1/2 Dozen

I'd like to take a BRIEF moment to introduce y'all to

Benjamen Tobias Holley

August 10, 2014

8 lbs 15 oz

21.5"

this was his 1 month pic... 

below are some quick hospital pics...

 Our hospital is currently building a children's hospital next to it so we were privileged with a view of the ongoing process... nothing like big dirt trucks to keep kids occupied ;)

 This girl is growing up way too fast...

 Baby Ben was having some issues keeping his temp up (like kempton did). So they let him have lots of skin to skin time with me... (unlike kempton).

 Hopefully I'll get a chance to get his delivery story up here... soon... and addie's too... hopefully...

I wish there was a time out for boys...

A few years ago I was able to go to Time Out For Women, a spiritual pick me up motivate me to do better type of weekend.  I have the opportunity to go again this week. Yay!  Anyways sb and tj had a conversation  in the car on the way home from church. It went mostly something like this:

Tj: I wish there was a time out for boys.
Sb: well tj, it's like this. When mom's grow up, they're with the kids all day and all night. And the dads, well they get to go to work everyday. So moms, well they need a break and this is for them.
Tj: oh. Well I still want a time out.

I love kid conversations.

you know the moment

you know the moment when you have so many ideas of what you're going to accomplish tomorrow?

that moment right before your head hits the pillow?

yes. that. I have that! I have had many of those... 416 of them to be exact.

And a lot of those include the awesome blog posts  I write in my head.  did I mention they are awesome!? ;)

in  a nut shell? we are all alive and doing well... 5 children, 2 adults and a 10 year old dog in our 2 bedroom apartment.  we now know that we can do Anything after this!

signing off for now and hope to be back soon!

Things that make my day to day life easier

There are  few things that i have learned as i have become a wife and mother...

one of the things that has helped has been to menu plan.

in the years past i've always done a weekly menu plan and then gorcery shopped to that plan.

 

oh the agonizing through my cookbooks, magazines, online blogs, and most recently pinterest...

everything that looks just amazing! and my mouth salivates with every turn of the page or click of the button...nom nom nom....

 

within the last year we varied our weekly menu to themes, every dinner had a different theme. for example, monday is a pasta dish, tuesday beans and or rice... ect.

 

now, with our craziness of homeschooling, one car, multiple baby dr apts, and the heat... oh my the heat... (side note, we've lived in the south for the last 7 years, but the humidity and heat, well i'm not sure it ever gets any easier to bear... even at the bottom of florida.)

 

well i just can't take all the time and energy every week to decide what's for dinner anymore.

now i have a "friend" to help :)

meet my meal planning notebook :)

I discovered this about a year ago on pinterest and finally printed it out... i've tweaked it some though.

I've decided on a monthly meal plan. and it takes just about the same time for the whole month as it did for just one week.

 

here's our month for september:

Mondays: Pasta

Tuesdays: Beans &/or Rice

Wednesdays: Salad/Soup/Potatoes

Thursdays: Breakfast

Friday: Pizza

Saturday and Sunday: these are filled with leftovers and

 a yummy meat dish that is a little more fancy

On each day I have written the dinner in for each day as well as where I can find the recipe if I own the book, or magazine.  If I have found it online I print it off and I have a folder insert that i keep the monthly calander in, and then I put it in the pocket behind the calendar.  I also write the date that I plan to use if for on the top.

(is this making any sense?)

 

This is just the back of the binder...

 

After the folder with the calander and the recipes, i have the weekly meals printed out (found on pinterest)

 

we plan out breakfasts much like our dinners:

Muffin Mondays

and Waffle Wednesdays (we actually do pancakes since we no

longer have a walffle maker sniff sniff)

Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are cereal or oatmeal

saturdays and sundays we do a little something more since

we now have 11:00 services.

every morning we have yogurt protein smoothies as well...

(a recipe I use from Green Smoothie Girl, her's is kefir, but we use greek yogurt and almond milk)

 

For simplicity our lunches everyday are the same,

Green Smoothies, peanut butter and jelly/honey sandwiches or salad.

 

Well then after I have figured out all the dinners, i just transfer it over and on the right hand side make my grocery list :) all the lists are written and plans are made at one time and then i just have to shop :) which in and of itself is one major feat as well... i haven't quite gotten that one down.

