The Results

Ok folks here are the results of the baby poll. (Sorry you could not see what people choose as we went along.) Katie, the 14th has come and gone, maybe next time. I see that a lot of you have chosen this Friday as you birth day of choice, we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I think that at this point I’m just ready to be able to sleep like a normal person, without having a big ball in the way. So hard to turn over and bring a pillow of almost any size with you. Other than that things are great.

Your Name? What is the What day will How much will
sex of baby? baby arrive? baby weight?
Katie Girl January 14, 2009 8 lbs 12 oz
Christy Boy February 6, 2009 9 lbs. 3oz
Aimee Carr Boy January 22, 2009 8 lb. 10 oz
Melissa Belter Boy January 31, 2009 8 lbs. 7 oz
Missy Dunn Boy January 24, 2009 10 lbs 2 oz (sorry Al)
Jordan Girl January 26, 2009 8 lbs 10 oz
Jenny Girl January 16, 2009 7 lbs 8 oz
Mom Libby Boy January 16, 2009 8 lbs 2 oz.
Anjie Behunin Girl January 16, 2009 7 lbs. 13 oz.
Ben Boy January 16, 2009 10 lbs 7 oz
Cara Boy January 28, 2009 8 lbs 6 oz
Shelann Boy January 23, 2009 8 lbs 8 oz
Angelina Libby Boy January 16, 2009 8 lbs. 5 oz
(Great Grandma)

Home Depot

I feel bad for some Olympic athletes whose sponsor was Home Depot. They just announced that they are pulling out of sponsoring the Olympics at this time which make the athletes have to find someone else to “help” them out. I really liked Home Depots program because they allowed the athletes to work part-time and receive full time pay while they trained and went to events. I always thought it was pretty cool to see their ads as well featuring the Athletes who worked for them. I hope that the decision made by Home Depot does not jeopardize any athlete from being able to compete in their sport. I would imagine it is hard to find a job while training that would be flexible with hours and pay. I mean really we completly helped Home Depot have a wonderful fourth quarter, so I just don't see what the problem is.



As a side note having small children and cleaning your house come sometimes be pointless. I mopped the floors yesterday and today have a huge mess in the kitchen that I will have to mop again on Sunday. It just sucks, don’t they understand Mommy does not want to or have time to mop more than once per week. When will they be old enough to mop and maybe then they can appreciate where I am coming from. Sorry for my incoherent thoughts above.

Lead

Once again our Government is hard at work attempting to protect our children from the dangers of lead poisoning. Or are they just trying to make restrictions on overseas importers on the products that are being sold by our retailers today? Last summer a law was passed that will be put into action on February 10, 2009 that will ban all sales of consumer products to children, 12 and under, that contain 600 ppm of lead. The real kicker here is that as the years go by that standard will decrease, so long as it is technologically feasible. At this point you might be asking yourself how this will affect your buying power and what you purchase for your children.

This new law covers all children products, clothing, books, toys, playthings and anything else that is directed towards a child. The ban also includes reselling of items. Although it does state that resellers “. . . are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits. . . However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content. . .” If you like to purchase some of your child’s wardrobe at resell shops or consignment sales, there may be a few challenges in making that happen. I can understand not reselling an item that has been recalled for safety issues or what not but clothing and books. How are we to know what is safe unless we all start buying 100% cotton or other organic materials for our children’s clothing.

I still feel that this law is really focused on trying to change the standards in which items are made after the February 10th date, especially on retailers like Wal-Mart or Target who have a majority of overseas imports to stock their store shelves. Realistically not every parent in the US is going to log onto a web site to see what items have been recalled or to verify the lead level before making a purchase. For those of us who register our new children’s products once we get them home should be notified if for any reason there is a recall but probably will not be notified if the lead level is too high by government standards to resell. What do we do with all those products now? Ship them off to a landfill where it will take hundreds of years for it to decompose. As opposed to sending them on to a nice family who could use the product but maybe could not afford to purchase a brand new model.

Don’t get me wrong I am all about caring for my children and making their home environment the safest it can be but what about the environment they are growing up in. What will we leave behind for future generations? Will all of our natural resources be used up because of these types of laws? How will this law affect our economy?

