My Baby Girl is 2!!!

First, it's been way, way too long since I've done any kind of blogging. Life has just been so crazy and busy lately. But also wonderful. We've moved into our new house, we had the holidays, and with it, family come and go. We experienced the death of a dear, dear loved one and then we started fiercely preparing for the birth of our newest addition, Oliver.

But, this is not what this post is about. This is about Adelaide- who turned two years old on the 4th.

I will never forget the day this sweet girl was born.  Nor will I ever forget the hand of the Lord in my life during that tough time. I will forever be grateful for my midwife, turned friend, who was there for me and for Adelaide when she was born. She touched my sweet baby girl before anyone else and then laid her on my chest. She was there for me, even though her shift was over and she'd been up all night long. So, I think of her often and especially near the time of Adelaide's birthday. I am a firm believer that God puts people in our lives just as we need them. So if you happen to read this, Jennifer, thank you. Thank you a million times over. I am incredibly grateful that you came into my life and remain a big part of it today. We love you. :)

Adelaide has had a tremendous year of growth. She continues to amaze me each day. She is a fun-loving, energetic, fireball. She is hilarious and sassy. Her vocabulary is pretty amazing. It often surprises me the things she can say. She asks, "Why?" a lot. Sometimes after asking "why?" and us answering, she'll still ask, "but why?" with the sweetest inflection. I love it. Sometimes, she'll continue to ask and Jeff learned one day, that if you say, "Why not?" she has no answer and will no longer ask "why?"

I love listening to her play with her toys. The conversations she has with them are awesome and funny and sweet. (Playing with her baby doll- "It's okay, baby. I know you're sad. It's okay. I love you." Playing with her safari truck- "You be nice in there. You'll be safe in there."Trying to get something to stand up- "This keeps falling down. This is frustrated. I can't get it to stand up. Now I got it!")

She's pretty witty, but unwittingly witty and it cracks me up every time.

She knows most of her colors, how to count to 13, lots of shapes and how to sing her ABCs. She loves to draw and color these days and will often ask for crayons and paper. She'll draw something and then ask me to look at what she drew. She will tell me what it is she drew (a butterfly, a candy cane, a horse, a person or whatever). She asked me to draw her a person the other day. I drew the best person I could, asked her how it looked and she said, "It's fine." I don't think I quite met her expectations.

She and Caleb get along pretty well, but mostly when they are doing something that they think is sneaky. For example, when they are to take naps and I send them upstairs, they will play happily together for as long as I let them. Caleb often tries to get Adelaide to get in on sneaky action and Adelaide happy plays along- sometimes to her fall. They also fight and get annoyed with each other and they know exactly which buttons to push to get under each others' skin. True siblinghood.

She does well in nursery and especially loves getting snack. :)

She likes to talk about her aunts and uncles and her grandparents randomly. She might be playing and will pretend to talk to her aunts Tracy or Ashley on the phone or she'll draw a picture of her uncle Robbie or aunt Torri or she'll ask to go to Namna and Papa's house or she'll want to talk to Grandma Cyndi on the phone or go to Papa Barry's house. I love that she loves them.

She doesn't enjoy the cold much. She always wants to go outside, even when it's cold, but never lasts long. She just gets too cold too easily, while Caleb could stay out for a long time, usually.

She loves singing and dancing.

Riding in the car with her can be quite the challenge. She's quite demanding and usually does a lot of screaming ("It's hot!!!" "I don't like that song" "Turn the music up!" "Turn the music off!" "You wake me up!!"- all with accompany weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth).

She throws some pretty intense tantrums sometimes. Luckily, they don't happen on a daily basis, though. She does throw little fits when things don't go her way, but sometimes I can just remind her that she can talk to me and not scream and she'll stop… sometimes.

She sleeps pretty much through the night these days, which is awesome. Occasionally she'll still wake up and has been doing so more frequently lately, but for the most part, she's pretty good at going to sleep and staying asleep. I lay down with her at night (or Jeff, when I'm unable to) and pat her back and sing her a couple of songs of choice and sometimes we chat. And then I tell her I love her, give her the choice to leave the door open or closed and wish her a good night. Soon afterwards, she's entered into a sleepy slumber.

I suppose that's a pretty good summary of what she can do (if it was too long to read, it's okay… it's mostly so I can remember anyway :)

Here are some photos of my girl. :)

Oh yeah and her stats: 24.4 lbs (40th percentile) and 35 inches (80th percentile).

