Loving Life

Babies seem to have a sixth sense about when it's a good time to have the most massive poop blowout imaginable. They prefer to not do it in the comfort of their own home where plenty of extra clothes, wipes, diapers, rubber gloves, mops, buckets, disinfectant and washing machines are at hand.  Oh no, that would be too easy.  Instead, they prefer to challenge their parents' skills to the max by picking the most inopportune time possible.  Keilah chose to challenge me in just that way yesterday at my doctor visit.  I had just finished my appointment and she was needing to eat, so they showed me to an empty room so I could nurse in private.  Once we finished up with that, I went to change her diaper as Keilah had pooped.  In this move, I made three errors.  The first was not waiting long enough to make sure she had completely emptied out her bowels.  The second was in the transition of diaper to diaper.  I often have the clean d...

It's hard to believe that just two and a half weeks ago, this bundle of cuteness was crammed into my stomach. I'm so happy she's outside of me now so I can kiss those cute cheeks of hers. We are getting used to our new life of four kids. Keilah continues to spoil us rotten by being such a good and easy baby (can you say sleeping 6 hours a night already?!).  Her version of being fussy is occasionally crying for about 30 seconds tops as she's drifting off to sleep. She often has a look of alarm on her face. I find it amusing. Another expression of alarm. On Saturday, the girls presented me with a breakfast menu when I got up (Saturday is my day to sleep in). It was precious.  Abby took my order and Ana set about making my breakfast. Here is the finished breakfast order, brought to me on a serving tray.  What sweethearts I have! Later that day, we made graham cracker houses together - they are much easier to deal with than true gingerbread houses. ...

Remember when I said David would be taller than me at Christmas? Well, it's not quite Christmas, but he did it. Here is the official proof.  Someone named David is quite pleased with this new arrangement. Someone named Mom pretends to be sad about this new arrangement. Here's a picture of my largest child with my smallest child. Hard to believe they both belong to me! I also found a great way to really like folding laundry. It's finding cute little socks in the laundry like these.  You can't help but smile when you come across these.  My finger is to help you get a picture of just how tiny they are.  :) Have a happy Tuesday everyone!

I had a great, productive weekend.  Here are some of the things that got done. The first is little candy sleighs for our seminar kids.  Aaron and I are seminar parents at our local high school. I made these cute little things for our kids (they are all juniors this year).  I think they turned out very nicely. And before you get all impressed with my amazing creativity, don't. That's what the internet is for. And google. We'll be making more of these for the girls' teachers at school.  The next family project was putting up our Christmas tree.  I kind of dread it, but love it at the same time.  I only dread it because our tree is so huge and takes up so much of our living room space. It really didn't look like such a big tree in the store when I bought it. :) We blasted Christmas music while we all worked to put it up. It was a lot of fun. David is helping Abby put the top of the tree on. It's nice to have such a big, t...

We're adjusting to life with four kids now.  It still seems weird that they all belong to us. I'm so used to just having three kids.  Both Aaron and I are constantly catching ourselves about ready to call Keilah by Abby's name. Abby's no longer our youngest, though in my mind, she's still my youngest. I'll get used to this eventually. Here is a picture of the cake my friend Sara made for Keilah on our first day home.  Yum! Keilah got a little more jaundiced than the doctor's wanted to see, so we were sent home with a bili-blanket on Monday when I brought her back in for a bili check.  She has this thing strapped to her body as much as possible. Hopefully it will only be for a day or two that she needs it. I'm thankful that we can do this at home and not have to be in the hospital for it. Here's a cute picture of all four of my kiddos.  This was taken when they first showed up at the hospital. Everyone was so excited to meet thei...

This post is for all of you who enjoy reading about birth stories. If you don't enjoy that, then read no further because it's all full of mushy gushy baby stuff. With all of my other kids, my labor began when my water broke.  So I was expecting that again this time around.  But just like this pregnancy was way different than the others, so was my labor. Wednesday afternoon I started feeling kind of yucky and had an upset stomach all afternoon.  I was having some contractions, but they were so irregular, I didn't pay much attention to them. But by late afternoon, I had started spotting and my contractions hadn't settled down - but they still weren't all that regular.  I started timing them around 5:00 just to see how far apart they were.  They were anywhere from 7-14 minutes apart and still not super intense.  As my spotting increased, I began to think that perhaps this was the real thing.  I made a light supper - chicken noodle soup and set about ...

