My baby is 5 months old

My very last baby is growing up so quickly.  It's hard to say if I'm sad or happy, of course, I'm happy.  But, it's bittersweet.  She's my very last baby.  I love seeing her grow and learn things.  She's now sitting up in the bumbo, rolling over, reaching for food, (although I say, no food until 6 months, she's EBF), and just all around a fun little girl.

But...she's my last baby.

bittersweet.

She turned 5 months old yesterday.  We celebrated with, uh, starting an earlier bedtime?

We've always had late bedtimes for our girls.  Usually between 9-10pm.  But, Delcie's telling us she wants to go to bed earlier.  Tonight, she is already asleep and it's only 8pm.  I guess that's what normal babies do?

Guess that puts a stop to our late-night partying.

M.A.B.E.L.

When we were first married, Troy and I would always watch the tv show, "Mad About You".  We worked or were in school all day long, came home after 9 each night, ate dinner or played cards with friends, then watched this show before we went to bed.

Wish I still had that much energy.  I'm getting old.

Back to the subject...
Paul and Jamie, (the main characters), had a baby girl towards the end of the series.  They were having trouble coming up with a name for her.  As they were heading to the hospital, Jamie's mother told her, "Remember, Mothers always bring extra love."

Jamie remembered that and used it to name the baby - Mabel.

I have remembered that for a long time, now, yes, almost 13 years.  I think I need to write it down and post it on my bathroom mirror or my fridge.  There are times when I seem to forget to love my girls.  We are so busy disciplining them or ignoring them that we forget to love them.  I know I don't spend enough time playing with them.  Sometimes I feel I rob time from one to give to another.  I guess these are all results of having children close in age.

When I was pregnant with Averie, I was having a really hard time understanding how I would be able to love her as much as I loved Camdyn.  I didn't think I would have as much love left to give to her, because I loved Cam so much.  So, I crochet her a blanket, hoping the project would help me feel closer to my unborn baby.  I'm not sure if it did, I think so, and the blanket turned out awful, but anyway...

The day Averie was born, I left the hospital while I was in labor just so I could go give Camdyn love before Averie was born.  I couldn't stand the thought of taking some of my love away to give to her baby sister.

But, as soon as Aves was born, I realized that I wasn't taking love away from Camdyn, I was adding another person to give love to her.  I don't understand how I was able to continue to love Camdyn as much but also love this new little one just as much.  It's just a miraculous thing.

Now that we have 3 little girls, I see it all over again.  I love Delcie just as much as I love her big sisters. I would give each of them anything they asked for if I could.  I don't understand how this multiplication of love works, but it's amazing.

This was just something that Troy and I were talking about tonight.  It's a scary thing being a parent, you hold a big responsibility for the tiny lives God has loaned you for a little while.   But, it's also a wonderful thing, being able to teach these little children about the world, and themselves, and God.

Don't forget, bring extra love.

Pumpkin Patch 2010

We went to a couple of local farm stands yesterday with my sisters and their children.  It's nothing like a midwest pumpkin patch, but we had fun.  

But, it makes me want to make a trip back to some of our old haunts just visit a patch...

I learned a little bit more about my camera and worked on adjusting aperture and shutter speed.  And light. I think I ended up taking some better pictures than I have in the past.  Yay!

Evan was kind enough to be my subject for about...20 pictures.  I finally got my focus right.

Working on the lighting.  This was a strap with cups on it that the kids could wheel corn up to the goats on the ledge with.

Here I was working on focus.  See that Cam is in focus and the goat isn't, while Aves is blurred and the goat isn't.

More lighting experimenting.

Just a cute picture.

Daddy and Delcie.

Then we moved on to the other market.  We picked out our pumpkins here.

We took some cousins pictures on the pumpkin wagon.  All the cousins but one, who lives in Virginia and couldn't make it ;)

Oops!  That was the outtake, lol!

Here's a better one...

And, we took pics of just our girls.

And, of course, the outtake:

Yea, they're mine.  Ha ha!

Our little pumpkin.  Or "punkin".

We completely forgot to take a picture of us outside, so we'll have to do it next time.  So, we took one in the kitchen.

Oh, and, happy day, I ordered a new lens for my camera!!!  I ordered it from a company that closes for all Jewish holidays and Sabbath, so, although I decided early in the week that I wanted it, I had to wait until sundown last night to place the order.  But, I got a notification that it's shipped already.  Yippee!

Smiles :)

Delcie smiled at me today.  A real smile, not a sleeping smile, or a grimace, but a real, "I know who you are and am happy to see you" smile.  Troy got to see it.  What a special moment, seeing my baby's recognition and love for the first time.

I'm really enjoying these milestones.  Well, there haven't been too many yet, but just go with it.

But, it's also a little sad when I think of this being the last baby that I'll experience these milestones with.  How blessed am I that I have these 3 beautiful babies to love!

I have to post something...

I am not sure what to write about, so I have been avoiding my blog.  We're getting adjusted to being a family of five here.  Tonight, I had the girls all to myself while Troy was at worship team practice.  For 3 whole hours!  It was - interesting.

Delcie is growing so fast.  We look at her and are amazed at how big she is.  The other two were so tiny compared to her.  At her 10 day checkup, she was already 10 ounces more than her birthweight.

Cam and Aves are doing wonderful as big sisters.  It's fun to watch them playing together, all 3 of them, and I can't wait until Delcie is big enough to run around with the other two.

