Do not labor and drive

Some people might know that when I am pregnant, after about month 4-5 my uterus becomes very sensitive to changes in barometric pressure. This means I become a human barometer and I start cramping, contracting, and generally becoming very crabby before storms roll in. Once the storms actually get here, it's not usually a problem. Sometimes these pains come up to 24 hours before the storm does, and the greater the pains the bigger the storm. Well, yesterday I looked at the forecast and noticed that a drop in temperature was due to occur today (high of 70 to a high of 55 today) but there was no rain associated with this change, just some wind predicted. I figured if I did have any pains, they would be mild.

Michael turns 2!

Michael had a birthday (*cough cough*, a month ago, ahem)! He turned the big two, which really isn't all that big but hey, two is still a cool age. :) We've started the tradition of coloring signs for the kids and hanging them up the night before so that they see them in the morning. I have decided to name the rest of my kids names 4 letters or less in direct result of this (not really, but it is making me seriously reconsider my current favorite girl name of Charlotte for the new baby). Doug colored the bulk of the letters while I was at my presidency meeting. He even freehand drew the Lightening McQueen on the M, just because he is that awesome.

1st Grade and bedtimes

 Well, now that Doug and I have gone to our first parent/teacher conference of the school year, I guess I should tell you about Evelynn starting 1st grade. So Evelynn started 1st grade this year. And she was very happy about it. :) She has the first track of school, meaning she starts at 8:00 am and gets done at 2:15pm. It took us a few days to figure out exactly how much time we needed in the morning to get ready, which lead to the first day of school having an extra 30 minutes before we had to leave. But we've finally got the timing right to incorporate maximum sleeping time (for me, not for her. I've only had to wake her up for school 2 or 3 times) and still accomplish the morning to do list. Like I mentioned, Evelynn, and now Eloise by default of sharing the same room, have become early risers, much to my dismay. Instead of waking up at 7:30 like they have been for a long time, it is now 6:30. Which means that the normal 8:30 bedtime was just an hour too late, and meltdowns were becoming way to frequent. We're slowing moving bedtime up as the days get shorter. We're somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 now, and its improved the overall house mood quite a bit. I also brought up an old alarm clock for the girls, not intending it as an alarm but as a way to regulate when they left their rooms in the morning. Starting netflix unsupervised at 6:30am is not a good habit I'm thinking. We had a lesson in numbers (mostly for Eloise's sake) and emphasized what 7:00 am looked like, and what it meant if they didn't see that magic number 7 on the screen, and what they were allowed to do before the 7 appeared (stay in bed, read, stay quiet, go back to sleep) and what they were NOT allowed to do (come out of their room, scream at each other, scream at mom down the hall that they wanted breakfast, etc). It's been working out rather nicely, except for the first two nights. Somehow, magically, twice, the switch was turned on to activate the radio alarm to go off at midnight, at full volume. Two nights in a row. Hopefully someone has learned their lesson about messing with the buttons and getting alarming noises blasted in their room.