Stats on a growing little boy!

We went for Garris's 4 month check up and he is doing great! He is still a little on the colicky side but Dr. P says that usually goes away between 4-6 months so hopefully we are on the last few weeks of the screaming episodes!

At birth: 8 lbs, 21 inches
At 2 months: 10 lbs 13 oz (25%), 22.5 inches (30%)
At 4 months: 14 lbs 11 oz (45%), 24.5 inches (30%)

From our family to yours...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Ginger Bread House

So, this ginger bread house thing, it is really much harder than I thought that it would be! Well, if I had know that there was a box in the box that you can use for the cottage, it would have been much easier to make! But, alas, I did not find that till we were done with the house. I had to bust out a can of icing to use as "glue" to hold this thing together! I will have to remember to use the cottage template next year! All things considered, Chayse had a wonderful time working on her ginger bread house and it will be something we do every year!

Stats on a growing little gal...

We went for Chayse's 18 month check up but in reality, it is her 19 month check up as she turned 19 months on the first...

At birth: 7 lbs 14 oz, 20.5 inches
At 2 months: 11 lbs 10 oz (60%), 22.5 inches (45%)
At 4 months: 14 lbs 3 oz (50%), 24.75 inches (60%)
At 6 months: 15 lbs 7 oz (30%), 26.25 inches (60%)
At 9 months: 18 lbs 2 oz (30%), 27.5 inches (35%)
At 12.5 months: 19 lbs 7 oz (20%), 29.75 inches (65%)
At 16 months: 22 lbs 1 oz (32%), 32 inches (85%)
At 19 months: 24 lbs 8 oz (50%), 33.75 inches (93%)

It's Thanksgiving!

Well, almost! Tomorrow it will be and what a wonderful time of year to really say thanks for all that we have! I cannot believe how blessed we have been with our children. We really are so grateful for them... all three of them! We learned so much about love, life, and letting go with Hope... she is missed dearly everyday and not a day goes by that she is not thought of. Nathan and I were sitting in the den the other night and Chayse was dancing and laughing, Garris was cooing, and Nathan and I were just taking it all in. Nathan looked at me and said can you even imagine how it would be with a 3 year old, an 18 month old, and a 2 month old? We both laughed and my heart smiled knowing that in moments like that when everything in our home is perfect, she is still remembered. For that, I am thankful...

Chayse had her 18 month check up and she is growing away! It is official... she is a TALL child! She is almost off the charts with her height as she is in the 95%, which is tall for a girl! She is growing and learning everyday. She is amazing to watch as she soaks up everyday life. She is talking and is just amazing to be around. She has such a sweet personality, even if she is a bit stubborn! What a wonderful spirit that little girl has.

For that, I am thankful...

Garris is almost 3 months old now! Can you believe it!?! He is smiling and cooing and laughing these days! He is also holding his head up and trying to push up a little. Before we know it, he will be sitting up and then running and walking! Agh! The pages of time are turning so quickly is this book of life we live! He is sleeping through the night now for the most part. He is nursing wonderfully. He is sweet sweet baby and we could not love him more. He is our sweet boy and is such a wonderful addition to our family! For that, I am thankful...

I often wonder if I am truly worthy of all that I have... my husband, my children, my family, and my friends... thank you God for blessing my life with more than I could ever imagine.

For that, I am thankful.

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Remember me??

I know I said it wasn't going to be long for pictures but it was. I need to apologize to Garris for not blogging about him the way that I should but he is just too stinking cute and he takes up all of our time! Now, ON TO BLOGGING!!!

Happy fall!! Can you believe Thanksgiving is almost here?? I cannot but I know it is coming because I see pumpkins and mums!! But, I have to be honest... I think that I have the cutest pumpkins in the patch! Here is our latest family photo!

Like I said, I think that we have the cutest pumpkins in the patch!!

Garris has been doing better with his reflux. For a while there, he was throwing up almost every day, several times a day. It was nasty!! But, he has been on some medication for almost three weeks now and it seems to be doing the trick! I cannot believe that he is already 2 months old! It seems like we just brought him home yesterday! He is holding his head up really well and is cooing away! He is so fun to talk to because he just smiles and smiles and ugh, it will melt your heart!! Garris went on his first beach trip a few weeks ago. We went to Myrtle Beach in S.C. and had a blast. It was a girls weekend plus Garris... Me, my mom, my aunt, Chayse, and Garris. While Garris did a lot of sleeping, Chayse did a lot of swimming!

Here is Garris, smiling... while it was night time, it was his first ever look at the ocean!

And these were taken on the same... Chayse and I walked down the beach at sunset and then we went and played in the hot tub!

