Welcome, Baby Izzy!

I'm a little late in getting this up, but I wanted to officially welcome Isabella Jane to the family! Izzy is my sister's 5th child. I'm amazed at how different they all are, and I'm curious to see how Izzy fits into the wild mix.




This was taken before the rest of the crew got there. I hope she brought a set of earplugs with her; otherwise, this might be the only sleep she gets!



Here's the whole gang--eight, six, four, two, and newborn. According to Elli (4), "Now, we have a big family!" Apparently, the 5th child is the defining number in a large family. She also informed me that since the baby is going to sleep in her room, she will get to hold her more than anyone else. Um...okay.

We love you, Izzy! I hope you're ready for a wild ride!

Random Thoughts Thursday

We tried a new restaurant a few weeks ago. A family member invited us to eat at Dudley's with him for brunch one Sunday. When we checked out their web page, Shawn and I were a little skeptical. Him because it looked a little froo-froo, and he thought it would be stuffy and boring. Me because it looked a little froo-froo and I was worried about taking a 3 month old after church---sounded like a recipe for disaster to me. We were both pleasantly surprised. While the place was nice, the food was super yummy, and Sam, like always, was well-behaved and happy. I got smoked salmon eggs benedict, which was a real treat because Shawn despises salmon so I rarely order it and never cook it at home. (That and the fact that we can't cook fish. Seriously, we've tried before and the cat wouldn't even eat the finished product...) Shawn got some kind of spicy rice dish with eggs, shrimp and black beans. When he ordered it I wrinkled my nose a little bit because I thought eggs and shrimp sounded weird, but it was shockingly good, and I ended up stealing several bites of his. I just love it when restaurants take normal dishes and put unexpected twists on them.

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These are my new zebra-print shoes. Pretty awesome, huh? I was a little unsure of them at first, but now I love them.

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Sam had his 4-month check-up this week. He was in the 97th percentile for height! I can't really say I'm surprised...I mean, look at his dad. But still, it was a little amusing when the nurse stretched him out on the table and said, "He's only 4 months old?!" Then Shawn walked into the room and she took one look at him and said, "Oh...okay."

I got a little caught off-guard this time. Since Sam is so grabby with his hands, the nurse asked me to hold them so he couldn't bat her away while she was giving him his immunizations. I did, and he just looked at me with the most betrayed expression on his face. I could almost hear him saying, "I thought you were on my side!" Last time, I didn't have to do that, and I got to scoop him up afterwards and shower him with love and kisses. I looked like a rock star. This time, I was an accomplice to the mean people sticking sharp things in his legs. Next time, I'll have the wherewithal to ask another nurse to come into the room and hold him. I also think I will take something chocolate for the nurse, because giving babies and kids shots all day has got to be one of the suckiest jobs E-VER.

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A few weeks ago, I noticed that we had two praying mantises on our back porch.

Over the next few days, I kept noticing them and decided they had taken up residence. I decided if they were going to be our neighbors, they needed names. Shawn suggested "Ollie's Lunch" and "Ollie's Dinner" since that's what they would probably become. Gross.

Anyway, apparently these mantises were praying for children, because there are four of the little buggers hanging around now. The original two are green, but I saw this little brown guy sitting on our swing this week.

He's also smaller than the other two. I don't know if he's a baby or just a different variety, but either way he's probably not long for this world if he keeps hanging out on our swing. That's dangerously close to Ollie's digestive tract.

Exersaucing!

Sam is doing really well holding his head and neck steady. I have been itching to get his exersaucer out and give it a whirl, so Sunday was the day! Since I am the official putter-together-er at our house, I waited until naptime, scattered the millions...yes, millions...of pieces across the floor, and set to work with the instructions. I have just a few observations:

a) The exersaucer has perhaps the worst assembly instructions I have ever read. And I use the word read very loosely, because all of the words were in Espanol...which despite two years in high school and two semesters in college, I still cannot speak very well. It was more of a picture book with arrows and parts.

b) Shawn and I are in for a lot of sleepless Christmas Eves if we cannot assemble toys any quicker than I was able to do that one. Perhaps a team approach will work better.

I finally got the thing assembled, got the batteries all installed, and set Sam in it. I think I was more excited than he was.

Doesn't he look like he's having fun?

You can't see it very well, but on the left side of the picture, there is a little lizard. He's my favorite piece on the exersaucer. When you touch him, he lights up and yells the color that he is.

"Red!"

Occasionally, he will randomly break out in song about the primary colors while flashing them.

"Red....Yellow...and Bluuuuuuuuuue!"

