about a month left

For the last 7 months or so, my calendar has said to have everything ready for the baby by tomorrow (4 weeks before her due date, although i don't think she'll come until august). Now i've realized that i'm just not going to be all ready before she comes; there's always more to do. But we are at least getting closer to getting the important things done before she comes. Joshua's had some big projects due for school, but he's been doing a lot of work and reading to get ready for this little girl, too. Her room is almost finished and looks great. Samson enjoys sleeping in there, too. It's both scary and exciting to think that there's going to be a baby girl in this family soon! Click on the expectnet link below to put in your guess about evalana's birth stats.

Photo is my belly at 35 weeks.

we're weird, but you probably already knew that

We had another appointment with our doctor today. We’ve worked out a lot of the details of what we’re wanting for Evalana’s birth. Just six weeks left to go! Evalana is currently head-down, so maybe she’ll decide to stay that way. Her body is all on my left side, though, so I have a pretty lopsided looking belly. Dr. Galvin said that everything looks great, and then she said that we should have a baby on the large side of normal. I asked exactly what she meant by “large” side of normal. She said “Well, I don’t think you’re going to have a runt.” Okay, well at least she’s still in the normal range I guess. Big-normal is healthy, right?
So here are some things we’re doing that I’ve heard are not so normal:
• We’re wanting as natural of a birth as possible. (http://bradleybirth.com/FAQs.aspx)
• We’re not really using diapers. (http://www.natural-wisdom.com/faq.htm)
• We won’t be having Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy at our house (http://tomakehimknown.blogspot.com/2009/12/telling-truth-at-christmas-or-why-our.html)
Who knows what other strange things we’ll be doing, but we’d be happy to hear any ideas about how we can think differently than what is just generally accepted. And we'd be happy to share if you want to hear more about the strange things we're doing :-).

Doula

We decided to hire a doula. You can check out more info at http://www.kansascitydoula.com/whatisadoula.php if you want. We're looking forward to having her help us through our labor and birth. We've been reading, watching videos, and are almost finished with our bradley classes. We're looking forward to hopefully having a good birth experience. We're praying for Evalana to turn head-down since right now she's still breech. She still has a month or so to turn, so we're trying some different methods which will hopefully help to get her into the correct position (music, ice, light, positions). We're still working on Evalana's room--just three weeks left until the date i said i wanted to have everything all ready. It's coming up soon now!
Please also pray for our friends and their 15-month-old baby, Corinne; they just found out that she has cancer. You can check out updates at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/corinneschneider
Also, on June 9th, Joshua's uncle, Carl, fell off a ladder at work and landed on his head. He is now in the hospital with brain swelling and a collapsed lung, so please pray for him as well. His updates are at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/carlgonzales
Thank you!

up or down?

I think she must just be doing summersaults in there. Now her hiccups are higher up again. We'll keep praying that she gets in the position she needs to be in. She's an active little girl these days. We started painting her room on Sunday. It's fun to be getting ready for our evalana!

hiccups

I think she turned head down! She woke me up in the middle of the night last night for the first time, and she was hiccuping low down on my belly. Yea God! Now I just hope she decides she's very comfortable upside down for the next couple of months. On Saturday we got to have a baby party with my friends, which was a great time of prayer for Evalana and our family, some good advice, and just wonderful friends.