July 4th!

These are for those of you that aren't on Facebook (MOM) or that I'm not friends with on Facebook yet.

The best picture I got all day of all 4 kids.


My sweet Evie in her first major holiday ensemble.



The bow I made for Evie, close up. And the bows I made for my cousin's little girl for her piggies.

The fight is over for the sweet baby I had asked you to pray for. He's no longer in pain or struggling. His mama and daddy got 2 precious days they didn't think they'd get with him. And now they begin healing--only with God's help, I can imagine. Thank you for praying for him, and please continue to pray for his mama and daddy and brothers, as well as our church as we begin to mourn the loss of this precious child.

Amazed

The baby I told you about in my last post? Well, he's still fighting. After a few unsuccessful trials at taking him off the machines keeping him alive, they decided to take him off the machines permanently yesterday. They said their goodbyes and no one expected him to live for very long afterward. More than 24 hours later, he's fighting and making improvements the doctors have never seen and can't explain. But we can explain. We have an awesome God.

Keep praying for this sweet baby boy and his family.

Heavy heart

I am burdened tonight with thoughts of a family at our church. I've never really even met them, but my heart is heavy with what they are having to face.

Their third son was born a few weeks ago, and he is very sick. Tomorrow they are having to make some terribly difficult decisions.

We are praying for a miracle.

Please pray with me. I don't feel comfortable sharing too many details since I don't know them personally, but God knows.

And I know God is big enough to change this situation.

I can't even fake it

Sometimes, when I'm in a really pissy mood, I try to just fake my way through and I eventually get in a better mood. When I act like I'm happy and that I don't mind being asked for the eleventy hundredth time what's for dinner, then I actually start to be happy and not mind.

But right now, I don't even care enough to fake it. I'm too tired to even want to try. To make matters worse it's melt-your-makeup hot outside (not that I actually wear makeup most of the time, but if I did, it'd melt anyway) so there's no hope in getting outside to get some fresh air and let the kids get some energy out. They can play for about 30 minutes first thing in the morning, but after that, their cheeks get scary red and they even start begging for the A/C. So they run around the house sounding like elephants, yelling and carrying on and waking up Evie, which, let me tell you, makes me oh so happy. And that really lifts the mood. *insert eye roll here*

I must really be in a pissy mood to be using sarcasm on the blog.

So.

Blah.

What's your mood lifter when you can't convince yourself to get happy?

I nearly cried when I heard

This makes me happier than I've ever been about a movie coming out. It's my most favorite book EVER and I've been waiting for a year and a half for the movie to come out. After every comic book movie and guy flick I've seen with Sweet Hubby on opening day, he is taking me to see this movie on the day it's released. And I'm going to hope hope hope that the movie does the book justice.

I'm a bad, bad blogger.

Sorry I haven't been around this blog o' mine much. I really don't know what to say. Life marches on and I'm not sure what to share about it.

Sweet Hubby went back to work last week. He worked one night on Monday night, then went to an all-day class on Thursday, and then went back on Saturday night. I was really nervous about handling the evening/bedtime without him, but so far I've only done it on my own once and it went well. I'm on my own the next two nights, but I think we'll be fine...as long as Marc-Adam is sufficiently tired.

Stephen's lost his two front teeth. The grown-up teeth are already coming in, but his grin is so.cute. and it's so funny to hear him talk.

The boys are VBS at a church in our town this week. I'm not quite sure what to do with my mornings...it's strange only having one child to care for. It's a wonder that I thought it was so hard when Stephen was a baby! :) Now, having only one child is slightly boring even though I love having that one-on-one time with Evie. But Evie likes to sleep through our one-on-one time.

That's all I got.

Wait and See

I love this song...it's become one of my favorites. It gives me so much hope to know that I'm still a work in progress. :)

Photo Shoot!

I'm not sure if you've seen these yet, but here are some more shots from Evie's photo shoot. If you live in the Houston area, be sure to visit the Evermore website to see the work of the photographer that did these photos. She's really talented and we enjoyed working with her...can't wait to have her back out again to get shots of all our kids. I can't imagine how cute those will turn out (she has some REALLY cute subjects to work with)! (Oh, and Evie's featured on her website as well, which makes me just puff up with pride for my baby girl!)

Here are just a few of my favorite shots...there's more that I may post later.