Here it is.

So for those wondering, here are some photos of my house. We're still hoping to be in by Halloween. Before we can move in, the flooring needs to be completed, the toilet fixtures need to be install as well as the kitchen sink and other faucets. We will need to get the oven and dishwasher installed (and then we'll add the refrigerator and washer and dryer when we move in). Then a tree needs to come down (it's really close to the house, leaning towards it and when they installed the septic, they severed the roots on one side). The current set-back is that we're waiting for the electricity to get hooked up to the house. The builder said there isn't much more more they can do until the electricity is hooked up, so hopefully that will happen soon.

For now, here are some pictures:

The front of the house.

This is what you see when you walk in the front door.

Here is the room on the right. It's labeled as a living room, but I'm pretty sure we're going to use this as an office/ school room as the kids get older. 

To the left, is the dining room. 

Between the dining room and the kitchen is this little butler's pantry. 

Here's the kitchen (looking in from the family room).

So this is the pantry and one of the reasons we liked this floor plan so much. We l loved that there was so much space in the pantry. 

Off of the kitchen is a garage.

This is the family room, looking in from the kitchen. 

Okay, back to the front door, so we can head up the stairs. 

To the right of the stairs is a little laundry room. I am so grateful to have a space to do laundry that is not in the kitchen.  In our last home, the washer and dryer were in the kitchen hidden behind some billfold doors. I'm just so glad that they will have their own space. 

Next is our room. This is looking in from the doorway. 

This is the sitting area in our room. I'm really excited about this space because this will be the perfect place for the baby's crib. 

This is our master closet. It's not huge, but I'm grateful for the space. It's definitely bigger than our last master closet .

Our master bath! I am just so excited to have another bathroom in the house!!

The other side of the bathroom.

This is the hall bathroom. 

This will be Adelaide's room. 

Adelaide's room, from the window. 

This will be the boys' room. 

The closet in the boys' room.

4th bedroom.

I love this little window and have plans to build a window seat there. 

The tiny door here is the closet. Look how narrow it is! I don't think I'll be able to fit through that door much longer. Haha. 

 So, there it is folks... our new home. It will be fun to update these pictures when we have carpet and get all moved in. For me, I think it will be fun to see the beginnings, the bare bones and then to see how it all changes. After just over a year living with my in-laws (as helpful as that's been), it will be so nice to be in our own home, our own space again. :) I'm getting excited!!

Blessings These Days

Well, I realize it's been awhile since I've posted anything on this blog. I do have two semi-recent drafts that I just never published, that's a start, right?

There's a lot to catch up on. Part of me hasn't caught up in awhile because I haven't had time. I have been busy with doing things with the kids, just being a mom, a wife, my photography business, etc. Part of me hasn't caught up because it's overwhelming to think about. For example, Caleb turned 3 back at the end of June. I took his 3 year pictures, but haven't even had time to edit them yet except for a few of the kids together for Independence Day. (I am going to try and get them edited this week though).

And then a part of me hasn't updated because I wasn't really sure how to or when the right time would be. I have been incredibly blessed lately. Things are going pretty well for my little family these days and though I have been grateful and feeling blessed, I didn't want to say much for fear of what people might think. Also, with social media, I see so much more heartache around the world, in our country and even in the lives of my friends and family and I didn't want to feel like I was rubbing anything into anyone else's face. I really don't know how to articulate better than that really. I have just been feeling sad for, maybe empathetic is a better word, towards my friends and family and want to show my love and support. Please know that I am aware that heartache happens, and I've experienced my own heartache, but I also rejoice in the happiness of my friends and family and I am sure you guys, do too...Does that make sense at all?

So, as I've thought about and as I've been more and more grateful for my blessings, I realized that it is okay for me to share the good things that are happening in my  life. And my friends and family will be happy for those good things happening just as I am happy for the good things in their lives.

This is not to say that we haven't had struggles and trials, because of course we have, but the good just outweighs the bad these days.

So what is going on in my life these days?

