Bear with me

Or is it bare with me? What does that even mean? Anyways, I have been a little MIA lately in the blog world because on Monday I was taking care of 3 kids! I watch a friends little boy, who is 5 months old, twice a week. He is the sweetest little guy and so much fun to be around. On Monday, my niece also came over to play, she is 10 months old. She is quiet, but active! And then I have my little pistol.



Ma'Lady after church. Showing her cracker eatin' skills. Mama's so proud!



She runs the show and when there are new kids in her house, she feels the need to let them know who the boss is. I have no idea where she got that trait from. So on Monday I had 3 little ones in my house and on Tuesday I had the two girls. The day FLLLEW by and I was exhausted by the end of it, which is why there have been no posts. Shout out to all you mama's with multiples! No wonder Kate G was so tough. Kids are crazy!



Allie enjoying socializing more than lunch. Not Izzy. She means biznass




"Allie, I don't want what you just put in your mouth. That's gross"




PUPPIES!!!!!

  Do you love the way I put kids on the center of the table like centerpieces? They're super cute centerpieces, but super messy.



This is Allie. If you notice her pacifier says "Izzy". This was the theme all day. Stealing pacifiers.

 Last night we also had a realtor come by to look at our house to tell us what to do to add value to our house before we sell. The only thing he told us? Paint Isabelle's room. It's bright pink right now. I knew he was going to say that, but it still broke my heart to hear it. Honestly, that is going to be the worst part about moving houses. I always told Mr. T that when we moved, someone else would have to paint her room. I couldn't watch it. Shoot! I was wrong. Isabelle's great grandmother painted a pretty tree on her wall and the room is exactly the way I planned it in my head. I will post pictures of it soon.
On the lighter side, now I get to decorate her NEW room. Pinterest makes me want to re-do rooms daily and so now I will actually get to do that!
I also saw this picture on Pinterest and thought it was hilarious because it pretty much sums up my baking abilities:

source

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEDNESDAY!

Yay! Blog Award

Thanks to Laura at Moments with the Mays I received my very first blog award. Laura has the ideal "versatile" blog because she writes about just about everything and makes it interesting and funny. Plus she has an ADORABLE boy that is about the same age as Izzy so it's fun to see how similar that age is! She lives just outside of Nashville, which is my dream city to live in. My sister and her family live there, the city revolves around singing country songs about Jesus and cold beer. Heaven on earth if you ask me.

 I just started this blog a few months ago and I have had so much fun writing in it. I used to write in a journal, but then my hands got tired and my handwriting got so sloppy that I could barely read it anymore so I just stopped writing in it. The blog has been therapy for me and a time capsule for Isabelle (and future babies) to read about how weird mommy is.

So less chit chat and more info on the award! Here are the rules for accepting:

The Rules of accepting the Versatile Blogger Award are:
1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 things about yourself

3. Pass this award along to up to 15 recently discovered blogs

I am never one to pass up an opportunity to write about myself. Don't lie, you love to do it to. So let's get to it.

1. I believe I should have grown up to be a singer. I would love to do it professionally! I am not shy, I love to perform, I would be entertaining and I love to change outfits. The only problem is that I suck at singing and I can't write. Sure there are TONS of "entertainers" out there that can't sing, but I would LOVE to just open my mouth and sound like Whitney Houston instead of a humpback whale.

2. When I cook, I become a mean, crazy, control freak. There is a word that is used on the street for this type of girl, but I'm keeping this blog g-rated. Izzy, mommy never uses naughty words. I don't know why I get like this. The kitchen just stresses me out and I'm always afraid I'm going to burn dinner and that would be a shot to my ego. So if you want to come to dinner. Come after dinner is made and after I've tamed the beast

3. I was born and raised in the same house. Right before I met Mr. T, my parents moved. Half of a mile away. I was devastated. Now every time I hear the Miranda Lambert song, "The house that built me" I want to cry.

4. I always say I want to live in the country and "live off the land". Then when I really think about it, I die. I hate bugs, snakes and I crave QuikTrip coffee and choices of restaurants.