Lots of things to post about and new pictures to come soon!!

Stats on a growing little boy!

Can you believe G-Man is 2 months old already!!

At birth: 8 lbs, 21 inches long
At 2 months: 10 lbs 13 oz(25%), 22.5 inches (30%)

Agh!

Time has gotten away from me yet again. We have been super busy since Garris was born! We have had family in town, we have been out of town, we have had lots of company... it has been hectic! Things are finally slowing down now though! Everyone is good, Chayse is adjusting wonderfully to having a baby in the house and the baby is doing great! We couldn't be happier if we tried! I will post pictures soon... baby is crying so I need to run!!

Our newest family member...

I am excited to say that we welcomed our son into the world this morning! Garris Noland was born at 12:15 am weighing 8 pounds even and he is 21 inches long. He, well we, had a rough delivery but he is here, safe and sound and that is the name of the game! He is doing great and we are hoping to go home later this weekend. Garris is my great grandmothers maiden name and Noland is Nathan's mother maiden name... Here are some pictures, more to come later!!!

Stats on a growing little gal...

We went for Chayse's 15 month check up today but in reality, it is her 16 month check up as she will be 16 months on the first... still hard to believe that she has been here that long! It seems like yesterday I was trying to finish getting her nursery ready!!

Almost 16 month stats on a growing girl!

At Birth: 7 lbs 14 oz, 20.5 inches
At 2 months: 11 lbs 10 oz (60%), 22.5 inches (45%)
At 4 months: 14 lbs 3 oz (50%), 24.75 inches (60%)
At 6 months: 15 lbs 7 oz (30%), 26.25 inches (60%)
At 9 months: 18 lbs 2 oz (30%), 27.5 inches (35%)
At 12.5 months: 19 lbs 7 oz (20%), 29.75 inches (65%)
At 16 months: 22 lbs 1 oz (32%), 32 inches (85%)

Really, a month??

I cannot believe that a month has passed since I last posted! Where is the summer going? I cannot believe it is August already and that my little baby girl is 15.5 months old! AGH! Slow down time, slow down! Chayse is WIDE OPEN! She is running and into EVERYTHING! She is so much fun to watch and play with but man oh man, does she make me crazy some days!!! She is going to be the reason I have gray hair someday! She has cut FIVE teeth in the last WEEK! She has been kinda crabby but I think that a mouth full of teeth is a good reason to be a crab! She has also been on a MAJOR growth spurt. She has grown over an inch and a half in the last 6 weeks!!!! NO JOKE! We won't go to the doctor's office for her 15 month check up till the end of the week so I will let you know her growth status on the growth curve when we get it.

We have been very busy trying to get the upstairs finished and I am very pleased to say that we passed our final inspection!! YIPPIIEEEE!! We have a CO! Can I get an AMEN on that!?! We are sooooo thankful to have much of the project done. We still have some cosmetic things to do, like put carpet in the stairwell, touch up some paint spots, and we need to get the rest of stuff out of storage but all in all, we are "done". What a relief that is! I will get some updated pics this week with the furniture in and post those soon.

Baby Boy and I are doing well, tolerating the heat as best as we can. He has found my sciatic nerve over the last few days and gracious, is that a painful thing! We are getting excited and are beyond ready to meet him! No news on when he will get here though... soon though we hope... at least we know he cannot stay in there forever!! Here is a shameless belly shot from the park last week at 38 weeks into this pregnancy!


Nathan and I celebrated another year of wedded bliss this past week. It is crazy to think how much things have changed over the years and yet know it will change even more over the next year as we adjust to another little person being in our lives... We have traveled more paths that we never planned on going down in our time together than most people experience in a lifetime together. I am still so grateful to have this wonderful person in my life and be able to call him my husband.

Before and After...

We are still not done yet but here are some before and after pictures....

This is what the stairwell used to look like. It was nice and dark!

And this is what the bonus room looked like after some of the furniture was already taken out...

This is what was on the other side of the door from the bonus room... lots of empty space that we used for storage.

Now, this is what the stairwell and bonus room area look like without the stairwell and wall there.... a whole lot brighter and a whole lot more open!!! We took out the walls and the door, added columns with rails (they are not done yet) and had hardwoods laid throughout the upstairs... they are currently being sanded and stained so it will be a few days before we can get any more pictures as we are not able to walk up there for a while...

When you go down this hallway, there is an open area on the right, a bathroom to the first door on the left, a closet on the second door to the left, then the second floor kitchen, the den/family room, and the sitting area. There are two doors in the family room... one is a crawl area for access, the other is a storage closest that runs the length of the house.

Again, this was before...

This is the after....