 

and just for fun here is the blank slate for october! I can't wait to fill it in with all the fun and yummy halloween dinners:)

 

Am I the only one who gets excited about food???? well, besides the MWBFF ;)

I'm not saying we're perfect... some nights don't go as planned but eh, we can only do so much :)

but without a plan we don't get very far...

hopefully this can help you too or at least give ideas or motivation :)

fun in pennsylvania with the neves :)

So bear with me as I try and catch this silly blog up so all 2 of you who check on us occasionally will know what we've been up to :)

We decided (and when I say "we" i really mean "I, or me") that it was about time for me to get my MWBFF fix.  So that meant we needed to head up to PA for some time with the neves.

The week right after the kids got out of school I headed off to girls camp (separate post to come...) and then the monday after that we headed up to maryland to see some other much needed friends (again, another post) and for brad to have a campus visit with the University of Maryland (and again, another post included with the maryland friends :)

So, after we got to the neves, we had to go check out ben's campus where he works in York, PA.

 (can you see kempton in the back???) we have Jamison, TJ, Natalie, and Sarahbeth

Ben showing the kids around some more... and how to go down the steps the proper way :)

There was a little creek/stream that the kids got to play in... cause it sure was hot!

Joseph chillin' in the ride...

 trying his hand at whistling with the grass

 annalie getting some sick/tired baby j love

 We also checked out Browns, an awesome farmers market type place where they grow pretty much everything there and it's super delish!

 We also headed over to a dairy farm where the kids got to pet the new calves and ben even let us sample some of his special ice cream he bought :) mmmmmmmm.

 Most of the time we just did what we do best, hang out and enjoy each other :)

ben reading to kempton and natalie

 i just love how he sleeps :)

except that night before he didn't...

 brad and i took turns holding him and bouncing with him all night... 

it was a very sleepless night and we felt so bad for our hosts...

 kids chilling while we were packing things up...

 The kids got along like they hadn't ever been apart... which was nice :)

and i know mine can't wait to see jamison and natalie again!

They had fun catching all the fireflies too... and we had a bbq one night when we got to catch up with the palmers too... but i guess we forgot to take pictures.  But it was like a little tuscalooosa reunion :)

a very very fun time :)

Hospital vs Birthing Center

Sorry for not having kept everyone up to date, but when things happened they happened fast, (I will blog about that eventually...) and i just now feel like our family is calming down and getting on a routine... for the next 3 months at least, then that will all go out the window when our newest baby arrives, sometime around thanksgiving and tj's birthday :)

which brings me to the topic of this post.  this new baby :)

For the last 6 years (and 2 babies) we have lived in states that have not allowed midwives to practice, so it was hospital birthing with the traditional ob/gyn.  which was fine with me.  we'd done that with sb and tj, in the hospital, with pitocin, and epidurals, and with kempton too... however after kempton i had really become more interested in hypnobirthing.  I have several friends who had used this method and was really intrigued. I used it, or what i could of it having just the book, and really had a great experience (as i blogged about with joseph's birth.) however, now, living in sunny florida, there are midwives galore!

At first I thought, my ideal would be a hospital water-birth using hypnobirthing with a midwife.  I went to check out the local hospital, just down the street from the library and only a few miles from our apt.  It was originally built to be a resort, because they didn't know if they would need another hospital in the area... turns out they did so when you walk in there's all this greenery and water features and glass elevators and all the floors open up around the lobby (they call it the atrium).

And while midwives having attending privileges at the hospital, water birthing does not :( they do have Jacuzzi tubs however :) While searching for the recommended ob offices with midwives i happened upon the local birthing center here... just a few miles the other way from us.  I took a little jaunt over to the website and have almost fallen completely in love with it... but i still don't know if this is the way i want to go... it took a little bit to get brad ok with it but now he's on board with whatever i feel most comfortable with.

a friend just posted about her helpful usage of the infamous pros and cons list, which i think i will do here, as well as ask y'all for your input on anything i might have missed for either list :)

Hospital Pros:

1.  has a neonatal unit right there in the hospital... no transfers needed if something were wrong
2.  when you walk in the doors for the maternity ward are titled "Birthday Suite" which is super cute... and the triage nurse i met with was really friendly. (but i know that shifts end and unfriendly ones can come on at any time...
3. 2 days of all about me and baby? i don't have to cook, or clean up, or help with other children?
4. it's a comfort zone... i've done it 4 other times, i know what to expect...
5. having extra days in the hospital with other hands helping, there were a few issues with kempton that it was nice having nurses right there to make sure all was well.

