melted smoosh

for as long as I can remember, I've envisioned having four kids. to me, it seemed like a sufficient number of kids to emulate the big family feeling I so enjoyed about my own childhood. plus, I like the symmetry of even numbers. having grown up as the oldest of six, however, I thought I might not be cut out for being a mother of six, so four seemed to be the magical solution. the Geiger six at the wedding reception my parents threw for us back in Washington state. there is a 14 year gap between oldest (me) and youngest (Krista). do you see why we used to call her Pink Baby?! this is such a classic photo I had to include it, even though it was before Krista was born. I sewed my own dress if you couldn't tell. #homeschooled all that to say that after our fourth child, Victoria, was born in 2023, I felt quite at peace with our family size ... but not to the point of giving away all of the baby stuff. after all, I was "only" 37. we did feel strongly though that we should ...

  1) Completing kindergarten and third grade. the girls wrapped up their school year on a high note. they loved their teachers and their classes, and have really enjoyed getting more involved in school sports (basketball and volleyball for Greta, soccer and spirit squad for Cecilia). Cecilia's favourite "class" was speech therapy. I was impressed with how much progress she made in articulating her /r/ sounds over the course of the year, and in fact, the speech therapist called me the last week of school to say that Cece's pronunciation is now within the normal range for her age and she won't require speech support in the fall unless something else crops up. selfishly, I miss the absolute cuteness of her little voice, but I know she was self-conscious about it and I'm so proud of her hard work to say her /r/s in the "new" way (the therapist encouraged us to frame correct pronunciation as "new" vs "old", rather than "right...

  Victoria Anne was born on the Fourth of July, weighing 6 pounds 3 ounces and measuring 19 inches long! Miss Victoria arrived right on schedule -- I had requested a 39 week induction based on numerous factors, including my age and gestational diabetes, although thank goodness the diabetes was well controlled without medication, so my maternal fetal medicine/high risk OB was comfortable letting me go up until 41 weeks if I wished -- which I didn't!  I had an easy  induction experience with Greta  (at 10 days post-due date), so I was fairly confident that my body would kick into gear quickly the fourth time around.   Cecilia's birth was a precipitous one-hour labor that has garnered her the nickname Sidewalk Baby, and Elizabeth was born after a relatively quick five hour labor. 39 weeks happened to fall exactly on the Fourth of July, and we decided to go for it!  Mom arrived on a red-eye flight the morning of July 2, and came along to mass with us. th...