Siblings Meet
Aidan and Cecelia were very excited to meet Isla. Here's Aidan claiming her as mama's as Yaya holds her.

All three together... I'm so in love!

Cecelia making sure Aidan is holding Isla right.

Aidan giving his new sister a gentle kiss.

Cecelia and Isla.

New best friends...

One tired daddy. I wonder why he's tired? He hasn't done much;)

So an update on Isla:
She's found her appetite and wants to eat all the time. Awesome. Also, the ped dr saw her today and discovered that her left clavicle was broken during childbirth. Not the average but certainly not uncommon and nothing to worry about. All we have to do is pin her sleeve to her chest so she can't flail it around. Also, we found out that she's measuring 22 inches long! While she has really big chubby cheeks, her body is not very chubby at all. She's got Aidan's chubby cheeks but Cecelia's long body. What an amazing addition to our family!

Introducing... Isla Grace Ballentine!
Born Monday January 26, 2009 at 5:38pm
She weighed in at 8lbs 14ozs.
We're still waiting on length...
I started drugs around 9am and had my water broken at 1pm.
The candy man visited me at 3pm and I stopped feeling all the pain. (YEAH for the candy man!)
I started quickly progressing and pushed for all of three contractions.
You might not be able to tell but she's a big baby. There was pain involved! She's totally worth it though. I'm completely in love! And she's already latched on twice to eat!
It got too late to bring Cecelia and Aidan over tonight then. They'll get to meet their new little sister tomorrow. We'll put up more pictures tomorrow. I'm off to snuggle my newly bathed clean baby! Sleep well all. There's another beautiful Ballentine baby in the world...

Induction...
How dedicated am I! I am at the hospital hooked up to an IV with Pitocin dripping in. I'm evicting the baby today! So at some point I'll blog again and let you know if we have girl or boy and sizes. Don't expect anything too soon though. I'll be a little busy for the rest of the day! WISH ME LUCK!

The Dinosaur Quilt
I've got all the squares finished but they need to be trimmed up. I think this is the layout though. I've very excited about how this one is turning out. I'm still waiting for the green fabric I ordered online to work on my girl lap quilt for me. This dinosaur one will be for the new baby if a boy or for Aidan if a girl pops out. If it turns out for Aidan , I think I'll stick an extra boarder on there to make it a little bigger for him.
I had Mark take this picture to get a last shot of the big belly. The kids decided that they needed to also be in the picture because you can't pull a camera out in front of them and not have their picture taken. They're so cute.

Doctor's visit today!
I just got back from the doctor. I'm 50% effaced and 2cm dilated for those of you who understand such things. All of this means that I'm getting ready to evict this baby. This would all work better if the baby was also ready to leave. That doesn't seem to be the case though. My father (he thinks he's soooo funny) keeps trying to tell me that all I need to do is the African baby dance which he of course has demonstrated for me and looks like a slow jumping jack while you're drunk. At this point, I'm almost willing to try it if it means getting this baby out. Sad.
In the mean time, I've been trying to stay very busy. I started my lap quilt and got everything cut that I have here but I ordered some green fabric online and am waiting for that to show up before moving forward with piecing that together. I've moved on to the dinosaur charm packs that I've been holding on to since summer time and found a pattern I liked on line. Last night I cut all the fabric and figured out the measurements for everything and then started piecing together squares. I got a pretty good start going before I had to stop and put my feet up while I could still feel my toes. I'm so swollen! Anyway, I'm off to go keep busy so I can't think about the fact that I'm still pregnant! I'm going to have to change the weight on my guess soon. There's no way this baby is going to be that small if I'm going past my due date!

Aidan's Birthday Gathering (and my due date)...
We had a very small gathering just in case someone decided to make an appearance. Which of course, didn't happen. I'm still pregnant! ARG!!! Anyway, here's some pics from yesterday as Aidan, Cecelia, Diego and Gabby ran around together and had Ninja Turtle cupcakes. Daddy and Joe played as hard as the boys and entertained the kids all the way around.

