Smile, Baby, Smile

I've got a bunch of posts coming....Father's Day Weekend, Grandparents' Houses, Trucks & Tractors, and more! In the mean time, I'll let you in on a little secret - babies stop smiling as soon as you get your camera out! Here's the various faces of Mr. Miles - everything except a big ole smile (the top right pic is the closest we got - but it gets MUCH better than that!). At least we have our smile paci :-)

Family Pictures

When my sister took our newborn pictures, she also took some family shots as well. These are my favorites!

I also tried out a new free collage building website that Amanda talked about on her blog. I LOVE IT! It's called PicMonkey. I used to use Picasa, but I'm going to swap to this because it is so much faster! Thanks, Amanda! 

Birth Announcements

We sent birth announcements to a few friends and relatives. Unfortunately, I cannot send them to everyone I know - believe me, I would love to! For those of you who didn't get your hands on a hard copy, here you go!  Feel free to print this out and put it on your fridge :-)

Target Chaos

I feel like I have been portraying our life as a little more perfect than it is in reality - especially lately. I love our life, and I really enjoy capturing and sharing the special moments for the blog, but I feel like I should be transparent every once in a while as well. So here you go - motherhood transparency...

I needed to buy some shorts that fit my post-pregnancy body. It's HOT outside, and all I had were some full panel maternity shorts. I also needed a few other odds and ends. I thought that I'd take the boys with me to Target since I had a very short list - it seemed do-able.

Not 10 feet past the front doors of Target, Miles started screaming and Carter started asking for a sucker. I gave Carter some crackers and his sippy cup, and I tried to give Miles his paci. Miles loves his paci but cannot keep it in his mouth for the life of him. I decided to hold him. Trying to steer a shopping cart with a 33 lb. toddler and infant carrier inside it is very difficult. I looked like a crazy person. I hadn't brought my front carrier for Miles because I thought he would sleep in his carrier the whole time - boy was I wrong. He was hungry - 1 hour early! I couldn't calm him, and I didn't bring a bottle, and I wasn't wearing a breastfeeding friendly outfit. Oh dear!

Ok, y'all - you may not believe me, but I ended up in the handicapped dressing room of Target in my underwear, nursing. This is not a lie. I had my shopping cart in there with me and Carter was strapped into it - screaming. I was handing him candy, cars, juice, wipes, ANYTHING that would appease him while I tried to nurse his brother and then get the heck out of there!!!!

I promise that no matter what I post on this blog, I am not the perfect mother; I don't have it all together; I don't have it all figured out; and I struggle - just like you!

Now that I've given you a good laugh - and disturbing mental picture...I must go tend to my baby who is screaming because I put him down to eat lunch.

Some days are harder than others - luckily, we are going out of town this weekend, and I'll have all the help I need :-) Yay!

One Month Old

Dear Miles,
You're already one month old! I can't believe it. It seems like you just got here yesterday. I'm going to write you a letter every month during your first year to let you know how you grew and changed. I'll even include some of the fun things we did that month, so that you know what happened during your first year. I hope that you enjoy reading these one day! I love you, and I'm so glad you're a part of our family!

Here's a picture of you when you were 1 month old.

Here's a picture of you and your dog.

Here's a picture of you and your brother. He is 22 months old. 

He loves you so much!

He stuck his finger in your mouth right as I snapped the picture, and you bit him :-) 

Maybe you didn't get too many germs as a result!

I'm going to try to take a picture of you with your dog and your brother each month so that you can see how you grow. You'll be bigger than your dog before I know it!

Here are some of the fun things we did this month:

• You were born! 
• You met your brother, Carter. 
• Grandmama, Granddaddy, Aunt Bamie, and Justus were there the day you were born. 
• Nana, Papa J, Gran, and Mawmaw came to meet you the day after you were born. 
• We had lots of visitors in the hospital. 
• We came home from the hospital, and Carter and Grandmama had made us a banner and put a bow on our mailbox. 
• We went to church the Sunday after you were born. It was Mother's Day. I will always remember getting to take my new baby to church with us on Mother's Day!  
• You did a lot of things for the first time: 
• First Sink Bath
• First Doctor Visit
• First Sunday
• First Bottle
• First Real Bath
• We stayed really busy!
• We planted a garden. 
• We went to the pool. 
• We went to a fair!
• We went to the park.
• We visited with Grandparents. 
• We played in the backyard.
• Your Aunt Bamie took your newborn pictures, and they turned out really well!
• Your Aunt Michelle, Uncle Brett, and cousins came to meet you!
• We had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows. 
• We went to a Huntsville Stars Baseball game.
• We helped with VBS doing 4th grade crafts. 