Birthing center pros

1. They actually promote and encourage a combination of hypno AND water birthing and have uber awesome tubs for this.
2. stay to have our baby and recovery, then SLEEP in our own bed at night!
3. the midwife comes to our home 2 days later to check on everyone...
4. this office has it's own chiropractor!
5. I can take my kids to the center for my appointments, they have a tv and toy area! (this is nice since brad's schedule most likely won't allow for him to get off to watch the kids, and we haven't quite made the connections or good enough friends here yet for me to say, hey will ya watch my 4 kids while i go to an apt for a while?)
6. Won't have to find anyone to watch the kids overnight so brad can stay with me, (because if i feel awkward even asking someone to watch all 4 for a couple hours, uhm asking for an overnight seems 100 times more awkward.) ... even though my mom IS planning on coming out for thanksgiving... babies sometimes keep to their own schedule...
7. the center is super close to another hospital should anything go wrong, not the children's one so if something was SUPER wrong there would be yet another transfer, but that goes on the cons list...
8. actual face/talk time during my appointments, not rushing between people trying to rememeber who i am and what we talked about last time...
9. someone actually understanding what I want!
10. cost???

Hospital Cons

1. the beds.... I can't believe that used to be my favorite part about having a baby (besides the obvious having the baby ;) with joseph i couldn't get comfortable... the plastic mattress just smelled...
2. iv's! i hate iv's.... so restrictive. and then so easy for them to put stuff in you without you knowing... oh they tell you alright, but while i'm in the middle of laboring i'm not really paying too much attention to what you're saying... 
3. the nurses i've been told do a lot of behind your back talking about you...
4. the dr... you don't always deliver with your dr... (happened to us with joseph...wasn't horrible, just would have preferred dr myers...love her still!)
5. this hospital you labor, deliver and have your recovery in one room and then move to another for the rest of your stay... i'd rather stay in one place and be done... sb's was done this way too, again, not a deal breaker, but not on my pros list.
6. hospital food... hmmmm. the last hospital was pretty decent....but i don't know about here.
7. Having to continually remind the nurses no gunky stuff for the eyes and no shots yet! (i'm not entirely against vaccines, but I hold them off, with joseph i didn't plan to start till 9 months but he kept getting sick and then we found out he was allergic to everything INCLUDING eggs, which plays a big part in developing the vaccines... thank goodness i'm learning how to be an assertive mom!)

Birthing Center Cons

1. unknowns...never used one before... like i said our comfort zone...
2. i know it's on the pros list, but it also could be a con, having to recover at home... it's kinda nice to have just baby and mom/dad time without the other kids being right there and on top of everything...you know, have them come in a little here and a little there...
3.  cost??? ( i write this here because our insurance doesn't kick in until september 1st and we don't have all the details of maternity costs yet...)

I'm sure there are more for each list... but as it is so late i'm just going round and round in my head.

If you're at all interested the website fore the birth center is here.  let me know what ya think!

and because every post needs some pics ;)

26 weeks and the most recent of the kids

tomorrow...

Joseph will be 11 months.  The next day He and I fly out together to visit my mom and try and be of some help or cheer while she is going through her radiation treatments.  just after we get back marks a one year anniversary of our pure chaos summer from last year beginning with the tornado and almost delivering a baby that same day, worrying over friends and how to help them,  to whirlwind interviews and campus visits with a job offer and house hunt, renter-finding and moving with a newborn...

We still haven't fully settled in here at the house we are renting... partially due to the fact that the lease ends in less than 90 days, and mostly due that it has a few issues that i just haven't been able to come to terms with.  either way, chaos still abounds here, and i just can't seem to get a handle on it.  We're still in job hunt mode and moving mode, this time with a 1 year old... which is MOST DEFINITELY harder than with a newborn.  We're back into renter finder mode or house selling mode, and once again trying to deal with emotions of coming to terms with leaving a wonderful area that has become home to us with friends that have become family.  I keep thinking back to the part in the steve martin movie Parenthood where the grandma talks about roller coasters vs merry go rounds... i feel like we are on a never ending roller coaster, and just for a brief moment would really like a merry go round ride...Oh well... I'm just grateful that despite everything we still have a tomorrow.

