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An Early Christmas Present!

At 5:30 am on Sunday morning, my water broke.  About 1 1/2 hours later, we were in the hospital with the labor process off to a great start.  At 4:16 pm, our new baby boy entered this world weighing 7 lbs 10 oz and measuring 19 3/4 inches.  Big Brother A loves his new baby brother.  He can't wait for Baby C to be able to play with him.  He's tried to share his coloring book and cars already, and he wanted to feed Baby C some cookies when I tried to explain that he was crying because he was hungry!  He'll be a great big brother!  

As for me, I'm doing fine.  I'm excited to be home with all of my boys (and a little overwhelmed, I must admit).  A is finally asleep and Baby C is currently asleep, too, so I am going to take this rare moment to catch a few well-earned minutes of rest.  Feel free to call or stop by to meet our new baby! 

A New Baby! But not mine :)

My sister-in-law was due with her third only a few weeks before my due date.  I have to admit that with my history of an early arriving child and a trip to the hospital with contractions 6 minutes apart, I would have bet money that our baby was going to arrive first.  But, I have to congratulate her on the victory... and what a prize she won.  It's fun to welcome our first niece into this world.  Congratulations S and V!  We are so excited to meet your precious daughter.

Holiday Season Begins

Every family has their own holiday traditions.  In my family, it's not really Christmas until two things happen: 1-We hear Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".  2-Cookie Making Marathon.  It starts with Mariah Carey belting out Christmas songs and ends hours later with all the girls tired, full of dough and swearing that next year we will not set out to make as many cookies (which of course never happens).  This year with two toddlers running around, the number of cookies did decrease drastically, but it was a blast to spend time with family and see the boys join in the fun.  

Here it is...

I realized the other day that this baby could come at any minute, and I don't have a single pic of me pregnant.  Not that I really want to document how huge I look, but I can already hear the sibling squabbles about how the first kid gets so much more attention than the rest.  So, here they are.  This is me 8 1/2 months pregnant.  

Family Reunion Pics

Here are a few more pics from the McCafferty Family Reunion that we attended over Thanksgiving weekend.

The entire McCafferty/Sammon/O'Malley family together for the first time ever.

Our family of three... soon to be four

Our immediate family


Gramma McCafferty with all of her grandchildren (plus her only great grandchild). This is a first ever, too.

Hanging out with daddy

Rock Band

Here are a few pics of our budding rock star.  We couldn't pull him away from that game.  

A few pics

It's been busy here.  We had a great Thanksgiving Day with my family.  Great food, great company and (A's favorite) Rock Band.  I hear 20 times a day how he got to play the drums with Aunt "Kuh".  Then we were off to Cleveland for P's family reunion.  Just a small gathering of 120 people!  It was more like a wedding reception with a rented hall, catered food, dj, photographer.  It was a lot of fun, and it was cool to have so many family members together.  A did great on the ride both directions, and was a crazy  man on the dance floor.  We finally decided to leave the party when he crashed on the floor of the dance floor and didn't get up (see picture).  

On our way home from Cleveland, we stopped at a going away party for very good friends of ours.  Again, A did great and even let us both have some conversation with adults!  

All in all, it was a great weekend, and we all enjoyed seeing family and eating good food.  

The pics below are from our Cleveland reunion.  There's one more random picture below:  We have been buying our eggs from a local farmer for the last few years, but his eggs aren't available this winter.  We ended up getting them from another local farmer this week.  Now, let me preface that I was raised on good old fashioned white eggs.  It took a LOOOONG time for me to get comfortable with the idea of brown eggs.  So, with that in mind, imagine the gasp I let out when I opened up this package of eggs.

Still sick...

We are all battling the sniffles now, so there's not a ton to update on right now.  Here are a few stories:

If any of you have kids under 4, you are probably familiar with the Wiggles.  We sing a song by the group at the library every week, "Can You Point Your Fingers And Do The Twist."  A usually watches the kids, but this week, he joined in.  He now asks multiple times a day to dance to the song (which I downloaded for him).  It's pretty cute to see him doing the twist, and he can actually stand on one foot for a few seconds (which is in one of the verses).  It's pretty cute.