She's here! This is our beautiful little daughter Keilah Rose. She joined our family on Thursday, November 29, at 11:53am.  She weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs., 13 oz.  I didn't realize that people wouldn't know how to pronouce her name. All the Keilah's I have known spell it this way.  You pronounce it with a long "I" sound.  We are so blessed to have her join our family.  We love her so much already! Check back tomorrow here on the blog for the story of her birth (if you like that sort of thing).

I've been having regular contractions since supper time last night.  I'm pretty sure this is the real thing.  Heading out to the hospital soon to get checked out and see how things are going!  I'll post hopefully with baby news in the next few days!

Here I am with one week to go before my due date.  Will I ever stop being pregnant?  I would like to think so, but it sometimes feels like I'll be forever pregnant.  Isn't Abby cute peeking around my tummy? With the finish line in sight, and my work on trying to stay positive these last few days, I thought I'd take a moment to discuss the benefits of having your own personal shelf (aka big belly).  1.  The best benefit is having a place to hold things when sitting down.  It's great to rest a cup of tea on top, or your dinner plate if you decide to not eat at a table.  It also serves well for a book holder or any electronic devise.  Having this shelf greatly reduces arm fatigue from having to hold up your own possessions. 2.  My shelf also serves as a pants protector.  Before I got this shelf, I would constantly spill things on my pants when eating.  No more!  My shelf is my own personal pants protector.  No mo...

I'm now 2 weeks until my due date. We've entered the waiting game. This is usually the hardest part for me. Even though I have never ever gone into labor before my due date (always right on my due date), I keep hoping that this time it will happen.  I'm getting increasingly larger and more uncomfortable and lots slower on my everyday tasks.  I've had several nights and days of regular contractions where I start to think "maybe this is it!" but it always stops after awhile.  It's so hard to be patient. I'm working hard on telling myself that I will be going the full 40 weeks and will have a December baby so I can stop being so extremely disappointed when my false contractions go away.  I did have a few hard emotional days last week where keeping life in perspective got a little too hard. Nothing that a few good cry sessions couldn't help. But I had a lovely weekend with Aaron this past weekend.  We went away to a marriage conference.  We stayed t...

First, I'll start off with the obligatory tummy picture since I know you have all been breathlessly awaiting the latest picture to gawk at just how far out one woman's tummy can get.  I have less than 3 1/2 weeks to go!  I just cleaned my mirror two days before this picture. It apparently didn't last long.  Grr. Here's a picture that I had David take of me.  I'm trying to explain which button to push and how to focus the camera - hence the weird facial expression. I am so ready to have this baby.  At my doctor appointment yesterday, he said I'm already 2 cm dilated and my cervix is all thinned out.  Yea! That makes me happy that all the random contractions I've been having have not been in vain.  Progress is happening.  As you can see, I never "drop" like other women do. I just continue to stick out farther and farther as my baby packs on the pounds. Abby is also getting ready for baby.  I turned our dresser to...

Ana was on the food committee for her class' Halloween party.  She volunteered to bring brownies, suckers, and candy monsters.  She was most excited about making candy monsters.  Here's a sampling of her work. I know it's hard to tell what everything is since they are all bunched up together, but they turned out super cute.  Each one is different.  She couldn't wait to go to school today to share them with her classmates. These are currently the best things ever. Caramel Pear Scones. My recipe made 10 of them.  There are currently nine left.  I want to soon make that eight.  If someone tries to help me not over-indulge in these lovely things, they may get their hand bitten off. Someone needs to teach David to put his school work away as he finishes it instead of moving to a clean spot on the table for the next subject.  This is the table at the end of his school day. This is baby's stuffed doggie and blankie. My mom has bought ea...

Aaron and David are at the State CC meet this weekend. So tonight, it was just me and the girls.  We decided to have a girls night in.  Once they girls got home from school this afternoon and finished up their couple of chores, we went down to the grocery store to get provisions.  I haven't been in much of a cooking mood lately (which is normally not like me), so we bought a rotisserie chicken for our supper.  I did steam some carrots and boil a couple of potatoes.  The roll is from a friend who supplies us with all sorts of goodness. To properly have a girls night, one must eat supper in your Goodwill bargain fairy dress.  It also helps to make goofy faces when your mom tries to take your picture. The other two essential items we got at the grocery store were a rented movie and a cup of ice cream.  We rented Madagascar 3.  Despite it being the third movie of a popular first movie, I actually enjoyed it. You should know that it's not ...