Dix

I know it's been forever and a day since I've posted and I'm sorry... We have just been super busy with life! Which seems to be happening super fast!

Joseph turned 10 months this past Sunday and while I'm sure no one is even reading this blog anymore I wanted to do some kind of record keeping since I never finished binding the baby book I made for Joseph :( so sorry baby # 4...

Anyways, as if yesterday He has two bottom teeth and the top middle two jut broke through the the two on the side of those have the blisters...

He finally started sitting by himself... Allowing himself to actually bend... At the beginning of nine months! He was pulling himself up and walking around the furniture by eight months and has been doing this "worm" scoot thing since five months and then progresses to a bear crawl around 9 months and just recently mastered the traditional crawl...as long as he's on a soft surface :)

He is all bottles now, he was done nursing by 7-7 1/2 months due to some of my own health issues... He LOVES bananas, sweet potatoes and avocados...

He finally sleeps through the night from about 7-8 at night till about 5:30/6 in the morning with 2 2-hour naps throughout the day, one starting around 9 and the other starting around 2...

He also babbles a LOT! And the one constant "word" he uses is AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! He squeals... Soooo high pitched that you can literally feel the hairs in your ear vibrate and it hurts! He uses that for every eeee mmmoooo shun he has...
Happy
Sad
Angry
Bored
Wants to get attention
Wants something you have
Wants something you don't have
......
Yikes that is one I can't wait for home to outgrow!

But he is the happiest go lucky baby ever! At church I serve in the youth program and he just get passed around between all the kids and they just love him! As do his brothers and sister!

He and Kempton share a room and often I will go in and either Kempton will be in the crib playing with him, or Kempton has gotten him out of the crib himself or Joseph will be standing in his crib and jumping with a huge smile on his face playing with Kempton ...

What a sweet family I have been blessed with!

Christmas in north Carolina

Merry Christmas!

click on the title!

in which i hopefully end the story

the tornado was a wednesday.  the following several days consisted of everyone able going into town to help clear debris, trees, and help people collect what belongings they could.  it turned out that 4 families in our ward from church had lost their homes and belongings.  the next 2 sundays we just had combined sacrament with the other ward and then everyone left to continue to help.  but back to joseph.  wednesday, then thursday through sunday brad helped with manual labor and i watched kids so that others could help too... not much a 9 month pregnant lady can lift...

monday, brad had a phone interview with a university from north carolina.  the kids' and i went to a friends house during the interview so brad could pay attention... he said he thought it went ok... then tuesday they emailed him for a campus visit.  This is where it gets funny.  He emailed them back telling him how he would LOVE to come for a visit... HOWEVER, his wife (me;) was due in just 10 days and if he could somehow request it be before this day or after the 16th, (which was after my mom was to arrive).  so they told him on thursday that they would fly him out on sunday (mother's day too) and have him home by monday night.  so that's what happened.  I was under strict instruction to lay on the couch and have a lazy day with the kids for monday... and thanks to another pregnant friend, the kids and i went over to her house and spent mother's day together since everyone was still out helping with clean up. however, I decided that since hobby lobby was taken out by the tornado, and the other cloth store wasn't opening due to electrical problems from the tornado, another friend and i and the kiddlets traveled to birmingham to try out joann fabrics and their hobby lobby.  see, after having 3 kids, i wanted a diaper bag that fit MY criteria... and none that i was finding was fitting the description.... unless i wanted to pay oodles of noodles! so thanks to ali, we went on an adventure and had fun!  Monday night brad came home and said he had had fun too, but he wasn't so sure how it went.  Tuesday mid morning, they called and offered him the job! but he still wasn't sure if he would take it... it actually only amounted to the same as what brad made with his assistantship and student loans, plus we would have to pay out of state graduate tuition if we took it... (obviously you know we did end up taking the job... since this post is 7 months past...)