At one month

Sweet Evie turned one month old on Sunday. Here's what's going on at one month old:

• She's getting really good at lifting her head. She lifts it up and looks around any chance she gets. She can even lift it and turn it while lying on her tummy!
• She's focusing on our faces longer, but she keeps going cross-eyed while trying to focus. Hasn't grown out of that, yet, I guess. She can sort of track me if I move to one side of her while we're making eye contact.
• I think she may have smiled at me on Saturday. It was brief, but beautiful, and I haven't gotten another out of her since.
• She's going bald. That makes me laugh and cry. The hair is getting incredibly thin on top which I try to cover with a headband, but I worry that might make the problem worse.
• We were swaddling with a Miracle Blanket for the first few weeks (we used it with Marc-Adam for months...he loved it!). She kept pee-ing through it, so I bought another to have an extra. They aren't cheap. A $30 blanket. Then she decides she doesn't like to be swaddled. Seriously, I started having trouble getting her to sleep, then I tried taking her out of the swaddle. Since then, I haven't had half the problems with her sleep as I had for several days before taking her out of the swaddle. Little stinker. Now I have this $30 blanket we can't use.
• The boys still love her. They ask to hold her several times a day and get so excited when she wakes up for a nap.
• She slept in her bed in her room for the first time on Sunday night. She actually only spent a couple of hours in there before I brought her to bed with me because she was having a hard night. But last night, she stayed in her room all night except for the one time I brought her in to bed with me to feed her. Then I put her back in her bed and she went straight to sleep!

I wanted to start taking monthly pictures of her during her first year to be able watch how she grows. I kept thinking that I wanted to take her picture with something that I could use every month to see how she compares with it every month. Then I remembered something we got for a shower gift, and so this is what we'll be taking a picture in every month to see how she grows into it. We had a few issues in the photo shoot.

She looked too scrunched down in this one, so I sat her up and tried again.

Well, that won't work, obviously.

Then she started squirming...I think the headband part of the tiara was poking her. Beauty hurts sometimes, Baby.

The Incredible Disappearing Tiara!

Ah, well, maybe next month will be more successful.

Der.

Baby Girl turned 1 month old yesterday. Eesh. It's going too fast. I'm enjoying this newborn time MUCH more than I ever have before. I guess I'm just now figuring out that this stage goes so quickly and since it could possibly be the last time we have a newborn in the house, I'm trying to soak up every second.

Anyway, I intended to get a post up yesterday about what Evie's up to at 1 month old and to post a special picture, but she had such a hard night/day/night that I completely forgot until just now. We've got an appointment for her this afternoon to see if we need to adjust her reflux meds (you really have to stay on top of making sure they have the right dosage since they grow so fast at this age), but other than that, nothing else is going on. So hopefully I'll have a post up this afternoon for her. Stay tuned.

Not boring, just not interesting

Aside from day to day details and me getting high from sweet baby smell (oh, and sweet baby breath), there's really not much going on around here that's worth blogging about. Nothing terribly funny or interesting or worth sharing. But I certainly wouldn't call what's going on in our home boring. So here's just a little brain dump, so I don't go too long without blogging:

• Evie's doing just swell. She's waking up a little more each day and starting to really look around. I think we might get a smile out of her any day now. She's doing FANTASTIC at night, which makes me want to dance at about 5am every morning. Um, but can she stop with the growing...? She's getting so big, and will be a month old on Sunday. I didn't think it would be because things have been so calm and easy, but the last month is a BLUR.
  

• Marc-Adam has been quite the challenge. He's still sweet enough that's it hard to stay mad at him for long, but oh my, that child makes my head hurt. We've tightened the reins a bit on him, and that seems to have helped...he's listening better and we're able to make it through an entire meal without having to put him in time-out *sigh*. We recently moved him to a twin bed and now the trouble he caused from his crib can now be caused anywhere in the room or hall. It's been quite the battle and Sweet Hubby and I are desperate to find a way to make bedtime a little more calm.

• Zachary has just been so funny and so sweet (but seems to have contracted a case of selective hearing). The other day, he wanted to sing a lullaby to Evie and he sang, "Little giiiirrrrl....with a head! I love you, sweet little girl!!" And then later at dinner, he started a conversation with, "Next time, when I grow up, if you're still my mom and dad..." Wha...?

• Stephen's *thisclose* to losing one (or maybe both) of his front teeth. 'Bout darn time. The things have been lose since Thanksgiving. It makes me slightly nauseous to think about it. I wish it would just fall out already. I've tried pulling it, but it's not ready so I've been telling him to wiggle it any chance he gets.

• I'm starting to get homeschooling back on the brain and am starting to plan out our next year. I think I'm going to try to relax our school schedule a little bit and not try to do every subject every day with Stephen. I plan on starting grammar this year (using First Language Lessons) and keeping up with our same math and writing curricula. So I think that maybe we might try doing math 2x a week and writing/grammar 3x a week with reading every day. I think he can handle that, but we'll see. For Zachary though, we'll be working on the same things every day because he doesn't have as much to do as Stephen. I also plan on sticking with Five in a Row...it's just a really good curriculum and we all enjoy it. There's a homeschool conference in August that I plan on going to...I just hope I don't get sucked in to trying something new. But I'm really excited about it. I didn't get to go last year.

