Pumpkin Carving: Oops we Forgot!

We've been so busy enjoying little Bentley that we completely forgot to carve pumpkins until Halloween morning! AHH! Shame on me. So Grandma Voge and I got to work carving pumpkins with the girls before school.


Here's Grandma and Hallie's pumpkin:

Here's Mommy and Syd's pumpkin:

One Week Old

One week old and Bentley has already gained his first nickname: the pee monster. The poor guy can't control his bladder, he pees through his diapers, clothes, blankets and bedding at least twice a day! I can't keep up on laundry fast enough, so we went on our first outing--to Target--to buy more sheets and blankets for him. He's peed on his face twice, on Cam and I numerous times and almost every time we open his diaper for a changing. I really can't complain though, I'd rather take peeing on everything any day than a bad sleeper.

I think he looks so much like a Drake in this picture. Maybe he's a good mixture of us both?

We've even learned a little bit about his personality:

• he loves the bath as long as it's warm
• he's so content all the time even when he's awake if he isn't being held he's completely fine with it
• the only time he cries is when he's hungry, and when he's hungry, he wants it NOW
• he loves listening to Hallie's voice when she talks to him
• he purses his lips a lot and wrinkles his eyebrows when he sleeps like so...

• We think he's quite the thinker
• he's the BEST sleeper ever which is such a nice change from the horrible sleepers our girls were the first year. He goes to sleep at 9:30pm and wakes up about every three hours to eat, burps himself after he eats, then falls right to sleep with a few minutes of rocking. So easy peezy! What a blessing he is :)

Bentley's Birth Announcement

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Bath Time for Bentley

Bentley got his first bath at home last night. I just love naked babies and all their lose wrinkly skin but the best part about bathing them is the way they smell after. Isn't he a doll? He's such an easy-to-please baby and is the best nurser, the complete opposite from how the girls were. He truly is a bundle of joy, we just love him to pieces.

All clean and wide-eyed...

Meet Bentley

Cam says he could set his clock by when I go into labor. With every baby I've started labor at 7am on the dot, and Bentley continued the trend. When I woke up last Thursday morning, I thought I might be in labor so I hopped in the shower, washed my hair, and did my makeup, knowing it'd be a couple days til I could get around to doing those simple tasks again. This labor proved to be a "fast labor" again too. We arrived at the hospital around 9:30am and I progressed pretty quickly, only having to push twice and he was born just two and a half hours later at 12:05pm.

We welcomed Bentley Cameron Voge into our family on Thursday, October 20, 2011! In just five hours of labor, he was born healthy and with a strong set of lungs. We are just enjoying his sweet spirit and are finding he seems to be a laid back and easy to please baby. We feel so blessed to have him in our family and the girls are just loving him to pieces. Sydnee loves telling us not to bug him when he's sleeping and she is his little protector while Hallie loves holding him and protects him from Sydnee's over-protectiveness. Here are some pictures of our sweet little man.

The girls were so excited to meet Bentley. They gave him lots of hugs and kisses and Bentley gave them a gift when they got to the hospital which were Halloween sticker books and a beanie baby stuffed animal. Then Daddy let the girls help change Bentley's first poopy diaper... yummy. Of course it brought questions about what that "thing" was between Bentley's legs so Daddy had the forced opportunity to teach Syd about a boy's private parts. To which Sydnee replied, "That's gross." Thankfully though, she loves the rest of him :)

My THREE kiddos and I! I can't believe we have three kids, boy are we outnumbered!

Grandma Voge meets Bentley for the first time! She flew in to help out with the baby and we figured arriving five days before Bentley's due date would be plenty of time to watch the girls when I go into labor, but Bentley had his own schedule and arrived hours before Grandma's arrival. Luckily everything worked out anyway, and we're just happy to have him here!

Bentley and I are ready to go home! He's sporting a cute little baseball outfit that I got from my shower. What a handsome little guy, we just love him to pieces. We're so blessed to have him in our family.

Pumpkin Patch Prek Fieldtrip

Call me crazy, but I somehow found enough energy to take the kids pumpkin picking today when I'm days away from delivering!? Just taking a shower to get ready for the day about wore me out bringing with it tons of contractions and still no baby (although Cam is praying I make it until Thursday night at least when "help" (aka "Grandma") arrives). Despite all the rain and cold weather we've had lately, the sun came out and warmed up the air a bit just as we arrived for Syd's fieldtrip.

The kids had fun picking pumpkins and playing in a mini-hay maze. Here's the prek kiddos: Sydnee, Grace and William. Syd was being a stinker and wasn't in the mood for posing today so this is as good as it gets...



Hallie loves tagging along on Syd's preschool fieldtrips too.

A Baby Shower for Bentley!

