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Gracie's Arrival

On Saturday, November 15, I attended the Fayetteville Cares Boots & Booties World's Largest Military Baby Shower. As it ended, I began to have painful contractions. Nothing terribly new; I've been having contractions off and on since November 4. I headed for home, but remembered we were out of coffee and trash bags and only had a bit of milk left so I would have to stop by the commissary. We had dinner at our neighbor's house across the street and the contractions continued to be painful and got closer together. Our neighbors generously volunteered to watch the boys for us as we headed to the hospital. They put me in triage and checked me after an hour and said I was still only 1 cm dilated but they wanted to keep me and recheck me due to my pain level and description of the contractions. After 2 hours, I'd made progress so they decided to go ahead with the surgery a few days early. The surgery went very well. Graceanne Gabriella was born at 2:35 am on November 16, 2008. She weighed 6 lbs, 4.5 oz and was about 19" long.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Canaan was doing his homework Thursday night, practicing writing his "T" words for the week. Matty can sometimes be a handful while Canaan is doing homework. So, I looked through our workbooks and found a page Matty could easily do and handed him a pencil and told him to circle the smallest picture in each row. "OK," he said as he proceeded to circle nearly every picture on the page! OK, maybe we need to work on it a bit more. But, he was so proud to be sitting next to Canaan doing his own "homework" I had to snap a couple pictures to share.

Destructo-Boy in all his glory!

That's a sock puppet on his hand.

First Stripe

Messy Matty

I thought I would take advantage of Dora's captivating hold over Matthew and cast my absentee ballot this afternoon. I appreciated the quiet while I tried to look up names and issues that haven't been blaring at me on local TV for the last several months. That is, until I was finished and walked in to the living room to find a bag of Doritos on the coffee table and chips all over the carpet I just vacuumed last night. And then into the kitchen to find a string of paper towels lying on the floor to mop up what I thought was water spilled in front of the open pantry doors. Closer inspection revealed it was not water, but grease! He was spraying my non-stick cooking spray all over the floor! The dining room didn't escape either. It was covered in Pixie Stick dust deemed too sour to consume. And a quick peek at his favorite hiding space, behind the couch mom is no longer capable of squeezing her 8-months-pregnant body behind, told me where the chocolate ring around his mouth came from--the last of the Hot Fudge Sundae Pop Tarts. Now, lest you think I don't feed my child or that my pantry is stocked only with processed and sugary foods, I do have to say in my defense there are apples and carrots and grapes he could also have chosen to make messes with, but, well, they just aren't as fun to crumble up, dump out, or squish, and they certainly don't come in a really cool spray can. However, Mom is now prepared for the next election!