The Daily Hailey

I hope this stage of life never ever ends. I know some more experienced parents than me will likely say that it will, but let me live in blissful ignorance for just a little bit longer.

My kids love to help. I am so grateful that he do, and that I haven’t had to push them to help, or make work a consequence yet. This morning really brought to light just how sweet of a thing it is, because its happened so much.

Rowan had rice krispies for breakfast, and it was a HUGE mess! That ridiculously light cereal was just all over the floor. I wish I could just add milk and make it a bit easier to stay in the spoon, but Ro still loves to secretly dig into his food with his hands when no one is looking, regardless of what it is, so that would be an even worse, stickier mess than the dry ones floating around on the floor. Once everyone was done, Dekker commented on the mess on the floor. I heard him mutter “We should do something about that,” and he wandered off. I heard the hall closet click and Dekker surfaced with the broom and dustpan. Now I don’t about you guys, but my kids cannot sweep. The tall broom and the coordination just isn’t there, and I am NOT complaining, because we all know Dekker is a great vacuumer! But he brought it out, and Laela and Rowan flocked to the scene. He organized a system and tried super hard, but couldn’t quite make it happen, and finally asked me for help. Of course, I did it right away while Dekker, the general contractor, observed the operation. Once it was done, Laela dumped out the contents of the dustpan into the garbage and Dekker put the broom away. Rowan asked “Favor? Me?” So I had to find him a favor to do for me, too!

Soon after that, I started doing the dishes, and the kids instantly rushed over to help. This particular load of dishes hadn’t dried well, and were still quite drippy. Also, there were a decent amount of knives. So I thanked them but said I would do this one on my own. Everyone kind of deflated, and Rowan asked “Please mommy.” I had to make a point to change my attitude here, and be ok with them helping making a bit more work for me, take them up on their offer to help. I never want to discourage their desire to do jobs with me. So I fished out all of the knives and let them go ham on the rest of it. And as per usual, they did awesome! I just had to clean up some puddles off the floor where dishes dripped when I would’ve normally tapped them off into the dishwasher or sink. Whatever. It took an extra five seconds. I’m so glad I let them help.

Beyond those things, all three big kids have just been actively in help mode, almost to a fault. If someone gets a job, I have to find one for everyone else. One person brings me a diaper, one person throws the dirty one away, and one person brings Solly a toy while I change him. Like its that specific. But I want to foster this desire in them SO MUCH. I don’t want to mess it up. I’ve been slowly trying to build an arsenal of ways to make that kind of thing easier for them, whether its some kitchen gadgets that are safe for kids and easy to use, that super light vacuum that isn’t great but that works enough that the kids can use, or using up wipes a little faster because they clean things easily. Best of all, the kids seem to really love it! I wish there was a way for them to get the laundry out of the washer, though. That is a job that is on everyone’s radar that I can’t let them help with :/

As I was writing this, I had to get up a number of times when Solly would be upset or to deal with one thing or another. I was recently having a chair snuggle with Solly when I had to jump up and run to someone else, and the moment I set Solly down, he started to get sad again. But before he even had a chance to finish his first vocalized fuss, Dekker was on the floor on all fours, baby talking to Solly. Crisis averted.

I am SO grateful for my amazing children, and their loving servant hearts <3

I didn’t post pictures of the deck yesterday, and I’m realizing that I’m doing everyone a huge disservice, because its SO BEAUTIFUL! So behold, our gorgeous deck!!

Like I mentioned yesterday, we have to exchange the railings we got for the stairs, so those aren’t on. Those, plus a nice aluminum gate will finish things off just right 🙂 But obviously, its still very usable like this, and I couldn’t be happier!

I’ve been feeling high stress the last few days, and I feel SO much better today! I love this kind of project, so I don’t think that’s been my point of stress. I do think I’ve put together at least part of it, though.