5. I love to be outside, but I'm not outdoorsy. I went camping when I was little and never slept. I only enjoyed it because I would play in the smoke in the camp fire and pretend like I was Reba McEntire singing "Fancy" ( I told you I should have been a singer). The last time I went camping, I had to drink a bottle glass of wine to fall asleep.

6. If I did live on a farm. I would have a farm of horses, dogs and tea cup pigs. Haven't seen a teacup pig? Google it. Your heart will melt of cuteness.

7. I hated running in high school and only chose to do it in college because I got a scholarship for it. I really fell in love with it my senior year of college and after college. It's amazing how much more you like something when you're not forced to do it.

Here are the people that I am giving the award to:

Katie at Minivan Diva. She's a wife, a mom of THREE boys and such a sweet woman. Her writing is positive and her family is adorable!

Country is a state of Mind. Remember, I wish I could be country. This mom does it. Plus she was a teacher and cross country coach before staying home with her baby Blaine. Love her stories of life out of town.

Running in Pearls. I love running and this girl walks the walk and talks the talk. She loves to run, yet loves to get dressed up and be girlie. Perfect combo!

Check em out!

P.s. Prayers needed. We are thinking about moving houses. Leaving the house that we have made exactly how we want it. Leave the house that we came home to after we got married. Leave the house that we brought Izzy home to. YIKES! Hopefully, the next one we find will make us ready to leave.

Bully on the playground

I had my first taste of what it is like to fight back the "mama bear" urge. Sure, I have been protective of my daughter but that usually just entails keeping her out of dangerous situations.
Yesterday was a great day to hit the park. It has been crazy hot here, so we haven't been to the park very much lately, but yesterday was nice so we ventured there so Isabelle could play with other kids and get her wiggles out a little bit.
When we first got there I saw another young girl (age 2) and her dad playing in the sprinkler and then running over to the playground part too. The little girl was running around laughing and screaming and so I knew Isabelle would LOVE to watch her.
When we do go to the park, it's natural for little girls to come up to play with Isabelle (I think little girls just naturally love babies) and Isabelle loves to play with them. This situation was no different. Except the girl came over soaking wet and starting to poke and rub Izzy's face. Now, Izzy loves to play but she's not really one that loves to be treated like a little doll. I smiled and laughed it off as Izzy pushed the little girls hand away and just kept playing.
I talked to the little girls dad for a bit about the school the little girl was in and how all the teachers have to have a masters education and blah, blah, blah.  He said she loves school and loves other little kids and then we just chit chatted about random stuff while the girls kind of ran around.
Then the fun started.
Isabelle was playing all by herself when the little girl ran up and pushed her from behind. Isabelle fell on her belly and just kind of looked up at the little girl like, "ugh aren't you going to say excuse me bia"? She didn't say "bia" but I was saying that in my head. I normally don't call little girls that, but I also don't normally have little girls shove my baby.
I stayed back and let Isabelle brush herself off and get back up. The little girls dad calmly said, "haha, honey we don't push babies" without ever really getting his daughters attention or even making eye contact with her.
I started to get a bit on edge at that point.
Isabelle continued to play by herself when the little girl ran up in front of her and got about an inch from Izzy's face and started screaming and lunging at her face to scare her. Izzy immediately got scared and started the sad cry (you know, the one with the big lip and the giant tears...it seriously will move mountains). I quickly went to pick Izzy up this time, because I had enough of this tiny bully picking on my kid! I calmed Izzy down as I watched the dad walk over to his daughter to tell her "no" and pick her up, but then she started flailing her body when he tried to pick her up, making it impossible for him to hold on to her so he just let her down and didn't say anything. Seriously? I'm not for capital punishment, but I am about to start if this little girl doesn't leave Izzy alone!
So this time, I take Isabelle to look at the pretty flowers (about 100 meters from the playground) so she can calm down and hopefully the little Denise the Menace (girls version of Dennis) will leave the playground.
I was wrong again.
The girl came over, and started hitting the flower bushes and throwing flowers at Izzy! SERIOUSLY?! Before I could say anything, the dad came over and picked her up and took her back to the playground. He said, "sorry" to me and I didn't respond. I didn't need a sorry, I needed your daughter to leave us alone! By that time we had left THREE areas to get away from this girl.
Finally, I heard the dad saying, "okay lets go honey" but before they could go she said "I go kiss baby bye bye!" and started running for us. This time I picked up Izzy and we started to walk the opposite way again. When she saw we were getting further away she started yelling, "HEY! HEY! HEY!" so I said, "Excuse me, my name is not Hey!". I completely sounded like my mother at that point, but who cares?
The little girl said "I WANT A KISS!". Ya right crazy kid! No way are you getting those hands near my daughter again, so I just said "wave bye bye Isabelle" and she did.
Finally they left.
I was happy to see them go, but at the same time a little sad. Why is this two year old hitting kids for no reason? Where did she learn that? Clearly, she already had her dad wrapped around her finger, but obviously he knows that's not good behavior. What should I have done differently? I am not one to let someone walk all over ANYONE else, but I also am not one to get yell at someone else's child. Everyone has a story and I'm sure that little girl has one too.