Random baby thoughts

I can hardly believe that my due date is so close. I am really wondering though when the baby will come. Several of you have made your guess, and many of you have not. I will post the guesses just as soon as the poll closes next Wednesday, at least I think that’s when I set it for, I don’t remember and I can’t seem to find that information out online. Go figure! So be sure to log your vote if you have not already. I have been having some “contractions” but they are not doing anything or making any changes.

But since I was a terrible mother and neglected to take a belly shot in December we’re going to do that one now and hopefully one before we leave for the hospital. We’ll just have to wait and see how that all comes down the pipe too. I really just want to know what the baby will be, a boy or a girl, that way we can stop calling it baby and give it a name.

Names are such a challenge to decide on as well, but I think we have finally settled on one for each gender so it should be interesting which way it comes out, or in my opinion who wins. I have mostly given up on trying to get Ben to pick something different for a boy’s first name and I have caved. It’s really had to compete with Barrett’s name in our opinion, it’s just so cool. Plus his nick name rocks and completely fits him. That makes it a little bit of a challenge to come up with something just as cool; for a boy at least. I’m sure it will all work out in the end!

That’s my little baby update, no new baby to speak of but sometime in the next 20 to 30 days. I don’t think the doctor will let me go too far over my due date, but stranger things have happened.

Go Play Outside

Here at last is our mostly finished jungle gym for the kids in the backyard. Ben had so much fun designing and building this for this kids that the project just kept going. We still have some finishing touches to do, like put some shade on top, close of some of the sides and stain it for weather proofing, other than that most of it is completed. Plus I think there are a few more elements that he wants to add for the kids. One special one being an adjustable monkey bar set for the kids. He wants it to be able to go up as the kids get taller. Pretty exciting if you as me, I think the kids are going to love it. They already have so much fun playing on the structure. So whenever you are ready come on over and we can let the kids play to their hearts content. It should be nice for when the baby comes and I need a little big kid break. (Oh yea please ignore our backyard mess, we really need a shed.)

Christmas Lights

What would a Christmas Season be without looking at lights? We usually try to find a light display, because you never know what neighborhood is going to have multiple houses all decked out. After all we had lights up but today it was so windy they came down. So instead of just aimlessly driving around town we visited a light production called Prairie Lights. It was so much fun to see the kids get all excited about the different displays and lights that we saw. Bear was very concerned about seeing bears in the display and kept asking to see more. Isabelle really wanted to take a lot of pictures of what she saw and enjoyed pretty much everything. I think her favorite was the “gingerbread house.” Not really sure if that’s what it was, but that is what we called it. Overall the light display was pretty good and a quick drive through since we went after Christmas. I think had we gone earlier in the month it would have been crazy. One of my favorite parts was the “tunnel” of lights you could drive thru at the end, it had lots of purple and blue, which is always different from traditional Christmas colors.

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to send out a quick note to everyone on Christmas Day. I know things will be busy and crazy for everyone, but I hope that you can all sit back and enjoy your day. Christmas is one of my favorite seasons and such a wonderful time to remember how it all came about. No matter what your traditions might be I hope you have some Christmas Spirit to spread around to those you will see. Merry Christmas!

Looks who's Four!

Happy Birthday Isabelle! I can hardly believe that you are four years old. Time flies when you are having fun. I’m so glad that we had a chance to celebrate your special day together and that you had so much fun. We started out your day with a waffle breakfast, candle included. Then it was off to Ice Skate the morning away. You tried to skate on one foot and all by yourself without help from a grown up or the wall. Not to be out done you also had a chance to ride the carousel thanks, to Bear remembering that was on his list of things to do today. Before you could open presents we had to have “noodle” dinner. Thanks to Pioneer Woman we had a great “noodle” dinner option. Then with family all around we had a very special cake, shaped like a butterfly. What dinner would be complete without cake! Afterwards you had a chance to open your presents. What a great surprise that was, a few of your favorites, are the play kitchen, dance lessons and blocks. You were ready to show off your dancing skills once you were dressed for the part; I think that you will have too much fun learning how to dance. Here is to another wonderful year full of new and exciting things.