This is the bathroom...

This is the closet...

This is the kitchen area...

This is the den/family room...

This was the before area of the sitting room... we had to rip out some of the roof support line and rebuild this area to open this us!

Can you tell we have been busy?? Chayse is having so much fun running around up there through all of the open areas. She went to the doctor this week and has reached 21 pounds! She is growing away and is so much fun to watch. She has recently started walking on her tippy-toes, she dances all the time now, she is very vocal (although we are still not sure what she says half of the time!), and she LOVES to be outside. She could care less if it is 110 degrees out there or not... that is where she wants to be!

The bean is growing away, and I do mean growing. He is consistently measuring larger that I am as far as his gestational age. I am still having contractions but he is not engaged, I have not dilated any and am not effaced so that is a great thing! So far so good!! It is hard to believe that in just a few weeks we will have TWO little babies in this house!! Once we get construction done upstairs, we will be cleaning out the guest room and office so that we can start his nursery.

Short Runs...

Well, I haven't blogged in almost two weeks if you can believe that! It doesn't seem like it has been that long! We have been SUPER busy with the upstairs and are close to being done. We hope to have our final inspection sometime during the week of July 13th! I will get some new pictures and post those later... maybe today if I have enough time.

Chayse is doing well. She is now "dancing" which is quite comical and last night when I turned on the bath water, she started pulling her clothes off. She is growing right in front of us and it is amazing to watch her learn! Chayse has the best personality and it shows in everything that she does. She is truly a wonderful blessing in our lives!

June 14th

Hope Noelle introduced us to Holland, a place that we never wanted to go... Although I have no idea who wrote this, I read this right after she died and it has stayed with me. Now, here we are three years later... on her birthday and on her death day... the day we let her go.

"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this . . .When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo’s David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, 'Welcome to Holland.' 'Holland?' you say, “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.' But there’s been a change in flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland, and there you must stay.The most important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for awhile and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland has Rembrandt's. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, 'Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned'. The pain of that will never, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland."

Hope and Holland. We learned so much from a 9.1 inch, 8.6 ounce little girl and our hearts still mourn for her. We have looked around and caught our breath, we have seen the windmills and the tulips and still, we miss her. Not a day goes by that I don't think of her or look at her little urn sitting on the fireplace and wonder how different life would have been. Today, I look at Hope's younger siblings... my 13 month old daughter Chayse and at my growing belly with our soon to be born son, and think of how truly blessed we are. Thank you, God, for all of the beauty you have given to us in both of our girls and in our son. We would have never known the beauties of this country without God's plan. Holland truly is beautiful this time of year... Happy birthday sweet baby girl, happy birthday.

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Construction 100!!!

We have been busy little bee's over here! Well, I have been busy going up and down with refills of water and Nathan has been busy working!! Progress is coming along well with the house and we are hoping to have the upstairs construction done in the next 3-4 weeks. Sheetrock is being hung today and I am sure that will make it look so different! We are both getting excited about the extra space we will be gaining from this!! Here are some pictures of a few of the rooms I took this morning before they started hanging sheet rock.

This is what will become the play room...

This is where the new office will go...This is looking down the hallway into the den...
This is the looking out into the den from the second floor kitchen...
And this is what will be the sitting room area... my favorite place!!!!

Chayse is doing much better. She still has a little bit of a lingering ear ache but we are working on that. She is currently weighing in at 19 1/2 pounds! AGH!! She is getting so big! She is a long skinny little thing! Baby Boy is growing away. In fact, two weeks ago he was measuring 3 weeks ahead! I think that maybe it was the way he was laying because I am not that much bigger than I was with Chayse. My total weight gain is now at 8 pounds. We don't have the nursery set up yet as his room will be what is now the guest room and that won't be moved till upstairs is done.

On a totally random note, I doubt you guys know this because I never have blogged about it before but, I have a second blog that is about all things Etsy... a place where you can buy anything handmade. Anyhow, I currently have a blog giveaway going on for a 4th of July hair bow that has a $10 value on it. If you know any little girls, nieces, neighbors, grandchildren, etc who love to get all dressed up for holidays, you should check it out... no purchase needed!! Have a great week!!!!

What are you laughing at Mama??

A Week Of First's...

This week has been a week of firsts for Chayse! It started off with her FIRST EAR INFECTION, which was actually a double ear infection causing her fevers of over 105. She was not a happy girl for a few days but she is feeling much better now!

Chayse went to the BEACH for the first time this year...

Chayse sat on the POTTY for the first time, although she has no idea what she is supposed to do with it once she is on it...

Chayse played with BUBBLES for the first time, at her first VISIT to her Great Aunt Gracie and Great Uncle Temus's house...