anyways, wednesday the plan was that my friend (who had just moved here) was going to watch my boys during my dr apt and then we were going to have a sewing party and get our craft on making baby things... most particularly my diaper bag that i designed and FINALLY had the fabric for.  well i had been having contractions all morning, but nothing that was out of the ordinary.  although there were some more intense ones in the waiting room... when my dr checked me i was at a 4 and she could feel my water.  well with sb i was at a 4 for the last 7 weeks of pregnancy... i still felt like it wouldn't be until saturday for whatever reason.  the dr didn't seem all that concerned either. so we said farewell and i got in the car and was on the phone and driving (i know i know...) when i had a contraction so intense while i was driving i couldn't even talk. i turned the car around and picked up brad.  I told the baby he couldn't come yet... i still had my list of things i needed to finish before he was born....  my list was 4 pages long... anyways, we decided brad would drop me and my sewing stuff off with my friend and he would go home and work on my list at least til sb got off the bus.

well, i enjoyed a yummy lunch with my friend, all the while we timed my "surges". 6 minutes here, 5 there... going in between 4-6 minutes.  i would just pause and breath then go back to cutting my fabric and ironing the seams and sewing until i had to sway and completely block everything out.  i couldn't even have tj or k talk to me.  i was like, uhm, i think it's time to call brad... i didn't want to wait too long because of the whole GBS thing we discussed earlier... so as soon as sb got home he got in the car with her and came to pick me and the boys up. it was at this point that we realized that our designated kid watcher couldn't take the kids but with in 15 minutes things worked out and our other friend was able to make it work.  and it worked well, actually.  we were borrowing our friend's car while they were out of town so we dropped off the van at the kid watcher's (confused yet?) and took our friend's car to the hospital  (thanks again mays!!!!!)

on the way i thought i should call the dr's office just to let them know.  well when i called and spoke with the nurse i said, "hi, i'm in labor and heading to the hospital, i just thought i should let you know."  she actually told me to wait at home to make sure i was "really" in labor and they'd have a nurse call me back, then i told her this is baby #4, my labors have been 5-6 hrs in the past, i'm gbs +, and was at a 4 this morning... she told me to hold on and so i was put on hold. then i started having another contraction so i passed the phone to brad.  all i heard was him saying "uhm no, this is her husband.  i'm pretty sure she's serious, i have the phone cause she can't talk through the contractions... well, either way we're on our way."  and that was that.

silly silly nurse.

didn't she know that of all people... I... ME.... I would be the one trying to postpone this????

anways, we were having a good laugh about that when i started to have another contraction... well we were laughing too much that i couldn't concentrate and breathe so it really hurt and there i was going back and forth between HAHAH, OWOWOWOW HAHAHA OWOWOW... then we walked into the hospital and up to the nurses' station.  Can we help you? they ask... sure, i said, i'm in labor.

... then i got "that" look... of yeah, we'll see.  "did your water break sweetie?", "nope, but this is baby #4, i have "fast" labors, i'm gbs + and was at a 4 just before lunch at my appt."  So they took us to the triage room and told us to wait for our nurse, but to change... sadly i never got a "real" just before going to the hospital picture, but i did get this :)

(don't mind the date in the background... they hadn't changed it... it was may 11th. for more hospital pics you can re-check out this post)

anyways, so i get on the bed and they hook me up to the monitors and watch for a little bit, and are like yes, well you ARE having consistent contractions (DUH...) and then when she checked me she was super suprised... she goes WOW, your at a 6 1/2 (really... how can you tell it's 1/2???) almost 7 and your water is bulging... she said you're not going anywhere. (i really felt entitled to a great big I TOLD YA SO moment...)

