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 diaper under her and shielding her bottom as I clean

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, tall, strong brother. David and

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 their little sist

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 getting things

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).