Before we ordered the deck, we went back and forth between treated wood or composite decking, bigger or smaller, aluminum or wood wailings, aluminum or wood stringers, etc. We obviously decided on composite and aluminum, for lots and lots of reasons, and I’m really happy with our choice. But if you’ve done any deck building or pricing, you likely know that we chose the most expensive combination. No, our composite is not top of the line, and neither are our railings, and we got amazing deals thanks to some of Brady’s work contacts, but YIKES it still came out to a pretty hefty price! And to be completely honest, I struggled with that! Our house is amazing, and I fear sometimes people think we’re over here just dripping money, which we indeed are not. We saved and researched and were really smart about our decisions, but here we were choosing such an expensive option. I do NOT require the best of everything. Not. At. All. I really don’t want to appear like we do. I made jokes to friends and family about how I would likely feel gross about the amount we were spending on our deck until it was up, and we’d laugh about it. And today, with how I’m feeling, I think that was actually really true!! I think the stress of the expensive materials and the pressure to not mess any of it up really was getting to me. Now that it is pretty much done, and it is perfectly imperfect, just like I like it, I feel like I can breathe again. The pressure is off, and I’m so relieved!

Turns out, I really don’t have any regrets about choosing the deck we chose. It is bang on! It’s everything we wanted. There is no way a baby will get splinters crawling on our deck. We can hose the sucker off easily and it’ll dry super fast. We don’t have to treat/paint/stain it every year or two. It can just be. And its SO pretty!! I’m so happy with how it turned out!

Rant over 🙂 And deck almost over, haha!

So we had very much hoped to finish our deck today, and sadly, we won’t. That being said, we could use it already. The thing is, the railings we picked up last week all look pretty decent except for the ones that go down the stairs. We only noticed today just how badly scratched up they are. I know they’ll get dinged up as we use them, as well, but I mean “scratched” as to say that big bites of the paint are missing on spaces, and they almost look a tad rusted. It doesn’t bode well, and we don’t think we should install them before at least trying to exchange them. So we’ll see what the guy we bought them from says, but until then, our deck sits and waits.

That all being said, the railings around the actual deck itself are DONE! Its beautiful. Seriously, everyone should creepily drive by to look at it, and hypothetically stick your heads in and ask for a beer to test it out with. I’m so thrilled with the outcome so far. A HUGE thank you to our neighbour who took pity on us and our jammed up impact drill and lent us his, along with the right attachments to drive the lag screws into the framing rather than me doing it by hand with a socket wrench. So. Much. Better.

Our backyard is super shaded in the mornings, but by the afternoon, the sweats were traded in for shorts and my long sleeved tshirt was swapped for a tank top. We all got sun today 🙂 The kids weren’t pumped about the wind so they opted to stay in hoodies most of the time they were outside, but at least they were out with us!

Yes, Solly wore ear muffs when Brady was using the angle grinder to trim down the railings. They were a little big, though, and sometimes they just protected his chubby cheeks.

They were such champs, and played really really well. I’ve felt pretty discouraged over the last few days, and Dekker is so sensitive to it. He kept inviting me over to sit on the stairs with him, just for a snuggle. He knew I needed them. It was so wonderful.

While not being able to actually finish up the job today, I’m happy with how much progress we did make. I’m happy I got to be out in the sun with everyone for at least a little while. I’m happy that our week, and by default, our normal routine, will start back up and maybe everyone will feel just a little bit more themselves. But I’m not ungrateful, I promise. Its been so nice to have a long weekend. Spring is here. And I welcome it with open arms.

Solly’s been sleep training for a while now, and its taken longer than we had originally expected. However, its only improving, and we’re very thankful for that. He usually wakes up sometime between 5:00-6:00, and instead of being up for the day, we give him a bottle and he actually goes back to sleep! That basically serves as his morning nap, which is awesome because then his afternoon nap falls beautifully in line with Rowans. This morning, though, he slept until 7:00, which felt so refreshing for Brady and I! Sure, we’d love to sleep in past 7:00, but its just so much better than 5:00! He drank his bottle, was super smiley and soft and adorable, and went back down to sleep. It was so nice. It felt like a nice morning.

When we went to get the big kids up, we were THRILLED to see Laela’s success! She had relinquished her pull up last night and agreed to wear underwear to bed instead, and she had stayed dry all night!! The backstory here isn’t too riveting. Laela pretty much potty trained herself recently. She wanted to go to bed in underwear right away, but peed in her bed the first time. It wasn’t a big issue for me, but she was quite distraught about it when it happened. She would still be able to identify which pair of underwear she was wearing that night. It really upset her that she had an accident, and she asked for a diaper at night instead. Since we really hadn’t intended to potty train her at that time, and she was doing such a great job on her own, we followed her lead and put her in the pull ups that Dekker had leftover from his potty training days. But in the last week, she stayed dry 6/7 nights. So she decided she’d give underwear a try overnight again, and she did it!! She totally succeeded, and was SO proud of herself! We all knew she could do it, she is SO in control of her body, but she just needed to take the risk. I’m so pleased it paid off 🙂 She is 100% DONE with diapers! Go Laela go!

