it's been 3 months already...

i really thought that i would have had a little more time on my hands to sit down and keep track of Miss Pink's life, but i guess that those high expectations went out the window, along with my sanity, on the day she was born. okay, okay, it's not entirely her fault, but she's young enough that i can still blame things on her and not just my laziness. quite a bit has happened since we finally got settled in. i'll just stick to the highlights, since not everyone really cares how many times a day i'm changing poopie diapers. 

by the time we took Miss Pink in for her 2 month check up she had gained almost 4 pounds! well crap, 4 pounds may not seem like a lot, but for her, she gained more than 1.5x her birth weight (imagine gaining 1.5x your own weight in just 8 weeks...ewww). i really thought she was looking chubby and huge, but HA! she was still so much smaller than the boys at that age. she really is a peanut compared to other babies. 

since i am not a professional, and my kids would never sit still long enough if I told them to, i had a friend come and take the boys first pictures with their sister. (thanks LWP)

so, like i said before, a lot has happened in the last 3 months. NoNo turned 5! i can't believe he's 5! starting kindergarten in the fall (less than 5 months away) and i'll be home with a munchkin. a super cute munchkin.

i really thought that being a mom for the 4th time would wreak some serious havoc on my psyche, but surprisingly things have been pretty mellow. i think that being a little older and having had done this 3 times before, i'm just taking this whole new mother thing pretty easy. i'll giver her some credit though, she's an extremely easy baby. she started sleeping through the night right around 6-8 weeks, and last night even slept for 10 hours straight! she's been giggling and cooing since she was about 7 weeks old and right at her 3 month birthday she figured out how to roll over. she's perfectly perfect...

it was a surprise birthday...

it was a Friday, the Friday after Christmas. the boys were home and bored, so what else do you do on a Friday afternoon, you head on down to Target wasting time "finding something for dinner". we didn't stay very  long, which is unusual for a normal trip to Target, so, we then headed on over to Chick-fil-A for a little snack (mommy wanted french fries and sweet tea). i'm a mom, i should've known something wasn't just right that day. i felt weird all day. and by weird i mean i was having contractions all day. contractions are nothing new for me. i have them all the time, but when i noticed they were 4 minutes apart and not stopping, i probably should have called someone (like a doctor).

by 3pm i decided to lay down and watch a movie (The Descendants to be exact) thinking this would be relaxing. it should have been. C was the only one home with me. the other 2 yahoos were over at P & E's house, so taking a nap should have been a no-brainer. i probably got up to pee 3 or 4 times in between the contractions, but i never really had to pee. actually watching the movie became difficult, and guess what? i never finished that movie. during one of the sappy hospital scenes where everyone is mad and crying, i felt something like a karate kick to my hoo-haw (from the inside!). i actually managed to pause the movie right before the giant explosion. and yes, it was an explosion, like 5 water balloons had just popped and i was the one popping them (you get the idea). it was barely 5pm and at this time no one was in the house. i remember rolling off the bed and scurrying to the bathroom while trying to undress at the same time all while screaming for someone (that someone would be baby daddy) to come help me. luckily C came in the bedroom while i was hunched over the floor barely covered with a wet towel. surprisingly he stayed calm and i gently (with a mad squirrel look on my face) asked him to go find Daddy. i could here him running to the garage telling The Husband he had to come inside, where he was told, "i'll be there in a minute." and then i hear, "NO, DADDY, NOW!"

my ever so calm baby daddy then helped me finish undressing, shower, redress, and get in the car all while talking to the hospital in less than 10 minutes. if you've ever seen The Husband drive, you would know that making it to the hospital in record time is no miracle. the next hour or so was pretty much a blur. i was lucky enough to have my best friend there (in the room) taking pictures the entire time and The Husband so graciously recorded the entire delivery for me to watch (that video will not be posted to the interwebs btw - gross!). all i know is that my water broke around 5pm and Miss Pink made her appearance at 7:16pm. i'll let the pictures tell the rest of the delivery story...