• Next week is Sweet Hubby's last week home with us. I'm slightly panicked about it. I think, though, that if I plan it right, it might be a whole 'nother 2 weeks before I'm actually all on my own after he goes back to work. The good news is that he only ever works for 4 days at a time, and once he goes back to working days (instead of overnight), he'll only be working for 3 days at a time. Logically, though, I know that I'll be just fine on my own with all 4 kids, it's just scary to take that first step, especially since I have 2 very high maintenance children.

I think that's about it for now. Any questions?

It's funny 'cause it's true

Sweet Hubby and I caught this guy on TV tonight, and when he started talking about IKEA, I told Hubby, "That's so true, remember the bunk beds?" Our boys have IKEA bunk beds that we've had to put together a couple of different times. And then the guy started talking about bunk beds.



We laughed ourselves silly.

Catching up...a picture post

I finally uploaded some pictures from my camera to the computer. So here's the story of the big things going on in our lives since Evie arrived.

Stephen had a big weekend last weekend. Saturday was "Mayfest" at the gym we go to for gymnastics. Mayfest is really just a time when the kids get to show off what they've been learning. Stephen's been working extra hard, so he was really excited to show us what he can do. (I apologize for the quality of the pictures...it's hard to get good pictures of moving kids and I also wanted to avoid posting pictures where other kids' faces are clear which cut down on my options.)

Stephen stretching...he's the one in the middle of the picture. I show this picture only so you can see just how flexible this kid is...he's almost in a full split with his head down.

"T"-what they do after they've landed and stuck it.

Salute

Rings

Pommel Horse

Mayfest Trophy

I love looking at these pictures because in the pictures of him actually doing something he looks so intense but in between he's all smiles. I think he really enjoys gymnastics. Jonathon Horton (winner of the silver medal in the all-around at the Beijing Olympics) trained at this gym way back when and is coming back to train for the 2012 Olympics...I heard that he may even be working with some of the boys. Stephen thinks that's cool and I'm super-excited about it.

Zachary and Marc-Adam performing their own little routines while watching Stephen at Mayfest.




Stephen also had his first performance in children's choir. He even had a line, "Look at that old shoe!" He did great and loved being in the choir. Again, not a great picture, and I have a ton more, but don't want to post faces of other kids.


Also happening this week, Evie's first bath. Her umbilical cord finally fell off so she got her first good bath.

As you can see, it was a family affair. The boys were so excited for her and kept telling her how brave she was....as if a bath were something to be afraid of. :)


And just for fun, Marc-Adam, wearing some kind of Batman scuba goggles.


And Evie and I were left alone for a little while last week, so we played dress-up. I started trying all her bows on her. They are all still a little big for her, so we're sticking to the little bows that I stick to her head with Karo syrup, but she still looks awful cute with these big ol' bows on her head.

Must share!

Evie had her first photo shoot today...we got a deal with a photographer wanting to expand her portfolio, so this shoot was free! I think we'll be inviting her back for a paid session to take shots of all 4 of our kids. She was great!

So, she sent me the link to a couple of the shots on her blog. They are so precious. If it's possible, I think these pictures make our girl look even prettier! I can't quit looking at them! Check it out!

Oink

Evie had her two week check up today and the little girl has gained 12 ounces in 9 days and is 9.5 ounces over her birthweight!! I love it! It makes me so proud to know that she's getting all she needs from me. It totally validates my choice to breastfeed even during the times when it would be more convenient to not breastfeed.

We decided to go ahead and put her on reflux meds because she seems to be getting progressively worse and has had a really hard time the last few nights. Hopefully, she'll be on her way to feeling better in a couple days.

Nothin' much else to say...I hope to get a few minutes tomorrow to upload some new pictures from my camera to show you.

Updates

I don't have anything fantastic or wonderful to say. But I wanted to let everyone know how we're doing.

Things are going great in our home...and not the kind of great that you say when everything is falling apart but you still tell people that things are going well. Honestly, things are really good. My hormones have been in check enough for me to not freak out too much, I guess. Or maybe it's just that this is our fourth child (and fourth adjustment to a new baby), my expectations were low. In any case, life has been calm and wonderful since bringing Evie home. I haven't been exhausted, the kids have been acting normally for the most part (there's been some major power struggles between Stephen and his daddy, but I'm not sure that's directly related to having a new baby in the house) and the new has not worn off Evie. The boys are still in love and still fight over her. The fight used to be about who got to hold her first, but now the fight is over who gets to hold her last because in order to curb the fights over who was first, I told them that whoever held her last got to hold her the longest. They even fight over who gets to take her diapers to the Diaper Champ. Sweet Hubby and I fight over her, too. Whenever the kids are in bed or visiting grandparents, we sort of race each other to see who gets Evie first when she wakes up. He normally wins. 'Cause I let him. It's an awesome feeling to see him with his daughter...he has been SO hands-on with her. Way more than I expected because he was sort of nervous about actually having a little girl. But he's changed as many diapers as I have and never once passes up an opportunity to change her or hold her or spend anytime he can get with her.

