"Brothers"

I just had to post a few pictures of my boys. they are so cute and I can't wait till Bryce is old enough to play with JT. JT will make an excellent big brother. He loves the baby, although he still wishes he was the baby. We will often find JT sitting in the babies swing, or chair, and he even tries to wear the babies clothes like his hats. Its actually very funny. He will run to look at the baby and say, "cute baby Bryce." He often wants to hold the baby and is always trying to hold his hand. These boys are so cute!

My Bryce

Well my little guy has been with me for one month now. It has been a hard road getting him here and it hasn't been very easy since bringing him home. He is a wonderful and beautiful baby that I adore but having four children all very close in age and all very dependent on me has proven to be a challenge. Jt has been refusing to potty train at all and this has been very frustrating specially since I have two in diapers, something I have never had to deal with before. The girls have been pretty great but JT has been crazy. He wants so much attention since the baby has come home and he gets it by, flooding the kitchen with water from the fridge, coloring with permanent marker on the carpet, furniture, himself, flushing objects down toilets, getting food for himself out of the pantry all day long, and the list goes on. I am nursing as well and the baby wants all my time which is understandable but difficult. I am sleep deprived as you can see in the picture. The baby we believe is a bit colicky so the afternoons can become very difficult as he cries a lot some days and I might not be giving him enough milk so I might have to start supplementing him with formula after he nurses. Bryce also has a clogged tear duct in his left eye which makes his eye goopy at times and he keeps getting little boogers stuck in his nose that make him snort so much while he nurses and this makes it even more difficult for me to sleep. All in all I wouldn't change a thing, I love my kids and love the chaos.

"Easter and a Birthday"

We had a wonderful Easter this year and since Elizabeth's birthday was just three days later we decided to combine the two and have an Easter/Birthday celebration. We were able to talk our parents into coming to our house for Easter which was so nice not to have to drive the kids anywhere and try and split time. We started the morning off with opening the kids Easter Baskets. It's always a joy to see how the littlest things make kids so happy. They all loved their baskets and the Easter Bunny even brought Bryce a new little play mat.

Later in the day the grandparents showed up and we had a nice meal together although I spent most of the time feeding the baby. My mom thankfully was a relief, she has such a way with my kids. She always seems to know how to calm them and they love to snuggle on her. The kids also enjoyed three Easter baskets this year. One from the Easter Bunny and then of course each set of grandparents brought them over a large basket filled with candy, toys and clothes, man they are spoiled! The kids had an Easter egg hunt, inside of course since it decided to rain, and we had probably about 150 eggs for just 4 kids to find. They had so much fun finding the eggs we actually even continued to find them for a few days afterwards. We ended up with so much candy and unfortunately for Russ and I we are candyaholics. We have been eating the candy daily, sorry kids!

We ended the day with a little birthday celebration for Elizabeth who is now 5 and on her way to Kindergarten. She is such a bright and lovable child. This little girl will do anything for you and she is super smart and beautiful. She got lots of presents from her grandparents and siblings and we got her a big girl bike. It is a barbie one that even has a mini barbie bike on the handle bars for her to take her barbie along for a ride with her. She loves this thing and has been riding it every chance she gets. The funniest thing that day was when we went to sing Elizabeth Happy Birthday JT got so upset because he wanted to blow out a candle. So after Elizabeth blew out hers we gave JT a cupcake with a candle in it which Elizabeth being such a sweet heart said was okay. As we lit it JT just stood there looking at everyone, he actually made everyone re sing Happy Birthday, but to him this time, before he would blow out the candle. All and all it was such a wonderful day.

He's here!!!!!

