The Count-Down Begins
September 19th, 2008 by Jenni
As of today we have 42 days until our “due date,” six more weeks! I have one more appointment with my midwife in two weeks and then I start seeing her every week. Yeah! I’m getting so close!
Every time we have a new baby I like to make some kind of count down to the due date. I’ve mostly done paper chains to count down the days, but this time I decided to do something different. Since it is fall I decided to make a big tree and fall leaves. Each day one of the kids gets to take a leaf off the tree and put it on the ground below. By the time all the leaves are off the tree, the baby will be here (or a couple days after, but I did give a few extra leaves just in case). And the neat thing is that by the time the leaves are off of our baby tree, the leaves will probably be gone from our tree in our front yard so the kids will get to see the leaves falling at the same time.
Here’s a close-up of the little owl that I drew, isn’t he cute?! I found him by searching for how to draw an owl online. I love it when the things I envision turn out close to how I envisioned them :)
And this picture is for all those perfectionists out there. Guenna was so good, she sat and watched me for literally two hours while I drew and colored the tree. She never complained, she was happy and content to just watch. Then the next day I was drawing the owl and the temptation was greater than she could bear, she found a pen and drew her own art (it’s a sideways person). She’s quite the artist isn’t she? :)
So, we are all getting excited around here for the coming of a new family member. Eamon’s birthday is in four weeks so we are gearing up for celebrating his birthday too, which helps to have something between now and then to look forward to. It should be a busy month. The last two days I’ve been having tons of contractions, my midwife asked if I was dehydrated, probably. Okay, no I am. Then today just about an hour ago they started in again, only this time they are painful. So I guess I will take her seriously and start drinking more water! I don’t need to spend the next few weeks in the hospital with a premie, that would not be on my list of things to do in October ;) There’s another contraction, I better go get a glass of water right now.
What a fun idea. You are so creative!
I love this tree - what a lovely way for your children to be able to visualise how long it will be until the baby arrives.
Wow!! That is so cool, and it looks great. The kids are going to love it; what a great way to help them understand the passing of time as well as giving them some way of participating AND upping the anticipation. The leaves are beautiful! I love it.
Okay, it is official…you are the queen of creativity!! How in the world did you make those awesome looking leaves? I would love to know!
Yeah! Me too! Sis, I knew you were making a tree, but this is incredible! I love it!!
Thanks :) I had a lot of fun making it. Several of you asked about the leaves, they were pretty easy they just took a long time. I had a stencil of four different types of leaves and I used a sponge to paint with (I discovered that it takes about 4 times as long when you use a little paint brush!) Then I hung them to dry and cut them out, the cutting part was very tedious, and I wish I could have waited and laminated the leaves as well as the tree but I was impatient. I attached the leaves with tape and I’m afraid it will probably tear up the tree in places. Oh well :(