What would you have done?

Embrace the Camera

Today I am linking up with Emily for a little Embrace the Camera. If you haven't done it, you should. As a mother, I take a million pictures a day, but then when I look back at them I quickly realize I am in NONE of them. If something were to happen to me (morbid thought, I know), Isabelle wouldn't get to see pictures of us sharing time together. Also, how hard do you laugh at your mom in pictures of you when you were little? My mom had a GIANT perm and white sunglasses. Isabelle will never laugh at my pictures of course because I am always in style. I'm classic. Right?!    No?     Oh....well that's rude.

Izzy loooves the trick of showing her tongue. She also likes to do it in front of my phone because she can actually see herself doing it. Quite the comedian I got here folks.

So What! Wednesday



I am teaming up with Shannon today at Life After I "Dew" for a little So What! Wednesday.

So what if:

• I kind of chuckle every time someone calls Wednesday "hump day". Does that make me immature? Probably. Does it make me a perv? Slightly. Either way. It makes me laugh
• I just got on the band wagon for reading Harry Potter. Enough reputable sources (over the age of 12) recommended it for a good, fast read (I have to say "fast read" so you think I'm smart and Harry Potter is sooo below me).
• When people recommend a book and say "it's a fast read", I get a little nervous. What if I'm not as fast of a reader as them. Or what does that even mean? Fast read to me means reading the captions from "Us" Weekly.
• I cheer for separate college football and basketball schools. I grew up in Oklahoma and my family went to the University of Oklahoma. I grew up cheering Boomer Sooner! I then went to the University of Kansas where basketball is a religion. Kansas football is terrible. So I am a die hard Sooner in the fall and a die hard Jayhawk in the winter and spring. I will ALWAYS cheer for my Jayhawks over the Sooners if they play one another, so leave me alone. I will DIE before Isabelle yells the words, "Gig em Ags." (that one was for you Mr. T). I only let Mr T cheer for Texas A&M because he went there and he's hot. If he weren't, he would be S.O.L.
• I go to the pool with spf 75 on and a hat. The thought of turning into a giant raisin when I'm 40 scares the crap out of me. Sure, cancer does too. But I'm vain. Who wants to look like a bull dog carrying kids around? Get a spray tan people! Safe and pretty.  
• I get baby fever the more I think about how quickly Isabelle is growing. The fever quickly leaves me when I ACTUALLY think about being pregnant, labor, no sleep, nursing like a cow and carrying TWO kids around all the time. Those thoughts are perfect birth control!
• I am taking Isabelle to her one year doctors appointment today where she will get her last round of shots. I hate it. I hate it bad. Especially now that she is a runner, I know that we will have to catch her and hold her down to give the shots. That makes me want to cry just thinking about it. I guess my mom wasn't full of crap when she said, "this hurts me more than it hurts you". Good Lord, I'm getting old.

So what are you saying SO WHAT! to?