Cecelia feeding Keira cheerios.
Aidan showing Daddy his new camera and how it works.

War of the toddlers!
Mark and Gabby were having a moment until Aidan got involved.
Daddy playing horse.
Aidan got his own pair of dice from Uncle John and then got to watch Land Before Time to settle down before bedtime.

What I'm doing today...
As I sit around waiting for baby to make an appearance and fight off cabin fever as we all sit around inside because it's too cold to be outside, Mark found something really funny on youtube. Those of you who have times to look up silly stuff on the computer, take a couple of minutes and look up 'Axis of Awesome'. They're a band (using the word loosely) and you want to listen to the Four Chords Song. I've watched a couple of their other videos pretty quickly too and most of them are pretty funny. Okay, I'm off to work on a baby quilt while I still have time.
Here's a photo of Cecelia making her very own sandwich (and one for Aidan too, of course) and Aidan waiting happily on the counter for his sandwich.

I'm still prego...
Just an update, I go to the doctor on Tuesdays. This past Tuesday and the one before, the doctor said any time now. So I guess we're still working on 'any time now'. Currently I can't be upset about not going out to the hospital. It's so cold out, I don't really want to leave the house anyway. Anyway, I'm taking guesses...
I'm guessing a girl, 7 pounds 6 ounces, and every bit of 21 inches long.
Although now that I've put it in writing, I'm sure it's wrong. Anyway, if you want to take a guess make it quick! Hopefully I'll be going into labor some time soon.

A View From Above...
October 22nd, 2008 January 4th, 2009
What a difference a couple of months make!

38 Weeks and counting...
So I've been trying to keep myself busy so I don't dwell on the fact that I'm still prego. This is what I've been doing...
This is the baby blanket for my mom's friend. It measures 48" X 36" and is finally completed! I didn't want to quilt any more lines than the x's in the squares so I put tiny knots in the cream lines to keep the batting in place.
This is the baby blanket for my cousin. Again, FINALLY FINISHED! It measures 44" X 45" I think. I've already passed it off to my mom to mail so I don't remember anymore. But it turned out super cute. Also, in keeping with the style of the person receiving the blanket, it has organic batting and is made of 100% cotton. I did the quilting a little different this time trying something new and ended up with a little puckering. Mark said it was fine but the type A person I am, it bothers me still. I'm working on letting it go. I do love how the random fabric hearts turned out. And I found the perfect heart fabric to go on the back and binding.


My favorite local fabric shop has this awesome sale every year on New Years Day called the Football Widow's Sale. I'm in love! I have no idea yet what I'll be doing with any of these first fabrics but I really liked them so...
These two are to be background and backing and binding for a sock-monkey blanket for my brother Chuck and his wife Virginia. These were harder to find then you'd think. I was matching the red to the details on the sock monkeys and it was tricky finding the right shade. Also, the poke-a-dots had to be just the right fabric. Not too busy because it's background and not too plain and again, just the right shade of red. PERFECT!! This week I've also finished the top to that blanket and sat on the floor last night trying to pin it together for quilting. That job is proving interesting this late in the pregnancy. Anyway, pictures are to follow but not until I've finished and sent it off to them so they don't get any hints on how truly cool it is turning out. Just wait and see!!!
This one's just for me. It's very girlie and has lots of hearts and I don't care. I'm going to make myself a fabulous lap blanket for all the cold nights I spend reading on the couch. Plus, I found a picture in a magazine that I'm going to try to copy for the pattern so a nice challenge to boot!
This was Friday night! We went to see Sesame Street: Elmo Makes Music. The kids had a fantastic time and Aidan made it all the way through his first show!

Bert doing the hustle in a '70's white disco suit. Awesome.
Cecelia jamming to the beat...
Aidan laughing at Mr. Noodle. Classic.

All-in-all, a good week was had by all. I've also been busy nesting and cleaning everything. A pointless task while both kids are home all day. Tomorrow Cecelia goes back to school and I might actually have a chance at keeping anything clean!