Samuel Garwood Kunes

We are so excited to announce that our third child, Samuel Garwood Kunes arrived on Sept. 11, 2012. Seems like such a sad date to have as a birthday, but as my good friend reminded me, how special it is for God to turn that day around with the blessing of new babies. And Labor and Delivery at the hospital was very busy that day, too! Praise God!

Samuel is our smallest baby, weighing in at 9 lbs. 3 oz.! His arrival was the fastest of all--2.5 hours of labor! I have had a much easier recovery so far with only a few small complications that are resolved already. We are excited to be going home from the hospital in a few hours--very healthy and happy. Robert and Lillian have visited Samuel in the hospital and are so excited to have him home today.

Robert likes the name Samuel, but he wishes we had chosen Winnie the Pooh for his middle name. What he doesn't realize, yet, is just how special his middle name really is! Garwood was our way to honor a true hero of the faith, Dr. Garwood Anderson, Rob's New Testament and Greek professor at Nashotah House.

We are looking forward to lots of help from visiting family, friends, and church family as we transition from a family of four to a family of five. I know it will be challenging, but we feel so blessed by Samuel and can't wait to get to know him better!

"she named him Samuel, saying, 'because I asked the Lord of him.'"
1 Samuel 1:20

Older Spring Pictures

Man, it was a long time between posts. I just realized that the last post before today was back in March! So here are a few pictures from this past Spring. The children and I took a road trip to visit my family over Easter. We stopped in Columbia to visit Rob's Aunt Julie. Great trip! Then we had a family trip to Charleston to visit with Rob's family in May. We had lots of fun on the beach and just relaxing together.

I really should keep up with these posts on a more monthly basis. It is hard to backtrack. Yeah, I'll put that on the list of all the other things I really should do. Ha!

PS Click on the pictures to see them in full. Not sure why they are all cut off like that...

Summer fun!

What have we been up to this summer, you may be wondering?

Here are the highlights:

Finally growing hair (Lillian, that is :)

Swimming at the pool almost every day. Robert took swim lessons and learned to swim all by himself with no water wingies. Many thanks to swim lessons from both the pool lifeguards and his Nona, who worked with him and had him swimming independently by the end of her visit!

Entertaining visiting family. We had a visit from Nona. Then we had my sister and her family visit for a few days, and Robert had so much fun with his cousins! He and Jordan became best buddies. And just recently MaBop came to spoil us for a week while Rob was out of town.

Growing a new baby. No, I will not be posting any belly pictures. Advertising my girth on the Internet is just not my style. I am happy to send private pics for any of you who are interested in seeing a human beached whale. The pregnancy itself has been fine, but my overall health has been rough. I've had lots of sinus infections, a bad ear infection that perforated my ear drum and left me deaf in one ear for over a month. I can hear now but there is still ringing in that ear. I've also had several other yucky side effects from the several rounds of antibiotics I've had to take. I guess my immune system has been low for this pregnancy. Maybe it has something to do with the two grubby little germ catchers I am with 15 hours a day :) Hahaha...still wouldn't want any other job right now! We are ALL very excited for New Baby. Can't believe we are going to be a family of FIVE in just a few more weeks!

Obviously not taking enough pictures! I went to go upload a bunch and realized that everyone else has been taking pictures of us all summer, and I do not have them on my ipad. We must take more pictures!

So it's been a fun and fast summer so far. We are preparing for Robert's Spiderman pool party on Monday. Then we are heading up North to spend some family time on the Bay. After that we will just sit tight and wait for New Baby. We still have some organizing and setting up to do, but we have everything we should need, so it should be pretty easy.

Hope every else is having as great a summer as we are! Much love and many blessings!

Strong Man Contest

How many pillows can you hold?
This is a fun rainy day activity that we invented yesterday.
And Lillian was building skyscrapers.

Growing Butterflies and Fun in the Sun

Yep, that's what we've been doing lately: growing butterflies and playing in the warm sun. It is such a wonderful change from the the last half of January and all of February. I was very "morning" sick and completely helpless. Thus, the poor family was practically starved for attention, food, fresh air, and just general happiness. It was a sad time, but thanks to God and several friends, we made it through to the second trimester and life is good again! Mommy is back to her old self, albeit growing, food can be cooked in the house again, we can go out play and do fun stuff, and we are happy and healthy! Praise God!
So we finally sent off for our larvae that go with the butterfly pavilion that Robert got for Christmas. It has been so fun watching them grow, turn into chrysalides, and then just this morning, a butterfly! We now have two butterflies, 7 chrysalides, and one larvae (our little late bloomer). I don't even particularly like butterflies (bugs with wings--eeeewwww), but this has been so cool to watch!
Guess I should update you on the kiddos:
Robert is back in school again--the same Montessori school at our church. We had taken him out this past Fall after a few weeks of obviously not doing great. We put him back in a few weeks ago after finding out Baby 3 will be here in September and figuring it would be best for him to get adjusted to school now rather than when he is also trying to get adjusted to having another sibling. He is doing much better, though the little bugger tells us each day that he did not have any fun and doesn't want to go. His teacher says he is doing well, and we are getting a few happy snippets from him here and there about the new friends he seems to like.
Lillian is talking more and more. She repeats everything, so you have to be careful around her. She especially likes to create situations where she can say very dramatically, "Oh no!" What a girl! She also likes to say "Oh man," which I can't tell whether she got it from me (I say it a lot) or Swiper the Fox. Maybe I got it from Swiper? I wouldn't be surprised. She copies everything Robert (or "Robbop" as she calls him) does. He doesn't seem to notice, and if he does, he tries to make her do something naughty. What a brother! They are starting to play together nicely more and more, especially in his room. This is good because unbeknownst to them, they will be sharing that room very soon!
Life is busy, fast paced, and wild these days, and thankfully, it's even fun lots of the time! I know, it's only going to get crazier when we are a family of 5!

Crisp and Cold Sunday Morning

Brrrr! It snowed last night, and it was COLD this morning. Nobody minded posing for a picture in the snowy yard, though. Robert had already been up and out playing in it at 7:30 in the morning! He had been praying it would snow all winter so far, and finally, what a blessing for him...my little Oconomowoc-born snow lover!
Click on the picture to see it in full--not sure why it cuts Robert off in the post.

Lillian has a special announcement!

Christmas Morning

Presents? Oh yeah, we had presents! Family? Yep, MaBop and PaBop came for a visit! Food? You betcha! The best parishioners in the whole world filled our house with everything from a beef tenderloin dinner down to all the sweets you can dream up! We had all of it and even some not so fun stuff, too. We had throwing up on Christmas Eve (Robert caught his first stomach bug EVER--Lillian about 36 hours later). Was it a good Christmas, though? It was. We are slowly getting used to Rob's Christmas work schedule. It was so nice to have my parents here to help me on Christmas Eve while Rob worked. And nobody really minded taking a break on Christmas morning for Rob to go to work for a bit. In fact, Robert and Lillian could have been quite happy with about 1/4 of all the presents they got! It got to the point where we were begging Robert to open more to just get done with it, and he was refusing and just over it! Overall, Robert still wasn't all that into Christmas traditions this year. He just acted sort of overwhelmed by it all. And Lillian didn't have a clue. So while we definitely plan on making some changes for next year, like paring down, focusing more on Jesus' birth and less on secular traditions, following advent and preparing gradually for Christmas rather than all at once and way too early, etc., we had a wonderful Christmas!