While Sam hasn't really worked out the cause and effect relationship in his head, he's very amused by all of the noise and commotion. Maddie...not so much. She has an inherent distrust of all of Sam's toys because a) she thinks all toys are hers, so why in the heck is that kid playing with them and b) she doesn't mind him so much if he just lies there motionless, but when he plays with toys he gets excited and squeals and kicks his feet, which really annoys her. So while Sam bounced around in his exersaucer and made a bunch of noise, Maddie and I had a little discussion about how Sam's toys are going to be loud and it really wasn't beneficial for anyone if she just stood there and barked at them all of the time. Maybe after having the same discussion about 3,000 more times, she'll start to agree with me.

Maybe...

Fall Is In The Air

Today when Sam and I were out running errands, I noticed that it was really starting to feel like fall. Even though the temperature was in the 80's, the day just had that fall-esque quality to it. I can't really describe it...it's just a different something about the air.

I have a love-hate relationship with fall. While I love the cooler temperatures, I'm always a little sad to see one more summer slip away. With fall on the horizon, Shawn always starts talking about closing the pool, and while we haven't really used it all that much this year, the times that we have have been really fun.

Things I Love About Fall
1. Sweaters.
2. Boots. Hmmm...do I need a new pair this year???
3. Big pots of chili or soup that simmer all day.
4. Fires in the fireplace.
5. Landscapes colored by the beautiful leaves. Every time we see the oranges, yellows and reds, I always have to imitate my grandmother: "Bill, would you just look at those trees? It takes my breath away!"
6. Fashion inspired by earth tones.
7. Apple cider, wienie roasts and bonfires.
8. An extra hour of sleep when the clocks fall back.
9. Mums. The flower...not the British word for Moms.
10. Those brisk mornings that make you just take a deep breath and want to go for a run. Not that I ever act on that impulse, but it's a good feeling just the same.

Things I Miss About Summer
1. The pool.
2. That carefree-ness of summer.
3. Lighter traffic in the mornings because school's not in session.
4. The pool.
5. The pool.
6. Longer days. There's just something a little depressing about it being dark when you leave for work and dark when you get home from work.
7. Evenings on the back porch.
8. Fresh produce.
9. Grilling out. (Actually, we tend to do this year-round, but I'm sure it's more fun for Shawn in the summer.)
10. I can't remember...did I mention the pool?

Bruschetta

I love dishes that use fresh, in-season ingredients. I guess that's one reason I love bruschetta so much. That, and it's fun to say it the way they do on Food Network: broosh-kett-a. A couple of years ago, I grew my own herbs and tomatoes for this, but that didn't happen this year. No matter, it's good just the same.

Bruschetta
4-6 Roma tomatoes or 2 large tomatoes
fresh basil
fresh parsley
about 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

bread

Dice the tomatoes, chop the herbs and add to taste (I like about equal parts), and drizzle with olive oil. Stir to combine. Season to taste. Serve on toasted bread. In the past, we have cut out bread long-ways, brush it with fresh garlic, sprinkled it with mozzarella cheese, and put it on the grill just long enough to melt the cheese and get grill marks on the bread. Super good!



Sorry for the vagueness in the ingredients, but this what I call a "Grandmother Recipe." It's just one of those things you want taste and add a little more or a little less as you see fit.

Dear Sam,



I love to hear you laugh. It's one of my favorite sounds. One thing that amazes me about it is that you have different laughs depending on what kind of mood you're in. Sometimes it's a typical, high-pitched baby laugh. Sometimes it's a delayed reaction kind of thing where I do something that I know you like, and you stare at me for a few seconds, then wrinkle your nose up and almost snort like a pig. Other times I'd call it more of a shout. You throw your head back and let out what can only be described as a bark of laughter. You and Daddy called and left a voicemail on my phone a few days ago. In the recording, he was getting your piggies, and you were laughing like a crazy person. I don't think I'll ever erase it from my phone. It brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my face every time I listen to it.


You crack me up when you sneeze. You almost sound like an old man because you let out a loud "AAAH" followed by a quiet and polite "choo". Like everything else, you do it with gusto.


I can't believe how you're growing. You're almost too long for your swing, which makes me a little sad because you love it so much. Your feet sit just at the edge right now, and I just know before long they'll be hanging off the end. For some reason you have decided that you don't really like to rock anymore, but you love to sit out on the back porch and swing...which is just fine by me because I love that, too. I wonder what we'll do when it gets too cold to do that, though. I'm already mentally rearranging the living room so we can just bring it inside and swing in front of the fire at night.


You love when we sing songs to you. You focus so hard, it's like you're trying to memorize the words. I love the face you make when you're really concentrating on something. You wrinkle your eyebrows and make a big "oh" with your mouth, and usually you fold your hands just under your chin.


