Ah, the two Jeremys of my life. My husband and brother. So to sum things up, I was in trouble for a while. After my parents and sis left I kind of took a turn for the worse. We had to go to the ER, my OB not so subtly suggested not being pregnant at this time, I was not gaining any weight and had to have neighbors and church friends come and watch Kate or bring us food because I could hardly move. My Mom felt terrible and sent my brother out for two weeks to help and it made a world of difference. Just having someone to carry Kate and make sure I could eat and drink. He was pretty much my hero. That and I realized maybe half of my conversations I am quoting some movie or cartoon from forever ago and my brother Jeremy is the only one who knows all of the same movies. We had a good time. And since he was sporting a shaved head and my husband Jeremy has wanted to shave his for some time now - voila ! We have the two shaved men above. I have since switched OBs, by the way, to one who took my vomiting and exhaustion and nausea a bit more seriously and things are better. I've currently gained 14 lbs (never mind that I should be closer to 25 or more now with two babies) and that is an exciting victory. But it's strange to be looking for high calorie, high fat, high protein foods when everything is marketed as low all of the above. 
This is to show off my fabulous photography skills. My sister gave Kate this dress for her birthday and she does look very cute, but she also likes to move which makes for a blurry picture when you only have the standard digital camera and not enough patience to take the 20 shots you need to get the perfect picture. 
We took Kate to the pool while Term (that's what I call my brother, Jeremy) was here. I lasted about 20 minutes, which was impressive. The water completely terrified Kate at first and I think it had more to do with the amounts of screaming children already in the pool. She warmed up to the idea after a while and we had a good time. 
Super baby with Uncle Term at the pool. 
This was Jeremy my husband's joke since all three of his girls (Kate, Pele, and myself) throw-up so much. 
This would be Katie Lou and I in a Boston fountain. We went to Boston hoping to go to the aquarium (air conditioning is a nice thing in humid August weather), but we couldn't talk ourselves into the admission price so we walked around for a bit instead and Kate had no fear of this fountain until the water came back down on her head. We survived all the same. 
So I seriously put my brother to work while he was here. We dug up half of the lily-covered garden to plant things like these raspberry bushes. The planter box you see here was a last minute thing before we had to drive him to the airport. We thought there was more soil there than there really was so we were pretty proud of our efforts to find things around the house to help with this project. We're not supposed to get a crop until next summer, but the one on the right has already given us at least 20 berries. He must be an early bloomer. 
We joined the canoe club here when we first came. Many of you are probably thinking that if I was that sick I am insane for even trying this out. Well, mental sanity is just as important and since either Jeremy my husband or Jeremy my brother was really doing most of the work as I had to keep Kate from drowning and I got to sit down the whole ride, it was not as physically exhausting as other things. And yes, Kate still wants to drink the water. 
We have this ginormo lavender bush outside our back door and every morning when we get back from our walk, Kate plays with it while I get Pele inside. We have since bought some fuzzy slippers to cover her feet in the morning as it's now around 50 degrees or less. (Again, the walk keeps the mental sanity, please don't tell me to stay home and rest - I can't do it forever and there is a balance.)
The child is a freakin book worm! She hands us books all the time. Jeremy seems to be able to get away with reading each book once, but I usually am asked to read it at least 3-5 times. Repetition is good, right? 
And this is my friend Ericka's birthday cake. She came out for a week to help me and we have been playing (and I also make her slave away). She taught me how to do a double layer cake, and our first lesson was frosting doesn't stick as well if the cake is still warm in the middle. Fortunately chocolate cake tastes good however you make it. There have been so many things I want to write about. We did find out both of the twins are girls (Jeremy is so outnumbered). But we were also told there were a couple of things they found on the ultrasound to be concerned about. It ended up being made a bigger deal than it actually was, but there's still something they're not sure about in the brain of one of the girls. At first we were very worried, but have since decided we're not going to change anything, we have no control over what happens here and we are very happy to love two more girls who are coming into this house. This whole pregnancy has been quite the emotional roller coaster. I always thought I'd like to live maybe a hundred years ago, but between Kate's pregnancy and this one I think I wouldn't be able to hack it. Oh, well. I look at the little Bug now and I know it's worth it. I'm at moments so overwhelmed and others so excited. I'm glad that Heavenly Father's in charge and not me and if I always look at it that way and not stress about maintaining control I am much happier.
I will be traveling to visit family and then DC for a few weeks, so hopefully we will have more pictures again for the next post and one day I'll get all my thoughts in about health care, the book I read on girls aggression, and having twins. Until then, I'm glad I finally put something up!
