I’m now 36 weeks along with baby number nine. It’s been in baby prep mode a bit around here! Of course I normally go late, so I don’t think it’s quite time for baby yet…but it’s important to prepare just in case.
The kids and I sorted baby clothes this week. Since we don’t know the gender, we need to be prepared for a boy OR a girl!
As we pulled articles of clothing out of tubs from the basement, we talked about so many memories. Some outfits have been around since Jayme joined the family over 16 years ago.
Others were bought by grandparents as special outfits for one child or another.
Some were gifts from special friends and family. It was neat to reminisce and look at baby pictures!
I packed my birth center bag with a couple of items for each gender. It was fun to pull out the newborn size diapers and remember how small babies are when they come home!
Baby Guesses
The last several babies, I’ve had the kids fill out Baby Guesses forms in my final weeks of pregnancy. It helps them feel included and allows us to spend time wondering about this new baby God has blessed us with.
I created a simple form in Word, and print it out for each child. To make it engaging for kids of all ages, it includes places to draw and color and is very easy to fill out.
If you want your own copy, you can open a PDF file here and save it to your computer. Just ignore that it says baby #8 instead of baby#9. I forgot to update that! baby guesses
Tomorrow’s the Day
Tomorrow is the day we are going to work through this exercise together. I can’t wait to see what the kids pick!
During this time, we always talk about the birth of each previous baby. This time, we’re going to spend some time brainstorming if our “tie-breaker” baby will be a boy or a girl.
It’s interesting. Bryan and I were talking about this the other day. Our kids have almost always been tied. And, when they weren’t tied, the girls have almost always been ahead.
Here’s how it’s gone down so far:
Jayme – girl
Owen – boy (Tie)
Jeffrey – boy (Boys up by 1)
Ellie – girl (Tie)
Sydney – girl (Girls up by 1)
Simon – boy (Tie)
Brynna – girl (Girls up by 1)
Bryson – boy (Tie)
So some of the kids think it’s the boys’ turn to be ahead. Others think it’s the pattern of our family for the girls to “be winning.”
We will see. 😀
Weight & Height
The weight it always fun to have the kids guess. My younger kids, who don’t really have a concept of weight, will throw out numbers like 52 O’clock pounds.
The older kids are able to take the information about how much they (and all the other babies) weighed, and pick a number somewhere in the range.
My smallest baby was just over 7 1/2 pounds (Owen) and my largest was 10 1/2 (Jeff).
Length wise, they’ve almost all been in the 19 1/2-21 inch range.
I think we’ll pull out the birth certificates from everyone and throw in a math lesson, graphing heights and weights. (Gotta love homeschooling!)
Time of Sharing
Once everyone is done, we’ll share our drawings and our guesses. I hang onto these forms and everyone gets a piece of candy for participating.
Once baby is born, we go back through them. Everyone gets a piece of candy for the categories they were correct in.
It’s a fun little treat, and gives us a good chance to talk together about the birth of the new little one.
Care to Guess?
I’d love to hear in the comments if you think the newest Tanner baby will be a boy or a girl. Please feel free to chime in!
Bottom of the Ninth!
On a totally unrelated note, Owen received this cute little baseball outfit when he was a baby.
He promptly stained it with baby poo and I didn’t deal with it correctly at the time.
It’s one that I’ve left in the baby tubs pretty much since then, because I didn’t want the other kids to wear something so stained. I don’t know why I didn’t just throw it out.
But now that we’re having baby nine, it seemed very appropriate! So I took to Facebook and asked my awesome friends for stain removing tips.
They came through, and after soaking it in hydrogen peroxide and allowing it to dry in the sun for several hours, the twelve year old stain came out!!!
Now it’s all ready to be worn by baby nine – it’ll be the bottom of the ninth! 😀