It was such an encouraging morning, for which I am thankful. We went out for lunch with my dad in the afternoon, and had a quiet afternoon. I’m feeling a bit off my game, though, so I’m currently hiding up in our room while Brady plays guitar and hangs with the kids in the living room. It feels like a good way to start wrapping up the day.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll spit out the rest of the deck!! Wish us luck! What are you guys up to on the last day of the long weekend?

Our deck is SO CLOSE to being done! We hauled all of the kids out there this morning and intended to get a bunch of work done on it. We hung a little swing up for Solly, even, so everyone would be happy and entertained. As life tends to happen, though, the weather was just a tad windy and Solly was cold and unhappy very quickly. I didn’t even screw in a single screw before I had to pack it in and take him inside. It was disappointing for me, but the other kids were having fun running around and playing still.

Right around the time I was getting lunch ready for the kids, my dad offered to come by and lend a hand. He and Brady worked hard for a few hours and got all of the decking on! So technically, the deck can be used by adults, but we need those railings on as soon as possible so the kids can also enjoy the new deck. We have them in our garage, so hopefully installing them isn’t too far away. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Monday. Maybe not. Who knows. But its so nice to finally have all of the deck boards in place. I’m so glad we’ve made it this far. Home stretch!

We wrapped up our day by spending it with a friend from high school who is back for the summer. We ate a super simple but yummy supper, and the kids ate SO much! Solly ate more than we had ever seen him eat! It was a good food day, and then a nice relaxed evening with our guest. Nothing like sipping a coffee and talking in detail about the last ten-ish years of everyone’s lives! So much has changed since high school, haha! It was really really nice.

I have a chill I can’t seem to shake, of all things, on this beautiful day, so I’m off to hit up a soak and watch some Netflix. I hope you’re all enjoying your long weekend!

Once in a while, Brady and I very intentionally regroup and make sure we’re parenting how we want to be. Often we come to the decision that we’ve toughened up a bit too much, and we need to dial it back a bit. Not that we get more lax, but that we make a bigger effort to be gentle and soft with the kids. Its easy to get tough on them, and we do it all too often, so the regroup sessions are a really good idea for us.

We just had one of these discussions yesterday, and it reminded us just how incredible our kids are, how warm hearted they are, and just how hard they try to make good choices. We both agreed to make conscious efforts to be more gentle with them in the near future.

So I did. This morning, I got the kids up and just chose my “battles” a little more carefully. I spoke more politely to them, and I’m embarrassed to say that they noticed. Part of me wishes I didn’t have to share these stories about today because I’m humiliated about all of the things I’ve failed at, but today was a great success story, so I’d rather tell you about it and take a bit of an ego hit 🙂

Dekker asked me why I was talking to quietly. He even mimicked me, whispering “what kind of cereal did you want?” It was funny, but I figured I should be straight up with them. I told them I was thinking that if I talked to them a bit more politely, maybe they would be happier in the day, and maybe even speak more politely to each other. I said that I was sorry I sounded loud and mad so often, and that I wanted to try to be nicer and more gentle with them. Without prompting, the big kids were full of forgiveness, and assured me that it was a great idea.

It was a really sweet kick off to a busy day!

I took the kids grocery shopping this morning, to Costco and then to Superstore. Lucky for me, the kids love grocery shopping so I never find that to be too big of a task. Except that it was approaching lunch/nap time, so by the second place, Ro was getting pretty annoyed with Solly sitting next to him. We had too many things in our cart to be able to go through self check out, so we were at the mercy of the line, which is usually where the kids get a bit more twitchy. I was working hard to exercise my gentleness while being firm and maintaining my brood of hungry hooligans. It was while I was unloading the cart that one of those people who wander around and try and make you sign up for credit cards approached my cart. My heart rolled its eyes (yup, don’t question it) but I smiled at her when she greeted us. Usually these people take one look at our crew and keep moving, so I thought she was a bit ballsy to try to sell us on a credit card in that moment. But out of nowhere, she pulled out a container of bubbles and entertained my kids. Unbelievable. Where do these amazing people keep coming from? I feel SO amazed every time someone just jumps in and backs us up. I thanked her profusely. What a lifesaver.

