Anyways, background information first:  I was induced with both girls, and had never had the experience of going into labor on my own, really… and I wanted to experience that at least once!  Since this will most likely be the last baby, barring failure of permanent measures… I was praying that I could just go into labor and do this thing without a scheduled induction.

So, August 18 comes around, and my parents took the girls for the night.  Chris and I went shopping and to eat fried zucchini at Carrabas, which actually did put me into labor with Harper… albeit early labor that they stopped… We walked, and walked and I was having contractions pretty regularly.  We stopped by a party of some of Chris’ work friends, and eventually left only to continue walking around Vandy’s campus to see if the contractions would stick around.  They did, but I wasn’t convinced it was time to go to the hospital.

We went home, went to sleep, and I woke up the next morning to the contractions slowing down.  Bummer.  But all was not lost…!  The grass needed to be mowed, and the hedges trimmed, YES… sounds like a great job for a woman trying to put herself into labor.  So, I pushed mowed the lawn while guzzling water just to ensure that these weren’t fake contractions… then helped Chris trim hedges and rake up all the leaves etc.  Contractions were steady and pretty painful.  We thought about walking to Home Depot for more lawn bags, which in hindsight, I am so glad we didn’t do… I think I may have popped a kid out on the side of Carouthers Blvd…. anyhow, after a shower and about 10 trips up and down the stairs, I decided to call the OB.  The contractions had been steady for about 3 hours or more and the week before I was dilated 4-5 cm. The doc told us to come in, because once I am in active labor, usually in less than 2 hours each of the kids had been born.

Got to the hospital, still about 5cm dilated… I was MAD! They told me to walk around an hour more, and she would check again.  Surely enough, after an hour, the nurse checked me and noticed a small change, decided she could tell the OB I was 6cm now, and thankfully they couldn’t send me home! Hallelujah!  She came in and broke my water, and baby Ty was born about 2 hours later… August 19 at around 8:30pm.

It was hilarious, because I was having a love affair with my epidural, and was texting friends, surfing facebook, instagram and the like literally up until 10 min before the kid came out.  I love epidurals.  Let me say it again… I LOOOOVE epidurals.  Don’t even come up in here and tell me that they are anything but fabulous….  I know better!  I could feel every contraction, just no pain… I could move my legs, feel when to push and knew when the baby was about to make his debut, but with NO pain.  Ahhhh, what could be better.  It was amazing!  And when that sucker wore off, I had virtually no pain either, didn’t even pop an ibuprofen in the days following delivery.   SEE: The proof is in the pudding… active labor, major contractions…totally relaxed and all smiles…if I wasn’t already married, I would marry you, Mr. Epidural. I love you. 

Baby Ty entered the world at 22 inches long (via NICU measurement, in the delivery room they said 21) and weighing 6 lbs. 10 oz. His arms, legs and feet were so long no one could really believe it! He had a little bit of reddish blonde hair and a sweet, sweet temperament.

Grace and Harper came to see him early the next morning, because they both had fallen asleep right before he was born.  As you can see, for Grace, it was love at first sight, literally.

Harper was terrified of the hospital environment and basically wouldn’t have anything to do with him until we got home. This is the closest she would get.

Ty’s been such a good baby. After 2 days in the NICU, he came home, and ever since then, Harper has been in love too.

He looks so much like she did, its almost impossible to tell their newborn pictures apart. So, there ya go! I am sure I forgot a few things, but that’s the just of it!  He’s 3 weeks old and time is flying by.

Now that Grace is in Kindergarten, I have a new perspective on the baby, toddler, preschool stages.  I KNOW now that these phases will end.  If you had asked me last year at this time, I probably would have honestly told you that I would be the mother of preschoolers FOREVER…. When I hadn’t known anything else, it did seem like that is what I would be doing for the rest.of.my.life. And that was an exhausting thought some days.  No matter what mothers with older children would tell me, I couldn’t see past the phase we were in.

Not anymore… the lack of sleep isn’t getting to me as much, the lack of alone time isn’t weighing me down as much as it used to, and the kids’ neediness, which I have always really hated is actually kind of sweet.   Now, chock this up to post pregnancy feel good hormones, I don’t know… But the new perspective is nice, and hopefully it will last!

Oh my goodness, I am not used to Grace being so confident and eager to try things by herself.  She is the kid who cried when I walked downstairs in our house, and she was still playing upstairs…like maybe even until last week.  She was terrified that I’d walk out to get the mail and leave her inside by herself… She has always been kind of attached.

But not today, buddy.  The first thing she said when I picked her up from her half day was, “I wanna ride the bus tomorrow.”