Texas Ice

Here is how Texas does Ice! That’s right we do not wait for the weather to turn bad, we just have it trucked in and sculpted, and then keep it in a really cold room. Every year (I think) at the Gaylord Texan the resort puts together a “show” called Ice. You can walk though this 9 degree ice box and see the marvelous talents of the people who have taken the time to carve some beautiful items in a really cold environment. They are nice enough to hand out really thick parkas so that you can fully enjoy the experience especially if you get stuck in line or have to wait for any amount of time. I think one of my favorite displays was the Santa sleigh and reindeer set up as a slide. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of that one because the crowd was a little bit crazy. The other one I really liked was the display that looks like those fancy antique glass ornaments. Either way it was cold but entertaining.

Holiday "Letter" 2008

Usually I do a holiday letter with our Christmas card but since we are having a baby sometime soon I decided that this year would be different and I would wait to make an official update after the baby. The price of stamps you know. But I don’t think I’m going to do a letter. So for all those people who don’t read my blog, they better get hot and take a look. With out further ado here is our year in review:

Happy Holidays to all our Friends and Family,

Our biggest news this year is two fold, one we moved back to Texas, and two we are expecting baby number three sometime in the New Year. We were excited to be closer to family in Texas but very sad to leave behind our wonderful friends in Utah. They will be dearly missed but hopefully we’ll still get to see them every so often. (Read I expect everyone to visit after the baby is born. j/k) It took us a while to find a new house in Texas but at last we did, and we think we got a pretty good deal, purchasing it from HUD. A very trying process but a great learning experience. Ironically it is very close to our first house that we purchased in Texas, who knew. We still want to live out in the country so one day we’ll get around to moving out of town. What country and where has yet to be determined, after all small town life is very different from city or suburb life.

The kids are doing great. Isabelle will be turning four this holiday season and is very excited about that. She plans to rule the world one day, and I’m sure has it all worked out as to how she will get that done. She loves school and really enjoys starting to read, science and of course playing. We tried soccer this past fall and she enjoys it when the ball is close to her, other wise the action is not quite the same. But she did a great job and hopefully will try it again in the spring. But I think before then she might get a chance to try out dance. I know what could I be thinking but, she is always dancing around, and moving her little body, so I guess it won’t hurt to try. Nobody said it is a permanent activity.

Bear is just Bear! He is so full of energy and goes about a mile a minute. He turned two in July and has been going non-stop. As we say he is our little energizer Bear. He really likes to do what ever Isabelle is doing and has a hard time sitting still for anything longer than five seconds. He loves his shapes and balls, and hopes play as much as he can all day. I think one of the coolest things about Bear is that he has not picked a hand preference yet and switches back and forth. I am still secretly hoping for a lefty but who knows maybe he’ll never make a choice. He also did a soccer program this year called Soccer Tots. He loved it! It was great for him, he got to run around, play with other kids, and do activities that are skill building for later in life when he plays on a real soccer team. I think we’ll have to try that again, since he had so much fun.

Ben and I are doing great. Ben enjoys his work most days and is happy to be back in Texas. I know strange, right? It’s always interesting to see people whom you have not seen in years and they are like, didn’t you move. Especially since we pretty much moved back to where we lived before. I’m doing well with the kids and enjoy staying home with them, trying to make them into wonderful little people, and slowly awaiting the arrival of number three. Next year should be pretty interesting so stay tuned and check us out semi regularly to see what is going on in the Libby-Thesing household.

Happy Holidays, from Ben, Allison, Isabelle, and Barrett

Cookie Exchange

Wow, have you even baked cookies for a cookie exchange? I just did last night, what a load of work. But the end result is kind of fun, you get to get a dozen of the cookies that the other people baked as well. The added advantage is that you get to taste everything before hand, so you will know if you ever what to make that cookie again. But then the downside is that your left with all these cookies to eat. Not exactly the best thing when you are trying to show the doctor that you are not really gaining a lot of weight around this very tricky holiday season. Oh well, it all comes off eventually right?