September (oh crap, it's October) recap...

i'm absolutely horrible at this. this blogging thing. it's been more than a month since i've posted anything, and of course a lot has happened in the last 6 weeks. once school starts it's a mass chaos of scheduling conflicts bombarding our household (and put on top of that, having a baby?!) so, let's make this kind of quick...

we started off September by celebrating P-Donculous birthday. i'm pretty sure that every year i have the same photo of the the 3 of them shirtless behind a cake. the only differences might be the kind of cake and that those buggers keep getting bigger.

the same weekend we celebrated a birthday, we also had our opening weekend of sports. this year we now have all 3 boys playing soccer, and P-Donculous also plays football, so, that means just about every Saturday we have 4 games to juggle. i have yet been able to make it to all 4 games. scheduling is a nightmare and 98% of the time there are at least 2 games scheduled for the same time, which means The Husband and i have to split our sideline cheering time between the boys. i don't know what we're going to do once Miss Pink starts participating in sports and we have the possibility of 6 different events in one day. 

anyway, back to this week's big event...NoNo's very first soccer game! he surprised us and actually played a great game, considering he spent the last practice before the game crying for the first 30 minutes. so proud of little dude. look how cute he is in his replica Barcelona uniform. he's also the youngest kid on the team by  2 years, so, he's doing pretty good at holding his own. it only took him 5 games before he scored his first goal, but you would have thought he scored the winning goal in the last second of the game the way i was screaming on the sidelines.

of course, we can't leave out the beginning of football...our Longhorn team has gone undefeated so far this season, which means we get lots of criticism from other teams that we're cheaters and we play dirty. seriously?! it's 1st grade flag football people, how in the world are we cheating? this is the biggest problem with small town sports and the way parents expect every team to win, each kid to score, and everyone gets a trophy. wake-up parents. those participation trophies your kids are getting are not going to get them into college. sorry, i was up on that soap box thing. what was i talking about? oh, my own kids...yes, so i managed to get pictures of 2 of the games that day, but because of scheduling i haven't been able to get P-Donculous or C playing soccer this season. (i still have a few more weeks before the season is already over) 

move up a couple weeks and we now have Homecoming week. i didn't get the best pictures this year, but i can blame that on the fact that C had to be taken to the ER clinic right as the parade was starting, because he busted his chin open (leave it to C to walk under a sign and slice his chin wide open). for being in such a small town, we have the longest parade ever! it took almost 2 hours, and they have this thing on a Wednesday night, so the kids then have to get up for school the next morning...lame

NoNo's PreK class went on their first field trip. for most kids it's the first time any of them have ridden on a bus, but since my kids take the bus every morning to school, nothing new for him. and they went to the pumpkin patch, the same one we've been going to for the last 5 years, so, not so new and exciting for NoNo. 

on top of all of our other activities, we've been trying to get Miss Pink's room put together. you would've thought that the years of waiting for her arrival would have given me plenty of time to know what i wanted in a little girl nursery, but nope, i was at a complete loss of creativity. we finally had the room painted, which of course makes the rest of the house look like crap, but at least her room is all new and shiny. i painted some of the furniture. trying to make it different, since it's the same baby furniture we've had since C was a baby (10 years ago!). i tried my hand at some abstract art and i'm in the process of putting together some mismatched frames for the wall. this crafting thing is for the birds. i would much rather find someone on etsy to make it for me. eventually we'll have everything in place, i'm hoping before she gets here...

2:12pm April 16, 2002...

10 years ago at this very moment i was trying my very hardest to push out 6 pounds and 15 ounces of pure joy out of my lady parts. looking back, there's not a moment that i haven't forgotten. i remember watching my family pace around the room anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first born grandchild. i'm not going to lie, the room was a little crowded. with me, The Husband, my mom, my mother-in-law, my nana, a very close friend, my nurse, the baby nurses, the doctor (who really only showed up 5 minutes prior to the big show), and a couple nursing students, you would think we would've been breaking a couple dozen fire codes.

luckily for me, and being my first experience with baby making, it was a fairly easy process. labor really only lasted a few hours and then there were the 2 hours of pushing, but at 2:12pm C finally made his appearance. there was a lot of oohing and awing, a little crying, and a big sigh of relief. he was healthy, happy, and bald. i can't believe they let us take him home 2 days later. we had no clue what to do once we left the hospital. we eventually figured it out, because i like to think we've molded him into somewhat of a good kid.

