Busy month ahead

After I picked Eli up from preschool I look in his bag to see what activity he did today, but low and behold there is October's newsletter and all of the activities this month. Who knew one little guy would have more things going on in his little social life than his parents? We have a least two things going on every week and that doesn't include doctor visits. Which Eli goes for his 4 year check up tomorrow. Our church will be receiving their pumpkins on the 11th (also my mother- in-law's 60th birthday party) and the Pumpkin Patch will officially open on the 13th, yes. Nic's birthday is in two weeks and he will have his 2 year check up. My birthday is at the end of the month, the dreaded 29, man I am getting old! Halloween festival and trick or treating, love that! And somewhere in there we are wanting to do a family picture with a photographer at the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch. Not to mention everything Eli already has going on at school. This is our busy time of year, I can't wait until the middle of November then things will slow down, but then you have to gear up for Christmas. Not really that bad, I tend to do my shopping on line, especially with the boys being older and can remember what you are shopping for. But as Doug always says once August hits before to long it's Christmas and you are wondering where the time has gone.

One party down, one to go

As everyone knows, Mr. Elijah just turned the big 4 years old. Now in less than 2 1/2 weeks my baby boy blue will be turning 2! Where does the time go? It doesn't seem that long ago that this monkey just arrived and now we are wanting to add one more, the final one to be exact (not sure I can handle more than one more pregnancy). When we got married we decided we wanted 4 children (Doug wanted all girls), that's right lot's of babies, now we have come to an agreement on shooting for a girl (pardon the pun), but if another boy is in the cards then I am well on my way to a basketball team.

I get home this morning and this is what I find, Dad has given Nic a big boy cup with a removable straw not one with a sippy lid, luckily it doesn't spill very easily, no milk on our cute Mickey Mouse pajamas.

Drinking big boy style.

Every morning the boys love either pancakes or toaster waffles with a doughnut and small bowl of cereal (they are going to eat us out of house and home).

Deciding to cheese it up for the camera before he gets dressed.

Elijah's 4th Birthday

Happy 4th Birthday, Elijah!!!!!

Sorry my pictures are a little out of order, I didn't upload in the correct order. These are pictures of our precious little man from birth through now. Enjoy!

Our first official picture after Eli was born.

Eli on his 1st birthday at the Zoo.

2nd birthday party with Daddy and Mimi helping him open presents.

A quick picture on his 3rd birthday after dinner.

Our big boy is growing up so fast!!

After a very long night of labor, but well worth it. A little chunk, Eli weighed 8 lbs. 3 oz. and was 20 1/2" long.

A picture of me and him right after he was born.

Daddy holding his first son!

After such a long journey he decided he needed some shut eye.

Home from the hospital and enjoying some loving.

Birth story as promised!

Well here it is the ending of my pregnancy and the wonderful journey of parenthood. After our doctor visit Doug and I come home make sure I have everything packed and ready to go and relax. We decided that the next day we would drive into Tulsa together, he had a meeting and I had last minute things to do. After I drop him off I head over to Utica Square to look at birth announcements seeing if I could find anything I like, I am pretty particular. Anyway I get done there and head to another store to check out what they had and of course nothing I liked. Decide to stop at Sonic and grab some lunch, a coney (my loving craving during my pregnancy with him), I then drive over to Promenade Mall. The Motherhood store has a lip balm that I wanted and by then I was just killing time until Doug was through with his meeting. I park the car and feel a little weird, thought it was the coney, and proceed to walk into the main entrance, now here's the kicker. As soon as I get into the mall I feel like I need to go to the bathroom, duh, I'm nine months pregnant, not only that I felt like I peed my pants. I get into the bathroom and realize my water just broke and there is fluid and some blood all over me and on the floor. I am still not panicked until I walk out of the stall and see an older lady washing her hands I calmly ask her to help me because I think my water has broken. What does she do? Takes off out of the bathroom like a bolt of lightening. As I make my way out of the bathroom I sit on a bench and proceed to call Doug but his phone is off because of the meeting and then I realize I have the car. So I am trying to get the number of the district office from information when a security guard comes walking out of an office and then the lady also shows back up. We go into the office to look up the phone number and I am able to get a hold of someone who finally can get Doug and bring him to the mall, luckily he was only a few miles away. I tell the security guards I would like to wait in the car, not in any pain or having contractions. Yet they give me a towel and I end up walking by myself to the car and decide to start calling everyone. I call my doctor, who is out of town for the weekend, so I get some nut head who is covering for him and this is who I had to deal with during my labor. Doug finally arrives and we start to the hospital, I half jokingly tell him we may as well go home and get everything since I am not having contractions, he didn't think that was very funny. We arrive at South Crest, man do I love that hospital, and they start me on pitocin around 2:30 p.m., my water broke around 1:00, about 3:00 the contractions are starting to begin. At five I decide to have a pain shot because I didn't want an epidural, but I was already dilated to a five. I got another shot around six but they were making me so sick and the room was spinning everywhere and some had brought Doug something to eat and that smell also does a number on you when you are in labor. Finally by seven I was dilated to seven and not feeling the greatest, personally I think my labor was going way to fast and I couldn't take those pain shots anymore and decided to have an epidural and by 7:30 it was done. Not only was my epidural only working on half of my body it completely stopped my labor, so I was still feeling everything. This went on the rest of the night and every time that doctor came in I wanted to kick him in the head and I also did while I was pushing. Finally at 5:00 the nurse said lets start pushing and it took two hours to get him out, Doug and a nurse got thrown up on him the process. I tore pretty bad and have to have a lot of stitches but it was worth it. I still believe had I not gotten an epidural I probably would have had him before midnight as fast as my labor was progressing but I guess we will never know. Well that is Eli's birth story, we joke around saying he was proving the doctor wrong by not wanting to wait another week and he was born the day before his due date.