First Haircut

Isabelle finally had her first haircut. I know she is almost four and has never had it professionally cut. What do you mean by professionally you say, well her brother has taken a little off the top every now and then, which of course takes me forever to find out from where. All I know is that there is hair on the floor and he did the cutting. I guess their even, since early on Isabelle tried to cut his hair as well. Anyway, if you did not see it before you really would not know it had been cut. Ben walks in and his response if “. . . did you get her hair cut?” Well yes, we just trimmed it up a bit so that it might “look” thicker, with out the end being all straggly. She did a pretty good job of sitting still, I think she really enjoyed watching the movie while she had her hair done. The place we went is not as cool as Cookie Cutters but it helps to entertain the kids. The stylist even said that some parents come in with their kids to have their hair cut, while the kids play. Not a bad idea if you do not have the time to wait on hubby or other babysitting alternatives. Here she is in her new hair glory. Now I do not normally take pictures of the back of my children, but it worked the best to show how “different” her hair looked.

Are you a spelunker?

What is a spelunker you ask? Well I will tell you, it is a person who goes caving. Now why not just use the word caver or something else? Too simple I’m sure. Spelunker makes me think that someone decided one day to make up their own word for what they were doing and it just happened to catch on. Now you may also be wondering how I know this term. Just so you do not think I’m a crazy word person I happened to hear it today on NPR, and thought it was funny enough to mention here. I guess if you find yourself exploring caves you can therefore be called a spelunker, how cool would that be. And look this is what you could look like after a long day of exploration.

Santa Clause

Now I don’t usually support the commercialization of Christmas, by taking the kids to see Santa and take some pictures, and continuously talk about Santa and what he is going to bring for Christmas, but this year, family members have been a little crazy about that. Maybe it’s the age of the kids and now that they are getting older, they understand a little bit better, who knows. I just try to acknowledge the kids when they ask questions about Santa if they have any, or ignore the whole situation. After all, stores were putting out Christmas stuff in October, before Halloween was over, just a bit soon. I know the economy is not where everyone would like to see it but come on, wait just a bit. Don’t get me wrong we still put out a plate of cookies, carrots and milk, but I try not to make Santa into a big deal. I think from now on Santa is just bringing the stockings and all other gifts are going to be from Mom and Dad or relatives.

Enough about my Santa philosophy; basically I broke down today and took the kids to see Santa. I figured it would be a pretty easy trip, no lines, we would be in and out. A good plan, going in the middle of the week and the kids did not disappoint. Bear was pretty excited about the whole adventure, and Isabelle did really well too. I kept asking them what they were going to ask Santa for so that they would have it down and Santa would understand. Bear can be a little hard to understand some days. Since I did not want the people to think I was stealing their thunder I just took a picture of the kids before they went in, but their Santa picture was pretty cute. If only my printer was talking to my computer I could probably scan it in, right now you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Dad's Helpers

For Christmas we are building the kids a backyard play set. Ben has a whole design worked out in his head for how he wants it to go. So far the kids are very excited and can hardly wait until they can play. But before they can climb on anything they have to help Dad transfer the first “tower” out to the back yard so he can put it together. They were so cute being Dad’s little helpers. Bear was just big enough to carry some of the smaller pieces of wood but had some trouble with the ones that were a little bit bigger. I hope Ben is able to at least get the swings in before the New Year. The kids already want to climb on the one tower that’s up but there are no stairs yet. I think some stairs, the swings and maybe a little sand pit would be a great place to start. We’ll see how far Dad can get before Christmas.

Oh yea when Ben went up to go get concrete Home Depot was having a project day, and the kids made these really cute Art Easels and even go to get aprons and see Santa. I guess they were doing the project very close to the front door and they asked Ben if the kids wanted to participate, and of course he said “. . . why yes, yes we would.”

Thanksgiving

Once back out to the hinter lands, we had to wait four more days before any of the fun people would arrive. Mom and Dad are just not a cool as all of our cousins. But once they got there, the fun times were a rollin’. Crafts, playing, Wii, and so much food, were the staples of our long weekend. Thanksgiving was nice, the bird was a little fried, but I hear it tasted great, since I watched them cook it I had a hard time trying to eat it. Go figure, my food aversion during pregnancy are very strange. Then on Friday we did the traditional Christmas with the in-laws, which is always crazy and wild but I think that everyone had fun and was please with their gifts. We could not get a tree though it was raining all day long. Oh well, we went the next day to get the tree. That was pretty fun too, we let a three year old pick out the perfect tree, a little on the Charlie Brown side but not too bad once you got it in the room and up with some decorations. Somehow the tree was not decorated though the day it was brought home but instead at six in the morning before the first group left to go home. Pretty crazy stuff, the kids had tons of fun putting the ornaments on the tree. We even managed to get a round of bowling where the adults like to see who can best the next person. It took some a while to warm up but soon the games got a little bit better. I think the most entertaining bowler went to Isabelle who after a while did not want any help and instated on doing it herself, with a little twirl here and a twist there. Who knew you could dance and bowl at the same time. Overall our Thanksgiving weekend was pretty good. I only finished three books while I was out there and came home with two more to read, so that says a lot.