Once a month mom

Have you heard of it? No, it's not a new dead beat mom program..although it completely sounds like it. It's an awesome program that you can do with a few other moms to take some stress off your shoulders of having to cook every day after a loooong day. Who am I kidding? Even when I wasn't a mom, I should have done this just because I always get hungry early and don't want to wait on everything to cook. This reason is also why the Quizno's by our house is so successful. I ate there enough that the workers knew my order when they saw me come in the door quite a few times. You can read more about the idea of Once a month mom  here but what you basically do is find a group of friends (you decide on how many) and you make one another freezer friendly meals.

 I have a group of four friends that are participating  and once a month I make two recipes and quadruple them, freeze them and then switch with those friends. They do the same thing so then you have eight frozen meals that you can cook and eat whenever you want. The more friends you include, the more food you make and receive.  I get annoyed with trying to find new recipes so this definitely helps with the boredom factor. If your friend sucks at cooking...don't invite her. I don't know why my friends invited me. I might get "laid off" after a couple meals. Then I'll just be forced to have another baby so people will bring over delicious food for us. Sounds like a plan to me. I kid.

This weekend marked the end of Isabelle's birthday MONTH. Holy moly guacamole, she had 3 parties. Yes, THREE. She got to "smash" 4 cakes (3 parties + a smash cake photo session) and I am ready to get my new little sugar addict back to a healthy diet. Having a huge family is fun on birthday's, Christmas, and anytime you need a baby sitter. I love it and I love that Isabelle will grow up having tons of people around her that love her like I love her. The part that isn't so fun? Accommodating everyone. It's hard and some one's feelings WILL get hurt. Mr. T and I are both people pleasers, but Mr. T comes from a divorced family so he has dealt with this dilemma his entire life. He's an old pro. I hate it and am terrible at it. I don't like to disappoint people, but at the same I also have no problem standing my ground. We have both had to do that several times over the last few weeks and it gets old being the bad guy, or feeling like your picking sides. That part truly sucks and puts a damper on special occasions. I hate thinking, "I can't wait until this is over" because I know we should embrace every memory and never rush through life. Sometimes it just gets overwhelming and I naturally start thinking negative thoughts like that. All of the parties were a blast and no one argued or got upset or their feelings hurt, but the days leading up to it all I could think about were negative thoughts about the whole event. STUPID! I guess that's the downside of having a big family? How do you deal with family stress or letting people down that you love? If there is a manual....I'll take one.

This little party animal had a blast. Shocker. 

1 year ago today

One year ago today, Mr. T and I were anxiously awaiting the arrival of little Miss Isabelle Mae. I am not a patient person, so waiting for her to arrive was tough on me. I just wanted to hold my baby and kiss her chubby cheeks (thank you 3D ultrasound!).  All along my due date was August 16th, but everyone kept telling me "you'll be late" or "oh, those first babies never come on time." I didn't want to believe them, but it turned out... they were right.

We began seeing our doctor once a week for a month leading up to my due date and she checked me each time, only to tell me that I wasn't dilated or effaced at all. Awesome, thanks dream crusher doc. The doctor did tell us that we would induce the 17th  and she would probably make her appearance on the 18th. We decided to induce because at that point the only thing that the baby (Isabelle) was doing in there was gaining weight and she could do that outside of my belly where we could watch her. So we had a FOR SURE date that we would meet her which was exciting! Except if felt like it would never come.

