Izzy, Abby, and Emmy

Yikes!

Boy, I have gotten really bad at updating this blog!  I am sorry, I know Marina, Mike's mom, checks daily for new pics.  I will try to be better.

I am trying to get a bunch of stuff done around the house, plus taking care of 3 kids, plus getting ready to for Thanksgiving and Christmas is keeping me busy.  We are going to Gatlinburg for Thanksgiving, I can't wait!  I have always wanted to get a cabin for T-day, but we never plan far enough in advance.  This year I found one that I really liked, though we really need a 3 bedroom these days.  Next year, maybe I will book before October!  

Another new thing is that I am trying to eat healthier and cook at home (eating out with 3 kids, not so fun).  My goal has been to try a new recipe each week and we are finding a few new things we like.  I need to fit back into my teaching clothes before school starts in January so I am well motivated!

Emmy had a doctor's appt and she is in the 95% in height, weight, and head size.  She is following Izzy's growth pattern.  We are still squeezing her into 0-3 months, but I suspect that will end shortly.  She is a cute little butterball.  I am still nursing her and plan on continuing at least until flu season is over.

Abby is doing great.  She continues to use new words each day.  She loves to play with Izzy.  I was just looking through our pictures this year to make our family calendar for next year and she has changed so much.  This time last year, she was just crawling, had short spiky hair, and a round little face and belly.   Now she runs almost exclusively and has hair that needs to be brushed and put into a ponytail.

Izzy is still doing well with school.  She is learning a lot and has started trying to read!  She is doing better with discipline, but still doesn't bring home a smiley face every day.  If she gets a smiley face every day for a week, she gets to go to jumpzone,  but she hasn't achieved it yet. 

Mike and I are doing fine.  We talk fondly of when we use to sleep through the night (in our own bed, without children!)  and when we use to go see a movie on the weekends.  It will happen again one day though. 

Halloween

Everyone in our house is fighting a cold so we didn't get around to carving pumpkins.  We painted them instead.  Took 5 minutes and they turned out pretty cute.

This year, Abby was an elephant, Izzy was snow white and Emmy was herself.  We bought her a pea in the pod outfit, but she had already grown out of it.  Oops!

The last 3 years, we have gone trick or treating with our neighbors.  It is so much more fun to have other kids (and adults) to walk around with.  They were dressed up in 100 acre wood characters so Abby fit right in.

I was disappointed more of our neighbors didn't hand out treats this year.  Maybe we went too early?  We started around 6:00.  We had fun anyway and even though we only did half our street, maybe 20 houses total, the girls had full pumpkins by the end of the night.  We let them eat as much as they wanted last night and they were in candy heaven.

After we came home (around 7) we handed out candy until ours was gone.  The girls we so cute, Izzy told everyone that came to the door that she liked their costumes and to have "The Best Halloween Ever!"  and Abby said "Bye!" to them several times, even after I had closed the door.  They had just as much fun handing out candy, I think, as getting their own.

zoo pictures

I keep forgetting to post these pictures from the zoo.  I forgot my camera, all these are taken by Val or Jessica.

 

 

 

 

And this is the hole left in the ceiling by the workers installing our insulation.  We are calling it our hillbilly skylight.

Recent Pics

The girls in halloween outfits:

Izzy as "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly"

I said "Act like an Old Lady" and this is what I got:

What a sweet baby!  She still has blue eyes.

Abby

Abby is in a super cute stage right now.  She is talking up a storm, her words include:

• Mommy
• Daddy
• Mamaw (sounds like mama)
• Baby
• Emmy
• Abby
• I-bel (Isabel)
• Issac and Ellie (our next door neighbors)
• out
• hi
• bye
• all done
• please
• up
• nose
• tickle
• Meadow (sounds like Minnow)
• downstairs
• Neigh, Moo, Baa
• outside
• drink (or tea, they sound the same)
• more
• cookie
• cheese
• shoe
• sissy
• love (only repeating)

She usually drops the last consonant of all the words.  It is so sweet to hear her say Mommy now.  When Mike comes home at the end of the day, she drops whatever she is doing and runs to the door shouting "Daddy!  Daddy!"  I have to get video of it.  She does the same thing when Mamaw or I come into the door until she realizes who we are and changes to our names.   She takes one nap in the afternoon and if it is late, she is a pain to get to go back to sleep.  She wakes very easily.  She has been sleeping through the night in her own bed for a while, but every now and then she starts waking in the middle of the night for several nights in a row.  