Swim Party

We started out Thanksgiving weekend a little early. Say about a week early, to go out and finish helping my MIL to ready her house. Sometime after she quit her job at the church she decided to clean out her house, I’m pretty sure she quit sometime in September but hey what ever. The kids and I went out early to help her finish out as much as possible before the rest of the family arrived. Fortunately for the kids we did get to take a break and come back to Dallas for a swim birthday party.

Isabelle says that we her favorite part of the holiday time. The swim party well before hand, too cute, and of course Bear says the same thing because Isabelle says it. Needless to say they had so much fun. We went to a local Dallas area swim school, which happens to be owned by my girlfriends Mother, who were there to see. My girlfriends son turned one last Saturday and to celebrate we had a swim. It was too much fun for the kids. Bear freaked out the lifeguards, with his antics and being the first one down the slide, but other than that he did pretty good. I think Isabelle had lots of fun playing in the water in November. Always a special treat, especially when it is cold outside. So Happy Birthday Joshua B, we really enjoyed our special time and hope to see you again soon

Survey

Ok, since I really have nothing to say, I know crazy right. I decided to put my baby survey up early. It is over on the right hand side at the top. I think I will leave it open until two weeks before baby is due and we can then go from there. I figure there will be a fabulous prize at the end, I just do not know what. To help you out with your decision making, here is some background information:

Isabelle was two weeks early and weighed in at 8 pounds 12 ounces. We did find out she was a girl all the rest was guess work.

Barrett was one week late, and we made him come out, but he weighed in at 9 pounds even.

I hope that helps I will probably take a couple more belly shots before it's all said and done, I'm not sure if you can change your answer but if you can why not. And as I think on it further I will let you know what wonderful prize I will be sending the winner. So make sure you get your votes in, and spread the word, everyone loves to win. If you have any questions please let me know. I think I will do two winners, unless someone gets every single question correct. The winners will have to have the sex and date correct or the sex and weight correct. Of course I will post who wins, unless you do not want other people to know. And if none of this makes sense please tell me, because after all my brain might not be working right because of the extra hormones.

The Baby

Ok so I don't usually post after I see the doctor but several people have asked how big the baby is. In reality there is no way to really tell, very accurately. But I asked today and Dr. A said that "normal" pregnancies at 29 weeks the baby weights 2.2 pounds. Now for me that means a little bit bigger, my tummy measured at 32 weeks so I would think somewhere around 3.5 pounds. Dr. A did not want to commit to a specific weight, because why get your hopes up. For all those people out there who think my belly is not very big, well I have news for you, it is. When I say that my belly measured 32 weeks, they take a tape measure and place it along your belly from the top of your uterus down to your pelvic bone and that is how big you are. I think those locations are correct, either way you get the idea. I hope that helps, we are right on track to having a good size new born.

Go Barack Obama

History was made last night with the election of the first African-American President in the United States. No matter who you voted for, this was an amazing night and something to go down in the history books. I thought it was very exciting to watch everything unfold before us as the states closed their polls across the country, and the electoral votes were tallied. I hope that everyone who wanted to vote had chance to vote, and show their support for their candidate of choice. For those who did not get a chance to vote, hopefully they will next time around. I feel that it is important for people to let their voice be heard and vote. There will always be something a person does not like about a candidate and their views but hopefully that issue will never come up. And if it does, maybe by showing support of your opinion in the form of a letter would help change the outcome based on what you believe. I am excitedly waiting to see what changes will be made in the coming years. This election year has been amazing and record-breaking all at the same time. I’m sure there will be good things to come from this election in the coming years.