So...I have not updated the blog in a loooong time. That sort of seems to be a theme around here.

We are officially in our new house with access to our desktop which means that I can download pictures whenever I want. Now the tricky part will be to actually sit down, get on the blog, and share pictures.

But today is a big day! My little guy turned one today. Zeke was our surprise baby, but I have never been more thankful for a surprise! I have thoroughly enjoyed having a little one around again.

He seriously melts me. 

About 1 month ago, Zeke discovered meat. And let me just say that he absolutely loves it. In fact, every time we eat it, he devours it, as in eats more than all of us. We have therefore decided to nickname him "meat". I know, I know it is such a sweet, baby nickname, no? I think one day he will thank us for it.
We decided that since he has such a deep fondness for meat, we should introduce him to steak. So for his birthday dinner, he got steak. And let me tell you what, he took it down!
He ate at least 10 helpings this size. He is quite serious about food.

And we finished it off with a little "Happy Birthday to You" and cupcakes. Again, he loved it. Food is just his thing.
I love this progression of facial expressions. In the third picture it is like he is anticipating the yumminess of what is about to happen.

As he finished up, we gave Taylor and Noah their cupcakes. Do you see his face of anger? How dare they eat cupcakes and not share?

Zeke has been such a blessing to our family. Taylor and Noah absolutely adore him (a little too much at times) and I cannot imagine life without him. He is always smiling, cries when you leave the room loves to be around people, and is a laid back little guy. Happy first birthday to Zeke!

poop in the tub

I am sure you already know what this post is about. I made is fairly clear by the title, but let me induldge you anyway.

At the beginning of every month, Mark has his busy time at work. One of these nights he has to work super late. Tonight is that night.

I was making dinner and thought it would be great to get a couple things done at once. So I brought Zeke's tub down to the sink, filled it up, and stuck him in. Multitasking, right?
One minute later, the tub was filled with poop. I wisk him out onto a towel (now also covered with poop) so that I can clean out the tub. I unplug the drain in his tub only to realize it was not all the way over the sink. Yay...poopy water all over the floor!

I finally finished cleaning the poop filled tub and the poopy floor. Wait, oh what's that warm stuff? Awesome, that's Zeke peeing everywhere. I guess I should have covered that up while I cleaned?

Good thing you are cute Z, good thing.

And to finish off my evening alone, I found Sophie's (our dog) throw up all over our room and the living room.

It's probably best that I go shower now. 

the Z man got his first hair cut

All of our kids started to need a little trim work around 3 or 4 months old. They each have had a killer mullet and Zeke had a few over the ear pieces that needed to be chopped.
Nothing too crazy, I let the professionals do that.

Don't worry...I won't quit my day job. But I do think he is cute enough to pull it off.

3 months old

And cute as can be. Someone told me today that his name should be "cutie". I agree :)

slightly embarrassed

We just had a visit with our homestudy social worker. Since our family dynamic has changed (meaning Zeke was born), we had to update our homestudy.

I thought she was just coming to check out our new little guy and maybe to make sure that having three kids has not made me go completely crazy. It never occurred to me that she would need to see where he sleeps.

Before I show you the pictures let me just say these things in my defense...
1. Three children create a lot of dirty clothes (especially when one of them is an infant).
2. One week is all it takes for them to create multiple loads of laundry...I promise I do their laundry every week.
3.  I had planned on putting laundry away earlier in the day, but it just did not happen - remember I have three kids.
4. Zeke is a really noisy sleeper...

Here is the maze of clothes we had to walk through in order to get to Zeke's "room". 

 Yes, this is our closet a.k.a. Zeke's room. I think it's nice and cozy, don't you?

So yes, she came to see me and the baby. But little did I know that she would also get to see Zeke's resting place. One day this will be funny...

my growing belly

our attempt at newborn pictures

Have I told you how much I love Pinterest? Well if I haven't, I really love Pinterest. I am sort of challenged in the creativity department and Pinterest really helps me out.

Zeke is 12 days now and I wanted pictures of him as an itty bitty baby. Since I am cheap thrifty, I decided to attempt them on my own and Pinterest was just what I needed for some ideas.

Although the pictures are far from professional, I am happy with what we got. It only took 2 hours, several nursing sessions, almost 400 pictures, one poop accident and one pee accident to get some good ones.
All in a days work people.

