Poolside in Florida

We’re at the beach all week, so I haven’t actually been “blogging” at all . . . WordPress has a cool feature that allows you to write and schedule your posts in advance.

I figured I would post a picture from back in May when we went to visit my sister Mary in Florida. This was Mara and my “third annual” May Florida trip! We first came when she was six months old, then last year when I was on bedrest with Micah, and this time our whole family was able to go! What fun! . . . Someday I will go through and post more pics from that trip.

PolaroidMaraPool

We’re not in Florida this time, but (hopefully) we’re on a beach somewhere, having just as much fun!

Random Mara Quotes

Soooo, here’s a draft post I started months ago and never posted . . . I still want to remember . . .  so I’ll just post it now.

Explaining why she couldn’t pick up the piece of trash on the floor:

“Yucky yucky! Little piece . . .”

“Of what?” I asked. “A little piece of what?”

“Little piece of . . .  I tan’t pict it up! It’s DOSE!!! [gross]”

Explaining to Daddy that we really did make him a birthday cake, after I told her it was top-secret:

“We made TAKE!” she shouted as soon as Daddy walked in the door. Then running into the kitchen and pointing at the stove, she yelled, “TAKE in uh-nen [cake in oven].”

“No, honey, that’s not a cake,” I said, hoping Daniel wouldn’t figure it out. “That’s our dinner.” It was indeed our dinner, but Mara had gone down for a nap with the cake in the oven, and awoke to find the oven still on, and the cake hidden, so she firmly believed it was still in the oven.

She wasn’t backing down: “No!” she firmly insisted. “Not ‘not take’! Iss take!”

[Sigh.] The secret’s out.

New Names

With the first two children, we didn’t start discussing names until we learned the baby’s gender. We’re planning to wait (once again) to discuss names, but hopefully not as long as we waited with our little preemie Micah, who didn’t have a name until he was 3 days old, and we would have had to go to court to change his name if we waited any longer to think of one . . .

But Mara is already thinking about baby names!

We were talking about the baby one morning and Mara asked, “What’s gonna be its names?”

“We don’t know yet,” I told her. “We’ll have to think of one.”

————

On an unrelated, yet semi-related, note . . .

I was sitting at the computer last week, when Mara came up to me, and in a most pedantic tone asked, “Can you say ‘MIX-ee-ah-WUNK-ee’?”

Not sure I heard correctly, I repeated: “Mix-ee-ah-wunk-ee?”

Mara looked quite pleased, as if I had “passed” her test. “Yes!” she smiled. “My name is MIX-ee-ah-WUNK-ee.”

Which seems to me a very good reason not to let Mara name the new baby

Mara’s Reaction to The Announcement

Daniel said Mara wouldn’t understand–she is just too young. But I still wanted to tell her. I didn’t want my daughter to hear from someone else that we’re having a baby!

I told her: “Mara, Mommy is going to have another baby!”

She looked at me blankly and then said, “Can I throw the baby up in the air?” 🙁 Daniel was right. . .  She doesn’t get it. She’s “just too young.” I believe those were his exact words.

No, Mara, you cannot throw the baby up in the air.

Maybe she’ll be excited about the next one, I thought.

——–

Saturday morning we were praying before eating our french toast, and Daniel prayed, “And please keep our littlest one safe.”

Mara asked, “Why Daddy says ‘please keep our littlest one safe’?”

Daddy said, “Because Mommy has a baby in her tummy.”

Mara’s eyes lit up. “Mommy has a baby in her tummy!”

“Yes,” Daddy added, “just like Aunt Sarah had a baby in her tummy for a long time, and then baby Sophia was born.”

I had to go upstairs to change Micah’s poopy diaper.

While I was upstairs, Mara asked, “Why Mommy has a baby in her tummy?”

And Daniel just told her, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Maybe she does get it!

————

Mara was playing in her room. She had both of her toy car seats out: Perkle Baby was in one, Pink Bear with Hearts was in the other.

Mara picked them both up, and said enthusiastically, “Now we will have Little Micah-man and Little Baby! Because I have a baby in my tummy!”