November

When a friend of mine had her third child, she said that she hardly ever had time to check her email or do any work on the computer. I remember thinking, "Really? How hard is it to check and reply to an email?!" Well, now I know. It is close to impossible. If I'm not busy driving the girls around to pre-k, ballet, the park, or the grocery store, then I'm at home trying to clean, cook, and feed/change/rock the baby, while also playing with the girls. If I just so happen to have a few minutes of down time, the last thing the girls want to see me do is fire up the computer!

Anyway I'm just explaining why my blog posts will probably be far less frequent now (at least for a while) and if I don't reply to your email for a week, you know why! :)

Here's some recent pics:

The girls snuggling with Sadie one morning in my bed. Larkin is singing Sadie a song, and Willa is telling Sadie all about her stuffed animal named "Mouse-rat". Sadie just looks around and soaks it all up!

Joel checking his fantasy football stats. Sadie is not impressed.

One day I was really tired and dropped Larkin off at school, took Willa to a drop-in daycare place, and then raced home with hopes of taking a nap. I got Sadie all snuggled up in her swing and thought for sure she was in a deep sleep. Just as my head hit the pillow I heard some baby squeaking sounds. I looked over and saw these big eyes staring around! She does this to us a lot-we call her the queen of cat-naps!

Yes, they are 5 yrs and almost 4, but somehow they found this baby play gym entertaining enough to play with for over thirty minutes! Here they are pretending to be babies and they thought it was hilarious.

Grandma and Grandpa came down to visit for Thanksgiving. We mainly hung out at home but did make it out to the botanical gardens one day!

Snuggling with Boat Mama on Thanksgiving day

Smiling Sadie! She smiles the most for Joel

She loves her changing table and will sit here happily for long stretches at a time!

Sensory overload for Sadie. The girls said they were "entertaining" her with all kinds of dance moves!

Halloween

 Happy Halloween! Here's some pics from our trick or treating. Willa wanted to be a princess (again) and wanted to wear the same princess dress that she wore last year, and I didn't argue!!

Larkin was going to be a princess but about a week before Halloween changed her mind and wanted to be a witch. This was the outfit she picked out to wear, and she wore it for a whole 10 minutes before she decided that she would rather be a princess! She kept trying to ride her broom everywhere, and her hat kept falling off when she ran, so I think that's what annoyed her.

 Costume change! Larkin is saying, "This dress is really, really old. I've had it since I was three."

 Sadie Brynn went as a pumpkin (thanks for the cute hat, Auntie Laura!) and spent most of the evening screaming her head off, so she (and I!) missed out on the trick-or-treating.

 Princess Willa and Pirate Daphne

 the gang

 

By the end of the night they completely filled their pumpkins! I told them they could each pick 10 pieces to save and eat, and that the rest we'd toss out. Then once I saw how small their 10 piece piles were, I said they could keep 15 instead. To this they replied, "Really? You are the best mom ever!!" Oh if only they could stay this age forever!

recent pics

Here's some recent pics from life around here. I wish I had the energy to write a long post, but it's 9pm and I have a long night ahead of me. A few nights ago everyone in the house was asleep by 8:30! Although I will say that Sadie is a great sleeper and has been giving us at least one stretch each night of 4-6 straight hours of sleep...so we are thankful for that!

sleeping superman-style

Story time with Willa

We finally did Larkin's pinata from her birthday!

Willa took this picture

Harley and the girls hanging out in Sadie's room while she sleeps. Shortly after this I added a child lock to the door!!

Sadie Brynn

Here are some pics of our new family member! Sadie Brynn was born at 10:35 PM on Oct 9. She weighed 8 lbs 3 oz and is 20 1/4 inches long.

Larkin and Willa were both born in the hospital, but for this pregnancy we decided to go with a midwife at a birth center. It was a wonderful experience!  My water broke at home, Grandma came over to take the girls to her house, and then we waited for my labor to kick in. Eventually it finally started (took a while, and was slow to get going--I kept hearing people tell me that the third baby is a "wild card" and don't expect it to be like your others--which turned out to be true!) and once the contractions were strong enough we headed to the birth center. An hour later, Sadie was born!

