Kameron's 4th Birthday

Hard to believe that our sweet boy is already 4 years old.  We are really loving this age.  Kameron is so sweet, helpful, funny, kind, creative and caring.  He loves to help take care of his brothers, he is great at building things like lincoln logs and Legos and is a great eater.  His favorite foods are spicy foods!  He loves Tapatio, Tobasco, Phad Thai, spicy sauce at Subway, salsa, etc.  He says the funniest things and his memory is amazing.  He will randomly bring up things that we did 2 years ago. 

 

This year, instead of doing a traditional birthday party, we did a few different things.  On his actual birthday, him and Travis made chocolate cupcakes and we spent the day playing games and hanging out at home.  That evening, we got pizza and the Howlands came over to play.  Travis and I had set up a little scavenger hunt with clues around the house, leading them to a drawer full of goodies for all the kids.  After he opened his gifts, we let the kids decorate and eat the cupcakes.  It was a really simple, but fun day. 

 

The day after his birthday, Travis' family came up from Yakima, and then we all drove down to meet my parents in Everett.  Wes and Leanna and the girls also came down with us, and we all went out to pizza and had a great time.  We had a huge table next to a fireplace, and my parents had brought birthday presents for Kameron.  After having pizza, we all headed over to a Silvertips hockey game!  Kameron LOVES watching sports, so he was beyond excited to go watch a hockey game.  It was also Kid's Night, so all the kids got free jerseys! 

Since we had bought a group of tickets, we got to put a message up on the reader board for free!  It was really neat seeing Kameron's name up there!  :)

Kameron had a great birthday weekend getting to spend 2 days with so many friends and family, eating cake and pizza, opening presents and watching hockey!  It was really special having both mine and Travis' parents there.  Every time I see pictures of the boys with both sets of grandparents, it just makes me so happy that he gets to grow up having that experience.  My grandparents all lived so far apart and far away, we rarely saw them growing up.  So I was just really happy for him that he gets to have these memories. 

Wow - it is so hard to get anything done besides just caring for our family right now!  I have all these blog posts floating around in my head and have not managed to get a single one posted.  I've probably forgotten half of them by now.  My dad was joking about not putting up any pictures of the 3rd child.  Well it is not because the pictures don't exist, we have a ton.  It's because the time to get them off of the camera, onto the computer, onto a blog post does not exist!  It has amazed me how long it takes to get anything done or get out of the house with the 3 of them, and Micah is a really easy baby!  I can't imagine how it would be if he was fussy!

The boys are all doing great, it just takes a lot to keep everyone fed, clothed, fed again, potty runs, change diapers, fed again, pick up the glass of spilled milk, remind them not to run their bikes INTO the side of the van, remind another not to use 15 pumps of soap to wash his hands, feed the baby again, turn down the boiling over pot that has lunch cooking in it, etc.  And that was just all today and it's not even 4:00 yet!  :) 

One reason it takes me a long time to get anything done, IF I get anything done is because Micah has been eating every 1 1/2 - 2 hours.  And when it takes a good half hour to feed him, that takes up a huge chunk of my day.  He is also doing this at night, which means not much sleep for me.  Thankfully, my strength is renewed each day and we are still functioning.  When Micah is 4 weeks, we are going to try pumping and giving him a bottle so I can sleep through a feeding a get a better chunk of sleep.

It has been really funny to watch the boys learn about nursing.  The first time I nursed Micah at home, Kameron asked what I was doing and what those parts were.  So I was explaining that it's mama's chest and it's just a miracle how a mama has a baby and then her body starts making milk to feed her baby.  Their comments were:  Brenner - "Yeah, babies need lots of milk and chest" Kameron - "I can't wait until I get a miracle and can feed Micah too!"  So sweet.  One morning I woke up to find Kameron sticking breast pads onto this pajamas. 

Travis and I cannot agree on who Micah looks like.  I say Kameron and he says Brenner.  I am going to find a 3 week pic of each of the boys to compare and maybe somehow find a time to even make it a blog post. :)

Snapshot of our life

This picture sums up our life perfectly right now.  Micah sleeps all the time, the boys are over the moon in love with their baby brother and never short on energy, and Travis and I are exhausted.  :)

Micah actually does amazing at night, so we feel very blessed that we are getting as much sleep as we are with a newborn, but are still exhausted from waking up during the night and keeping up with the boys.  Travis just went back to work yesterday, so we were very blessed to have him home for almost 2 weeks!  I have so many blog posts I want to do like Micah's birth story and photos, what we were up to in the weeks leading to him coming, Kameron's 4th birthday, Kameron's playing T-Ball, etc.  But for now and my limited energy, this sums it up.  :)

Micah Jesse St.George

We are so excited that Micah has arrived!  He was born on April 3rd, 2013 at 2:53pm at the Bellingham Birth Center.  He weighed 8lbs 5oz and was 21" long.  We came home around 7pm that evening and everyone is doing great.  It still seems strange that we are now a family of five with three sons, but we couldn't be more thankful for these beautiful boys.

Kameron and Brenner were so excited when we brought him home.  It has been amazing to watch them interact with them and want to help take care of him. 

Getting ready for baby!

It seems like for a long time, it felt like we didn't really have a lot to do to prepare for this little guy to come.  I felt like I had a lot of stuff and wouldn't need to get much, and then as it got closer, my memory started coming back about some of the essentials I feel like I need with a newborn.  So I started ordering things on Amazon, our friends threw a really sweet couples shower for us and family and friends have sent gifts and I am feeling much more prepared! 

 

We never did a "nursery" for Brenner.  He was in our room for a long time, and then had a crib in our guest room.  The 3rd room in our house was never re-done like the rest of our house.  We had switched out all the trim in our house to white and painted every room, except in this one.  So we decided to use this as an excuse to actually finish this room.  Travis did an amazing job putting up a chair rail and white trim and I painted and we love how it came together!  Brenner still sleeps in a crib in this room, so even though it says Micah on the wall, it's kind of Brenner's room for the time being.  Micah will be in our room for a while, and when we're ready to move him to this room, we'll move Brenner in with Kameron.

 

This is me at 37 weeks.

We decided that we wanted to cloth diaper again.  I loved doing it with Kameron, and did for a while after Brenner was born.  But when I had 2 little guys in diapers for over a year, it was just really hard to keep up with all the laundry they created and I was happy if I could just stay on top of diaper changes!  So I went back to disposables and just had never gotten back into cloth diapering.  I get strangely excited about cute diapers, so this is the stash that I have for Micah!  I can't wait for him to be born so I can start using them.  :)

Our small group threw a couples shower for us and we had so much fun.  A couple people had put together little "survival" kits for Travis as well with things like beer, earplugs, coffee gift cards, etc.  It was so much fun just to celebrate Micah's arrival.  Being the 3rd child, it's just so different than the 1st time.  Thankfully we have a lot of friends and family that are VERY excited about him arriving, but it was fun to actually have a little party to celebrate our new son.  We feel so blessed to be given another child and loved having people pray over us and him and anticipate his arrival.

I don't really have a huge sweet tooth, but this pregnancy it is in full force!  I just want chocolate ALL the time!  One night I decided I really want chocolate covered strawberries and now it's hard for me not to have some every single night.  :)  After a few nights, I realized that I could save time and not melt the chocolate and just eat some strawberries and chocolate chips.  It's become my nightly obsession.  :)

Ready for labor

When we were pregnant with Kameron, Travis and I took a 12 week birth class and it was one of the best things we've ever done.  We learned so much about pregnancy and labor, and it was such a neat thing to get to do as a couple.  We used so much of that information when we were in labor with both Kameron and Brenner.

The woman who taught the class does refresher courses for people that are 3 hours and she'll come to your home.  So tonight, we had her over and we went over everything from the stages of labor, to comfort techniques, planning for if things don't go the way we've planned, etc.  It was SO good.  I was sad when it was over!!  I am one of those weird people who actually like labor and look forward to that process.  To me, it is just so amazing to bring a person into this world and is such a bonding thing for Travis and I to go through together.  I have no judgement for people that have babies at the hospital or decide to get drugs, it's just not the route that we've chosen to go.  I feel so blessed to have a husband that is 100% supportive of this, understands why it's important to me, it's important to him as well and now we get to do it again.  The plan is to have 2 of my best friends there as well and I am really praying that works out. 

Going through this refresher just made it so real for both of us that Micah really is going to be here very soon!  We can't wait!

Our first view of Micah!

For the past few months, Micah has been breech and we've been waiting for him to flip over.  At my last 2 appointments, the doctors were "pretty" sure he had flipped, but couldn't be confident, so they scheduled an ultrasound for this morning to make certain of his position.  The ultrasound confirmed that he was head down and we were SO happy!  We are planning on having him at the Birth Center in Bellingham, but had to be sure that he was head down to be able to do that. 

After she had checked his position, the tech asked if we would like a 4D shot of his face just for fun.  I was so excited!  We would never pay for a 4D ultrasound, but I think it's so amazing what they can see now with technology and of course wanted to see my baby!  We both think he looks a lot like Brenner, so we're anxious to see when he's born if he really does, or if it's just this shot.  He just looks so peaceful, content and perfect.  We can't wait to have him here with us. 

We are only 3 weeks away from our due date now!  In the beginning it always seems like you'll be pregnant forever, but now I can't believe that he's going to be here so soon.  This pregnancy has definitely been harder for different reasons, but I'm healthy and he's healthy and that's what matters.

When Kameron saw this picture come up on the big screen, he said, "That baby is all smashed in there!"