We had to use the video camera today to take some pictures since my camera wasn't in the bag...

I found an old picture of Cam taking a bath in the kitchen sink and just had to share it.

Isn't she a cutie!

Oh, how I miss my blue counters.  And huge sink.  But, someday I'll have my own house again...

Camdyn Turns 4!

I'm skipping around with our summer.  Camdyn's birthday came after our vacation, but it has way fewer pictures than our vacation for me to "edit", (I'm not good at editing), so we're going with the birthday first.

I'm not doing well with the humidity and heat this summer, it makes it hard for me to breathe.  But, we wanted to do something special for our first little girl's birthday.  We have a great zoo in town with a cool new castle playground attached, so we decided to take her there.  My sister and her boys joined us, and my mother.

Here are the cousins enjoying their wagon ride.

This owl was at the zoo because he was hit by a car.  There was a mouse or some sort of rodent eating a banana peel on the side of the road.  He swooped down to catch the rodent and got hit.

Looking at the pink flamingos.

Aves enjoyed running away down the hills.

After the zoo, we went to her favorite "restaurant" ... McDonalds.  Yummy!

That night, we had dinner and gifts just with our family.  (We did the rest of the family party on Sunday when everyone could make it.)

Daddy got her tons of princess stuff.

Grandpa and Grandma got her a fishing pole.  We haven't put a hook on it, yet.

Soon, I'll add the pictures from her big party...

A long time coming update

We have been gone on vacation in a nice, big city - with terrible internet.  All last week we were on vaca in a huge hotel, but I was only able to get online once.  That's okay, it meant we could spend more time swimming or shopping :)

It was hot, very hot.  It really wore me out.  Nearly 100* each day.

I'll post pictures later, maybe after I get the July 4 pictures posted...

Here's a pic to tide you over.  Our hidden baby at 35 weeks this past Sunday night. (And the baby's sisters...)

It seems the baby has dropped.  My sisters told Troy that they noticed a difference in the week we were together, and a ton of customers at work this week are making comments, so it must be obvious.  I'm having a lot of cramps and BH contrax, but not much more.  We'll see what the doc says today.

Troy's on his way out of town this morning, not coming back until Friday night.  I think he's nervous that he's going to get a call to rush home, like he did when I went into labor with Averie, but I don't think so.

Hope not.  We're not anywhere close to having a name picked out.  We don't know if this baby is a boy or girl, so we have to have both.  We have a very small list, and don't really love any of the names.  Ugh.

My girls' Father

Today is Father's Day.  For years, we didn't enjoy celebrating either Mother's or Father's Day.  The years when we didn't have any children, although we were trying hard to have them, desperately wanting them.  Of course, we were always thankful for our fathers and grandfathers, uncles, brothers, etc, but it's hard celebrating something we couldn't have.

But, for the last 3 years, we have been able to celebrate having our daughter(s).  They changed our lives completely.  They're such individuals.  We love watching them grow and learn new things.

So, today, we celebrated our girls' love of their father.  We celebrated our last little miracle on the way.  We remembered the two we have waiting for us in heaven

My girls couldn't ask for a more attentive, loving, wise father.

Happy Father's Day!

Tuesday

I'm tired, I went back to work today for the first time in 4 years.  So, I'll just leave you with a few pictures of our evening.  I had a silly, sleepy girl...

Update on Camdyn

Remember I said I thought she had a migraine?  Well, no, she actually has ... Strep Throat.  I should have figured it out, she said her mouth hurt.  She had a fever.  And a headache.  She was tired.  But, this is my first experience with Strep, I didn't know the symptoms.

She's taking my favorite medicine - Amoxocillin, and doing very well now.

Happy New Years!

Okay, I know it's a little late.  Or, maybe a lot late, but better late than never.  Right?

For New Years 2009/2010, we went over to Troy's brother's house.  They invited a few friends and we had a great time with yummy food and lots of playing kids.  It was our twin nephew's 13th birthday, we had cake for them.

Averie really wanted cake.  Doesn't her face just make you want to give her the whole cake?

Finally, she got a piece.

The girls made their way around through the night.

Troy learned a new card game, Euchre.  I was surprised he didn't know how to play, I thought he knew all the card games ever invented.

And...we were home and in bed by 10:30pm.  I know, we're old foagies.  And boy, did we get mad when the text messages and phone calls started pouring in at midnight!  Just kidding, we love our friends - thank you for remembering us!

Hope everyone has a 2010 worth remembering!

I'm a proud mama

I'm sitting here wasting time on FB and trying to back-up my computer so I can do a disk clean-up and free some space.  I'll tell you why later ;-)

Earlier, when I was working on my Christmas cards, I was watching the Top Chef Las Vegas finale I had DVR-ed the night before.  The 3 finalists' moms were able to come to the finale and eat a first course their sons made.  Then, they hung around until the winner was announced.  The mother of the winner said something along the lines of, "I'm so proud of my son."  I'm sure she said more, but I've deleted it and that's all I can remember.  As she said it, I wondered, "what would it take for me to say that?"  And I realized, every day, I'm proud of my girls and the new things they learn.  The ways they grow physically and mentally.  The funny things they say and do.  Their kindness to each other.  And, multiple times a day, I think to myself, "I'm so proud of those two girls."  And, it didn't take them winning Top Chef for me to say that.