“Um, Ok… well, let’s talk about it, let’s ask Daddy what he thinks… you don’t HAVE to ride on your first day…”

“I know, but I want to ride it!”

Well, against all the fibers in my being, I said yes… thinking if I showed any hesitation at all, or anxiety about it, it would kill her confidence….So, that’s what  we did.

Maybe I didn’t realize it until a few minutes after I walked in the door yesterday, that she would actually be riding the bus home….

…And I cried, for maybe 2 hours, then fell asleep for 2 hours (harper was running some errands with mom when I happened to pass out from crying-exhaustion), woke up, ate lunch, put Harper down for a nap…and paced the floor for oh, I’d say…3.5 hours.  Eventually I put the pacing to good use and started cleaning… needless to say, the house was spotless.

When the clock hit 3:35, I was a mess again… good Lord… that’s when she was getting on the bus for the first time in her life with all kinds of big kids that she doesn’t know… And talk about the wait until I actually saw the bus pulling up.  Holy Moses, I was running through the list of things I needed to do to file a missing child alert when she didn’t get off at our stop.

….And then like magic, here came the bus, the lights started flashing, and it actually stopped, right in front of us… and out came the smiley-est 5 year old girl you’d ever seen; ever so confident, and dare I say a little surprised that she had done this all by herself.

I think a 2 ton weight lifted off my shoulders at that point and I took the first deep breath I’d taken all day. She made it, she wasn’t crying, she was actually smiling, she had big girls waving bye to her out the window when she got off… and she had a fan club waiting for her at the stop…she was on cloud 9.

So, what’s the most logical thing to do when you just OWNED that bus like you’d been riding it since the day you were born???

Take off running towards the ice cream shop to celebrate, of course!

Hello. My name is Grace and I rocked the bus today!

…And then I breathed again, made sure to notice if the baby was still moving since I think I had deprived him of oxygen all day; and I prayed and thanked Jesus who has really turned this timid little girl into a confident little 5 year old who is ready for new things…

She did great.  No one shed tears, I could tell she was a little nervous, but mostly excited.  Harper was the saddest of all, she just wants to do whatever her sister does, and up until now, she really did!

She literally can’t wait 2 more years till she can go with G to school.

See the excitement and nerves on her face…?  This was the sweetest, most precious girl sitting next to grace.  She looked at her with the biggest smile and said “Hey Grace!  We are gonna be really good friends!” Melted my heart.

Before I knew it, it was time to pick her up and the carpool line was crazy as ever.  But the smile from ear to ear on Grace’s face was priceless.  She usually tries to hide her little smile when she is the most excited, but not today!  She was so excited and couldn’t stop talking about her day.  Almost the first thing she said to me was… “I really wanna ride the bus tomorrow!” I tried not to swallow my tongue and said, “I think that will be really fun Grace, maybe you can ride it home!” My internal organs were twisting inside, but I didn’t want to show her my nerves! I think it will be really good for her, so we just might take her in the morning and let her ride the bus home… Oh Lordy, the stress of waiting on the bus tomorrow may just put me into labor right there on the corner!!! I mean, how do the bus drivers know where to drop off each kid?  Stupid question, probably, but I’ve never ridden the school bus, so I am kind of freaking out!

I can’t believe my baby is in school… FOREVER….and that I am about to have another one any minute now.  This is crazy, and I don’t want poor Harper to get lost in the shuffle. Chris says he identifies with her… the middle child and all… he was so neglected as a child… (wink wink)

I am so THANKFUL that this day went well! Next thing to tackle will be the bus….. maybe tomorrow…! EEEKKK.

May seems to have come and gone in a hurry.  It’s been a fun, full month.   We’ve been to the splash pad, which was awesome!

Last night we went to the opening of the Treehouse exhibit at Cheekwood.  It was amazing to see all these treehouses!  This was my favorite.  It was crafted after the book The Rainbow Fish.  So cool.  Made out of thousands of cd’s!

Today we met friends, rode the trolley and painted pottery.  It was super fun!  Here’s harper and her friend noelle obviously talking about something HILARIOUS.

Here they are about to paint their pottery!

And here the girls are on the trolley.  This was the first experience Grace has had that will be similar to the school bus and she loved it.  I was so blessed by the driver of our 2nd bus, who happened to be a school bus driver for the Williamson County Schools too! She talked to me the WHOLE 30 min. ride about the ins and outs of the bus, the safety, the procedures, the drivers, and everything else.  The whole time I felt like God was giving me a little wink and love from above.  I have been constantly praying and praying about  making the right decision in whether to let Grace ride the bus next year, and what better experience could I have than 30 min of uninterrupted Q and A time with a driver herself.  I was MORE than impressed with EVERYTHING she told me.  Wow, I was really blown away at what an answer to prayer this was!