so they were getting the other room ready (just so happened to be the same exact room we had kempton in!) and brad was calling my family.  he had called my sisters' phone and our nephew, ashton answered... i had started to have another contraction during this and my bags were still in the car so i didn't have my mp3 player to use my scripts yet, but i hear brad say "no ashton, not uncle DAD, uncle BRAD... BRAD... BRAD?" and i started laughing again... but then we were back to me "hahahah... owowowowow-ing"... that was the only time i was mean and said GET OUT to brad... but he understood :) after we got back to our room and iv stuff started and i had my mp3 player everything was great!  the nurse was trying to get paperwork done so whe would talk and ask questions and when i felt one coming i would pause, put my other earpiece in and press play, close my eyes and relax.  then when it was over, i'd take a deep breath and open my eyes and smile! i was so excited after each one! and it really wasn't hurting AT ALL... as long as i could relax.  but if i was distracted it really was painful. that's kind of the way it went till i felt nauseous.  the nurse decided to check me and i was at a 9 1/2.  the dr came in about then too (we'd only been back in the room for about 45 minutes and at the hospital for a total of almost 2.5 hours.) it was obvious we wouldn't make it the whole 4 hours for a second dose of antibiotics, and he wanted to be sure that there wasn't any meconium in the waters, so he broke my water...

 (side note... if we have anymore, i will NOT be letting them break my water!)

water was clear! and the next 2 or 3 contractions were fine but then after that i just couldn't get a handle on them and the next 1/2 hour or so were seriously agonizing. the position i was most "comfortable" in was on my knees, bum in the air and my head seriously like rammed into  the headboard.  i did some weird noise breathing thing through the contractions that i'm sure sounded super bizarre, but they helped.  But i was soooooo weak i couldn't hold my body up to change positions and was getting super dizzy and lightheaded.  the nurse had me get on my back to start some "practice pushes"... yeah right...  i did one and she had me stop... STOP??? sure i can stop... NOT...  actually i did stop pushing but my stomach didn't... i actually was trying to hold things in but do you know how seriously IMPOSSIBLE that it?  she hurried to get everything ready and just about delivered joseph herself... the dr came in and then said to push.

now, i've delivered with epidurals before... 2 that have "worn off" or so i thought. even still i felt quite a bit more with the ones that wore off than with the one that didn't... but when i pushed with drugs it was super easy. 5 minutes for sarahbeth, 3 pushes for tj and not even a full push for kempton.  and as soon as the baby slid out... like seriously as soon as their feet were out it was like this amazing rush of adrenaline and i felt great!  This was way different.  I couldn't even get a full breath to push. so i think it was like 2 pushes this time for joseph to get all the way out...i just closed my eyes and laid there. i opened my eyes for a split second to see oh, he looks just like kempton... and then i waited.... and waited... no energy... eventually i felt the need to push the afterbirth out which was obviously easier, but felt very odd indeed.

and then, i got cold.

and weaker.

and shaky.

i couldn't even hold him until after i had showered because i was so shaky and weak. so brad did. i remembered later that one of the times that i opened my eyes, brad was crying. he did that when sb was born too... but they did his first bath while i still hadn't held him yet, and took him to the nursery to do what they do in the nursery.  while they did that brad ran out to wendy's to get us some food because the cafeteria had closed and i got into the shower all by myself! it felt much better as far as that went after with out an epidural but i still was wondering what happened to that burst of energy?!?!?

Joseph Kambak Holley was born at 8:05 pm only 3 hours after arriving at the hospital and measuring 7 pounds 6 oz and 20 3/4 inches long. it was almost 10:30 by the time i was able to hold him for the first time... and it was so sweet! i just loved him... and at that point was not so sure i ever wanted to do that again.

now when we had our other kids, we kept them in the hospital room with us.  but with kempton, the first night he choked on his spit or something and we woke up to him gasping for air and then couldn't sleep the rest of the night.  so the nurses kept him so we could get some rest.  i realized that was the awesomest thing ever! so that's what we decided to do with this baby from the bat.

unfortunately i didn't sleep.  yah, i found my adrenaline... i layed there like it was christmas eve waiting for them to bring him in for me to nurse :) i didn't sleep the entire night. the recovery after that was fantastic. and after the first day i asked brad about the noises i made... he said they were fine... and then the further we got from it he truthfully said they were kinda weird but it worked so not to worry about it...:) and me..... after the first couple days i didn't want to think about childbirth...but by the end of the week i was really excited to try it again... just not sure when that will be.

so just to recap... wed, 4/27 tornado/almost baby day. monday 5/2 phone interview, tues 5/3 campus visit offer, sunday 5/8 mother's day, brad leaves for campus visit, monday 5/9 late night he returns, tuesday 5/10 he gets the job offer, wed 5/11 new baby! in  a quick, mostly painless labor... except for the last 1/2 hour, 1/2 cm...