Noah the angel has visited with a blessing for you of good food for your body. The angels appeared singing, "Girly to God on highest" to tell me I'll be having another baby. They don't know when. Then they reappeared with food for my husband when he gets home from work.
We took a visit into Michigan this past weekend to visit the great grandparents. We only managed to see the Cole side of the family, as the Byrne side was sick. But we had a great time indeed! As a bonus, we brought back a bookcase that Uncle Garry constructed for us. I don't have a photo of it, but trust me, it's beautiful.
For some additional photos, click here.
The kids really loved picking out candy at a trunk n' treat outside of a local church. Vincent looks particularly adorable, wearing the same warm costume that all our kids have worn around this time of year.
Click here to see more photos.
We stopped in to see some clearance items and pick up some clay. The kids got to enjoy a free craft.
Earlier that day we were at Michaels looking at some of their sales, particularly the jewelry and beads. During that time
The kids really had a great time at the store, many thanks to the tea samples in the back. Our kids really loved the chai tea!
We took the kids to the Exploration Station at Perry Farms a couple weeks ago, and the kids really had a blast. They have free days, and usually I have to take part of the day off to enjoy the time with the kids. Their favorite part is definitely the castle, which I didn't get any photos of as my camera battery died. Enjoy the photos below, and check out the rest on Picasa.
I started reading a great book last night called Parenting in the Pew, by Robbie Castleman. It's a great book, and it truly encourages my spirit with keeping our children with us in worship. It seems like such a hard thing for people to grasp, but this book really puts eloquently what Amy and I have been trying to explain to people about our children in the service. Here is an excerpt from page 37/38, referencing Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony:
In many of our modern, sophisticated congregations, children are often viewed as distractions. We tolerate children only to the extent they promise to become "adults" like us. Adult members sometimes complain that they cannot pat attention to the sermon, they cannot listen to the beautiful music, when fidgety children are beside them in the pews. "Send them away," many adults say. Create "Children's Church" so these distracting children can be removed in order that we adults can pay attention. Interestingly, Jesus put a child in the center of his disciples, "in the midst of them," in order to help them pay attention. ...The child was a last-ditch effort by God to help the disciples pay attention to the odd nature of God's kingdom. Few acts of Jesus are more radical, countercultural, than his blessing of children.
Here is an excerpt from the book, referenced in that quote above:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
"Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me..."
- Matthew 18:1-5
We know that sitting with your children during the service isn't what everyone wants, but it is truly what we want. As the book says in the first chapter, we want to say, "Daddy, I'd like you to meet my children."
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| Valentines Day Party |
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| The Big Move |
We just moved across town to a three bedroom house! It's right across from work so I have a commute of 5 minutes by foot. We are really blessed! And excited! I'll try to have some more posted soon.
More details on the house: Our bedroom on the second floor isn't considered a room, but we do. In essence we are using it as a fourth bedroom. I plan on setting up a darkroom in the basement bathroom. We have a gas stove, and a garage, and a shed. We're within walking distance from DQ, Mickies Gyros, ONU, and a bunch of other shops.
 Click here for photos of our weekend! |
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| Easter 2009 |
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| Easter at Mom's |
Giovanna Ruth Arlene Giove entered the world on November 8th at 6:18am weighing 8lb 14.5oz and measuring 21.5in long! Our home birth ended up going really well, and Amy did an excellent job! After waking up with some painful contractions, we called the midwife at 4:30am telling her that it was the real deal. At 6am she said, 'This is intense' as she labored in the pool. The midwife arrived and 18 minutes later and Giovanna made her entrance into this world. She was born in the bag of waters which was amazing, and to the delight of Amy as she was hoping that would happen.
We had planned for the kids to be at our good friends house (the Taff family) but it was so early that we didn't want to wake them to be picked up. It ended up being perfect. At 6am Frencesca appeared in the doorway of the kitchen with a look on her face to say, "Hi, what's going on in here?" She walked over to me and sat on my lap calmly and was able to witness the birth first hand. After Amy delivered the after birth, we were walking her back to our bed to lay down when Noah appeared at his door with the same wonder. He definitely knew something was up when he asked, "Did your baby decide to come out today mama?" He was definitely amazed and happy to see his little sister. Noah even exclaimed that he didn't want to leave his baby, when he was leaving to spend the day with our friends.
We definitely will be doing a home birth again, as it was an amazing experience. I'm sure Amy will get on here and express her own thoughts, and I'll probably have some more things to say later as well. I was definitely very impressed with Amy and her laboring. She did amazingly well, and it will always remain a mystery to me because she was in such intense pain, yet remained a lot more calm than you could even imagine.
P.S. I just noticed the other day that picasa lets you order prints from Walgreens, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Photoworks. Enjoy!
This may be news to you, but we've decided to have a home birth. It's going to be attended by a Midwife
For those of you who are skeptical, you would be pleased to know that the largest study of homebirths attended by Certified Professional Midwives, as published in the British Medical Journal, has found that homebirth is safe for low risk women and involves far fewer interventions than similar births in hospitals.
Please feel free to talk to us about the decision, and ask questions about the home birth. We are learning a lot! You should see the reading material we are getting from our midwife and doula!