So clearly, Costco and Superstore were a big win. The kids did SO great. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do next, whether go home or help a friend with a small move this afternoon. It turned out that timing was on our side, and we were able to be of use to her, so I went through the McDonalds drive-thru and everyone got lunch. Everyone asked for what they wanted and it was pretty much the same as usual. No problem there. I pulled into a parking spot once we had our stuff and Dekker came to the front of the van to help me hand out food. I love how easy it is to just move around the van as needed. He was very willing to help, and everyone just had better manners than usual. Seeing this was a fabulous motivation for me to keep up my gentle attitude and higher level of patience.

As we were driving, Dekker told me that Rowan wanted some apples, but Rowan hadn’t asked for apples. Dekker reassured me that he would share some of his with Ro. Then, later on, when Rowan finished his lunch, Dekker offered him what he had left. I was so thrilled to see his giving heart come before his defensiveness.

So here is the kicker. My kids sat in the (running) van for an amazingly long time while I loaded stuff into my van, drove, unloaded, drove back, loaded, etc. I think I did three loads back and forth, and the kids just sat and patiently waited. Once or twice I heard Solly wine, but someone would jump in and sing to him, baby talk, or whatever else, and it would cheer him up. They were CHAMPS! Like unbelievably awesome, and unbelievably patient! I would get back in the van for another trip and thank them for being so patient, and they’d assure me they were fine. When the last load was unloaded, I climbed back into the van and told the kids we could go home. They laughed at me and pointed out that the sliding door was still open. I went to close it and Dekker commented to me “It would be nice to leave it open, so we could hear the birds.” Now Dekker is SUCH a softy in general, but comments like this were made all day, and just reminded me of all of his beautiful feelings and thoughts. They are all just so amazing.

While we were driving home, Dekker asked “Do you think maybe we could have an easter treat because we are so patient?” And I really really did think so, yup. When everyone got home, the kids ran in happily and I turned on a show for them to rest up to. It’ll be an interesting evening as none of them really napped at all today, so the resting was necessary. They hung out inside while I dragged in two full grocery shops worth of food, and only once everything was inside and I started sorting through stuff and putting it away did they remind me about their hypothetical treats. I instantly plunked them all on a couch side by side and gave them each a bag of mini eggs. They were so happy and thankful. It felt great to me to see them so happy and satisfied with the great job they had done. It wasn’t a bribe. It was a special reward.

As I moved around the kitchen, I heard such positive talk, and very clear communication. Dekker was trying to tease Laela and instead of her usual siren screech, she said “please don’t tickle me, Dekker.” And he backed right off. No fighting. Not. Even. Any. There are still moments where they get snippy, but I’ve been able to just remind them to speak politely, and they do! Its amazing how, after such a big day, they’re doing so well.

Its often days like this that make me feel a bit guilty for underestimating my kids. Why would I expect that they wouldn’t do well? Its a realization of how much my attitude and mood affects them and theirs. I’m not in any way suggesting that now we’re just golden, haha! I’m sure I’ll have many days of failure ahead, but today has been great. And successful. To God be the glory, for giving me strength; for giving my kids intuition and good judgement; for giving me the opportunity to take them all with me and practice new skills.

I’m so grateful.

You guys should really come grocery shopping with us sometime. Its a blast.

Solly woke up super early this morning, and since its a school day for Dekker, there was no way I could go back to sleep once he did. Brady was still home when he woke, and lovingly brought me a cup of coffee in bed before he headed out for work. I have no issue with people who drink more coffee than me, but I almost never have more than one cup. Unless I end up going out and having coffee with someone, or picking up coffee in the city, I just have one cup. Well, this morning, cup number two was long gone shortly after I got home from taking Dekker to school. I didn’t feel like either cup even touched my fatigue.

On top of my general tired mood, the kids are fightier than usual. Yes, fightier is a word. Don’t fight me about it, because I’ve had enough. Its very likely actually a normalish day with some scrapping thrown in, but today it just feels a hundred times harder to get everyone playing happily. Lunch helped, and now the little boys are napping, and Laela and I are resting in the living room. She tidied up the toys and is stretched out on the couch, watching some tv. She keeps telling me she “just needs a yittle west,” which I’m more than happy to let her have. Down time is SO necessary.

Brady is hanging out with a friend this evening, so I’m thinking it’ll be a restful evening for me. I originally thought I’d play with makeup and watch YouTube to busy myself, but with the day feeling as it has, I may just lay in bed and watch movies, haha! Productivity is great, but so is rest, and I can tell I’m in need of some.