Here are the things you are doing now:

• You weighed 8lbs. 7 oz. (which was 14 ounces past your birth weight) and you were 20 inches long at 10 days old (75th / 95th)! You now weigh approx. 9 pounds!
• You eat 7-8 times a day for about 20-30 minutes. You've only spit up 3 or 4 times - you keep it all to yourself :-)
• You sleep 3-5 hours at night before waking up to eat. 
• You wake up to eat 1 or 2 times every night.  
• You can lift your head momentarily. 
• You bob your head around when someone is holding you. You are working on gaining more head control. 
• You make eye contact when people are talking to you.
• You grab onto things that touch your hands.  
• You have flashed a few big toothless smiles at us, but we haven't gotten a picture of it yet. 
• You have started to make some cooing sounds.
• Your favorite place to be is in the swing while mommy is showering and drying her hair. You like the noise. You sleep best when it's loud - which is probably a good thing with an older brother.

Here is your typical schedule: 

6:30am - Mealtime (you nurse), then you are usually awake for about 30min - 1 hour

8:00am - Naptime

- You nap in the car, swing, pac n play, your bed, wherever you will be safe from brother :-)

9:30am - Mealtime then Waketime

- During your waketime we go to the pool/playground, go on walks, play in the playroom, swing in the swing, sit on the porch, have tummy or back time, listen to music, etc...

11:00am - Naptime 

12:30pm - Mealtime then Waketime

- Sometimes Daddy comes home for lunch!

2:00pm - Naptime

- This is when mommy takes a nap too because brother is sleeping too.

3:30pm - Mealtime then Waketime

5:00pm - Naptime

6:30pm - Mealtime then Waketime 

- This is when you play with Daddy and brother while mommy cleans up dinner.

8:00pm - Bathtime then Naptime

- Mommy gives you your bath while Daddy bathes your big brother. Then we all kiss brother goodnight, and he goes to bed. This is when you sleep on Daddy's chest if you'll allow it...you prefer mommy right now because I feed you. You will soon learn that Daddy is fun too!

9:30pm - Mealtime then bed! 

2:30am - Mealtime then back to bed. 

- Sometimes you fall back to sleep instantly, and sometime it takes a while for you to get back to sleep. We are giving you some gas drops to help your tummy settle down. You like the sound bear in your crib, and you like your paci (sometimes)! You liked to be swaddled for the first few weeks, but you don't really prefer it anymore. Mommy is hoping you'll sleep through the night before you are 2 months old, but there's no pressure. She will get up as long as you are getting up :-)

REPEAT...

I love you more and more everyday. You are very different from your brother, and mommy is still trying to figure out what you like and what you don't like. I've never had 2 kids before, so I'm still figuring out how to be a mommy of 2. Please be patient with me - I promise we'll figure it all out soon enough. You are a blessing to our family!

Love,
Your Mommy

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

What do you do with boys? Take them to a baseball game - of course! We took Carter and Miles to their very first Huntsville Stars game the other night. It was "kid night," so kids got in free and received free t-shirts! We stayed up way past bedtime, and had a BLAST!

Carter would clap and cheer (sometimes at the wrong times - oops - sorry Stars!). 

Watching very closely.

This is what Miles thought about it all...

Yes, the blanket came too :-)

Here's Lucroy in his new sleepshirt...

I have a feeling we will be back :-)

Newborn Pictures

My sister, Anna Katharine, was able to take Miles's newborn pictures. She did such a great job, and had so many neat ideas! Thank you, Aunt Bamie!!! We love you, and we'll treasure these pictures forever!

Precious.

Doing What It Says

This blog is about my journey into a precious ministry. I am not tooting my own horn, but praising the Lord for giving me a place to serve!!! Here's the story.

This past Spring, a few girlfriends and I went through the Beth Moore study, "James: Mercy Triumphs." It was fantastic! I learned so much about the Bible, the book of James, the person James, and Jesus! I highly recommend the study.

Two of the verses Beth focuses on are:

 "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

James 1:22

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him,

how can the love of God be in him? Dear children,

let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

James 3:17-18

If that isn't a kick in the pants to everyone in America, you probably aren't being honest with yourself. I know these verses got my attention!!!

It made me think of Mia's speech on the Princess Diaries - you know- one of those movies that I watch now because in a few years I will be greatly outnumbered and watching nothing but action flicks! Back to Mia's speech... She - in all of her teenaged elloquence - says,

"I realize how many stupid times a day I use the word 'I.' And probably all I ever do is think about myself. And how lame is that when there's like seven billion other people out there on the planet..."

I was convicted. I felt as if all my current efforts were selfish - focusing inward - on my own family. While I was trying to be the best housewife and stay-at-home-mommy that I possibly could be, I had forgotten about all the other people in the world who could use my help. I was sewing, cooking, cleaning, getting my family to church, etc... Even though those things are GREAT - they were all about me/us. I knew that I needed to do more - for others, but I wasn't sure where to start.