My good friends, DeAnn and Tiffany threw me a baby shower to help us get ready for our little man's arrival, it was so sweet and such a wonderful shower! The food was yummy, the game was a hoot (we played "Baby Concentration" where the candy is the prize once you find a match),

and the gifts were perfect, completing our "things we need to get for the baby" list. And boy do I look like someone who's ready to be done with this pregnancy! My tummy looks like it's literally about pop, and I have that "tired" look that I get when I'm days away from delivering... let's hope it's days away and not a week!

Bentley got some cute outfits for when he's a little older.

The wonderful sisters in Relief Society surprised me with a quilt they made for Bentley, which was so thoughtful!

Here's almost everyone that came, Adrienne, Jessie and Michelle left before we were able to grab a pic.
A big thanks to Tiffany and DeAnn for throwing me a shower!

Underwear is Over-rated

We were in a hurry to get dressed yesterday so the girls went eagerly (not sure why) upstairs to get dressed while I cleaned up breakfast. I waited for a couple minutes before going up and offering my help when I realized I didn't hear any arguing over what each girl was going to wear or how I was going to do their hair or any crying because Hallie offered to help Syd when she didn't want her to. It was kind of nice. So I decided to pop a squat and bask in the peace and quiet and in my girls' desire to finally get dressed by themselves.

Sigh, it was a short lived moment because not a minute later, Sydnee came down in this proclaiming, "I'm dressed!" Did I mention that it was only supposed to be 59 degrees for the day? Definitely not capri weather which is what she has hooked to her foot. And who needs underwear? I've heard it's over-rated among the average three year old.

Be Prepared and Ye Shall Not Fear

Well, I am prepared but I'm still fearing:

• What if I go into labor before my Mother-in-law gets here, what will I do with the kids?
• What if I'm not here to get Hallie off the bus after school because I'm having a baby?
• What if the day I go into labor there's no food in the fridge because it's my grocery shopping day? What will Cam and the kids eat?
  
• What if I can't get a hold of Cameron when I go into labor?
• What if the girls are sick when I go into labor? Who would take care of them?
• How am I going to take care of three kids... Cam and I are now outnumbered, so who gets left to deal with a matter by themselves if they're all crying at once? (heaven forbid!)
  
• What if my Mother-in-law can't find the girls' blankets or Sydnee's binky (yes, she still has one at night... ugh) when she puts them to bed!?
  

The worries just keep coming but on the other hand, my "nesting" is finally starting to ease up a bit. However, Cameron's I believe has just set in. Last night we had this conversation...

Cam: "This weekend, we're getting rid of Syd's binky at night." (yes, our 3-yr-old still has a binky at night, but lets not dwell on the bad things I've done as a Mom.) "We can't be babying her anymore."

Me: "O...kay? Are you going to be in charge of that? Cause I'm at home with her all day and I'm not going to be the bad guy right now when I'm about to bring home the reason why she won't be my "baby" anymore."

Cam: "Yep! I'll do it. I'm tired of her having it, and we'll cut the nipple off and attach it to her stuffed dog. We'll call it, Binky Dog."

I have to say, he's on to something. But I guess deep down I'm not ready to take that "baby" part away from Sydnee because it means she isn't the "baby" anymore which breaks my heart. I know it's normal to feel like that just before another baby is born, but I'll let Cam deal with Sydnee's binky issues and I won't tell him that I have three more binky's hidden in different places throughout the house.

Teaching Preschool

This week I taught preschool again, and I'm loving only having three kids in our group! It makes the crafts we do so much easier to manage since that's my favorite part about teaching preschool. So this month we're finishing up all the colors and next week we move onto shapes. Tuesday's theme was Black and White so I made some black and white oreo spiders for snack which the kids loved.

What a cutie-pa-tootie...

We also learned about our white bones and made skeleton's with Qtips which I thought was perfect since Halloween is just around the corner. Not to mention the craft turned out adorable.

I also took the opportunity to teach the kids about healthy foods that keep our bones strong and I had Hallie show them some exercises that keep our bones strong like jumping jacks (do I need to explain why I had Hallie do this part of preschool?), somersaults, and running.

Thursday's theme was a review of all the colors so I read the kids "The Rainbow Fish" book (one of mine and Hallie's favorite books) and we had a lesson on sharing since the Rainbow fish shared his shiny scales with other fish. For the craft, the kids made their own rainbow fish with one shiny scale to remind them how good it feels to share.

Kind of crazy to think that the next time I'll teach preschool, Bentley will be part of our family! Thanks Tiffany and Tina for taking over the next few weeks, what a huge help you are:)

Sydnee's Apple Orchard Fieldtrip

Our Co-op preschool took a fieldtrip to the apple orchard last month. The kids got to ride a tractor back into the woods for a fun fall festival where they had a hay playground,


tractors to ride, and the longest slide I've ever seen that sat up against a big hill (I didn't seem to take any pictures of the slide!?).

Before leaving the orchard, the kids picked some Johnathon apples that Daddy used to make a delicious apple crisp with. We enjoy his baking every Sunday :)