And finally, this is a pic of the 26 week baby bump.  I took this yesterday, but I feel like it’s a little deceiving.  I feel about 3x’s this size and I am not sure if the mirror is playing tricks on the camera here… but I swear I feel like I look bigger than this.  Who knows.

… and now I need to go take a nap before the girls wanna go to the pool for the rest of the afternoon/evening!  Have I mentioned how much I LOVE having an amazing neighborhood pool.  Seriously, they can not get enough of it.  We are there sometimes twice a day for hours at a time.  I. Love. It! (I may need to buy stock in sunscreen, though…)

I read this post about dyeing clothes the other day and thought I’d give it a try.  each bottle is less than 3 dollars and dyes TONS of fabric, so what did I have to loose, right?

I pulled out the 2 bins of baby clothes I had from the girls, and not only was everything PINK, but it was all completely stained with spit up from Harper.  I had forgotten how much this girl actually puked until I saw the evidence on the clothes.  Wow.  There was no hope for most of those things…or so I thought.  I was going to have to throw them away, use them for rags or something else, because I would be ashamed to give these to charity.

I started with the items stained the most…and filled up my dye bath. I think the first color I used was from a powder called sunshine orange… Worked like a charm!

Next I tried Aquamarine… that worked out pretty well too.  There are some items that are a little splotchy, but from what I read, I could dye them again to get that to go away… but I didn’t bother.

Here’s one of my absolute favorite outfits that the girls wore.  Top was white (but mostly puke stained) with a pink and brown bunny, and the pants were pink.  Now look at the results! I am thrilled!  Love how it turned out!

Aww, the little man will look so cute in this!  And they all 3 will have worn it!  I SO wish I’d have taken before pictures… I was too ready to try out the technique and didn’t hunt down the camera.

The only pitfall I ran into is that sometimes the thread doesn’t dye…i.e the white seams you see on some of the items.  Some of the things I tried to dye had been sewn with pink thread and after dyeing, it was completely still visible and very pink…so although they turned out cute, and the puke stains were covered they wouldn’t be suitable for a boy.  Still very girly looking.

The number 1 thing I learned is that the more rinsing, the better.  I rinsed and rinsed these items by hand until the water ran clear for at least a few minutes before throwing them in the machine for the first time.  I had almost no color bleeding when I did it this way, which is good because I am not a good light/dark separator when it comes to laundry…

Here’s a pic of the whole lot of clothes that I dyed:

*the items that look gray in this pic are in fact the same color blue as the shirt in the first pic…don’t know what’s going on with it here.   AND at least half of these items were PINK!

And now for the best part of the project:

We all know those Aden and Anais blankets that are all the rage these days, but are WAAAAAY expensive, right?  I’ve heard amazing things about them, but I had no idea you could buy the same fabric and make your own for a fraction of the cost…!

Check this tutorial out:

Genious!  I ran to JoAnn’s as fast as I could with my 50% coupon in hand and bought 6 yards of the stuff in white. (which ended up being @3.49 per yard) I cut and dyed 3 blankets, and then serged the raw edges with a rolled hem and a contrasting color.  I will leave the other 3 blankets white and either serge with another color, or I may finish the edges like she does here, and maybe add some kind of applique or something… I kind of like the pop of color from the rolled hem though… we’ll see!

I am more than thrilled that I did NOT shell out half a “Benjamin” for 3 blankets.

In other news… the sisters are fine and dandy.  Here are a couple of shots from this past weekend.

What on earth have we been doing this month….?  Let’s see… We had Easter, and a whole bunch of hockey…and that’s honestly all I can remember right now.  This may be a bullet point post of tidbits I can remember from the month, since I was a total slacker in blogville.

Let’s see:

* We took the girls to see the baby chicks and ducks at TSC… adorable.  I wanted to bring one (or 5) home!

* Most days I feel like I am just surviving…and eating pineapple.  I think I’ve consumed at least 10 fresh pineapples in the past month alone.

* The baby is still a boy, and he is healthy and growing.  I think he looks like Chris from the ultrasound…but hey, you can really only see the profile and the shape of the head… hehe…And we are no closer to figuring out a name than we were before we knew boy or girl… ugh.

* I have become an avid reader of all things hockey (Predators related, that is) I can’t get enough.

* I also read the Hunger Games series this month… and I was impressed with the first and second books (although I didn’t love them) but hated the third book.  It probably says something about the writer when I didn’t like the story but couldn’t pull myself away from reading the books… huh?