We've got a few new words this week: "pop" (as in "pop the bubble") and "up".  It's pretty hard to say no when A stands at my legs, hands in the air saying "up".  And, we have a word that sounds closer to grandma.  It's more of guh-guh, but it beats the "k" that we've been hearing for grandma.  We had our first meeting with A's new speech teacher this week, and it went really well.  He qualified  for free services through the county, so they will come out to our house twice a month to work on verbal communication.  I'm really excited about  it, and he loved playing with her.  

We made some "finger paint" earlier this week (vanilla pudding with food coloring).  A loved painting, though I think he liked eating the paint more than putting it on the paper.  He would scoop some paint onto his finger, do an  obligatory dot or two on the paper and then eat the rest off his hand.  He was a mess, but it was fun.  Here are a couple pics of him "painting".

It's been awhile...

I'm back for a quick post. Here's what's been going on at our house:

1- My allergies are back and coming on full force. I have almost no voice and am struggling with sleeping since I can't breathe.

2- A is getting his 2 year molars. He's been grumpy (understandably so), but he's hanging in there. It's been a long week for him, and the teeth haven't even broken through the skin yet.

3- P is still recovering from a knee injury. He's spending most of his time on crutches, and the rest of the time finishing up our home projects.

Combine those three, and it's been hard to get around to blogging. Soon, we'll have the house on the market and hopefully we'll all be back to our normal healthy selves. Until then, hope you are all doing well.

And... you can check out our house website. It's not finished, but you'll get the picture for now.

www.4306grove.blogspot.com

A New Twist

I have now reached the point where I can't see my feet and every time I bend over, a noticeable grunt is heard. I was reading to A today, and the books on the floor were just out of reach. Every time I bent over to get another one, he would "mock" me and make a groan noise. It was hilarious!

So it is definitely harder for me to move these days, but I no longer hold the title of "least mobile" in our house. Patrick went to get an MRI on his knee after getting knocked down pretty hard in an ice hockey game. It turns out that he doesn't need surgery (thank goodness), but he's supposed to stay off it for three weeks. He's hobbling around on crutches now. Should be an interesting three weeks as A is getting faster and we are getting slower.

A New Word

We all know that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Most of A's strengths are in his physical ability. He can jump, gallop, catch a ball, etc. But he has always struggled with words. We have been working with him often trying to get him to say "hi" or "dog"... words that we use all the time, but he still has only really mastered about 5 words. But recently he has picked up his first two-word phrase. "NO MINE". Seriously... where do kids get this? It's not like P and I walk around the house shouting "NO MINE" when he touches things. With the thousands of times we have used the word "dog", you would think he would have picked that up, but no luck. Instead, everytime someone tries to take a toy or help him eat, they get the whiny response of "NO MINE". I guess the terrible twos start earlier than I thought.

Pumpkin Farm

Since Halloween is just around the corner, we took a trip to the Pumpkin Farm. A's grandma was able to join us, which was a lot of fun. There were all kinds of activities for A to do, and we ended up spending an hour there without spending any money! Though the weather channel predicted rain all day, the forecast changed last minute, and we had beautiful weather in the 60s. Here are a few pics from the trip.

Home Improvements

It's been awhile since my last post, mainly because we have been so busy working around the house. We are finally completing all of the projects we've wanted to do since we bought the house 6 years ago. That means: completely updated and re-tiled bathroom, painted trim, repaint bedroom, new kitchen counters, paint the kitchen, random yard work (including replanting grass)... and that's just the beginning. It's been a lot of work, but items are finally being crossed off the list for good!

The irony is that the projects will be finished just in time to put our house on the market. We are going to try to sell fsbo and see if anyone is interested. Of course, everyone wants to know where we are moving and why now in the midst of a down market. And the reality is we don't know where we are moving. We have been tossing around the idea for awhile, and then the other day at church, the pastor was talking about faith as an action... how faith is more than just believing, it's acting out that belief. He ended with the question, "What step of faith do you feel like God is asking you to take?" As we left, Patrick and I shared our thoughts on this question, and it turns out we both felt like God was calling us to put our house on the market. It was very random that we would have both come up with this idea at the same time, and we both feel strongly like it's what we are supposed to do. So, despite the long list of reasons it doesn't make sense right now, we are going to put our house up for sale. Though it's stressful, overwhelming and a little frightening to have no idea what the future holds, we know Who holds us. We are both so excited to see where God leads us from here.