4 years ago today....

On this day four years ago I went to what I hoped would be my final doctor's visit before our new addition to our family arrived. Upon the end of the exam my doctor informed me that I was just starting to dilate and would most likely take a while, at least another week, before I was ready to have this monkey. So we scheduled another visit for the next Thursday and would be going in to be induced after that, finally we would meet this little person who had been doing a break dance in my uterus. I had a great pregnancy with Eli, although we didn't want to know what we were having, the only thing major was the horrible heartburn. Tums were my best friend from the get go and I always had them with me no matter what. For the ultrasound we asked the doctor not to tell us and you could tell he was having a hard time not saying anything for the remainder of my pregnancy. But we were fully prepared, we even picked out a boy and girl outfit to take with us to the hospital, bags were packed, car seat ready, we were just waited for d-day to arrive. Doug wanted all girls and look what we have, just goes to show you shouldn't say things out loud all of the time. Although I wouldn't trade my boys for anything in the world. I will let everyone know more probably tomorrow, I promise it is definitely scary and a little funny (at least now anyway).

Boys left alone for a few minutes

This is what happens when the boys are left alone for a few minutes while I fold some laundry.

Nic undresses and climbs in his crib.

Eli thinks he must join Nic in his crib.

Nic decides everything must go in the floor.

(At least he didn't clear out all of the drawers)

Who knew playing could be so much fun!!!

Happenings

My little monkey or bruiser as we have called him since he was born otherwise known as Nicolas sure knows how to make his mom's heart jump and keeps her on her toes. His latest discover is climbing into his crib, not necessarily climbing but diving. He steps up on the rail and can't quite climb over the rail just yet so instead he leans over and dives in, very hilarious to watch. No I don't have any pictures my memory card is full, apparently I need to get one that holds more pictures, I believe there is at least 180 pictures on there. Mr. Nic can get in but can't get out, which I love by the way because once he is able to get out that means a big boy bed and I am not ready to turn him loose just yet. He has also figured out how to climb up on the counters without using a chair all he had to do was watch Eli a couple of times. Not once but twice last night did he do this while I was vacuuming. We have a jar of Dum Dum suckers on the counter, now they are on top of the refrigerator, if he can figure out how to get up there I am definitely in trouble.

Eli or bubba as we call him is my instigator, he always tells Nic what to do and of course Nic always does whatever it is. Pretty clever thinking for a little guy, knowing he is not the one who is going to get in trouble, but alas, mom figured it out pretty quickly but you can't be slow on your feet because there is always something new around the corner. This week is a busy week, I have at least two things to do outside of my house everyday except today. I am going to try and get things done early tomorrow morning or late afternoon because I would love to go watch the high school softball game. Some people might not like it but I love it! My old high school is coming up here to play and they aren't doing to shabby this year, apparently they think they might make it to state this year and they haven't been since I was a freshman. Oh the memories of playing, it was some of the most fun I ever had growing up. Well better get back to the laundry and my little monkey is waking from his nap.

Greatest person I know

My husband is by far the greatest person I know, I am not saying that because I love him but because he is a genuine, kind, caring and the most helpful person. He always puts his family first before himself and everyone else, which is the way it should be. Doug loves helping people especially when they come in and cannot afford their medicine. I can't count how many times he tells me he has paid for someones prescription or helped them pay for it. He doesn't hesitate when it comes to someone in need. Why I am saying this about him? Glad you asked. Doug has been helping his always drunk older brother out a lot, much more so the past few years. But there comes a time when you have to just let them figure it out all on their own. Doug has been working hard and traveling a lot and apparently he is supposed to drop everything and drive over 4 hours to help out, you know who. Not only that he received 20 voice mails on his phone being cussed at and probably called every name imaginable. Some way to treat the person that is doing everything for you, huh? He calls me and tell me this and I try to calm him down and get him to relax, not easy when you are not there with him. Not only that this, excuse my language, imbecile threatens to show up at my son's 4th birthday party. Now you know those are fighting words and anybody who would even try and ruin my child's day can expect the wrath of me. There comes a time in your life when you have to draw the line and this would be now. Doug has officially told me that is it, no more, can you blame him? I support him 100%, our family is what is important not someone who would treat their own sibling like dirt.

Doug reading the boys their Bible stories

New mommy friendship?

We received our first RSVP today from one of Eli's classmates, yeah! I hope more are able to come, we scheduled the party for dinner time on next Friday night, yes I know what was I thinking! Doug and I are feeding everyone pizza so hope they enjoy. Anyway, I talked to this little boy's mom for 45 minutes and we have never even met before. That's right our children are in the same class two days a week and we don't know each other. Matter of fact I don't think any of the parents really talk to one another, they mainly drop their children off from their cars and leave, I take Eli into his classroom, but I am quite protective of my boys (not quite sure if that is good or bad yet, hopefully good). But let me tell you I had a ball talking to her, we talked about a lot of things and guess what she likes to run, so maybe her and I can go running while the boys are in school. I don't really have any close mom friends, I guess you would call them acquaintances with children the same age but none that I would confide in and just open up to. But we really have never had the chance with kids running around and every one going different directions and living in different towns. I hope we get to know each other more and obviously the boys would have fun playing together. You never know until you try, guess we will have to wait and see what happens. Until my next post....