Lucy Olivia

There are advantages & disadvantages to having an induced labor.

Advantage: You know exactly when you're gonna have a baby.

Disadvantage: You know exactly when you're gonna have a baby.

I don't know about you, but I am a very anxious person. The night before we dropped off Tatum & Spencer with my parents before heading home to prep, pack and head to bed. It was going to be a very early morning. We took one last pre-baby picture...

We checked into the hospital at 7am on July 11th and started to get prepped. I was so nervous. It was all starting to come back to me. The pain, the blood, the pushing... My heart rate skyrocketed. At about 9am the nurses finally got the doctor's orders and the pitocin was running through my veins. At about noon my doc decided to break my water and I decided a pre-emptive epidural was needed. We waited til about 2 for Mr. Anesthesiologist and by then the contractions were hard, strong and pretty much not fun.

After getting good and "comfortable," my doc showed up to break my water. I thought the entire event was hilarious. My legs kept falling over and I had absolutely no control. Sorry doc, it was entertaining.

Soon after I became nice & nauseas and had a lovely headache. BUT, it was definitely worth the lack of massive pain in the rest of my body. At one point, Lucy's heartrate dropped and a ton of nurses stormed the room to check me and give me oxygen. Turns out she was just dropping lower and must have pushed against the umbilical cord for a moment. It was 5:45 and I was at a 5.

Within 20 minutes my body started to shake uncontrollably, which was a sign of transition with Spencer & Tatum. Then came the uncontrollable crying. Again, did the same thing with Tatum. So Tony turns to the nurse and says, "well we've hit both stages, pretty sure she's ready."

Sure enough, the nurse checked and I was ready to rock. Unfortunately my doc was at dinner. AGAIN. You'd think she'd learn. She was at dinner when I got to 10 with Tatum too and she made me wait. Not fun at all. So I waited... when she finally got there I told her she was fired. She laughed and told me to start pushing. I laughed back and said "I'll start pushing when you sit down!"

She sat down, I said, "I don't know if I remember how to do this," took a deep breath, pushed and all of a sudden at 6:36 pm, there was a full head of dark hair, completely out. Doc told me to slow down and then all of a sudden she was out. Took less than 60 seconds. It was so surreal. I started laughing again...

And here she was, this sweet little girl with a massive amount of hair. The whole thing was just hilarious to me. I could not believe she came out so fast, nor that she had so much hair, NOR that she smelt so bad! The first words out of my mouth were, "she's so stinky!" Apparently, when they are early they still have some stanky vernix (white goo) all over them. I never noticed it with Tate, but Lucy was definitely smelly!

So they cleaned her up, weighed & measured her, and she came in at a teensy 9 pounds, 7 ounces and 21 inches in length. She didn't look like Spencer & she didn't look like Tatum. Perhaps a combination. Not sure. Although it makes me feel good that I finally have one with dark hair like me. But who really knows how long that will last. Tony's blondness seems to be a pretty strong gene...

After spending the night in the hospital and getting very little sleep I was ready to head home. Don't get me wrong, Lucy & Tony slept great, I just could not sleep through the crying baby next door!

When we got home, the kids met us there and got to meet their little sister for the first time. Tate wasn't really sure and it's taken her a couple of days to get used to the idea of her. When I nursed her the first time in front of Tate, Tate got really upset and kept telling me to put my shirt down. She's gotten a lot better though and this evening Spencer & Tatum sat and stared at Lucy for a good 30 minutes just admiring her and pointing out all of her little features.

Spencer was sort of excited to meet Lucy, but as soon as he had, he was kind of like, "been here done this" and headed outside to play with his cousins. He has since been very concerned though, as has Tatum, whenever she cries... to make sure she's okay and has what she needs. I think they are both going to be very good siblings to their new baby sister.

Lucy Olivia Jones

Oh crap, another biggun...

Here I am at about 8 weeks before my due date with my 10+ pounder, Spencer (please excuse the gross nekked beller pic, at this point I was void of stretch marks):

And then at the same period of time with my 9 pound 4 ounce Tate:

And here I am at 8 weeks til my due date with this one:

Awe crap, I'm totally gonna have another 10 pounder...

Happy Birthday Baby Girl...

2 years ago today my little (9 pound 4 ounce) lady came into this world. From the moment she was born, she was the sweetest, quietest, easiest, most adorable baby. But all that has changed! She's 2 now and as big a talker as her brother was at this age. She is turning into quite the little diva and she knows it! The other day she was yelling at Spencer because he had a toy she wanted, stopped and said, "I being mean." She can still be the sweetest little girl despite her diva-ish ways. She loves to give people "squishes" (hugs, but if you say "hug" she won't give it to you. It has to be a "squish." She loves Sesame Street, her baby dolls & anything pink. Who knew I would end up with such a little girly girl?