On Thursday March 26, 2009 at 10:13 am we welcomed our absolutely perfect little boy Bryce Michael Maxwell. I was induced 2 1/2 weeks early and even so Bryce was a healthy 9 pounds 3 ounces and measured 20 1/2 inches in length. He has a cute little head of black hair that is lightening up to more of a brown and the most precious blue eyes, he reminds us of our first daughter Nichole who also has blue eyes. He is such a precious baby and an absolute miracle. It seemed like such a long road to get him here with lots of ups and down but the end result is wonderful. He has been home with us for six days now and has been an absolute joy. When we got to the hospital on Thursday at 5 am they checked me and I was already dilated to a 4 and before they could start the IV I had three contractions and they were definitely not braxton hicks. It was as if Bryce knew what was about to happen and he decided he would help the process along. They started the induction at 6 am and four hours and only 7 pushes later he was here. He has been sleeping a lot which the other kids are disappointed about because they want to play with him and hold him. I'm nursing which has started to get easier and we sleep together to make it easier at night. The girls adore him and literally can't keep their hands off him. My son JT is warming up to him although he is very jealous. Johnathan doesn't want much to do with me these days, it was pretty dramatic for him to have to leave me in the hospital and has kind of kept his distance from me at home, but I think he will adjust just fine. He definitely can't stand for Russ to give the baby much attention though, if Russ is holding Bryce JT just cries and says, "that's my Daddy." Poor little guy. We are so blessed though and are so happy to have two girls and two boys :o)

Me and my boys!

The other weekend I had a chance to take a picture while pregnant with my little boy. It was my husbands idea, since he had got me a little figurine for Christmas of a pregnant mother kneeling with her son on her lap holding her stomach. The figurine looks just like me and my son, same color hair everything. It is probably one of my most treasured gifts from my hubby, being that I'm such a sappy sentimental person. Anyway we wanted to recreate that pose in a picture and it came out fantastic. I only wish that I had done it with my girls. I could not believe what a ham my son was. There were so many good pictures it was hard to choose just two, I would have taken them all home if I could. I thought for sure he might not be into it or even cry, because my girls didn't really do too well with picture taking at his age. The minute we started though he stole the show, he was smiling hilariously, which he does with a goofy grin and his eyes squinched closed, but it is the cutest. He is an amazing little guy and I am so grateful to have captured this moment in our life forever.

Valentines Day!!!!!

Valentines day was great for us. Our children are very spoiled in the sense that they associate every holiday with gift giving, and we love them so much we never seem to be able to let them down. We had just given each of them just some small things but they were so excited. We gave them each a small stuffed animal with a card, a small box of chocolates, and a cute Valentine gummy candy with a little balloon. We love to see them so happy.

Russ and I were lucky enough to have his parents come over that day as well to watch the kids so we could have some time to ourselves. We have been married going on 8 years and this was the first Valentines Day where we actually got to go out by ourselves. We usually always celebrated it with the kids for one reason or another. Russ gave me the most beautiful flowers, and a box of Godiva chocolates (yummy!) and he even found a card that played the song we danced to at our wedding!! It was so nice to have some time to ourselves, we rarely get the opportunity to ever be alone. We went to the movies and saw "Taken", it was really good. And although we wanted a bit of a romantic dinner restaurant neither of us had made reservations anywhere. We ended up at Mi Cocina's, just about the only place we could find near by that wasn't going to be a 2 hour wait. Thankfully it was delicious and we had a great time by ourselves, no children throwing food or needing to be hand fed, it doesn't get much more romantic than that for us, haha!

The Beginning of our Blog!

Today is the first blog post. I will try to keep up with it as much as is possible while taking care of three rambuctious children. We are currently in countdown mode to baby #4. I feel huge but have actually got many a compliment on how great I look for this being my fourth. People have no idea how much those comments mean to me, it can be quite discouraging being pregnant at times when you feel like a bus. I am by far a lot smaller than I was with my other three kids but that has something to do with losing 50 lbs before I got pregnant. I just hope I dont struggle much with the baby weight. We are so excited for the new baby. It still seems unreal at times to be pregnant again. Finally JT will have his match. So we have evened out the playing field, and I think we are done. We'll see what God has in store for us, but we are very content with the size of our family. This pregnancy has been long and hard, but we are near the end. We will be scheduling an induction for the end of March. Scheduling an induction always seems to be the best game plan as two of my children arrived on their own on the day they were to be induced so thats what we are hoping for again. I am completing stressed about going into labor at home with a daughter in school, a husband that works 30 minutes away and my doctor/hospital being 45 minutes away. Hopefully everything will run smoothly!