Abby loves to play outside, especially loves to swing.  When Mike comes home at the end of the day, he usually takes the girls out and she can't wait.  She also loves to go over and play with the neighbors. 

Abby has great expressions.  She often lifts her eyebrows and grins with a look of perfect inocence, often after doing something devious.  She will draw down her eyebrows and make a frowny face too, but if you imitate her, she goes back to grinning and laughing.  She is also at the stage of tantrums and often lays herself carefully on the floor before kicking and screaming if she doesn't get what she wants.  If we only had one child, we would be worried, but Izzy has broken us into tantrums and now we just wait until they are over and she finds something else to play. 

I know I have said this before, but it continues to surprise us how different Izzy and Abby are (emmy doesn't have enough of a personality to know yet.)  Abby is so adventerous and climbs on everything, Izzy was always very cautious and afraid to get hurt.  Izzy would hide her head in restaurants if anyone spoke to her, Abby goes around saying "hi" to everyone, offering to join their family.  

She is our very special miracle girl.

One month

I absolutely cannot believe it has been 1 month since Emmy was born.  The month has flown by in a sleepy haze.  Here is a short update on each girl and some long awaited pictures.

Emmy is doing just fine.  It is almost like you can see her growing, she is getting so huge, so quickly.  She is exclusively nursing now and eats like a champ about every 3 hours.  She has kept me up a lot, but I am hopeful she is starting to sleep better.  Last night, I woke her up and fed her at 10, then she slept until 3.  After feeding a burping, she went back down at 4 until 6:30.  This is about the best we can hope for at this stage.  She has started to have longer awake periods during the day (the first few weeks, it felt like she slept 22 hours a day.)  She is getting fussier during the awake times and we have pulled out some baby toys to start to entertain her. 

Abby loves her little sister when she remembers her.  She runs over to look at her when she is laying down and "helps" me burp her when she sees me patting her back.  Most of the time, Abby does her own thing.  She has started getting in trouble and being sent to the corner.  She goes without complaint and stays until I tell her to get out which makes me think she doesn't understand the concept of punishment yet.  She is starting to speak a lot, but mostly repeats what we say instead of initiating it herself.  Words she can produce on her own are Mommy, Daddy, Drink, and animal sounds.  I was trying to get her to say "I love you" the other day and I would say "Say I" and she would say "I", then I would say "love", but instead of repeating me, she just says "You!"  Very cute.

Izzy is in kindergarten now.  They started a new classroom a few weeks into school and she was transferred into the new room.  We really like the new teacher and hope she does too.  She still plays with her best friend from preschool at recess and talks about her all the time.  Mom and I have both gone to have lunch with her at school (rectangular pizza tastes the same.)  When she is home, she loves playing with Mike and wants me to "watch the new baby and Abigail so Daddy can play with me". 

Here are some pictures we have taken over the last few weeks.  Nothing within the last week, I am afraid.  Those are still on my camera.

10 days in

Whoo, I forgot how nice it is to get a full nights sleep!  10 days in with a new baby, here is a recap:

Last pregnancy picture, on our way to the hospital, 39 weeks, 1 day.

Emmy's first sponge bath

Abby tries to put Emmy's clothes on.

Abby still insists I put her to sleep every night. 

Abby has learned to say "Cheese" when you take her picture.

Emmy at 1 week old.  Does she look more like Izzy or Abby?

For reference, Izzy at 1 week:

Abby at 1 week:

Emilia James

We are very happy to announce the birth of our third little princess, Emilia James.  She was born  on August 31, 2009 at 12:32.  She weighed 17 lbs, 13 ounces and was 20 inches long.  She has dark hair and dark blue eyes.  Emilia is the spanish spelling of Amelia (and is pronounced the same) and James comes from her grandpa, James Martin.  We plan on calling her Emmy.