I hope you guys haven’t had fighty days. I hope they’ve been resty. Let’s hope for a restier day tomorrow!

The deck was a bit stalled out when Brady was back at work, and he managed to have a couple of fairly long sick days in the middle there. So for those reasons, its been almost a week since we last got out there and got our hands dirty. Today, we broke the cycle.

I got my legs waxed in the early afternoon, grabbed some coffees, and came home to Brady and Laela working on the deck. Dekker had opted to stay inside to play Lego, and the little boys were napping. I went inside and invited Dekker to join three three of us outside, but he declined. He insisted that he really wanted to play Lego. I got his jacket out of the closet and told him it was on the stairs if he changed his mind. Luckily, I hadn’t been out with Brady and Laela for too long at all before be decided to join us. Woot!

Due to the great desire for our deck to look as good as possible, I’ve been fairly intimidated to work on too much of it myself. My husband is the carpenter, literally, in the relationship, and I don’t want to mess up something he could do perfectly himself. But I’m getting sad that I haven’t played as much of a role in it as I originally had wanted to. Conveniently, installing the deck boards is something I am capable of doing pretty risk-free. We are using hidden fasteners to hold our composite decking on, so none of my screw holds will show, which is pretty comforting to me.

Dekker and Laela sat by the stairs, or played around in the dirt, and made up games while Brady and I set up a good system for me to comfortably work on the decking itself.

Of course, once I was confident in my role and was in a good groove, I made a quick stop inside to check on my nappers and both were awake. Because I can’t just put Solly down in the dirt, and its pretty windy and chilly on and off, I can’t revisit my post on the deck. I really like hanging out with Solly and Ro inside, don’t get me wrong, but I’m a bit sad to leave a job I can finally do. Merp.

The evening will only get better though! Jerilee is coming for the first time in at least three weeks, which is CRAZY but true. That will be a definite high point for the day. As was my leg wax with my fave waxing girl, my short chance at the deck, and hanging out with my family. Lots of things to be thankful for.

Hopefully that deck is done soon! We are SO ready for that! Just deck boards left, and the railings are all built and waiting in our garage to be installed. Its going to happen!!

Since I didn’t get to see my mom on Mother’s Day, it worked out beautifully that Brady had today off, because I was able to take my mom on a date. I had outdoor plans and indoor plans, so we wouldn’t be hooped with a weather change. I tried to be ahead of the game, anyway. And it worked!

First, Brady helped me put together a super delicious breakfast. It turned out gorgeous, and it tasted even better than I had expected. The picture is of the full product, but I only brought a chunk over to mom’s place for our breakfast, and left the bigger chunk at home for Brady to eat.

Seriously, it was amazing, and suuuper easy. Everyone should try this.

As we ate breakfast, I finally forked over our plans. It wasn’t raining like the forecast had predicted, so I figured we’d go with our outdoor plans, but when I confessed our indoor plans, my mom got SO excited! So we decided to do something we’d never done before and go paint pottery together!

Since I planned our date, I decided that we’d both paint a mug for each other. She was on board, and we ended up picking the same styles for one another. Because we’re alike. Which I like. I’ll admit that it was pretty daunting trying to decide what she might light and sorting through options and ideas. Neither of us had painted in years, so we weren’t confident in free-handing a design. We ended up doing silk screens, but I won’t show you what we made yet 🙂 Not in detail, anyway.

In five-ish days, they’ll be glazed and fired and ready for pick up! I’m so excited to see how they come out. I think they’ll be quite perfect. It was so much fun putting them together and putting so much thought into them. We’ll definitely be back!

When we were done and on our way out, we had about an hour left until our lunch reservation. We decided to run a couple of small errands, just because we could, and we didn’t have time to do any of my other outdoor plans. A quick stop at Walmart and one more at London Drugs left us at Red Lobster a half hour early, but there was room for us to settle into a cozy corner booth anyway. We enjoyed a delicious lunch!!

Red Lobster was the last stop on my list before picking Dekker up from school, but we had some extra time to kill, so we ran another errand over at Indigo. We grabbed Starbucks and did some perusing the gifties before getting on our way.

I took mom home and we visited until I absolutely had to go to the school to get my kid, haha! My mom and I could chat ALL day.