1 day old

1 year old

2 years old

And the verdict is...

Last night I could barely sleep because all I could think of was how this baby's gender was going to completely change the dynamic of our family. We would no longer be even, it'd either be chick flicks or action movies...

I woke up this morning and started drinking my ridiculous amounts of water and as soon as we dropped Spencer off at school I had to pee. So I did. They say don't "void" but whatever, if I drank a quarter as much water as they want you to drink, my bladder will still be full 2 times over. We dropped Tatey off with my friend Rachel, I peed, then headed to the clinic. I checked in, I peed, then my name was called.

Our tech was Tony, a very nice fellow indeed. He started to look around and the first thing the baby did was shake it's bum around. Hilariousness. Moments later he found where there would or would not be parts and in a matter of moments we knew!

Our tech continued looking and the entire time our little baby squirmed and kept opening it's mouth and yawning. It was the coolest thing to watch. Tate & Spencer moved during their ultrasounds, but the movement was not as detailed - more like random kicks, but we got to sit and watch this baby stretch it's neck and squirm and try and eat the placenta. It was so amazing.

We also found out that we could get a copy of the video, something we weren't aware of with the first two. BUT they did manage to track down Tatum's video from over 2 years ago and they're gonna attempt to get that one to us too. We'll have them next week! I'm so excited to sit and watch them over and over...

Oh, by the way, it's a girl. ;)

Rental Rant

So if you haven't heard yet, we are buying a new house and we supposedly are moving the end of March. We have until then to find a renter for our existing home. We decided to go the rental route since we had our house on the market a certain amount of time and had no viable action. Not to mention, the market is absolutely terrible and we'd have to pay an insane amount of money to sell.

So here I am. House is clean, children are clothed, I am bathed... And... Nothing. Some potential renters called yesterday saying they really wanted to see the house. So they said they could come today at noon. What time is it? 12:30. Where are they? Who even knows.

I am frustrated beyond my wits end.

Granted they could have a ridiculously awesome explanation for not showing up, but couldn't they at least call? I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but come on. I don't know how many people have called about our house saying they would call back later that day and never do.

Is it the type of person who rents? I don't think so, I have a very good friend who rents and she always calls and shows up when she says she's going to. These other people sure are giving "renters" a bad name. Is it a lack of respect? A lack of pride? I don't know. What makes their time so much more important than mine? Why don't they have enough respect for other people to show up?

I guess I never fully realized what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to rent this house out instead of selling it. But it seems like there are so many people out there that are just plain rude. What ever happened to "do unto others as you would want done unto you?"

When will this get better? When will we find a respectable person or party to live in our house? Will we? We better, or in 5 weeks we'll be stuck here, which wouldn't be a surprise because I've been saying that the last 4 years. We are going to be stuck in this house until the end of time.

We are cursed.

My baby isn't a baby...

What happened? All of a sudden I woke up the other day and my baby girl was no longer a baby. She's in a big girl bed, she plays by herself, she TALKS all the time, she uses please & thank you. When did this happen? Good thing I have another one on the way to fill my baby hole. Tatum is turning into such a sweet, loving, demanding, adorable little girl and I couldn't prouder.

Cats Outta the Bag!

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm totally knocked up again!

I am 9 weeks pregnant and due in July with our 3rd spawn!

Despite the constant nausea, migraines, and a bout of the flu so far, we couldn't be more excited.

I guess this explains all of the complaining I've been doing and me being so sick. ;) Hopefully there will only be about 3-4 more weeks of complaints. Then it's on to the fun part! We decided we aren't going to find out the gender of this baby since we already have one of each. So few surprises in life, I think this will be a fun one!

Thank you to everyone for all of your support and encouragement. I can't wait to meet this little, or most likely NOT so little, one come July!

Go green.

I never used to be conscious of the whole recycle thing. I mean, I would return my soda cans, but that was 5 cents a piece I was getting! It wasn't until I got married that my husband made me more aware of my recycling habits and helped me turn them around.

Here a few of the things we do at home to try and do our part...

I NEVER buy wrapping paper, tissue paper, gift bags or ribbons for presents. I reuse all the tissue paper, bags and ribbons from presents we have received.

I use paper bags at the grocery store instead of plastic.

I cut apart the paper grocery bags I have and use the blank side as the outside for wrapping presents. Then I use all of my pretty ribbon or bows I've received to snazzy them up. It's really beautiful, especially at Christmas time with the same colored wrapping and all the beautiful bows!

Lighter.Safer.Greener wants to know what you're doing to help save our planet!