Emmy's birth was a scheduled c-section.  She was breach from 33 weeks onward, but she must have flipped the last couple of days before the c-section because the doctor found her in the head down position.  I was happy to have her out, but I do wish we could have had a natural childbirth again. 

Emmy is the best nurser of our three girls and has latched on for 30 minutes every three hours since birth.  She also sucks on her fingers in between feedings.  She definitely has coloring similar to Izzy's, but we can't decide if she favors one sister over the other.  I think she looks like Mike. 

Here are some pictures.  This is one Mike took of her in the nursery.

The girls met their baby sister around 2.  Izzy immediately wanted to hold her and Abby thought she was a doll.

Emmy and I later in the evening. 

speech advances

Both our girls are progressing well with their speech ability.  Izzy continues to take speech 2 times privately a week and will begin having two sessions in school starting this week.  Over the summer, she changed to a new private speech therapist (Jan) and we saw a lot of improvement.  One thing that Izzy has done forever is pronounce words that end in m or n with the m or n up front.  For instance, she would say "nun" for sun or fun.  This was one of the first things we tackled after she started speech 2 years ago and we got her to the point where she would say "ssss-nun" or "fff-nun", but she still left the n in the front.  Just recently, something has clicked and she now says these words without the extra m or n.  The first night we were practicing them and she did it correctly, we went through the house saying "fan" and "fence", we were all clapping for her.  It was and is so exciting to see her overcome something she has been struggling with since day 1.  We still have a long way to go, but I believe her speech is improving a lot.  They will test her at school again in October, we will see then if her standardized score has improved.  She still can't say the hard g or k sound regularly but Jan has gotten her to say g in isolation a few times in the office.

Abby seemed to say a lot of words before she turned a year old, but all those words fell away before her 15 month appointment.  She still said "Daddy" to mean everything and would say "mama" when prompted, but she didn't apply those words to Mike or I.  When I told the doctor this at her 15 month check up, she suggested getting her checked for a speech delay (if only she would have been that attentive to Izzy!) but we decided to wait and see if she caught up by 18 months.  Finally, just this week, we were reading the book "Moo, Baa, La-la-la" and she immediately started saying the sounds of the animals.  The funny thing is that instead of saying "Ruff-ruff" for what a dog says, she hangs out her tounge and pants, just like Meadow does all the time.  Her favorite is probably the horse sound and she still struggles with "meow".   She has also started saying "tickle" when she comes up behind us while we are sitting at the dining room tables and tickles our backs.  She is supposed to have 10 words by 18 months and I think we will get there in time.

I am scheduled to have this third baby by c-section next Monday (August 31).  We have a few names picked out but I guess we will wait till we lay eyes on her before we decide what to name her.  I have started maternity leave and am looking forward to getting to the other side of the birth.

nesting

We are now starting the 2 week countdown for baby Tres (not her real name) to enter the world and we thought it would be nice to provide her a place to sleep and some clothes to wear.  Hence, the weekend was spent cleaning up and re-organizing our house (and lives) to allow space for a very tiny new person to enter it.  (When I say "we", I obviously don't mean me.  I sat like a slug on a log and simply directed the activities.)

Initially, she will sleep in our bed room.  We moved the dress to a new wall and put the pack and play and some spare diapers where the dresser used to be:

Her new little home:

And our bed for a complete picture.  Note the lack of window treatments or interesting paint color (yes we have lived here for 3 years).  Izzy hung her speech homework above our bed a long time ago and there it remains.  Lucky us, since we haven't hung another picture!

We recently bought Izzy new furniture so hers could be passed down to the "twinkles".  This is a view from the door of her room:

Her new bed and nightstand:

And her dresser:

Her reading corner stayed the same:

Finally, Abby's room.  It changed the least, though it did gain a "new" dresser and lots of baby clothes.  Eventually the two wee ones will share this space, but when it will happen, who knows.

The view from the door:

The two dressers.  These are dressers from the 70s that I bought at a garage sale for $50 when I was 20 and stripped and refinished to use while I was in college.  A few years ago, I painted them white and green and put them in Izzy's room.  Now they will stay with the twinkles. 

The clothes filled closet:

And just because it wouldn't be a complete post without a couple of pictures of the kids...  These were taken on Izzy's second day of school:

And Abby loves to wear her big sister's shoes: