Meeting Baby Hadley

I'm so glad we were taking pictures in those first few moments when the girls were able to meet their new baby sister.  The expressions of joy and excitement on these faces are priceless to me. . .

(I don't even care that I hadn't yet showered or gotten more than 2 hours of sleep after the delivery!)

Do you think we were all excited for this new little baby to join our family?

Introducing. . .

She's here and is VERY LOVED. . .

Hadley Jane Holbrook

Born Tuesday, July 26th

11:06pm

6 lbs 12 oz, 19.7 inches long

We are all home together now and looking forward to getting some rest and adjusting to our new family of 5!

More to come. . .

38 weeks and counting

I had Ella stand on the couch and take a picture of me today at 38 weeks so that I had some record of this pregnancy. . . (should have done it at like 32 weeks so I was looking a little cuter and not so LARGE, but better late than never!)

Well, I have lasted longer with this pregnancy now than I did with Maggie.  (Which, with the amount of contractions I started having at about 30 weeks, is pretty impressive).   We are definitely glad this baby is still comfortable in my belly for the time being as we were pretty worried she would come too early for a while.  This pregnancy has been WAY harder on my body than the last two and I have had way more aches and pains than I ever had before.  With the other two I always felt like I could still do pretty much anything up until the time I delivered, but not so with this one.  Brad says it is just cause I am old now.  What a nice, sympathetic doctor he is, I only hope he isn't so blunt and candid with his patients :)

My parents are coming into town on Saturday to help, so as long as she doesn't surprise us in the next day or two, they will be here to take care of E & M while we are in the hospital.   We are thrilled!  We never had any family around when we had the other two, so we are excited to share it with them.  The ideal situation is that we will have this baby sometime next week, have my parents here to help, and then Brad will take his 2 weeks paternity leave as soon as they head back to Utah.  By the way, have I mentioned that I am beyond THRILLED that Brad gets paternity leave!  With Maggie he was only given off the day I had her and the day he brought us home from the hospital and then was back at work every day from about 5am-7pm (including weekends) and on call every 4th night.  It was SO hard, but I think it was even worse on him than it was for me.  We are both so excited to have some time to adjust to our new, improved family!

I haven't done too much to get ready for this baby.  There isn't really much to prepare for I think when you are having your 3rd girl in a row in about the same season as the others.  I did go out and buy her a new outfit for coming home from the hospital, so at least she has one thing that is hers.  One thing we did need was a new dresser, since the other 2 girls share one and I felt there was no way we could fit clothes for a 3rd in there.  I found a pretty decent one at a garage sale and talked the previous owners out of it for $12.  I wasn't in love, but felt like I would be able to make it suit our needs for now.  About a month ago I decided to refnish it and spruce it up a little before the baby comes.

Here's a before shot as I was preparing to sand it in the garage. . .

I sanded it and stained it, but then wasn't happy with the stain.  It turned out really splotchy--which I later learned is a big problem with pine, especially if you want to stain it a dark color--who knew?  So then I sanded it again and painted it the second time around.  I found some new drawer pulls on the cheap from Target and here is the end result:

Not perfect, but I am happy with it.  And I like it WAY more than the original, so that's good! 

Other than that, I have just been trying to keep the house clean and the girls busy.  In the last week that has been a lot harder as I am trying also to take it easy since my body has been looking "ready" for awhile.  I get  a lot of contractions with almost anything--even grocery shopping has become a major chore!   I have just been in postpone mode trying to hold out until my parents come.  Now that I think we are actually going to make it, I'm starting to worry that all this preventing might backfire and this baby will decide to come late.  If only you could plan for these things, right?

I still haven't really packed a bag---I just never really know what is so important to put in there beyond the last minute stuff that you use everyday anyway.  I would love to hear any suggestions or recommendations though!

Oh, and we still haven't decided on a name.  I have this problem since both Ella and Maggie were inspired from our grandmothers' names, I feel like I have to name this baby after someone and make sure there is special meaning behind it.  I just feel like I can't just give her any name, but of course, it also has to be a name I like as well!  I hope we can get some inspiration on that one soon.

The girls are especially eager for this baby to come now.  I have told them all along that the baby won't come until after Ella's birthday and after Grandma and Grandpa get here.  I am afraid come Saturday night they'll be expecting a little too much right away.  I think we are all a little too excited to meet this new little member of our family!

Birthday Festivities

When we asked Ella what she wanted to do for her birthday this year she had two requests: She wanted to eat dinner at Chili's (she loves their chips and salsa) and she wanted to have some friends over and play with water balloons. So that's what we did.

During the day Ella had to wait for Daddy to get home from work before she could open her presents. So we went out for some fun. We visited the carousel at the mall and then went swimming with some friends (her request).



We opened presents when Daddy got home from work. Among her favorites were a Belle doll from Maggie and a bike from Mommy and Daddy. She was also spoiled by grandparents and her aunts and uncles. We then headed off to Chili's for her birthday dinner.




This next picture makes me laugh because I watched Brad as the girls were so excited to play with the Belle doll with him. He was such a good sport to join their pretend world, but the whole time I kept thinking, "I bet he wishes he was playing with Star Wars figurines instead". Right after I thought this I went to take a picture and the look on his face confirmed my thoughts. I sure hope someday he has a little boy to play with so he can even out all the time he now has to play with dolls and babies! If that happens, I guess that's still a long way off so it's a good thing he doesn't show it much!

On Saturday we had a little party with some of her favorite friends. We got out the pool, slip n slide, and sprinkler, and of course, water balloons and had a fun day out playing in the water. All her friends were really cute and wanted to sit by her at lunch, opening presents, and when we had cake. I think it made Ella feel really special and she seemed to enjoy the extra attention. I'm glad we did the water games because it was SO HOT on her birthday.




The strawberry ice cream cake she requested started melting really fast and the strawberries wouldn't stay on long enough for pictures and blowing out candles, but at least it still tasted yummy.


It was fun to celebrate Ella's birthday weekend with her and listen to Maggie sing "Happy Birthday" to Ella the whole time! I think Ella had a great 4th birthday!

4 years old

Ella is 4 today. We are so excited to celebrate her birthday with her!

It doesn't seem weird to me that she is 4 at all, I think partly because I have been telling people she is 4 for the last couple of months mostly to avoid the looks if I tell them I have a 3 year old, 2 year old, and am obviously very pregnant with number 3. But I also think it isn't weird to me that she is 4 because she really does act like she is older than that. To me, it seems that she should be turning 5 and starting kindergarted as she is definitely ready for it and is really very mature for her age. Luckily though I get to still have her around at home for another year. I don't know what I would do without her around to entertain Maggie and help me clean the house!

I really feel so blessed to be Ella's mother and I cannot believe she has only been a part of my life for 4 years. She is gentle and kind. She is sweet, helpful, and humble. She is patient and often sets the example for me when I get impatient with Maggie and she calmly talks to her and helps her out. She likes to be a protector of others and will be the first to put an arm around and comfort a friend or family member who is upset. She loves to learn and is constantly figuring out how to write and read new words. She asks many questions and truly wants to understand everything around her.

One of my favorite things is that everytime Brad comes home from work and we are sitting at the table she asks how his day was. Then she wants to know "What is the first thing you did today?", she listens intently and is always ready with follow-up questions. These can be especially tricky for Brad to answer when he tells her he did surgery to help a lady who is bleeding too much, and she asks where was she bleeding from or how come she didn't get a baby in her tummy when she wanted one. To Brad's credit, he has done a pretty good job in answering all her questions without telling her too much. She then proceeds to ask what was the 2nd thing he did at work, the the 3rd, then the 4th, then the 5th, and so on until she is convinced that Brad told her everything about his day. It makes it hard for anyone else to get a word in at the dinner table, but we enjoy this conversation that Ella seems to look forward to every day and her genuine interest in others.

Every time and anytime we tell her we love her, she replies with "I love you more than you love me". I'm not sure where she got this from, but she is as certain that it is true as I am certain it is not (at least in terms of her dad and I). She tells anyone she is feeling the love for, I love you in the same manner, "I love you more than you love me". It's sweet to hear, and we are glad she feels so much love for others.

She is so excited to be a big sister again and cannot wait for her new little sister to come. She loves seeing some of our friends who have new babies and is so sweet and gentle with them. She will be playing with the older kids and stop what she is doing immediately if she hears so much of a fuss out of the baby and hurry over to help as best she can. She tells me all of the time how she is going to be a mom someday. She used to tell me she was going to have 100 babies, but now she has realized that that is too many and she says she no longer wants that many. Phew!

We love our Ella so much and are grateful for the part she plays in our family.
Happy Birthday Sweet Pea!

Fun on the 4th

Brad had the day off on the 4th this year--wahoo! We celebrated by attending our ward breakfast and flag ceremony in the morning and then it was a BBQ, swimming, and fireworks with friends in the evening. I didn't take too many pictures (I think I am at the point in this pregnancy where if the camera isn't 1 foot away from me, it's too much effort to go and grab it and I am too slow to get back in time for whatever "picture-perfect" moment I wanted to capture anyway!)