On a totally different note, I have some great video of A that I'm going to try to post. I've never posted video on blogspot before, so it may take awhile for me to figure it out. But, you can sit in suspense waiting anxiously to see a really cute movie.

Busy Week

I didn't realize it's been so long since I updated. We've had a really busy week with something going on every night. But it's been a fun week. Here are a few highlights:

-We went to a small group Bible study on Tuesday. A stayed with a babysitter at the house next door with a few other kids. I think he finally realized what he's missing as he watched DVDs, played a video game with a SmartCycle, and spent 1 1/2 in a playroom the size or our living room chocked full of every toy imaginable. I think he passed up the oreos, though, which made me happy.

-I had a doctor's appt... the baby is doing well and getting big. It was fun to hear the heartbeat again, though I had no doubt the baby was doing fine since I'm getting kicked a whole lot more often these days.

-We had dinner out at a nice steak house with my family. A did well staying entertained, though he hasn't mastered the inside voice yet. Though I wouldn't let him have any chocolate cake for dessert, he did enjoy some whipped cream, which he couldn't eat fast enough. He just inhaled every bite and then looked up for more.

-We went to the high school's homecoming parade on Friday. It started with a lot of tears as the marching band scared A. I guess it was too loud. But, the parade ended on a great note with a fire truck, ambulance and police car. He spent the rest of the night making fire truck sounds.

-A had a sleepover at his grandma and nonno's house. I guess I can't speak in past tense as he's still there. P and I went to Cirque du Soleil (however you spell that). It was quite a spectacular show! The strength, flexibility and pure guts of these people was amazing. It was a great time, and great company.

P's now off playing in a hockey game, and I'm on my way to bed. I am looking forward to a morning where I will have to set my alarm to make it to church on time. Sleeping in is one of the best gifts a parent of little kids can receive. I can't wait!

Bonfire

We went to a church potluck dinner/bonfire tonight, and it was so cute to see A interact with other kids. He showed no fear and just jumped in with a group of kids about his age and started playing with them. I am learning to step into a new role as more of a supervisor than a playmate. At home, I am still A's number one friend, but when other kids are around, he becomes so much more independent. I can watch from a distance (unless he's attempting some superman-type feat). It's freeing, that's for sure! I can actually carry on a conversation with another adult with few distractions, but I am still glad that he needs his momma. I'm not ready for him to be completely independent yet. I am learning to savor each moment of cuddling and each time he comes running to show his momma something. This truly is a fun age... a good balance of neediness and independence.

Here are a few more...

Daddy teaching his son how to log onto espn.com


He dumped all his blocks on the floor and insisted on wearing the plastic container as a hat all night long! It was hilarious!

A few pics from this week

He insisted on wearing these sunglasses all afternoon


Playing in the sand with neighbors


We took out his car seat to move some big objects, but I guess A wanted to go for a ride


Sweet smile


Mommy and A playing with the camera

Two things I love...

I will miss the days when A could do these two things:

1. squat down like this when he is intently looking at something. It is such a cute baby thing, and I love watching him do that. Maybe I'm just jealous because my pregnant body could never do that without falling over!

2. wear footy pajamas. They are just too cute. He looks so cuddly.

Fire House and Miami Spirit

This past weekend, we headed out for a walk, and P had the great idea of walking by the fire station. We stood outside for five minutes or so just staring at the engines inside, and A was so excited! Then, two firemen came out and offered to show A the trucks! They have no idea how much they made his day!! We spent probably 20 min. walking through the fire station and looking at the trucks. They showed A secret compartments where they store stuff on the trucks, let him try on a fire hat (with some help because they are heavy!), showed him their uniforms, turned the lights on for him to watch, and even gave him a plastic fire hat and a sticker badge. I think it may be the highlight of A's short life!



Today, A came up to me carrying a Miami shirt that I had tried on earlier (and decided to forego since my big old belly was hanging out!). He successfully communicated to me that he wanted to wear it, so I put it on for him. He was hysterical running around the house in that huge shirt and somehow managed to not get hurt in the process! Thought I'd share some pics of him! Go Redhawks!