Lucia Camille was born on Sunday, August 12 at 12:39 AM.  She weighed 7 pounds 5 ounces and was 19 inches long.  So far she is an easy baby... nights are rough getting her to stay asleep in her crib; all of my children have been that way though!  She tends to stir and wake up when she needs to burp!

I have now given birth in three very different ways!  An emergency c-section for Josephine... VBAC's (vaginal birth after cesarean) WITH epidurals, drugs and plenty of interventions for Maureen, Veronica and Julian, and a completely drug-free (almost intervention-free... I let them break my bag of waters after I stayed at 9cm for 2 hours!) birth for Lucia!  Yes, it was painful... but manageable.  It was nice to get up and walk to my recovery room afterwards and I really did feel much more alert and able-bodied.

Here are a few pictures of Lucia and others (from my sister's camera).  I have not yet put the pictures from Michael's, Josephine's or Maureen's camera on my computer; I will eventually get to that!  There are TONS more pictures on their memory cards...

Lauren:

 Here's a picture of Lucia:

Julian

Maureen

Veronica

Josephine

Julian and cousin, Lauren giving him lots of love!

And a few more of Lucia:

A smiling picture of Julian!   Too bad his eyes were closed, but I wanted to put this one up anyway, because it's so hard to get a picture of him smiling.

Well, I did it! I managed to post again BEFORE the baby was born!  EDD is two days away... won't be surprised if the 8th comes and goes and I don't go into labor!  I will post pictures once she is born, and that will likely be the last post for a while!  

I am working on planning/preparing our 2012-2013 homeschool year.  Josephine will be in 5th grade, Maureen in 2nd and Veronica in Kindergarten.  I may eventually post my detailed plans, for those of you who are interested!  I plan on starting a couple weeks after the baby is born... We shall see!  Overall, all three girls did well last year.  We had plenty of bumps in the road, but it's definitely an improvement over the previous year of attempted homeschooling!  I have learned from my mistakes and feel even more confident this year to make things even smoother.  Josephine and Maureen scored well on their CAT tests (all average and above average scores) and Veronica's biggest accomplishment is that she knows how to write all her letters, can recognize and write numbers up to 20, count up to about 40 (including "skip counting"), and most of all can read!  She's on lesson 50 in "teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" and is breezing through the BOB books.  I say she's doing pretty well for just turning 5 and going into Kindergarten!  I'm so proud of all my girls.  

I'm so glad I continued to teach throughout the summer... I took off a couple weeks to finish preparing things for the baby and get a few projects done, and we took days off here and there, so it was very laid-back schooling.  We still got a lot accomplished in terms of our science, social studies and history lessons.  They also continued reading and earned prizes from the library for the summer reading program (a free library bag and a coupon to get a free cookie from a local bakery).  We will continue our "summer school" until the baby is born!

Here's some pictures of the last couple months:

Veronica's 5th Birthday!  June 21st

The pool was Veronica's present from MeMe and PawPaw; she loves it (so does her brother and sisters!)

 Josephine decided to go crazy with the bows/barrettes in Maureen's hair; it made for a cute picture :)

Julian and Josephine have gotten really attached... she's turned in to his "Little Mommy" as we say often at home.  She really does help out a lot with him!  If only she could be more helpful in other areas :)

Josephine took this picture of me...probably the only pregnant picture you'll get :)   not sure how she took it without it being in color; some option on her camera, i suppose!

Josephine going crazy with the hair bows/barrettes again!

Josephine had Maureen and Veronica pose in front of the Eiffel Tower painting.

I bought the "Press Dough" cookie set (As seen on TV!)  from Once Upon a Child (a used children's clothing/toy store)... it was never used, still in the original plastic wrapping... The girls had a blast making and decorating cookies.  The first time was definitely experimental, though!  I know how to tweak things differently next time we try it to make the cookies and decorating more successful.

Julian's usual position when in deep concentration playing with his cars!  notice how he lined them up in this picture

Julian's 2nd birthday party!  July 29th... He really does smile, I promise!  He looks so serious in all his pictures, though.