Pumpkin Madness

A couple weekends ago we did our annual pumpkin retrieval trek. This year we headed out to Greenbridge Farm in Jefferson for $1 pumpkins. The kids were ready in their boots and Braeden pulled Ryllie & Spencer nearly all the way out to the field in the wagon...
The kids hitched a ride with the pumpkins on the way back...
There was an entire covered area that had a hay tunnel and a wheatbox for the kids to play in for free. And since there wasn't anyone else around, the kids had free range.
Tate & Connor sat in the wheatbox playing while the older kids played on the hay.

The McIntyres

The Jones'

The night before Halloween we spent the evening carving pumpkins on a makeshift mat on the living room floor. The kids just ran around playing while all the adults did the hard work. I swear, one day, they'll have to do all of this themselves!
L-R Spencer drew 3 silly faces that I carved out, Sheri carved Ryllie's castle & Nathan carved Braeden's autobot pumpkin.
Our house still smells of pumpkin guts.

My baby turned 4.

My son turned 4 & I didn't even blog about it! What?! I'm a terrible mother. On October 125th, my bucket, that's right, his nickname is Mommy's bucket, turned four! It was 4 years ago that I gave birth to my 10 pound 4 ounce Mister man. I can't believe he's four. I know everyone says this, but it went by so fast. So much has happened. He has grown into the sweetest, most stubborn, caring, inquisitive little boy.

He's always been one to just go go go, I suppose that's why I keep asking him to slow down and stay little for me. He says he can't. That he has to grow up to be a Daddy and get his own house. What is that? What four year old wants to grow up and move out?

A few milestones:
First smile: 3 wks old

First laugh: 8 wks old

First word other than Mama & Dada: kitty

Crawling: 7 months old

Walking: 11 months oldTalking in full sentences: 18 months old

Refusing to eat anything but yogurt and cereal: 1-2 1/2 years old
Potty trained: 2 1/2 years old
Complete drop down massive tantrums: 2 1/2 years old-3
Obsession with Transformers: 3 1/2-present

3 wks

1 year

2 years

3 years

4 years old!

I really truly believe that Spencer is growing into a caring, loving, thoughtful little boy. At random he tells me that he loves me and that I'm pretty. What girl wouldn't want to keep that boy forever? Too bad he wants to grow up so fast! I love you Spencer Zane.

The Heart of our Home...

As a child, our family spent most of our quality time together in the "great room." We always ate dinner together and watched Jeopardy afterwards (while my older brother sat at the table yelling out the answers as he ate... VERY slow eater). Another big thing we did together was watch movies and eat homemade caramel popcorn. But times have changed a lot since I was a wee tyke...

Now that I have a family of my own, I've found that we spend a lot of our time together in our bedrooms playing with the kids. I don't remember both of my parents down on the floor playing with us very often. Perhaps it's because there was 4 of us and we entertained each other, but I find that our happiest and most memorable times are spent hanging out on the floor of Spencer & Tatum's room playing airplane or Saturday & Sunday mornings when we all linger in bed tickling, tackling & teasing the kiddos. I never thought that the heart of our home would be the place we sleep, especially since as a child it was the place we never wanted to go since the "go to your room" statement always meant we were in trouble. I hope that we continue to spend a lot of time playing with and enjoying our children while they still want us to.

What do you think? Where is the heart of your home? Leave me a comment & if you do, you'll help me win a new Samsung washer & dryer courtesy of Twittermoms! Then I'll be able to do even more laundry and fold it in our bedroom with the kids! I've recently discovered Spencer & Tatum LOVE to find our pile of unfolded clean laundry in our room and play dress up. Very entertaining...

Spencer's Imagination

So I'm new to this whole preschool thing so I have a couple questions...

A) Is it normal for my usually very outgoing child to NOT want to tell me what happened at school?

B) Is it normal for him to make things up that never actually happened?
First day of school he had yams for snack... not.
He almost got a time out for not putting a toy away... not.
Today he stood on top of the table and didn't get to eat the rest of his snack... not.

So when I ask his teacher, she's is just like, huh? What are you talking about?

I am so confused. I am not really sure what to believe. I don't know why he's making things up... Is preschool not exciting enough that he has to fabricate stories?

Spencer's first day of Preschool...

I think I haven't posted this because I'm quite possibly in complete denial that my near 4 year old has a life outside of me.

Friday was his very first day of preschool and he was sooo ready for it. I dropped him off and he immediately ran off to make new friends. There was a handful of other kids crying and clinging to their parents and for some reason it made me feel a lot better. He was not being forced or coerced, he wanted it, he needed it. We both did.

My baby next to his backpack & hook!

Lining up to head inside

First one in the door, never even looked back.