i've spent most of the day looking through pictures and baby books laughing at the silly outfits, bad hair, and chubby cheeks. i did very well at keeping up with his baby book (not so much with the next 2). one of the entries was a question about his name and what other names we had considered. i honestly don't even remember how we decided on his name, but some of the other candidates i had listed were: Carter, Caden, Camden, and Mason. funny, because i can't see him with any of those names now.

i hope that one day he'll know how much he has meant to us and how proud we are that he has turned out to be such a handsome well-rounded little man. and yes, i can say little, because that's what we are...little. i hope he doesn't hate us for being hard on him about turning off the lights in his room or turning his socks right side out every time he takes them off. i hope he doesn't frown upon the fact that he will probably always be the short one in the group (trust me, it's tough). i hope he appreciates his brothers and never takes them for granted. i hope he knows we love him...

Happy 10th Birthday C!

Chuck E Cheesus...

i'm really getting bad about posting anything on time, or posting at all for that matter. NoNo's birthday was 10 days ago, and i'm just now getting to it. it's not like i've been uber busy the past 2 weeks or anything, i'm just lazy (and not afraid to admit it). we let NoNo decide where he wanted to have his party this year, and yep, he chose "Chuck E Cheesus". thankfully, the Chuck E Cheese has had a little overhaul, and is quite clean and updated. and if you plan a party in the middle of the week...no one else is there! he had a really great time with all his friends, and we still managed to leave there with 100 extra tokens (argh...just means we have to go back). 

i can't believe he's 4. 4?! in a year he'll be going to kindergarten. where does the time go? 

it's a Cake & Ice Cream kind of day...

i can't believe that on this day 6 years ago i was on my way to the hospital getting ready to meet a very important man in my life. and i say man, because even from the time P-Donculous was born, he looked like an old man. he's the one child of mine that looks "different" than the rest. not different in bad way, but he's the only one that doesn't look like me, nor does he look like his dad....so, he's always been "the old man". i've known from the start that he was going to be my difficult one, but i've also learned that his being difficult is his way of coping for being the somewhat shorter middle child.

i'm extremely proud of P-Donculous. this has been a great year for him, football, soccer, starting Kindergarten, and even learning to ride a bike (now if i can only get him to tie his shoes). i'm very excited to see what life has in store for him.....

Happy Birthday Dude!

Happy Birthday Little Sister...

today is the celebration of the 32nd anniversary of the year my little sister jumped out of mom's lady parts. i'm so excited to say that i have a sister (although those years between 1989-1992 were a little sketchy). i feel a little guilty that for years everyone thought she was the older one (even though i have her by 3 1/2 years). but now, she is definitely holding up better as the "younger" one. i'm so proud that i have such a loving and courageous person to call my family. last year this is how we celebrated her birthday:

it was a crazy sweaty night of sushi (her very first), drinks, and dancing. we had a blast, and figured out how to get free drinks...wear a birthday hat! but this year, things are a little different, because this is how my sister is spending her 32nd birthday:

my nephew has been in and out of the hospital all summer. after having reconstructive surgery last month, he was rushed back to the hospital last weekend due to some unexplained infection*. my poor sister and her family have been dealing with incompetent hospital staff, lack of sleep, lack of decent food, and definitely a lack of strong alcoholic drinks. i'm really hoping that someone in that hospital serves an acceptable birthday cake for my sister, because she more than deserves it.

i wish more than anything i could just give my sister a hug for her birthday (don't worry i actually did get her a gift, and it was the bomb diggity if i say so myself). i miss being able to hang with her and laugh and joke about the silly things in life. i wish that she didn't have to struggle with inserting tubes and dealing with bodily functions that would make most people faint. but for whatever reason, she was chosen to have the most wonderful little boy anyone could ask for. i'm so proud of her and i love her even more because of it. she's my sister damn it and i'll punch you in the stomach if you hurt her! it's too bad i can't just punch someone right now so that she could just go home on her birthday and enjoy her day without medical staff around. 

so, cheers little sister. i raise my spiked morning coffee to you in hopes that you'll be joining me very soon in a well deserved birthday cocktail...

*you can read all about my nephew's story right here