Don't feel free to share negative comments or experiences (especially to Amie.) We've done our research and the facts show that an assisted home birth is completely safe, and any horror stories will only make Amie more tense and apprehensive during labor (It is well known that a variety of psychological factors can influence people's health and interfere with medical treatment. In obstetrics, levels of anxiety have been found to predict obstetric complications.
Also, you can search for your own information, or you can look at some notes that I put together here.
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| Dairy Queen trip |
Lately we have been very successful at potty training Noah, and for the last two nights Noah has stayed dry all night! Yesterday when he was dry for the first time, we decided to take him out for ice cream to celebrate. Noah was pretty excited and Dolly was sure appreciative about it as well. We took them to Dairy Queen across from ONU, and Josh happened to be driving by and stopped to say hi. If you don't know, Noah loves Josh. And he was pretty excited about him showing up. Take a look at our video:
Ice Cream Trip from David Giove on Vimeo.
In other news: Today is Noah's Birthday! We woke up early (before the alarm went off at 6:30am) and I made Noah and Frencesca some cinnamon oatmeal pancakes for breakfast. Usually when I do this the pancakes never actually hit a plate, they come right off the frying pan and into a belly. Needless to say, they devour pancakes. Later today Grandma is coming to spend time with the birthday boy, and hand out presents tonight. I'm looking forward to it, and I'll have videos/photos of it to share later for sure. Check back soon!
Today I got a call from Noah, which was similar to one I got last week. He told me:
I pooped in the potty daddy!I couldn't help but express my enthusiasm for our little man. For the last two weeks Noah has been wearing big boy undies and peeing in the potty. He's had his good and bad times, but he is really getting the hang of it. Not only is he excited and actively working towards a diaper free life, Frencesca is excited as well. Just today we put her in her new big girl undies in hopes that she will follow in big brothers footsteps. She loves the cat undies at the moment, and she'll sit in the potty for candy. We're keeping our fingers crossed.
Potty Announcement from David Giove on Vimeo.
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| Ultrasound Photos |
I am finally getting these ultrasound photos up here from our visit three weeks ago. This would have been the time to find out what the gender was of our baby, but we didn't! We want to be surprised about this one. I would have liked being surprised about the others, but Amy agreed this time because we have clothes and such for both a boy and a girl. So she feels aptly prepared. I also managed to sneak in our little video camera and took some bootleg shots of the ultrasound in progress. I'll upload those soon so you can see our little person squiggling around in Amy. :)
I have recently done a few wood projects at home, which I am pretty proud of. Granted I'm not carpenter, I can accomplish a few things when it comes to wood.
My first project was to create some shelves for our DVD and VHS collection (Yes, we still own and frequently use our VHS player.) The purpose was to keep them organized, and to keep them out of reach of the kids. My idea was to create a hanging shelf that would anchor into a stud in the wall close to the ceiling. I made these shelves out of a 6'x3' piece of wood which I drilled holes in the sides for the wire to feed through. You can pretty much look at the pictures to see how they turned out, and how I did it. The pictures say more than I could in describing them anyway. I made two sets of these (only one is pictured) and the second set of shelves definitely came out better than the first.
I also made some shelves for our laundry room, and for the room we call the arm pit. The armpit is where the furnace and water heater is, and where most of our junk goes. The stuff we don't want the kids getting into: Bug spray, tools, cleaning chemicals etc. I didn't really make these shelves to be pretty, but it's not like they are ugly. My main goal was to make shelves, and to make them cheap. You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but this really made these two rooms amazing. It pulled all the stuff we had on the floor onto the shelves.
So we've had quite the experience with cars lately. For those that don't know, we have owned one car for (soon to be) six years. It has run like clockwork the entire time, and has been well worth our money. With the past few weeks we had something interesting happen: We were stopping by Wal*mart to make a return, and the car stalled in the parking lot. It wouldn't start, and we didn't have much idea why. In retrospect we consider it a blessing that we had this little adventure at Wal*mart, and not a day or two earlier when I was riding home at night amidst corn fields with no cell phone. Noah and Frencesca got to stay up well past their bedtime, and here is what Noah had to say:
Come to find out the distributor died. After we had the distributor replaced, the mechanic informed us that the clutch was close behind it. He told us:
If you baby it and try not to let it slip, it will last longer. Essentially it is going to get worse and worse, until it just won't start.So great. More problems. But that's not the half. It also has an oil leak. And we found out yesterday that it has a gas leak. At this point we would be putting more than the car is worth into repairs. Not to mention that we don't have the money to do so.
Enter the 1991 Toyota Previa that we purchased on Independence day weekend. We really wanted a Toyota, considering they run forever. And we found a place, and a price that was within budget. We drove it home knowing that it needed a windshield and a some exhaust work. We soon found out that it needs rear brakes, exhaust, new tires, various flushes and such. This added up quick, but in the end still ended up being worth the price we paid for it.
Currently, we are making a few within budget repairs on the Previa, and considering scrapping the Corolla for parts (hopefully $500 or so?) The mechanic said you could put an ad in the paper calling it a, "Mechanic's special. Haha.
Through it all, God is good.