*Grace and Harper have become best friends over the past year and I am starting to worry about what Harper is going to do when Grace goes to Kindergarten. Can 3 year olds get depressed?  Hopefully a new baby will distract her.

* Chris is the best husband ever and worked his magic for me to have glass seats for 2 of the 1st round games in the playoffs.  I.will.never.be.the.same. Oh my goodness…. Here are a few picts of game 5.

* Folks, no zoom on my camera was employed here… We were just THAT close.  I could have grabbed his jersey if there was no plexi-glass in front of me….Pucks slammed into the glass inches from our face… the players checked each other into the boards… it was awesome.  The first game I was scared out of my mind… (and saw myself on ESPN hiding from the impact)..but by the second game, it was all business.

* This is June… my brave friend who accompanied me to game 5…on the glass.  We had a blast!

* And yet another perk of being married to the coolest guy on earth… we rode in style to the game.  A town car with the nicest driver in the history of drivers came to pick us up at home.  I could get used to this!

Can you tell that Playoff Hockey has dominated our lives this month?  Even the girls know it’s playoff time… the pray for the Preds almost every night, and whatever the color of our opponent becomes the “grossest” color ever for that series. It is really funny.  Grace even ‘trash talked’ our opponent last week, saying: “Mom, I bet all the Red Wings smoke cigarettes, because cigarettes are so gross and the Red Wings are so gross…”  I was dying laughing.

Even the boy gets all riled up when we are watching hockey… it is definitely when he is most active.  Maybe it’s all the screaming and jumping up and down on my part…but whatever it is, it takes about an hour after games for him to calm down.

* Also, I have become kind of a hockey snob and am of the opinion that all other sports are a snooze-fest compared to NHL hockey….

*Ok, the last point of the day… Kindergarten open house is tonight at Kenrose Elementary!  Grace is beyond excited, and Harper is hoping to convince someone that she is actually 5, so she can go WITH Grace in August.

Hopefully I will be back sooner than later with more posts and pictures!  Pregnancy is kicking my butt, although half the time I forget what’s going on and wonder why I am SO tired.

Alright, we’ll end it here: GOOOO PREDS!!

I am not even sure what the phrase “in like a lion…out like a lamb…”  really means, but for some reason thought it fitting for the month we’ve had so far!

It started with Grace losing her first tooth!  Almost exactly 5 and a half years old, and her first tooth fell out with no drama, tears or anything of the sort… which was awesome.  Coincidentally, it fell out on March 4, which was the day we were taking the girls to see the Disney Princess show at TPAC.

Most of the little girls in attendance were dressed to the nines in their favorite princess attire… but Harper… she insisted on wearing her elephant costume, which was awesome.  She has a mind of her own.  The funny thing was that all the kids who saw her costume were a tad jealous, I think!

The weather has been amazing…summer like temperatures.  So much so that we’ve had water play almost every day.  Since the neighborhood pool isn’t open yet, we’ve got to beat the heat somehow!  I am not complaining though, I absolutely love it. It’s been in the 70′s and this week it’s in the mid 80′s all week.  BLISS!

A little tennis time was in order….

And today, Chris and I took Grace to register for Kindergarten!  I can’t believe she’s old enough to start.  It seems like just yesterday she was born and Kindergarten seemed a lifetime away.  Nope.  Time flies, like it always does and it doesn’t seem possible that she is old enough!  Can you tell she is excited…?

Of course, being the optimum planner that I am, and the mom who is always on top of things… I forgot 2 of the 3 key, essential pieces of the puzzle in registering her: the birth certificate and the immunization form.  Hey, but I did remember proof of residency…that counts for something, right? Oh well… We go back on April 9 for her assessment and again on the 26th for the Kindergarten open house.

And one more piece of news…and welcome to 2012 surprise we’ve had this year:

Yes, you see that right… a baby.  (Not 2… thankfully… just one, but each one had to have a picture to hold).  And drum roll please…. we just found out that it’s a BOY…. !?  What???  Excuse me?  Is that even possible?  Well, I guess as evidenced from the current announcement, anything is possible, right?

The middle picture accurately sums up how Harper feels about having a boy, but Grace is super excited.  She is so sweet that she would have been happy about either.  Harper is opinionated and slowly coming around to the idea but on the night we told them they were having a brother, she prayed: “Dear Lord, thank you for my baby brother….but I wanted a sister.  Amen.”  and Grace only had one “condition…” she is NOT watching boy shows.  That’s OK, Grace, I’m not either.

So, moral of the story is… almost exactly one year after you give all your baby stuff away… you will most likely find out that you are pregnant again.  Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

So, that being said… if anyone has anything they’d like to pass along… let me know, all we have left is the crib…and the double bob, and I think maybe I can dig up a high chair.

