One Month Down

I can hardly believe that it has been almost a month (tomorrow) already since Zayin entered this world. Everything has been a complete blur. He is, for the most part, a very sweet and easy-going kid.



But, of course, he is still a baby and babies are lots of work. People keep asking if 1 to 2, 2 to 3, or 3 to 4 is harder and I'm not really sure. I still think 1 to 2 was the hardest transition for me to make. By the time you have others you are already used to dividing your time between kids, but I am curious what everyone else thinks. What was the hardest transition for you? How are some ways that you have dealt with adding subsequent children? Ok, not only am I curious, I'm looking for tips. I know only a couple people read this blog, so if you know people with several children that have some good ideas, feel free to send this on to them. Thanks. I'm looking forward to what everyone comes up with.

First Bath

I've been meaning to post this for about a week now, along with some other things, but I am just too tired for words. So here are some pictures instead.

It's a Boy!

We're home! This is our second day home with our new bundle of boy, and Jeni asked me to post an update. So...in case you haven't heard, this is how it went down...

Tuesday night we returned home from college group. Jeni had been having contractions about 10 minutes apart - but this was nothing new. We went to bed despite the activity. Jeni had gone to bed with contractions many times, only to wake up in the morning disappointed that nothing materialized. At 12:10AM she was still working on sleep and attempted to roll over to find a less uncomfortable position when she heard AND FELT a loud pop! She cried out in pain and soon discovered her water had broken. Somehow the combination of the rolling over and the baby stretching was enough to break her water...AND break her tailbone. We just didn't know it at the time.

During the brief (depending on who you ask - don't ask her) ride to the hospital, it was clear she was in the throes of deep labor. We got to the hospital at about 12:35AM. When the nurse checked her, the baby was all but out the door. They desperately tried to get her to breathe easy and not push so the doctor could get there - yeah right! Fortunately the doctor arrived "soon" and after a couple of pushes, Zayin Jude came into the world! He was born at 1:00AM - she was in labor for less than an hour!


I know you're gonna ask, so Zayin is pronounced just like it looks - "ZAY - in". Think "sayin". You can wiki or google Zayin for the meanings and significance, but in summary it means sword and sustenance and represents completion and rest as the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. See Ps 119:49-56 for the "Zayin" section. Jude means "praise".

We're home and still struggling to reverse Zayin's days and nights. Our first night home was terrible! Jeni is also on crutches - not from the broken tailbone, but because her pelvis separated during labor. Not fun for her - not that a normal recovery would be fun.

Micaiah was the most excited one to see Zayin in the hospital (his face lit up and he exclaimed "I LIKE IT!").



Charis already has it planned out - she thinks she is gonna have to raise the other kids herself! Thankfully (for their sake) she will not have to. Since we've been home all she wants to do is play old Super Mario Bros. games with me.



Anya thinks he's just so cute and loves to hold him until her 3 second attention span runs out.




They are all still a little amped from all that parent-less time, but we are SO thankful for my parents, Jeni's mom, Noah and Sarah, and David and Monica, who all took shifts with the kids.

That's our past week in a nutshell. Once we get Jeni a donut pillow to sit on, she'll no doubt do some blogging of her own - which will probably involve correcting a lot of what I just typed. Thanks for all your prayers and support!

"Toot Toot"

This is the sound we make when we catch one of our kids shamelessly bragging about one of their accomplishments or fishing for a compliment. So as I was getting ready to post about one of my most recent accomplishments "toot toot" was all that came to mind. I am not fishing for a compliment, but I am kinda proud of myself.

I have been working/slaving away in my kitchen for the last several days to make my very first wedding cakes. I had no idea how much work went into something like this and I have a whole new, gargantuan appreciation for people that do this for a living. The couple asked for a daisy themed, 4 tier fondant covered cake with a different filling in each layer. They were very specific about what the fillings should be. They wanted 1. pineapple (for them to save), 2. banana, 3. coconut, and 4. raspberry. They also wanted a chocolate grooms cake with raspberry filling and a sheet cake. Here is what they ended up with.



















I didn't see the topper until the cake was already made, thankfully it fit.

Now for some reason Blogger won't let me add any more pictures to this post so this is all there it.

A little piece of our new normal

In the past few weeks we have decided to take on a few home improvement projects. I really wasn't planning on blogging anything about it until everything was all said and done. But this blog isn't just about the cute, funny, more admirable things in our life, it's about our life and whatever it looks like at the time.

It's been in the plan, since we moved in, to knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. But it is amazing once you get started on one project how everything begins to snowball. We are now working on the kitchen, dining room, upstairs bathroom, downstairs bathroom and the little boys room. Needless to say we are living in complete chaos. I've had an oven in my living room for a week now.

I'm also finding an interesting phenomenon at work here, when one part of your house is in disarray how all the other rooms (not being worked on) get jealous. Every room in our house looks like a tornado hit. I'm actually not sure if I would notice if one did hit. So since my new normal is chaos and this blog is about our "normalness", and since I apparently don't have any dignity, I thought I would share some "before" pictures with you. I'm also including rooms that we are not actually working on just to give you an idea of how disgusting we really are.

So now if you are ever feeling bad about yourself, or your house, you can check out these pictures and smile knowing you would never let your house get this bad.



Micaiah hiding from all the noise of the deconstruction.






And last but not least the laundry for the last couple days that needs to be folded.