Turns out, we did! I bought my mom a spaghetti squash for Mother’s Day (Don’t judge it, she gets it, haha!) and we really wanted to eat it together. So Brady graciously suggested I go join mom for supper, which I did with almost no convincing.

My gosh, it was SUCH a good food day!! And the company didn’t hurt either.

To know my mom is to love her. I am so fortunate to have been raised by a woman such as herself.

Thank you for letting me love on you and celebrate you today, mom. I’d love to do it again.

There is a survey floating around Facebook encouraging women to share details about having their babies and basically how they became mothers. That’s what this post is going to be. And this is why.

Mothers Day weighed on me a bit. I love it, and I’m THRILLED to be a mom. On another hand, though, I’m not unaware of those around me who desire to be mothers but have no baby to hold in their arms. I had no idea just how much infertility/loss/grief there was around the subject of having babies until I started having them. Now, this year, I have experienced what I feel has been a great loss, and a huge blow to our family. We lost our baby. I loved my Mother’s Day yesterday, but I do have some weird, unresolved feelings that I’m still processing. So today, I’m keeping it light.

To the surveys!

1. Did you have an epidural? Yes
2. Was your husband in the room? Yes
3. Were you induced? Yes
4. Did you find out the sex? Yes
5. Due Date? August 19, 2011
6. Did you deliver early or late? 2 days late
7. Did you have morning sickness? No! None! It was glorious.
8. What did you crave? Corn dogs
9. How many pounds did you gain? 45
10. What was the sex of the baby? Boy
11.Did you have complications? No
12. Where did you give birth? RUH
13. How many hours were you in labor? 8 ish
14. How much did your baby weigh? 10 lbs 10 oz
15. What did you name the baby? Dekker Thomas
16. How old is your baby now? 5

1. Did you have an epidural? Nope. Nope nope nope.
2. Was your husband in the room? Yes
3. Were you induced? Yes
4. Did you find out the sex? Yes
5. Due Date? September 21, 2013
6. Did you deliver early or late? 8 days late
7. Did you have morning sickness? Yes, the most I ever had
8. What did you crave? fuzzy peaches
9. How many pounds did you gain? 35
10. What was the sex of the baby? Girl
11.Did you have complications? Do you count a precipitous labour? Otherwise no.
12. Where did you give birth? RUH
13. How many hours were you in labor? 1
14. How much did your baby weigh? 9 lbs 10 oz
15. What did you name the baby? Laela Hazel
16. How old is your baby now? 3

1. Did you have an epidural? Yes, a VERY controlled delivery
2. Was your husband in the room? Yes
3. Were you induced? yes
4. Did you find out the sex? yes
5. Due Date? March 2, 2015
6. Did you deliver early or late? one week early
7. Did you have morning sickness? Not much8. What did you crave? noodle bowls
9. How many pounds did you gain? 25
10. What was the sex of the baby? Boy
11.Did you have complications? No
12. Where did you give birth? RUH
13. How many hours were you in labor? 5.5
14. How much did your baby weigh? 8 lbs 6 oz (He was sooo bitty!)
15. What did you name the baby? Rowan Toby
16. How old is your baby now? 2

<3 We lost a baby VERY early in between these children, in September 2015. Baby was gone before we knew it had even been there, but is NEVER forgotten!! We will meet again one day. <3

1. Did you have an epidural? Yes, also very controlled, which I was so grateful for
2. Was your husband in the room? Yes
3. Were you induced? Yes
4. Did you find out the sex? Yes
5. Due Date? June 7, 2016
6. Did you deliver early or late? one week early
7. Did you have morning sickness? Yes
8. What did you crave? broccoli (about time I craved something good for me, hey?)
9. How many pounds did you gain? 22
10. What was the sex of the baby? Boy
11.Did you have complications? No
12. Where did you give birth? RUH
13. How many hours were you in labor? 4
14. How much did your baby weigh? 10 lbs 7 oz
15. What did you name the baby? Solomon Brady
16. How old is your baby now? 11 months! Almost a year! Not ok!

<3 We lost our little man Theo in January, 2017. I wish I could share his details, or even know them myself. I anticipate meeting him one day, as well.

I am so beyond thankful to be a mother to my children, both on earth and in heaven. BEYOND THANKFUL. I know we’re so fortunate to have who we have.

I hope you all had the happiest, most blessing-filled mothers day weekend, all of you mothers out there, whether in body or in heart.