On Tuesday, August 17th  Mr T, my sister, brother in law, nephew and parents went out to my favorite restaurant where I had my "last meal" of my favorite dinner...Nachos, macaroni and cheese and water (To add salt to the wound, the restaurant we went to had $2 Miller lites. My drink of choice. Everyone at the table ordered one, except me. I was sooo ready for a cold beer by then!) I settled for water with a lemon. It was delicious. At 7:30 pm. Mr. T and I checked into the hospital for the induction process to start. Pretty quickly I met my nurse (Shawn) and she hooked me up to the machines to watch Isabelle's heart rate and to watch for contractions. While being hooked up, I learned that I WAS having contractions, but I wasn't realizing it! (I'm not tough, just dumb a newbie at this whole pushing a human being out of a tiny hole). She also showed us how we could watch Isabelle's heart rate on the monitor and the range that her heart needed to stay in. I was glad she gave us that tid-bit of information. (more on that later)
After we had settled in (about 30 minutes) our nurse gave me some medicine to help my cervix efface. That's when the fun really started. My contractions got stronger and it was getting hard for me to sleep which was stressful because I knew I was about to do the hardest workout of my life and I needed rest! The nurse gave me some medicine to help me sleep, which basically did nothing to help me sleep it just made me feel loopy. My doctor was great at telling me beforehand what to expect, so I felt like I knew all the next steps. We would wait until I was more effaced and then in the morning they would give me petocin to help me dilate and get the contractions started and that's when the fun would start. Wrong.
After they gave me sleep medication, I couldn't sleep and started to feel nauseous. Then I felt like I peed the bed (a.k.a. water broke). Everyone in the room was surprised at how quickly this was seeming to go. My nurse also said that based off the fluids from my water breaking, they could tell that the baby had pooped in utero, but that was OK. She reassured me that it wasn't a big deal, so I went with it.
 I was starting to feel really sick and the pain was getting a lot more intense. I was NOW feeling the contractions. Then my dinner decided to show itself again (yup, all over Mr. T).
My brother in law is an anesthesiologist and told me that I could get an epidural whenever I wanted. You don't have to wait to be a 3 or 4, you can basically get one when you walk in the door. During every contraction, I heard his voice telling me that so I decided to get the epidural then. I knew I wouldn't get any sleep without it. If I had to do it all over again, I would have skipped the sleep medication. It did nothing for me. The epidural did everything for me (even though it took them 2 tries to get it in!)
At about 4:00 a.m. my contractions got more intense, even though I was now sleeping through them (Thank you LORD for anesthesiologists!). My nurse and Mr T were by my side the entire time helping me to relax and making sure I was comfortable. I got in the habit of just watching the monitor. When you're pregnant there is nothing better than hearing your babies heart beat and now that I could watch it, I was glued to the monitors. We started to notice Isabelle's heart rate dropping below the "target area" and I could see the expression on our nurses face was worried. She told me she was going to call my doctor and let her know what was going on, but it wasn't a big deal at all and everything would be great. Next thing I knew, our doctor came in with a smile on her face and said, "I have been monitoring you from my computer at home and I'm not liking how low baby's heart is getting so we're going to go ahead and get her out of there." I was confused. A c-section? I wasn't prepared for that. I thought all along we had a plan, but the plan quickly changed. It was better for Isabelle. Apparently every time I had a strong contraction, her heart rate would drop considerably low and the more contractions I was having, the longer it was taking her to get her heart rate back up. I still thank God that we were in the hospital to monitor that and not at home laboring.
A team of nurses came in and gave Mr. T some scrubs and told him to put them on so he could be in the surgery room with us. I could tell on his face that he was worried and was trying to fight back tears, which made me realize how serious this was, but before I could do anything I was getting wheeled into surgery.
The c-section started and went quickly. It's not painless. It may not be ripping of lady parts, but it's no picnic. Our doctor also said that I wouldn't be able to kiss and hold Isabelle immediately because since she had pooped in utero, they needed to make sure that they sucked everything out of her lungs before she took her first breath of air. The NICU team was there waiting for her arrival as well. I was freaking out and just wanted everything to be OK. At that point I felt the mothers love. I would have died on the spot to make sure she was okay. And she was. Mr. T told me that when she first came out, she was gray. Once they sucked her lungs...I heard her first cry. That was the most amazing sound I have ever heard. I immediately started crying as soon as I heard her. Mr. T got to go to be with her and told me she was perfect and gave me a kiss as he left to follow her out to get measured.
At 4:35am Isabelle Mae was born at 6lbs 9oz and 20 inches long with a perfectly natural Mohawk. The moment we saw her, I knew she was perfect. Happy and Healthy. Our baby.

Easily, the best year of our life.