weekend.  I've only unpacked from the car the 2 huge bags of 0-3 and the small newborn bag and bag of socks and hats; the remaining 4 large bags are actually, truth be told, still in my trunk.  They'll go to basement storage soon... a storage area that needs to be sorted so that the baby stuff can be made easily accessible.

Maya, Bobby, and I looked through the NB and 0-3 stuff; what an experience.  The kids were picking out "favorite" outfits for Michael.  It's no suprise that Bobby's faves were mostly red things, and Maya's faves (with her love for the Madegascar trilogy) included lions, hippos, zebras, and giraffes.  But to see them enjoying that experience, and wanted to touch the items and talk about 'when the baby comes'...  It was really quite the morning.  (And the 15 minute event turned into over twice that, but hey! We all had fun!)

Sunday had its own fun when Peter and I finally settled on the booster seats to order for the kids.  We wanted something that had a wide weight/height range so that Bobby and Maya could have the same one (the more things are identical, the easier!), something with a high back (but could convert when the kids get much older), and something that maintained the 5-point feature (versus the traditional booster's 3-point).  I wanted something LATCH compatible, but that was just a side benefit, and we needed something that was vastly different, width wise, from their current Evenflow Titan seats.  With those seats, the infant seat would fit in the middle, but it was reeeeaallly tight.  Since we dont want to put the kids in the third row seats yet, we decided to go ahead and upgrade to a booster, if we could find one that we liked and that the reviews were good on.  After what feels like a forever of searching (but was really only a few weeks... I think we started looking in December), we settled on the Safety First Go Hybrid Convertible Booster.  They were considerably more expensive than we wanted to pay, but they go from 20 pounds to 100 pounds (and 57"), were high back and 5-point (up to 60 pounds), and had good reviews.  The Evenflo seats will go into Peter's car, which will be convenient since he drops them at school (and then we have to switch cars so I can have mine back).  While we wouldnt be able to put a third seat in the Forester, it will be nice for Peter to be able to take Bobby and Maya without us having to switch seats out of my car then worry about getting them back in.  Their new seats arrive tomorrow or Wednesday (by Wednesday but Amazon has them being delivered tomorrow), so we'll try them out for the Thursday school run. We dont spend a lot of time in the car, so I'm not too worried about the cons of the seat; we take a hanful of trips where the kids would fall asleep annually, so we'll make sure to have extra pillow supports for them when we go on vacation in April or to New England (possibly) in May, but otherwise, for the time we spend in the car, they'll make three across a comfortable possibility.

Three across... an infant seat.... Wow.  We're having a baby in four and a half short months, there is a baby due in our house.  Just wow.