Soon to be 3

Long time no see, blog world!

Since we are expecting baby boy #3 any day now, I figured I would do a catch-up post...those are the only posts I do anymore. Ha!

Heber is now 2 years old and he fills that role quite well, if you know what I mean. Heber's hilarious and has so much personality. He is not shy at all. When he was a baby, he was the most mellow, contented little baby I'd ever seen. He hardly made a sound, but how the tables have turned! He is a screamer (happy and angry), a giggler, and a big talker. He no longer just sits back and takes any guff from his older brother, but fights back. He's very aware that people are watching him and he shows off quite a bit. Here are some of the funny things Heber does that I want to remember:

*He has this cute speech impediment where he replaces the "er" sound at the end of a word with the "ay" sound. Water is "Wadday", Heber is "Hebay", etc.

*He loves Emmitt and will often give up his toys or a yummy snack to get on Emmitt's good side.

*When we make him apologize for something, he will try to get close to who he offended and pat them on the head while he says sorry.

Heber is excited to meet his new little brother soon. He's very affectionate when it comes to little kids, so I'm not too worried about the transition for him. It may be a bit of a shock when he doesn't get as much attention as he used to, but I'm sure that's how it is for every kid. Having a baby brother will be a really good thing for him. 

Emmitt is 4 now and has grown up so much in the past few months. I feel like he came out of his "terrible twos" just as Heber was entering his. He is a hard worker. He loves to help out with chores alongside an adult. When we were living with my parents (more on that later), he loved helping with the chores. Maybe it's an oldest child thing, but I think Emmitt really wants to be big. My dad is in charge of the 11 year-old scouts in his ward and Emmitt wanted to be a part of scouts every week. He soaks up learning and is very curious. The other night when we asked him what he wanted to do for 5 minutes before bed, he said he wanted to learn about the moon. We had to put that one off for a night because we had to do our own research. He'll be smarter than we are before too long. Emmitt's also starting to read small words and I'm so excited about that. Both he and Heber will take a book to bed and just look at pictures. I'm glad Emmitt's passing on his love of books to his little brother. Something we've been working on is Emmitt's shyness. He's always been shy, but I think all the moving around we've done for PA school has contributed to it. It's very hard to talk him into doing anything public. He had his first primary program a few weeks ago and just going up to the stand to sit with his class brought on the tears for a good 5 minutes. Tom and I were sweating the whole time, wondering if we should just go get him, but he had an awesome teacher who calmed him down. We just moved into a ward that hasn't done their primary program yet, so we'll see if he can muster the courage for round 2.

I can't believe Emmitt will be starting school in less than a year. He's very excited about it. He brought it up once and I told him I'd be sad and wouldn't know what to do without him all day when he went to school. He patted me on the shoulder and said, "I'll come back, Mom." *(sniff)*

Tom has finally finished school. We are soooo happy to not be students any more. I know they say you should live in the moment, but I think we've been living for this time for the past 6 months. That's about when we moved out of the house we'd been living in for a year and a half and became vagabonds, bouncing from my parents house to my brother-in-law's house, with a few trips for job interviews, board exams, certification classes, and graduation in between. I want to say here that our families have been so encouraging, helpful, and supportive! Tom's parents have always been up on what we're doing and helping out, even though they live far away and my parents were good enough to let us move in with them for a total of 4 non-consecutive months during the year, always going with whatever changes came up. We are so grateful to them. I think the fun family reunions and other get-togethers got us through the last bit of school, giving us something to look forward to. Family is awesome.

We are now living in Pasco, Washington. Tom took a position at a family practice here and starts this Monday. He has done so well and I'm so happy he found a job he's excited about. He'll get to use his Spanish and he's glad he's not specializing right away. We love the house we're renting in Washington and we're excited for this new chapter to start. We really like Washington so far. Our move was successful, although poor Tom had to unload most of the moving truck by himself and the first two disorganized days in our house were really miserable. We were trying to buy Craigslist furniture while we had our moving truck rented and figure out how to get the house together and get to all the administrative stuff that goes along with moving out of state. I got a little emotional, to say the least. By day 1, we had a washer and dryer, couches, and everyone had a place to sleep, thanks to Tom. He's a very patient man, but we won't go into how I know that. (:

Now back to the most exciting news of adding our third boy to the mix: This pregnancy has been really weird. With so much other stuff going on, I don't feel like I've given myself enough time to be excited about it. Since our move was so close to my due date, the first week in Washington was a little tense because I hadn't set up care with a doctor or figured out which hospital we would go to. Now that that's out of the way, I feel lots better. For the first time, I've unpacked some baby clothes and given myself time to soak up what's happening. The hospital bag is packed and we're anxiously waiting. The next post will be all about number 3!