Well, last June (as in June of 2013), Jeff and I decided that we wanted to move out of our small home (just over 1000 square feet, 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom home).  We already had two children and knew that at some point in the future, we'd want to expand our family. We started our home search, not completely sure at first, but as we continued to look at homes, we started to get more and more excited about moving into something bigger and more suited to our family's needs. We were looking for a 4 bedroom home with 2 bathrooms. We started our search in the Midlothian and Chesterfield area. We (and I guess, really I) wanted to stay in our ward if at all possible and if not, we wanted to stay in our stake. As we searched for homes, we ran across several in HOAs and that was something we were not interested in. Sometime in August, we found a home that we both loved. It was an older home, built in the 70s. It was in an established neighborhood, but not in an HOA. It was also on a .5 acre lot and had a lovely backyard with a screened in gazebo (and the gazebo had a fan!). This home had 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a living room, a family room with a fireplace, a rec room, a florida room and a laundry room. It also had a walk-up attic. It had everything and more that we wanted in our new home. It also had a large 2 car- attached garage with storage space above. The home definitely had work that needed to be done, but the sellers had also done quite a bit of work and had already started renovating the home. We looked at more houses, and then came back and looked at it again. We did notice that there was some water damage and mold issues, so we before we put an offer in, we asked if we could bring contractors to come and check out the house and give an estimate for the work required. A contractor and a mold guy came the same afternoon. They looked at the damage and came up with a a plan and by week's end sent us the estimate, about $10,000 combined. We put in a full-amount offer but asked that the seller pay for the repairs. They accepted and we were set to close on Sept. 19th. Yay!! So then we did the inspection and we found more problems. Leaky roof, more mold, termites. We already knew that the seller was not willing or able  to help with anymore of the issues. So we withdrew our offer. I seriously mourned that house. It had a nice front porch, a large yard for the kids to play in, and so much character. I didn't think we'd be able to find another home we loved as much.

We kept looking and were met with disappointment after disappointment (for example another home, I really liked got an offer placed on it that same day). Finally, we broadened our search and Jeff started looking at land. We happened upon a strange L shaped lot in Aylett, Virginia. It's a little 3 acre lot and though strangely shaped, we decided we could build there. So, we're in the process of building our home. In fact, it's nearly done and hopefully, we can move in by the end of October (!), though we haven't been given an official date yet.

While in transition, we've been living with my in-laws (so since mid- September) and while it's been good and helpful, it will also be so nice to be in our own place and have our own space again. :) This home that we will be moving into, does not necessarily have everything that I want, but it's a great home and definitely bigger than our first home together. I am very grateful that we have been able to do this. That though there are some stressful moments, that it is finally coming to fruition and that we'll have a home more suited to our family's needs as we continue to grow.

Speaking of growing, we are also expecting baby number 3 sometime at the beginning of Feb!! The official due date is Feb. 4th, which also happens to be Adelaide's birthday. But, babies come when they are ready, so we'll see if this baby will actually come on the 4th. So far, one baby has come a week early and one 3 days late. We are thrilled to be expecting another new little one and can't wait to bring this baby into our home. :)

Speaking of home, I am planning on having a home birth. There is a wonderful midwife here who does home births. I am already so impressed with her. I tell you, I have truly been so blessed with the wonderful doctors/midwives I've had with each of my babies. Caleb was delivered by two of the best doctors. They were compassionate, understanding, nice and fun to be around. They made me feel strong and able. Adelaide was delivered by the most amazing midwife. She was awesome at our appointments and fell in love with Caleb right away. She was amazing and calming during the labor and delivery of Adelaide and she even came to see me again that evening (even though she had already been up all night long and all afternoon while I was in labor). And now my current midwife seems to be just as amazing. I am grateful for each of these wonderful women.

Speaking of babies again, we find out what we're having on Monday (as in tomorrow)!! We found out with Caleb, but not with Adelaide. I am excited to find out what we're having this time. With Adelaide, I just knew we were having a girl. This time, I have no idea. Sometimes, I think boy and other times I think girl, so who knows... well, we will on Monday! :)

So I guess the big things happening in our lives right now is the fact that we will be moving into a new house sometime in the next couple of months and that we will be expecting a new member of our family in early Feb. And we are all so thrilled!!

Anyway, so any guesses as to what we're having?

Today at 19ish weeks.

From the other side.

This was at 16 weeks.

Here's our new house. I'll be honest, another reason I didn't want to share is because I am kind of embarrassed by it. Anyway, if you're interested in seeing inside pictures, let me know! I took some, but thought that since this was already kind of long, I'd post more later if people were interested. :) 

 These are from back in early July:

These next couple are just from a couple of days ago. 

Well, I guess that's all for now!! :)