He’s here!

Ezekiel Richard ~ born Monday, January 14th at 1:57am ~ weight 8lbs 3oz ~ length 21.5in

Our precious baby boy is here! He is absolutely perfect and is blending into our family just wonderfully. I know most of you are here for the pictures, so I'll start there and then share Zeke's birth story :)

Zeke's first moments - being weighed, right after birth, and having his newborn exam

Family of 5! Tay is super excited about baby brother, she was just upset that Noah got to hold Zeke :)

Sweet baby boy

One happy big sister...who happened to wake up at 3:30am to greet her new brother :)

Big bro!

Meeting cousins and grandmommy for the first time. 

First adjustment

Zeke's Birth Story

This pregnancy was a rough one. Between being super tired, sick, and the back aches, I was ready for our baby boy to come. 

The last few weeks of Zeke’s pregnancy, I had more Braxton Hicks than I did with any other baby. There were 2 nights I thought I may be going into labor only to be let down when the contractions became more spread out and less painful. One of these nights I even called our midwife at 3am thinking that labor had begun. I asked her to wait another hour before she came to our house. Within 15 minutes of getting off the phone with her, my contractions had almost stopped coming completely.   

The day Zeke came, I had been having Braxton Hicks on and off. They were sporadic and just enough to be noticeable. 

I went to bed around 9:15 with the contractions still coming. A little before 11:00, I decided to start timing them. They were coming every 6 to 7 minutes and were becoming more painful. At that point I got in our bath tub for about 20 minutes. The contractions were coming every 5 minutes and I needed to breathe through them. Once I got out of the tub, around 11:40, I knew I was in labor. The contractions were hard and came about every 3 minutes. A little after midnight we called the midwife and asked her to come over. She immediately said “I’m on my way”. Forty minutes later she was at our house and I was at 8 centimeters. 

During this time, Mark was working on filling up the birthing pool. But we had one problem…our hot water heater went out. The tub was only half way full and there was no hot water left. So everyone (midwife, her assistant, our doula, and Mark) began boiling water. I went ahead and got in the tub, but it was chilly and uncomfortable. As the boiling pots of water got dumped in, it was more and more bearable. 

I got in the birthing pool around 1:00am and I was in some serious pain! I remember our doula speaking encouraging words and bible versus and coaching me through the breathing. Mark was holding my hands and speaking encouraging words over me. As painful as the contractions were, having them there helped me get through them.

Around 1:45am, I began to feel the urge to push. I waited as long as I could and began to push about 5 minutes later. At the first push, my bag of waters broke. It took several more pushes for him to come and it was definitely the hardest part of my labor. 

Zeke was born at 1:57am on Monday morning. He came out with the cord wrapped twice around his neck and twice around his body. It took one agonizing minute for our midwife to unwrap it and for him to begin to cry. It may have been the longest minute of my life. But exactly one minute after he was born, we heard that beautiful sound that all parents love to hear, our baby’s first scream. It was a wonderful noise. 

My mom arrived at our house around 2:20am. When she got here she asked Mark "How far along is she?" . Mark said "0". Then it clicked for my mom. She had missed my delivery...again.

Both of our children slept through the entire labor and delivery. And let me go ahead and say it was NOT because I was quiet. However, Tay did wake up at 3:30am. She came into our room and was a bit overwhelmed by all the people. She came into bed with me and Zeke and after about 2 minutes grasped what was going on. When she realized her baby brother was here, her face lit up and she immediately wanted to hold him. In all of her excitement, she did not go back to bed that night. She is one magnificent big sister :)

When Noah woke up the next morning he decided that breakfast was a bit more important than meeting his little brother. But once he made his way into our bedroom and saw Zeke, he was ready to hold him and give him lots of sweet kisses. 

I have been asked if I would do a water birth again. My answer is probably not. I was hoping that the water would provide relaxation and help with the contractions. But after having one in the water and one out, I have to say that I don’t think there was a difference. 

And if you ask me if I would have another natural birth, my answer would be heck no! Hum…I guess I said the same thing after Noah and I obviously did not stick to that. Mark’s grandma said that “labor is the worst pain and the easiest to forget”. I am going to have to agree with that. Labor pains are AWFUL, but the reward is so sweet it is easy to forget.