Speaking of your hands, you have discovered that you can clasp them, and you act like you think you have to hold onto them or they'll run away. You hold them together to chew on them, when you're eating, you even rub your eyes with them folded together when you're tired. About the only time we can get you to separate them is when we clap your hands to play patty-cake...which you really love. You've also started trying to reach out and grab things...which is a bit difficult to do when your hands are clasped. If I dangle a toy over your head, you stare at it and slooooooooowwwwwly reach out your hands to grab it. When you actually manage to get ahold of it, you get so excited and you giggle while I cheer.

We're trying to start a bedtime routine that includes a story every night. You're doing really well with an earlier bedtime, and I love our snuggle time in the evenings. It's a tradition I hope to continue for years to come.

Sam, your infectious laugh is the music of my heart. Your gummy grin is like happy medicine for me; I just can't see it and not smile myself. Your little personality is really developing, and it makes me smile to see that you're such a peaceful little guy. I'd like to take at least a little credit for that and think that it is, in part, due to the fact that you know how much we love you. Every day I think I couldn't possibly love you more, but the next morning my heart wakes up a little bit bigger. You're learning at an incredible speed, but you're teaching me so much more.

Love you always and forever,
Mommy

Random Thoughts...

My brain has always worked in a really random way. It amuses Shawn that we can be talking about one subject, and I'll suddenly, without warning, blurt out a comment on a totally unrelated subject. Motherhood has only amplified this personality trait. In most of our daily conversations, I will at least once say, "So this is totally off the subject, but..." I have a lot of these random thoughts bouncing around in my head these days, but none of them are, in my opinion, significant enough for an entire post. Soooooooooooo, guess what that means?

A totally scattered, random, non-cohesive post!!!

I thought it might be neat to have a regular appearance of these types of posts, and I'll call them Random Thoughts Thursdays...but this is getting posted on a Friday and that just doesn't have the same ring, so there you go...

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We hired a house-keeper. I have fought my urges for a while, and I'm even a little embarrassed to admit it on the internet. It seems like such an unnecessary luxury. In a time when many people are having to make cut-backs in their budgets, it seems excessive for us to have someone clean our house. We don't work overtime, and it's not like I spend my evenings serving food at a soup kitchen. I finally rationalized it like this:

1. Sam's going to be mobile soon, and I don't exactly keep a spotlessly clean house. While this hasn't always been that big of an issue in the past, it makes me a little bit sick to think of all of the things he could potentially pick up and eat.


2. When I am off, I don't want to be spending my time trying to clean house...I want to be lovin' on my baby. (This was what finally sealed the deal for me...more time with my Sambo.)

Ruby, who will henceforth be referred to as "The Angel from Heaven," started this week, and I just have one thing to say:

I. Love. Her.

It was so nice to walk into my clean-smelling house and be able to just enjoy my family without feeling like I should be vacuuming or dusting or...

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No rodent or feathered fowl is safe in our yard. Our little Ollie has become quite the huntress. This is fairly new for her...I don't think she ever did this when we lived in Pikeville. What's funny is that she not only leaves her "gifts" on the back porch, she announces their presence. Wednesday night, I was rocking Sam, and I heard the awfullest caterwauling from our back door. I groaned, because I knew what I was going to find when I opened the door. Sure enough, Sam and I got up and opened the door, and Ollie ran in and started dancing around my feet as if to say, "Hey, look what I did!" On the door mat was a dead bird. I have a strict policy against removing carcasses from our home, so I shut the door and made a mental note to ask Shawn to take care of it. However, later when he went outside, the bird was gone, so either it made a miraculous recovery or someone else disposed of it for me. And by "disposed of" I mean "consumed." Personally, I choose to believe that we had us a healin' that night.

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I got these new shelves for Sam's room.

Aren't they cute? And no, your eyes are not deceiving you. There are no pictures in the frames. Despite the fact that we have a bajillion pictures of Sam, I haven't decided which ones I want to put in these frames. But I wanted to put the frames out to see how they looked on the shelves, and they looked so good I decided to leave them. I'll work on pictures next. (Isn't my husband a patient man?) The shelves, by the way, came from Target. I also bought a pair of zebra-print shoes, but they're for me...not Sam.

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And finally, I'll close this extremely long post with a cute picture:

One of Sam's new favorite games is when we pretend like we're falling on him. He thinks it's absolutely hilarious...and we, in turn, do too.

He Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

So, I've been hearing about this flight attendant who went loco on the airplane. If you have somehow fallen off the face of the earth or been stuck under a rock and NOT heard about this on the news, a lady was apparently trying to get her too-big bag into the overhead bin on an airplane. From the way I hear it, she was being really rude, moving other passengers' bags and trying to shove hers in. The flight attendant stepped in to help her, and she became verbally abusive and started throwing around cuss words and just generally acting like a big jerk. She then slammed the overhead compartment door on the flight attendant's head, causing a gash above his eye. After the flight, this same woman apparently jumped up to get her bag, and the whole thing just went downhill from there. I guess there were more expletives thrown around, and the flight attendant got on the loud speaker, repeated what she'd said, told her to do something that's anatomically impossible, grabbed a couple of beers, and exited the plane on the emergency chute.

