At my appointment, the doctor confirmed what I already suspected to be true: probably no baby this week. I’m at the exact same place I was at this point in my last preganancy – dilated 2cm and 50% effaced. The doctor thinks it’ll be about another week before baby comes, and I tend to agree. The average lateness of our three babies is seven days overdue, so it’s no big shock to me.

Can I confess something? People will often now say to me, “Hang in there,” or “Oh, you poor thing, hopefully he’ll come soon,” or “You look like you’re ready to have that baby!” or something like that.

But for the first time, I’m in no rush to have the baby.

I love Jaden with all my heart, and I know it’ll be exciting to have him join our family outside the womb.

But I’m also slightly terrified of being Chief Diaper-changer, Owwie-kisser, Fight-breaker-upper, Entertainer, Bather, Discipline-administrator, Safety Guard, Godly Example, (i.e. MOMMY) to FOUR kids ages 4-1/2 and under. Oh, and I’m also first-and-foremost WIFE (which has its own job description). Is there enough of me to go around?

In my tired humanness, I think “no.” But I do know that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

I’m just okay with waiting a while to see that verse in action.

Right now Jaden is warm, cozy, and fed. And I’m okay with that.

Welp, my belly officially looks huge in the latest picture, and part of the reason is that Jaden has definitely dropped. I’m waddling more and just more uncomfortable in general. I will have an OB appointment tomorrow morning, so I guess I’ll have more to report after that!

I have to say THANK YOU to Dan and Emily for coming over on Saturday to help around the house. We got a lot of things accomplished that I don’t plan to do for a while after Baby J is born…Emily scrubbed down both our bathrooms (HOORAY – my least favorite chore!), helped me organize and inventory our chest freezer, and helped me clean out our fridge and freezer. Even though I still need to dust and vacuum, it feels SO good to have those deep cleaning things done. Dan also helped with some man jobs. (Good thing he was a maintenance man at Cornerstone!) And he let the kids watch Spiderman videos on his iPhone and read to them from our Home Depot do-it-yourself book. (Sounds boring, but they sat there and listened to him read it for SO long!) Anyway, Dan and Em, thank you so much! We love and appreciate you!

Okay, now I seriously need to finish packing that hospital bag…

We had a great weekend with my mom, sister, and her kids here while Luke and Karl (sister’s hubby) were at Men’s Retreat. Of course we missed Luke, but it was nice to have some quality time with my family!

My mom so graciously watched all five kiddos so Melissa and I could have some sister time on both Friday and Saturday. We spent a lot of time at garage sales, and M also treated me to lunch at Olive Garden. YUM! It was really nice to have some sister time without kids screaming in the background! (And I was able to stock up more on clothes for the kiddos, which was great.)

Melissa also came with me to my OB appointment on Friday. She got to hear Jaden’s heartbeat again. (She was actually the one that was there when we found out the gender.) She left the room for some parts of the appointment (*ahem*), in which I found out I’m dilated 1cm! I honestly haven’t felt much of anything at all in the way of contractions, so I was guessing I wasn’t dilated. But yep, 1cm. That’s a start.

I scheduled my next appointment for Monday, May 11, but I’m going to call and reschedule for this Friday instead. I would like to make sure I’m not too far along in this process before we go out of town for Betsey and Micah’s graduation!

I feel like I have so much to do before Jaden comes, and yet time is ticking away! (Which reminds me of an old DC Talk song…But I digress…)

Well, on the docket today is storytime at the library, packing the hospital bag, cleaning up Messy Monday, laundry, and budget night with the hubby. Hope everyone has a productive day!

Sick Week ended yesterday, praise the Lord! After seven days of the pukey/poopy sickness in our home, we seem to be done. Grace and Caleb are fighting again, and Ava is sassy as ever. I guess we’re getting back into the swing of things!

So, two things are weighing heavily on my mind these days: Jaden’s birth and Base Camp. I need to have the Base Camp curriculum finished before Jaden’s born, and yet I spend much more time thinking about the baby than the camp!

Here’s proof.

I made a doorhanger for our time at the hospital, inspired by this girly one. Here’s the front…

(We’ll write in the date/time/weight/length info after he’s born, of course.)

And here’s the back…

You’ll see that I put the meaning of his names, and then there’s a big blank space. I was originally planning on having his footprint in the middle of that space, which I still might do. OR I thought we could have people who come to visit us in the hospital leave their John Hancocks.

Today I also painted the letters for Jaden’s room. Thanks, MomR for getting those for us! I will try to attach the hemp and hang them tomorrow.

This weekend Luke will go to Men’s Retreat at Lake Ann Camp. I’m excited for him, because it always seems to be a refreshing time for him to just hang out with the guys as well as be spiritually challenged. Karl is also going, so my mom, Melissa, and the kids are going to come down and stay with us. It’ll be fun! Melissa and I plan to do some serious garage saling this weekend!

I also have an OB appointment on Friday. I missed it last Friday because of Sick Week, rescheduled it for Monday, Caleb got sick, and rescheduled it again for Friday. It doesn’t really bother me to miss them, even though I’m “supposed” to be going weekly. I’ll let you know how the appointment goes, as long as I don’t have to reschedule it again!

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!