As far as Evie goes, she's just so precious. She's amazing. She's a very calm baby and rarely cries...when she does cry, 90% of the time she settles down before I can get to her to soothe her. I think she has a touch of reflux, which is no surprise since Zachary and Marc-Adam had it as well. But it really only seems to bother her when she's trying to go to sleep and it only keeps her from actually being able to sleep at night. The rest of the time, she just whines and winces for a few minutes and then goes to sleep on her own. For the last feed, I've started giving her Mylanta and that has helped her nighttime tremendously. She generally goes about 6 hours between her last feed of the evening and the first time she eats at night. Sometimes she'll wake up before then, but when I try to feed her, she goes right back to sleep. And then I doze off and we wake up a few hours later all snuggled up and she'll finally take a good feed. So considering there's a newborn in the house, I've been getting amazing sleep.

More brags on my hubby...Sweet Hubby is still home with us and will be for four more weeks. The only reason I'm able to hold it together is because of him. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure I'd be a weepy mess for the majority of the time. He's been amazing in taking care of me and the kids and the operations of our home. I haven't made a meal in almost 2 weeks...haven't done laundry, haven't cleaned anything, haven't wiped any butts, haven't given the kids showers, haven't done dishes. And yet, we've eaten well (and not just the dinners that have been made for us, but breakfast and lunches, too!), we still have clean clothes, the kids are clean (with clean butts), the house is semi-straight and we still have dishes to eat off of. And the kids are well engaged, not climbing the walls and are having fun. It's just been wonderful and such a burden off my shoulders. In addition to running everything for me, he has also just been an awesome emotional support for me. When I told him yesterday that I was going to take a few more days to take it easy, he told me to take as long as I needed because he was still going to be home for another month. He is such an amazing answer to my prayers. There will be many tears the day he goes back to work.

As for me and my recovery...well, it's abundantly clear that this is my fourth c-section and that my body is not the same as it was when I had Stephen. It took a little while for my incision to become comfortable and I've actually finished off the bottle of vicodin I got when I left the hospital. I've never done that before. Most of my current pain is coming from a muscle in my hip...it is extremely painful and I've woken Hubby up in the middle of the night a couple of times by crying out in pain. It's fine if I stay perfectly still, but I have to be very careful in moving around because if I move the wrong way, it feels like that muscle has been lit on fire. It's getting a little better slowly, but I'm looking forward to my 2 week check on Thursday to talk to my doctor about it. Other than that, things are healing up quite nicely. Nursing is going really well. My milk came in before I left the hospital and Evie has been fairly good at getting the hang of things.

So, for now, there is much peace in the kingdom.

For Alison (and everyone else, too)

I've been instructed to post more pictures...so I'm popping on quickly to show Evie off a little more. I think I have more pics that haven't been uploaded yet, but those will have to wait. So here's a few from the first few days:

I changed this picture from the one I had up originally...I hated that picture and it's been bugging me all day knowing it was up here...so here's the first picture Evie and I took together, just a few minutes after she was handed to me for the first time.


Couldn't you just eat up those cheeks?

Going home dress...such a pretty girl.

The proud brothers (Big, Bigger, and Biggest).


Pretty sweet, huh? :)

And now you know...

....why I've nicknamed him Sweet Hubby for the blog.

My Wonderful Life!

Just two days ago Alli and I brought our precious daughter Evie home. She has to be the sweetest baby girl that I know. I want to say that I am very grateful for all that my wife has gone through these last few months. They have been long and hard for her, but the payoff is more than I would ever dream of. Our handsome boys have welcomed Evie home with nothing but love, hugs and lots of kisses. I have never seen our boys more in love with a baby until now. Our life will be different from now on and I would not change a thing.

Evie was born 7lbs. and 1 oz.. She was 18 1/2 inches long. She is so precious and I can't wait to get my hands on her every chance I get. My life is so blessed! Alli, I want to tell you that I love you and I am so proud to be called your husband. You are the greatest wife that I could have ever asked for. We make an awesome team.

Thank you all for you comments and love to Alli and our family. We are blessed with a great group of friends.

Gary