Now, please don't misunderstand--I am NOT, in any way, defending the flight attendant's actions (although I do think it would be fun to slide down one of those big chute things). It sounds like he acted like a diva and totally had a Mommy Dearest moment.

Buuuuuuuuuttttttttt..............

What about the woman? Everyone is talking about this guy and his very theatrical display of emotions. Who's talking about the woman who started all of this? The flight attendant is being charged with several felonies, and while he is being heralded as a working-class hero, he will likely do jail time over his little drama display. But what about her? Did she lose her flying privileges for being so rude and abusive? Is she being charged with assault for hitting him in the face? Is anyone splashing her face and name across the news because she acted like a two-year-old in the throws of a temper tantrum?

No.

In fact, if I had to hazard a guess (and that's all this is), I'd say that the woman has already been issued an official apology from the airline, and she's probably already planning her lawsuit for emotional distress. When did our society become so "Me First" that we put up with this kind of behavior? When did the definition of right and wrong become so skewed that someone can act like that without recourse? Are we really so obsessed with not offending people that we put up with adults acting like spoiled brats?

We've all seen it happen. You've been at a restaurant, and you witnessed someone acting like a big horse's behind because someone messed up and put mayonnaise on their burger instead of mustard. (Personally, I try to be super-duper nice to my food-servers because I'm always afraid they'll spit in my food, but I digress...) Or you've been shopping, and a lady chews some 16-year-old cashier out because her sweatshirt rang up $24.99 instead of the advertised $22.99.

Again, I think the flight attendant handled it in probably the worst way possible, but I'm just so sick of consumers thinking they can walk all over people simply because they're paying a little money out of pocket. Seriously, is it so hard to just be nice?! Sorry for the soapbox rant, but sometimes I just want to shout, "Grow up, people!!!"

There's A New Curve In Town

There are so many things about post-pregnancy for which I was simply unprepared. I knew everything I could know about pregnancy. I had read all of the books...even the scary parts. I felt like there was nothing about pregnancy or delivery that could surprise me. It was that period AFTER I had the baby where I felt so ill-prepared. Maybe someday I'll do a whole post about that (because there's enough that I could), but today I just want to talk about my pants.

I'm still not back in my pre-pregnancy pants. Admittedly, I am still carrying a few extra pounds, and I had just been making it work until I could get that weight off. Why buy new pants when I'm hopefully going to be wearing my old pants in just a few weeks, right? I like my old pants. Buying pants has always been a source of displeasure and anxiety for me, and let's be honest--it's not exactly easy to go shopping with a little sidekick. So, I had been wearing those baggy pants that everyone has. My old pants are hanging in my closet so I would hopefully be motivated to wear them again. I even got a pair of jeans out a couple of weeks ago, put them on, sucked it in, said a prayer, and said, "Look, Shawn! I got them zipped!" He gave me a sympathetic look and informed me that I really shouldn't punish myself like that. Anyway, after 3 months, I decided it was time to be a big girl and go shopping.

So there I am in the changing room, trying on pants. One thing I learned is that my after-baby hips require the "curvy" fit--which is a nice way of saying "when you weren't looking, your butt got bigger." In the room to my right, I hear the following:

"Honey, can you go get me a smaller size? These 2's are just too big."

Meanwhile, I'm silently chanting, "It's not about the size you wear, it's about looking and feeling good in your clothes. It's not about the size you wear, it's about looking and feeling good in your clothes. Hmmm...if I buy some Spanx and don't breathe all day, I wonder if these would work."

I exhaled and refocused on the task at hand. After a few minutes, I hear this from the room on my left:

"Oh, good! You found an extra small! I didn't see that one, and I just didn't think this small was going to work."

Eyeroll. Seriously, I'm going to need a milkshake when this is all said and done.

Now, I'm not a petite person. Even when I was in high school and ran every day, I was never the thinnest of my friends. I'm okay with that. I'm comfortable with my body, and I really hate the idea that a woman has to be skin and bones to be pretty. So this "curvy" girl has a request for all you Skinny Minnies out there: When you're in the changing room, could you please just not talk?

Goofing Around With Daddy

Sam thinks everything his daddy does is hilarious. Seriously, Shawn and I can say the same things and make the same faces, but for some reason Daddy always gets the belly laughs. The quality of this video isn't very good because of the sun from the window behind Sam, but those giggles can't be beat! I wish there was a way to set my alarm clock so that it would play this sound every morning.