I decided to start with my Sunday School class. In the Fall, I had stepped up as the Service Project coordinator because we didn't have anybody really doing that, so I tried to focus on that ministry. I haven't exactly done a fantastic job with it, but it's something. I saw a need, and I tried to help out. We now do one service project *about* once a quarter (sometimes more / sometimes less).

That was good, but I still felt as if I should be doing more. The service projects are great, but they really only take up 4-5 Saturdays a year plus the time it takes to send off a few emails. What else could I do?!?! Me - a stay-at-home-mom with 1 toddler, a baby on the way, and no family in town - it's not like I had all this spare time that I need to fill up :-) It was about then that things got crazy preparing for Miles, I went into labor, and we added another precious boy to our growing family.

Many of you know, I don't sleep after I've had a baby. I can't. My mind races. Well, one of those sleepless nights, God reminded me of a ministry that I had heard about - a ministry to babies! It's called the Footprints Ministry. They minister to families of NICU babies at Huntsville Hospital (and a few other hospitals in Montgomery and Birmingham). Anna, one of my friends - the one who taught me how to smock and sew - recently had become the area coordinator for this ministry at Willowbrook (our church).

Footprints gives each family in the NICU a care package. In this package are things that a family of a premature and/or very sick baby would need like a Bible, a camera, toiletries, magazines, gift cards to local restaurants, a baby blanket, a burp cloth, a baby hat, etc... I contacted Anna to see how I could help with the care packages, and she told me that they were always needing people to knit hats and embroider burp cloths because they deliver about 60 bags a month! What could be more perfect!?!?! If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that I LOVE SEWING, and this was something I could do from home to help those in need. I asked Anna to come teach the girls in our Sunday School how to knit the hats, so that they could get involved too! She is such a precious person, and a fantastically patient teacher :-) She brought a ton of burp cloths for me to embroider and gave me the stuff to make more of these precious hats. I have already started to work! Here's what I get to make for these precious families.

I added the bow & tassle for fun! 

So tiny!

I pray that the Lord will bless these families through these gifts and open up doors for souls to be won right there in the NICU. Maybe one day I'll get to give somebody a bag myself! As for now, God's given me the perfect job for this season of my life, and I couldn't be more thankful.

Thank you, Lord for this precious ministry! 

When the Dust Settles

We had family visiting for about 3 weeks after Miles was born. What a huge help and blessing they were to us!!! I love having people here and celebrating new life, but eventually they all go home and the dust setttles...and this is the reason for the gap in my recent blogging :-) The dust settled around week 3.

Last week, I survived my first full week alone with the boys - YAY! My biggest lesson of the week? Well, I hate taking naps, BUT when you have a toddler and a newborn, naps make you a better mommy - period. I don't like stopping in the middle of my day to sleep - it just doesn't come naturally to me, and I still don't do it everyday. However, I did take a few good 1-2 hour naps last week, and I was such a better mommy/wife/person when I did. We had a few fun playdates at the pool and the park, and we made it through our first week just the 3 of us!

This week, I signed up to work crafts at VBS (another reason for my lack of blogging). Ha! I've decided I'm a crazy person :-) No, actually I'm not - I promise. Carter was able to go to the 2 year old class if I volunteered, so in the name of entertaining my toddler and serving at my church to help win kids to Jesus, I asked them to put me in a flexible position. I was able to take Miles with me and help with some wonderful ladies doing 4th grade crafts. It was perfect, and Carter had a BLAST! Every morning when we pulled into the parking lot, he would repeat "Church, At-sigh" (Church Outside) over and over again. He was recently promoted to a class that goes outside to play on the playground. This sealed the deal for Carter - he is now a BIG HUGE FAN of Church! I picked him up early one day to go meet his mother's day out teacher, and he crumbled into tears. He hated to leave! It was sad but adorable :-)

Kevin's been working long hours, so it's been nice to have playdates and VBS filling up our mornings. It makes the days go by a little faster; although tomorrow is Miles's 1 month birthday! I can't believe it - the days have gone by a little too fast. This month has FLOWN by!!!!! I've done a little less napping over the past 2 days and a little more snuggling with my baby during Carter's naps because I don't want him to grow up without me stopping to breathe him in during this newborn phase. Yes, that's right, he's still a "newborn" until tomorrow!!!!!

The evenings have been full of Family Time. One evening it was especially cool, so we decided to build a fire and roast marshmallows and eat Smores.

Somebody ate more marshmallows than a toddler probably should consume...

It's a rule that if there's a fire in front of you, you must stare into it :-)

Serious roasters.

A (Very Cute) Sticky Mess

Mommy's Snuggle Bug

YUMMY!!!

Naptime is over now for Carter (even though he never actually fell asleep today), and Miles is waking up to eat one out of his 8 meals a day. It's nice (and sometimes exhausting) to be needed :-) I'll be back with more later.