The birth center keeps the room warm and the lights very dim when the baby is born, and the baby doesn't get whisked away to get weighed, measured, washed, etc. They just sponge her off and keep her there with you, which was nice. Sadie cried a little bit right when she was born but then she just looked around with her big blue eyes and took everything in. We all fell asleep together and then by 6am were headed home. We called Grandma and had her bring the girls home, and they were so excited. Joel and I were sleeping with Sadie in our room, and the girls ran in to wake us up. Willa squealed when she saw her and Sadie started making some little newborn sounds. Willa ran back outside and yelled, "Larkin! I saw the baby!!! And she said Eeekk Eeekk Eeekk!"

Overall Sadie is the easiest baby yet out of all three of them. She is a great sleeper (so far) and hardly ever cries. When she does cry, she is easily consoled. She likes to listen to the girls talk to her and just stares at them mesmerized. Willa made up the cutest little song for her about "the world" and sings it to her often. I'm hoping to get it recorded and put it on the blog. Larkin would hold Sadie all day long if I let her. The other day she skipped her favorite cartoon and refused her favorite snack because she wanted to hold Sadie instead. So they snuggled together on the couch for over an hour! 

 

Sadie at the birth center

holding Sadie for the first time

Willa's first words about Sadie: "She is so cute! When will she be five?"

Cat-Mama has been a big help!Thanks Cat-Mama!!

The girls love to watch her every move!

Snuggle sisters

First shampoo

The pink lovey is in a lot of pictures--the girls are constantly "giving" it to her to snuggle with.

family of five

Larkin is five!

 Auntie Lisa came down to visit for Larkin's fifth birthday. Unfortunately Larkin came down with a stomach bug the night before her big day, but she pulled it together long enough to open presents! Luckily we had just planned a small family party.

 The girls decorated the cake with Lisa. Lots of sprinkles and decorations on the Ariel cake! Larkin picked out the Ariel candle and was very excited about it!

 

Willa was such a trooper and did not get jealous at Larkin's gifts or candles. I love how happy she looks in this pic as Larkin gets ready to blow out her candles!

 Here's the 5 pinata that we still have not broken! The plan was to have some neighborhood friends over and do the pinata with them for her birthday, but with the stomach bug and busy weekends with baby prep we never got around to it. Hopefully this weekend we'll do it!

end of summer

The girls reading to their doll in the bassinet

The new baby should be here any day now, and the girls can not wait!  Willa keeps asking when the baby will "hatch out" and they are constantly trying to come up with possible names. Some recent ones they've thought of are: Cotton, Violet, Rose, Heart Rainbow, and Flower. When I mention any possible names they are often quick to come up with reasons why that would be a terrible name. One day Willa got a bit exasperated and said, "Mom, I'm tired of all of this (coming up with names). Let's just name her Pink Flower, OK?!"

I'm happy to say though that we've found a name that all four of us agree on, although the girls do not really know which name we've picked...but when the name was mentioned a few times as a possibility it was one of the few that they both liked. :) Hopefully the announcement will come soon!



The heat wave has finally broken, but here's some pics from a few weeks ago when we were outside trying to stay cool!

Mud fight!

Playing beauty shop outside--washing hair, and watering the grass too!

Circus

 Papa took all of us to the circus a few weeks ago! He has always been a circus lover and we have a great picture of me when I was around the girls' age at a circus. The expression on my face in the picture is a combination of fear, excitement, and nervousness as I was watching the tightrope walkers. We were all laughing because the girls had the same expression on their faces. I tried to capture it but this is easier said than done when you're eight months pregnant and trying to lean over a bowling ball belly!

 Larkin loved the "trapeze girls". She's been saying for about a year now that she wants to be an acrobat someday, so they were right up her alley!

 Willa loved the cotton candy, popcorn, and the "mermaid girl" that was part of the show. She got all excited anytime she spotted the mermaid!

 Joel's favorite part was when they drove motorcycles into this metal sphere. First they start off with two motorcycles and you think, "Ok, that is crazy! Someone is going to crash!" and then next thing you know they start adding more and more motorcyclists--I think there were about 10 total all whizzing around there at once!

If someone else had been holding the camera, they could have gotten a picture of me with the same expression on my face from when I was three. We were sitting there and suddenly heard a motorcycle revving, and then directly over our heads (and I do mean directly!!) was a man and a woman riding a motorcycle over the crowd--their bike was balanced on a tightrope. The motorcycle was attached to the tightrope, but it was a bit scary because I swear if one of them fell off, it would have been right in our laps!

Thanks Papa for a memorable day!!