Chocolate Chip Pancakes

  L discovering the pancakes he helped make this morning. 

 Obviously the best part being the chocolate chips.

Hudson's birth

Week 1:

I am so determined to stay up on my blogging this time around.  I feel that I have lost a lot of my memories of the boys in the last few years.  So I would love, love, to retain something of this next year of watching Hudson grow!  Here is my effort to keep on top of things!!

C-section and Delivery:  The c-section.  The event I had been dreading, praying, and sweating over.  It finally came.  An early delivery (7am) meant an early arrival time (5am), which was fine with me because I never sleep all that well the night before.  And I didn't.  With Noah and Luke I entered the hospital under the premise of trying to deliver the baby naturally (or quite unnaturally in my cases), but this time around surgery was all planned and booked.  We just had to arrive!  Everything went so smoothly, the IV was placed, (even in the small things a virtually painless IV was such a huge blessing), drugs were administered (no yucky drink!), I took about 20 trips to the bathroom (nervous) and we were ready to go!  But in the end as we were about to enter the OR an emergency c-section sent us into the recovery room to wait.

Pre delivery!

Our time came and I will be totally honest, I was pretty freaked out at this point.  But God so graciously provided comfort; my very kind OB held my arm while I was getting my spinal done.  No hubbies allowed anymore at this point!  And a very kind anesthesiologist who not only comforted and talked me through much of it; he also told me at one point, it's ok you can hold my hand, I guess I was grasping for something to hold onto!  You know what song kept running through my head at this point?  Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.  There is such a sweetness to this song.   And such a sweetness to call God my rock in the midst of a surgery.

There are so many little snippets I can recall, first was hearing Hudson cry and then nothing!  I can remember saying, is he okay?  Why isn't he crying?  He was fine and once he was out, he demonstrated just how okay his lungs were, for about two hours!!  Yikes.  The delivery was a bit rough.  Thanks to a combo of scar tissue and big baby.

Another thing I can recall is overhearing a nurse talking about 'his coloring looked very bad'.  Mommy ears for sure!  I am not sure how I heard this but before I had a moment to ask a question I then overheard, we should probably get him some juice.  What? Juice?... Someone must have seen my confusion and cleared it all up for me.  The poor male student who was observing his first c-section had passed out!  He was a great sport about it all and even came back to thank me for allowing him to observe the surgery.  Yes, you are very welcome for causing you to feel faint and woozy!  Anytime.

Soon I was out of surgery.  Ready to hold and cuddle our sweet little, still at this point, screaming baby boy!  Such a joy to be out!  Such a joy to be done!

Thanks for reading,
Heidi

(obviously a bit behind in my posting but still wanted to share this!)

July 4th

Peddling backwards a little these days!

We spent the holiday, which happened to fall mid week this year, at the Saylor's house.  They are wonderful hosts, we had a great time, and the highlight of the whole evening was the sparkler's followed by the sprinklers turning on.  My boy's went home happy with burnt fingers (Noah couldn't quite get the concept as to why he kept burning his fingers on the sparklers), wet bodies and tired, but happy, faces.

Thanks for reading!
Heidi

Noah Bob

A little post on Noah.

In the last month I have witnessed Noah mature.

It has been a very long, very emotional road, getting from there to here.  I have failed more often than succeeded at being patient and loving to him through his struggles.  I have spent many days pleading with him to sit, play, focus...and to no avail.  He was, and still is, our busy boy.

Yet for the past few weeks he has slowed down, he will sit for periods of more than five minutes, and just plays!  Wonderful play.

My heart rejoices each time I witness him: enjoying his toys, primarily his trains, putting objects in the caboose, making sounds and laughing.  This may sound elementary for a four year old.  But he is our four year old that never quite could do this seemingly effortless task.  And now I see it, I am thankful for it, and I see God's grace in the midst of it.

For I have struggled greatly in not having a child that reached developmental milestones at the 'right time', I have struggled in comparing him to other's, and I have struggled with being humbled in the midst of it all.  So we praise God for this and for Noah continuing to enjoy his time of playing.

Thanks for reading,
Heidi

One Month in....

I have a one month old (plus a few weeks).  Time is truly passing us by.  I have been trying to hold on tightly to each little phase that Hudson is going through but some of them pass too quickly.  It seemed that in one instant I could still squeeze a size Newborn diaper around him and then the next it was impossible.  I have already packed up all newborn clothing, but let's be honest when you are born at 8.14 and lost basically none of it, that isn't a big surprise.  And I am already thinking size three month is looking a little tight length wise.

Slow down little one!

In one month our little Hudson has hit some milestones.

He smiled at about one month.  A big, gorgeous grin, with his mouth wide open.  He is simply irresistible smiling at me like that.  Sweet thing.

He finally got his first shot at his one month visit.  Yes we are those parent's.  Not the non vaccinating kind but the kind that can't remember anything, and the kind that kept forgeting the important vaccine card that you are supposed to take to EVERY visit.  We forgot whether we had him vaccinated with his Hep B in the hospital, and forgot whether we had it done in the doctor's office at his first visit, and so on...proud parenting moment. We finally remembered to bring it and he finally got his shot!  Yay for him.  He screamed, I cried, same old shot routine...

He was picked up, sat upon, poked at, kissed, licked, all by his very loving two older brothers.  The picking up thing is pretty disastrous.  I made it worse by not reacting correctly the first time Luke did it, all I could do was say, oh thank you Lukey, thank you, thank you.  I was on the phone at the time and my dear friend kept saying, STOP thanking him and pick up the baby!!  Hello.  Unfortunately now, Luke picks him up (and yes he can undo the safety belts as well), walks to me over the TILE floor, hands him to me and says, Your welcome Mama.  Pray that sweet Hudson survives his brothers.

His belly button fell off.  And basically I did everything wrong during the process, are you starting to worry about how Hudson will survive our parenting?  I found out that putting a bandaid over the belly button is not what you should do.  Which, it turns out, makes belly button's worse if they aren't exposed to air, but I did, I covered it with a bandaid, then realized the whole thing was oozy and bloody and stinky.  And I will be honest I was a bit embarrassed that I had no idea how to care for an infant's belly button.  So I made Kelly take him into our pediatrician.  A shining moment for me making my hubby do the dirty work; thankfully they fixed it up with no comments about, isn't this your third?  But I think I learnt my lesson about sending my husband in because Kelly tells our dog, LOVING, doctor (I know this because she put it on her profile) how much he can't stand certain dogs.  And the dogs he can't stand are the one's she owns.  Classic Kelly.

I always enjoy putting the boys stats in my posts.  So here are Hudson's!
Weight 10.14 (75%)
Height 22.5 " (75%)

Thanks for reading!
Heidi

Nap time and Radio Campesina

Nap time.

If you are like our household naps are more like 'rest' time with no sleep.  Or rather, Mommy sitting by the door furiously crocheting or knitting, praying that someone will eventually drop from sheer exhaustion time.

Sometime's they do but more often than not they do not.

We have spent a few weeks shuffling them around the house trying to figure out the optimal napping situation.  And with three of them all needing a place to lay down, and now knowing that if the two older ones are together it mostly turns into a party or a bitting fest, we are becoming a bit creative.

So when I went into check on Lukey the other day there was just something truly entertaining about what I saw, and heard.

Loving the little years...

I had this book, Loving the Little Years, suggested to me right before Hudson (H) was born.  The book is 17 short chapters on loving your littles, even in the midst of chaos!  The author should know since she herself has five (going on 6!) children all under the age of 5 or 6 years. (Though whichever phase I have been in with one, two or three there are always opportunities for chaos)  And yes she had time to write a book with that many little ones.  I should take note of that since I just got out of my pj's and it is 2 in the afternoon!

I have a feeling it will be one of those books that I will reread, over and over, to get the sweet blessings that she shares on caring for your babies.  But this is one of her ideas, concepts, blessings, that she writes about and it has been being put into practice in our lives...

Picture this lovely scenario.  H eating, N playing quietly on the big red chair, and L climbing on the back of the same chair.  Sounds pretty nice and serene?  I should mention that I had just dealt with a whole lot of potty accidents but I would rather give you a scenario of peace and quiet and poop free.    Sadly at this point L falls off the back of the red chair, hits his head on the window ledge and cracks open the exact same spot as before.  Bye bye glue, hello blood spurting forth.  Craziness then ensued, L running around screaming (he is a tad bit dramatic, totally Kelly's side of the family) with blood dripping everywhere, H crying because he has been ripped from his sweet meal, and then N decides that now would be a great time to open the freezer and help himself to some ice cream.   I was trying to calm L with a very sweet, STOP SCREAMING!  While cleaning his head up and the blood on the floor, so what does a frantic mother do?  She decides to call my dear hubby hoping by some miracle he would drop what he was doing and come running to help.  Ok, maybe not, rather he laughed and thought that whole thing was hilarious!  Which to top it all off I turn around to find L had picked up H, because he does that a lot and I mistakenly told him, good job, the first time he did it and now he thinks he is doing a good job by picking up his three week old brother and carrying him around the house over TILE flooring!  Goodness help that poor sweet boy.  Enter whichever one necessary.

So why this story you say?  How does the book tie into your craziness?  Because the author writes about her own moments of crazy chaos, where everything seems to be falling to pieces, and you begin to question why you have so many children?  Or maybe that last bit is just me.  Here is what she writes:

"Instead of spending time telling yourselves stories in which you are given too much to do, come up with some simple coping tactics.  In that same early and intense phase with the twins, I developed the twenty minute rule.  If things started seeming really out of control, I would look at the clock and note the time.  Then, I would tell myself that in twenty minutes this would be over.

If I just kept my head down and did the work, twenty minutes was all I needed....the storm would have passed in twenty minutes if I was cheerfully getting things done....

A moment.  It passes.  But when it passes, you will be very glad off all you did was work right through it.  No self pity, no tears, no getting worked into a dither. "  Rachel Jankovic, Loving the Little Years.

And this is what ran through my head today.  You see I am prone to tears, tantrums, shouting, maybe all of the above, in the midst of these moments.  Yet her advice, her words, rang in my mind as I was in the midst of this time.  20 minutes and it will be done.  20 minutes to get the wound cleaned up, the ice cream put away, a child disciplined, a baby fed, a crying boy settled.  No grumbling, no complaining, no phoning my husband (oops), but head down doing the work cheerfully.

May I be faithful in loving my littles...

Heidi