And she added "ALL DONE" to her vocabulary this week!!

12.5 month stats on a growing girl!

At Birth: 7 lbs 14 oz, 20.5 inches
At 2 months: 11 lbs 10 oz (60%), 22.5 inches (45%)
At 4 months: 14 lbs 3 oz (50%), 24.75 inches (60%)
At 6 months: 15 lbs 7 oz (30%), 26.25 inches (60%)
At 9 months: 18 lbs 2 oz (30%), 27.5 inches (35 %)
At 12 months: 19 lbs 7 oz (20%), 29.75 inches (65%)

As her pattern has shown, she continues to be a longer, skinner baby on the curve! She burns sooooo much energy and sooooo many calories a day walking around... and now running!!! She gets going so fast it is hysterical to watch. Because of her teething causing the running nose, which caused a double ear infection (which has been causing the fevers), Chayse did not get any of her one year shots today. We will have to go back at 13 months and have those done once she is over this double ear infection.

Chayse...

Baby girl has been a sick little thing this week so I have not been on line very much. She has been fighting a fever that has been right at 105 several times. We go to the doctors office again on Monday so hopefully we will know more about what is going on once we go. If you would, please say a prayer that she gets over whatever this is pretty quickly as she is not herself at all and I miss my baby girl!!!

We did make it out to Duke toward the end of last week and took them a CAR LOAD of toys! They were very grateful and most of the toys went to use as soon as they were taken out of the box. We were very pleased with the toy drive and the Camp K outcome. It was a wonderful way to celebrate Chayse's first year of life!!! Duke sent us a very sweet thank you note this week for all of the donations so from Duke to us to you, thank you!!!

Other than that, not too much has been going on. We had a wonderful Mother's Day. It was quite but fun. Nathan and Chayse got me a new camera and I LOVE it! Now I just need to fugure out how to use it!! It is a canon 50D and is a little over my head still but I am learning how to use it! Chayse and I played outside in her little blow up pool. We set it up three weeks ago and she LOVES it! She thinks it is the neatest thing!! I thought about Hope a lot that day and how different our life would be had she lived. It is hard to soak in Mother's Day... I am so lucky that my mother was able to go into remission from cancer and that she is still here with me so that I can celebrate her. I wish Nathan was able to see his mom on Mother's Day but the distance makes traveling so far with a little one and being pregnant a little difficult (it is too far to be from my doctors at this point) so I felt bad for him not to be able to see her on Mother's Day. I love that I was able to spend my second Mother's Day with Chayse and how special that was. I was sad that Hope was not here with us. Mother's Day was the last time that I saw my Daddy as my Daddy... his brain tumor started bleeding just two days after Mother's Day and he was never of the same mental status again. It is just a flurry of different emotions and it is hard to sort them out. I know time makes things easier but there are some days that are just plain hard and Mother's Day is one of them.

The toy drive for Duke

Sunday was the big day for Chayse's first birthday party, which meant not only were we celebrating her birth, we were celebrating her life. And what a fun first year it was been! Instead of toys, friends brought toy donations for Duke Children's Hospital as well as partaking in a quilt raffle fundraiser. And gosh, did they ever answer the call for our cause! The toy drive for Duke Children's Hospital was HUGE!!! We had lots of toys donated and we raised $761!!! We split the money up into two piles... one for more toys and one for Camp Kaleidoscope. Nathan, Chayse, and I all went Target last night and purchase over $700 in more toys (we matched the toy money donation in order to be able to get that many toys) and we put $300 aside from donations to send a child to Camp Kaleidoscope!! IT WAS SO MUCH MORE THAN WE EVER DREAMED IT WOULD BE!! I have to be honest though, it has been such a high to know that we are doing something so good for so many children and families. I cannot image what it will be like when we actually take the toys to Duke Children's Hospital later this week and deliver the check to send a child to camp!! Here is what the final toy pile looked like before I boxed it all up...

The Cake Never Stood A Chance....

We celebrated Chayse's birthday at home with family on Friday night and it was so much fun. It is amazing how much Chayse has changed and grown in the last year. We grilled out and had her favorites for dinner and then Chayse took on a small strawberry cake, made just for her! She loved it!!!

Her actual birthday party was on Sunday afternoon and we had such a good time with family and friends... the weather was perfect and it was a great afternoon for a party! All in all, we ended up with over 100 people and it was so much fun! We had tents in the yard and a blow up bounce play house for the kids to play in...

Not a fan of grass...

Miss Fearless wouldn't get off the slide! Here she is with her Uncle H!

And we had a great success with the toy drive... more to come on that in another post!