'Just' a Mom: Family Time in March 2025!

What a month our family had in March! We spent most of the month enjoying all the warm weather we got and preparing for the baby and finished the month off welcoming our baby sister!

We couldn't be more in love.

Oliver got some tractors for Christmas and didn't play a lot with them. I knew the moment it warmed up and he could use them in the dirt, they'd start getting played with a lot and I was right!

At night, Ben will tell Oliver a story each night. Oliver wanted a story about a superher one night, so Ben made up Tiger Boy (who is Oliver in disguise) and it's become a favorite thing of Oliver's 🩷 Ashtyn made masks out of paper bowls and made him a "Tiger Boy" mask. I thought he looked so funny in it, and it was a pretty tight fit, but he loved it.

Face painting!

I love catching my kids looking at books!

In March, I finished painting our Master bath and closet and love how they turned out! It felt good to finally finish, it was something I really wanted to do before the baby came.

Once I finished painting, I was already 36 weeks pregnant and feeling a little stressed because I hadn't done most of the baby prep I wanted to get done. With all my other pregnancies, I was mostly done by 36 weeks, so it was a new experience for me. I started with the most pressing things (like getting my birthing kit ready and putting meals in the freezer). I had lots of helpers for the freezer meals!

Ashtyn 🩷

Oliver found a Batman book at the library and got into Batman. While I was gone one morning getting a haircut, Ben showed him an animated cartoon of Batman on YouTube, and then I remembered we have a Scooby Doo and Batman DVD. Then Ben found a Batman game on his Steam Deck and played that with the kids one evening while I was feeling sick. They were very into it, especially Oliver.

About five minutes after a bath, they are playing in the mud ... 😂

I love seeing our kids interact together, especially the girls with Oliver.

For Mario Day, we did a Mario puzzle, colored a Mario coloring page, and watched the Mario Movie! Oliver really loved the Mario Movie.

Ashtyn used her money to buy her own paints and loves going out and painting things, especially rocks.

The kids have also been making us wordles to do. This one was Rylee's (Ashtyn does a lot too). It can be tricky, since they don't always choose real words (once Ashtyn told me it wasn't a name and it ended up being "Egypt") or when they accidentally tell us a letter isn't in it that actually is 😂

Twice in March, Rylee randomly fell asleep around 7. The first time, we got her up to bed at bedtime and she went right back to sleep and slept until her normal time the next morning. The second time, she struggled to go to sleep and was up a little late.

🩷🩷

Oliver also stopped napping in March with Daylight Savings. Before Daylight Savings, he was waking up early and not napping (because he was no longer contained to his crib). What I ended up doing was sitting in with him for about twenty minutes to keep him laying down in his bed long enough to fall asleep, about every other day. More than that and he would struggle to fall asleep at night. When Daylight Savings hit, we just didn't put him down for his nap, so he fell asleep right away in the evening even though it was an hour later and then actually slept in until after 7 naturally because of the time change. It worked out perfectly!

With dropping his nap, though, he had a few days of not quite making it until bedtime 🩷

I made lots of food in March! One of my favorite things to make was cereal. I found and tweaked a homemade chocolate cereal recipe that the girls and I love and I already had a puffed red wheat cereal that is Ben's favorite (the kids call it "Dad's cereal" and they really like it too). I would make those and my homemade honey granola recipe. It was fun to make and the kids were feeling spoiled to get cereal so often.

We usually do Breakfast for Dinner on Friday nights. Since January, I've been doing a local free tap class right at dinner time on Fridays, so often Ashtyn would make German Pancakes for the family. She got pretty good at it!

My homemade honey granola with bananas and strawberries 🤤

I also did lots and lots of meal prepping! I did 2 months of meals (most of the recipes I have make two meals because our kids don't eat a lot of meals). I also did a giant batch of chicken nuggets and a big batch of tortilla shells (a lot of which went to chicken quesadillas), some of my favorite things to have to eat after a baby.

For St. Patrick's Day, we did a green dinner! We had stroganoff dyed green (with chickpea noodles), broccoli, and cabbage.

For the kids, I made homemade rolls with green sprinkles on top. I have fond memories of my mom putting sprinkles on her homemade bread on special occasions for us. I snuck some of the rolls into the freezer for me for after the baby came.

We started off the day with some of our favorite St. Patrick's Day traditions, like doing a scavenger hunt for chocolate gold coins, watching Riverdance and doing Irish dance, and learning about the history of St. Patrick's Day. Afterwards, we went to cousin's house in the morning (it was their cousins' birthday), then the kids played outside in the afternoon with neighbors while I did more nesting deep cleaning. We finished off the evening having a couple friends come over.

Near the beginning of March, our ward did a talent show. The kids sang You are My Sunshine and had fun with it! I also did a short acappella Irish dance, which was fun (though my leg started going numb at the end because of being pregnant XD).

The kids performed in a Federation in March. Federation is a local piano competition where you are competing only against yourself, to get the highest score possible. Each score comes with a number of points (the highest number is 5) and once you have 15 points (after performing for multiple years), you get a trophy.

I forgot to take a picture of the girls (and you can't record during their performance, though they are performing the same songs for the spring concert, so I'll get a video then), but Ashtyn took this selfie with my phone and the treat they got afterward 😂

Just a couple days before I was 39 weeks, Oliver got a fever. It was stressful to have him so sick so close to my due date.

He loves taking walks with me, but was so sick, I just wrapped him up in a blanky and he slept most of it.

And then ... I got it! It was not the worst cold ever, but miserable enough that I really didn't want to go into labor while feeling that way.

39 weeks pregnant! This was Friday, just a day before having Leah.

I was starting to feel a little better and ready for labor whenever it came.

Trying to get my walks in even when I wasn't feeling very good 🩷

I asked Oliver to get me a tissue. He ran to the bathroom and came back with this 😂

His effort was sweet.

And then right at the end of the month, Leah came!

I was really happy, I had wanted a March baby and really wanted to avoid April Fool's Day, and she managed both 🩷

Love at first sight.

Her siblings couldn't have been more excited that she was finally here!

Baby toes 🩷

I'm so happy to be nursing again. Nursing is my favorite part of having babies 🩷

I got lots of rest the last couple of days of March as Ben took care of the kids, but they had to sneak in to my room as often as we allowed to see the baby.

I was trying to wake her up to eat, but she was so sleepy.

Her perfect little profile 🩷

She had a tiny bit of hair! Less than Oliver (who had the most out of our babies) and Parker, but more than Rylee and Ashtyn (who both had peach fuzz) and it's dark, so we can see it!

Having a baby tired Oliver out too!

He is so sweet. He'll tell me, "I love having a baby, Mom."

The second night, we had a storm that was really windy and cold. I was awake holding Leah and saw this on our window in our room. I thought it looked cool and wanted to show the kids.