a middle of the night wake up call and a really bad fall

Well, it is getting late, but it's been a week since I've blogged and I have so much to say.  For the last few weeks our neighbors and good friends, Brian and Windy, have been on the baby watch!  I received a text around 1 am last Thursday morning saying Windy had gone into labor! Woo Hoo...finally! Windy started having contractions around 27 weeks and was put on strong medications to keep her from delivering Noah early.  At 34 weeks she was given the okay from her doctor (which just so happens to be my doctor too!), to stop taking the meds. She was 38 weeks last week and had been dilated 3 cm since 36 weeks!  Needless to say, she was ready to have this baby!!!  Windy texted me in the wee hours of the morning because they also have a 2 year old, Jacob, who was fast asleep and unaware of all the excitement. They wanted to keep it that way, so I was happy to hop out of bed and go sit at their home until a family member could come and stay with him until morning.  I was so excited for our friends, that I could hardly get back to sleep when I got back in bed around 2:45 am.  Good thing I couldn't sleep because for some crazy reason Ella Claire decided she couldn't sleep either! She still does this occasionally, and I'm not sure why.  It's odd to me that she can sleep all night for weeks and then randomly, for 2 or 3 nights in a row, she wakes up at the exact same time in the middle of the night! Regardless of the reason, I got back out of bed and fed and rocked her until she was sleeping peacefully again.  Around 5:50 am Windy and Brian welcomed Noah Samuel into the world!  He is perfectly healthy and the cutest little thing! Congrats Brian and Windy and big brother Jacob!!

Friday brought more excitement...not exactly the kind of excitement we all like to see, but excitement!  My parents own a scrap metal recycling company, Dean's Scrap Metal. GO GREEN!!  My brother, Brian works there. (Well, so does Steph, Jeremy and myself) Brian was standing on the side of an 18 wheeler at work and stepped backwards to get down.  Somehow he missed the step and fell backwards.  His right ring finger caught the blunt of the fall....all 6 feet 4 inches, 250 lbs of it!  And this is what it looked like afterwards....

       WARNING!!!....  

If you have a sensitive stomach you might not want to look!

My sister, the nursing student, and me, the "retired" nurse, evaluated the situation and quickly realized he needed to go to the ER.  So, off he went.  A few hours later he was informed it was not broken, just dislocated. Thankfully, they numbed it for him and gave him some oral pain medication then put it back in place...OUCH! He has been sporting a splint all week and feeling much better.  Thank goodness he didn't have any other injuries!

On a more fun note, Ella Claire and I met up with Kim and Madelaine,

and our good friend Sara Jane, and her baby, Laura Katherine for lunch one day last week. Laura Katherine and Ella Claire are almost 2 months apart, so Sara Jane and I shared a lot pregnancy pains and joys together....oh the nausea, right SJ?!?!  :)  We met at Panera and it was a site to see, I'm sure. 3 mamma's and 3 babies between the ages of 4 weeks and 8 months.  We took a few pics to remember our fun lunch date.  We enjoyed it so much that we decided to meet up again tomorrow. Just ignore the fact that I look 9 months pregnant in this picture!  :)

The time is now, well this post has taken me so long, I'm embarrassed to say the time! Hopefully soon, I will get a little faster at this. Let's just say it's way past my bedtime and my wake up call (aka Ella Claire), will be bright and early.  So off to bed I go! Night!!

let me bring you up to date

So, it's been a while since I've blogged!! A lot has happened in one year. Our view of Ella Claire went from this:

and this:

to this!!!

She is such a joy! Our lives have definitely changed! Most of my days are filled with feeding baby, changing baby, playing peek-a-boo, feeding baby, changing baby, reading books, feeding baby, changing baby...you get the idea!!!! Ella Claire doesn't look like that baby picture anymore, of course.

She has grown so much! I know people always say that babies grow so fast, but it's so true!! I feel like I have a big girl on my hands and she is only 8 months! She sleeps all night (which I am LOVING), sits unassisted, eats baby food (more on that in a bit), says "ma ma", "da da" and "bye bye" and crawls (more of an army man crawl than on her hands and knees, but still a crawl)!

Besides having a new little one in our house, Jeremy, Steph (my younger sister) and I have been trying to continue to run. I had no idea how hard it would be to exercise once Ella Claire arrived! Thank goodness for this wonderful Christmas present! I highly recommend a jogging stroller to new moms and dads! It isn't as easy to push as you would think, but that makes for a better workout right?!? So, thanks to this stroller, we were able to run our first 10K! The Azalea trail run was this past March. It was such an amazing feeling to finish just 5 1/2 months after having EC! Our time wasn't the greatest, but for the little bit of training we put in, we were happy! I love to run, but this deep south summer heat makes it extremely difficult to run in the summer months. Hopefully, we will will keep it up and finish a few more races in the fall!

Another thing keeping me busy this year has been making baby food for Ella Claire. I found this great site that helped me in the right direction. So, with the help of my mom, I made my first batch of rice cereal and have been making all of her food since! I love knowing that all of her food is fresh and organic.

Exactly 7 months to the day that Ella Claire was born, my older sister, Kim, delivered her first baby in the same room that EC was born in! Madelaine Joy Myers was born at 4:03 on May 6, 2010. She weighed 5lbs 13 oz and was 19.5 inches long. She is such a precious little bundle!! I love her so much already!!!

One of the most special days since Ella Claire's birth, was the day she was dedicated. Kim, and I, along with our husbands decided to have our babies dedicated together. We go to the same church, so it was perfect! It really was a great day! The girls had matching dresses and bonnets and looked like little dolls. The Lord reminded me of Deuteronomy 6:4-7, a few days before, as I was thinking about what a baby dedication really is about. It is my hearts desire to be an example of Christ to Ella Claire, and all of our future children, to not only teach them God's word, but be an example myself!

Well, these are just a few of the highlights that I missed blogging about this past year. I hope to be back a little more frequently with updates on what's going on in our life. Goodnight for now!