While he was away, Tate & I hung out in a very quiet house. My stomach churned the entire time wondering what he was up to. We finally went to go pick him up and he was super excited to see us. It took a lot of questions to figure out what exactly had happened in school.

1-He apparently had yams for snack and had told the teacher he hated them.
2-He nearly got a time out for not listening to the teacher when she told him to put a toy away.
3-He made a friend named Braeden (Braeden had a blue shark on his shirt just like Spencer had a blue monster on his shirt... bonded them I guess).
4-He told Braeden that he knew 2 Braeden's, him and his cousin.
5-Braeden told him there was only one Braeden.
6-He learned about Adam & Eve and how they ate the smooshy fruit.
7-They cut out paper hands and he was too slow so he didn't get to finish and then yelled at me because I didn't have any child friendly scissors for him to "continue learning."

So yesterday I spoke with Teacher Kristy to figure out what exactly happened and found out...

1-They had crackers for snack (no yams)
2-He never got in trouble, or even close
3-He did absolutely wonderful

So it'll be interesting to see what stories he comes up with the rest of the school year. Yams. I was wondering who would bring yams for snack for 3 & 4 year olds!

2009 Fantasy Football Draft Lottery...

5

My freshman year of college I caught a toilet on fire and had to do community restitution in the paint shop. The very next year I started serving my punishment... After my unintentional attempt at arson, I started dating a guy who was part of a fraternity (we'll call him Big Red. Why not? My parents did). He was hilarious and had the greatest personality, but as soon as I started hanging out at said fraternity, I met a really cute guy (we'll call him Dimples) that I could not stop thinking about. Soon after, I dumped Big Red in hopes of striking up a romance with Dimples.

To my dismay, Dimples paid no attention to me. He was a senior and I was a lowly sophomore. He soon graduated and left me. But alas, one day I saw Dimples at the gym betwixt my sophomore & junior year. I struck up a conversation and left that day feeling hopeful that I would see him again. The next week I returned to the gym every day at the same time in hopes of seeing Dimples again, but to no avail. Sadness returned.

The next summer I lived in an apartment above a girl (we'll call her Hooch) who started dating Dimples. I was so excited to see him return but less than elated to see Hooch treat him like the Hooch that she was. One day I told Hooch how much I really liked Dimples. Turns out Hooch wasn't that into Dimples. She said that they were going out to see a movie that night and I should come along. I went along.

Soon after Hooch & Dimples broke up.

It wasn't until my senior year, when I had given up all hope of finding love and had resorted to dating a townie who lived with his brother and didn't have a job AND a 5th year senior who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life and spent most of his day with his friend the Bong, that Dimples returned to attend graduation school.

I was in the cafeteria and Dimples walked in. My heart went thud thud and he asked me for my MSN Messenger name...

5 months later we were engaged.
5 months later we were married.
5 months later I was preggers with his baby.

Happy 5 year Anniversary Tony! I married you for your dimples and your biceps but to NO surprise it's turned out to be so much more! I love you.

1up

Tony turned 29 a couple weeks ago. I think he was deprived as a child when it comes to crazy birthday cakes. So he requested a Super Mario Brothers 1up cake. I hope he appreciates it, because I'm done with his fancy cakes... He's nearly 30!

Smells like Fair

So a few weeks back the fair came to town. Tony hates all things fair, aside from the food. So he really didn't want to spend his money on something he hated, but I REALLY REALLY wanted a funnel cake. So he promised to make me one. We got home really late that night, can't really remember why, but we spent the next couple hours making and devouring the most tasty delicious funnel cake ever. If you're ever in the mood, it takes nearly no time and Alton Brown has provided us with a super easy recipe here...

Ketchup...

I know it's been a while, but I gotta tell you about our Fourth of July. See how I did that there, catch up/ketchup... you eat ketchup on your burgers/hot dogs on the 4th. Get it? Wow, that was dumb...

This 4th of July we went out to my parents' house in Stayton and BBQed. Good times had by all. The most momentous time was of course the lighting of the fireworks. The kids all loved it and thought it was hilarious that my brother Nathan stood by everytime with the house in hand "just in case," because at one point he LIT THE LAWN ON FIRE! Good thing he had his trusty hose!Even the babies had a good time. Some of the fireworks were a little loud, but for the most part they were fine.
When all of the regular fireworks were done the kids got to do sparklers!

They all had to stay within the confines of their block of cement so they wouldn't catch anybody else on fire. They did really well! When we were all done we all jumped in our cars and headed to the middle school to watch the big fireworks. We ended up spending the whole time coralling the children and trying to keep them from jumping out of my brother's truck. Perhaps they weren't quite old enough to be into the cool fireworks. Live and learn.