There ya have it… March:  In like a lion…out like a ________?  We aren’t sure yet.

Truth be told, I have always had the desire to live very near a beach.  Every single time I go near the shore, I think to myself…why don’t we live here?  I can remember even thinking this when I was a young kid. I dream of warmer winters most of all…and the possibility of seeing dolphins every single day.

But what is fabulous about this February is that I feel like I am at the beach in my own house…in Tennessee!  It’s amazing.

I love the fact that all my windows are open and the thermostat reads 71 degrees.

I love the fact that almost every day, the kids have been able to go outside and play barefoot.

I love the sun beating down on my skin and the fact that we stood in the rain today and were not cold.

I love that we grilled burgers on the patio last night and the breeze felt warm like the beach.

I love walking every day with short sleeves and still sweating a little.

This February has been fabulous.  I don’t even care that there is one more day in Feb this year than normal.  Bring it on… especially if it will be above 65 degrees.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still dreaming of the beach… but I’ll take this.  And it makes me wonder if our climate was like this all the time, if I’d even have as much of a desire to move there? Who knows.  For now, thank you Lord for Feb 2012 and the cray warm temperatures.

Oh, and one more thing I am SO thankful for… Daylight Savings time is almost over… or is it beginning… who knows? who cares?… but there will be more sun in my life and longer days and oh, how I can’t wait.

(I have no clue why the font is supersize…and wordpress is not user friendly, so I have no idea how to change it…!)

After several epic battles with the girls this morning, I am left perplexed.

The first of the battles started when I poured 2 bowls of cereal, one into a purple bowl and one into a seafoam green bowl of the exact same size.  The child with the green bowl threw a fit and refused to eat because she didn’t like the color of the bowl.  (which by the way, she picked out at the store… but I digress)

I responded to her by explaining that there are millions of kids in the world that don’t have any breakfast to eat at all, and if they had been given her green bowl full of cereal and organic milk, they would have been overcome with thankfulness for the gift just given to them.

So, she didn’t have to eat at all.

I explained that when her stomach growled later because she was hungry, that she was to remember the kids who go hungry every day because they don’t have any food.

Not 10 minutes later, the other child threw a fit because she didn’t want to wear any of her shoes.  She had at least 4 pairs to choose from and none were good enough.  Earlier we had the same fit about a dress…from her FULL closet, she didn’t like any of her clothes and wouldn’t wear any of them.

We had the talk again… Kids everywhere don’t have clothes to choose from, much less a clean outfit to wear every day, and that shoes are a luxury that so many people don’t have.

They don’t get it… how can they?

I am reading the book Kisses from Katie to Grace right now, but it’s still almost impossible for her to understand the gravity of the situations that kids live in around the world… and luxury that is theirs, every day.

What should I do…?? I’ve debated taking all but 5 dresses out of their closet, boxing them up and putting them away; taking all but one pair of shoes out of the house….reducing their toys, books and stuffed animals down to single digits….but not sure that will solve the problem.

How can we raise kids that are overwhelmingly THANKFUL, content and ready to bless others?? How can we expose them to the things going on with other kids in the world without actually going to another country to see it first hand?    Periodically we do box things up, give them to charities, or others who are in greater need, we give money to the church and do not give in to every whim that the kids have.  We talk about people less fortunate and how we need to help them…

We are still drowning in stuff compared to the rest of the world…

Oh, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a lot of stuff…

Ahhh….what do we do?  How do we help them learn? Ideas, advice…?

I am just praying about how best to handle this situation!

*Promptly woke the kids up and bundled them up to head outside.

*I made coffee, turned on the heat in the sun room, and prepped my camera. (I do not go out in the snow if at all possible…it’s nice from a warm distance)

*Chris takes Grace out to make her first ever snowman. It’s unbelievable that in her 5 years of life we’ve never had a wet enough snow to make a good snowman!

*Harper soon follows, and they finish the snow-lady

*Everyone’s cold except me and they come inside

*Snow stops in a couple of hours

*We end the day with a temp in the high 40′s and all the snow is gone!

*Today’s high is in the mid 50′s.

*This is my kind of snow.

And to make the weekend just perfect, my amazing, beautiful friend came over on Saturday mid morning and did up a whole delicious breakfast just for us.  The kids were in heaven with their sweet potato pancakes…and Chris was totally and completely spoiled with the delicious food.  June comes from a line of cooks and they do not mess around and do not disappoint.  Seriously, these were the best pancakes I’ve ever had. I tried to document the greatness…