The best Valentine EVER!

My Mom, My Valentine...

Mom, I love you more than pumpkin pie. I love you more than my dad. I even love you more than football. I love you like a moon loves night. I love the smell of your potato soup. I love the taste of your baked potatoes. I love the sound of your heart beat. I love the feel of your head against mine. I love when you find time to cuddle with me. I love you, I love you, I love you, I do!

From your kid, Lucas

It's been awhile...

I really have done more in the last 4 months than have a beautiful sweet baby. It's definitely the best thing I have done, though. Life with 4 kids is crazy busy, but most of the time I love it. It's hard,but good hard.

I totally missed all the holidays so here is a really quick highlight version with some too cute to be missed pictures.

Thanksgiving:

I had my first official Thanksgiving at home and I loved it! My mom and my sister came up and we had so much fun. I had a great time cooking and baking and everything turned out great, even if I made WAY too much food. The day after Thanksgiving I went shopping with my mom and Jaimee (and Bella too!) at 5:00 in the morning! The next day we took the kids and Jaimee to get our very first REAL Christmas tree. The deal I made with Joe a long time ago was when we have a house then we can get a real tree. I have to say that I LOVED having a real tree and I don't think I can ever go back now.




Just before Christmas:

Right before Christmas we got a phone call letting us now that my great grandma had passed away. She was an amazing woman and always very special to me. Emma is named after her and the two of them had a special connection. While we were all sad to see her leave this world, we know that we will be with her again someday.

It was nice to be with all of our extended family. Most of them had never met Molly so we had 2 beautiful girls to introduce. I think it's safe to say that my cousin David and Bella are officially in love!

Christmas/New Year's:

We got back from Indiana the day before Christmas Eve and had a million things to do. It was a little crazy but we made it and ended up having a great Christmas with all the kids. Band Hero was definitely the biggest hit and a huge surprise to Joe thanks to my mom! We have several budding rock stars in our family and I am pretty sure Emma is ready to change her name to Taylor Swift!

New Year's was the typical lots of game playing and a crazy hard 1000 piece puzzle. Lucas and Emma made it to midnight, but Molly passed out on the floor about 10:00.

I really love being at home with our little family during the holidays. It's great to be with our extended family but I am loving the peace of just being home together. This year Joe took off work for the 2 weeks that the kids were home. It was heaven! We all loved having him home and were really sad when it was time to go back to work. I really love my husband and it was great to have 2 weeks to spend together laughing and falling in love all over again like a bunch of teenagers!


Now:

Now Bella is 3 months old!!! Lucas is about to turn 7! Molly is doing AWESOME at potty training!!! Emma is doing great at her ballet class and the recital is coming up soon! Joe, of course, it out of town this week and busy being young men's president. I am recommiting to being a good wife, a good mother, finding more patience and finding joy in the small everyday moments of motherhood.

Beautiful Happiness

Bella Felicity McGuire was born Monday, October 26, 2009 at 6:46 p.m. She weighed 8lbs. 14oz. and was 21" long. There are no words for how in love with this beautiful girl I am. She is a dream baby. We only ever hear her cry when she is getting her diaper changed and then she's totally content again. Oh, and she sleeps...at night even! I think I have some kind of magic sleeping powers. All 4 of my babies have been great sleepers right from the start and they still are. So here is the birth story for all those interested. True to form, I was induced late. After arguing with my doctor for 9 months about how this was going happen, she induced me without me having to convince her. So Joe and I went to St. Mary's Friday afternoon about 11:30. Everyone was so nice and expecting me and knew my name. That was very comforting because I was so nervous about having a baby in a new place. I had wonderful experiences in the past and I didn't know what to expect here in Madison. I was in a hurry to get started but it was about 2:00 before I was hooked up to the pitocin. Then we walked and walked and played a Twilight trivia game on the iphone. After about 10 laps I was tired and we headed back to my room. Then the doctor (who was not my doctor but I loved her way more then my own) and the resident (who I did not care for at all) came in. Not much was happening up to that point. I was having a few contractions but nothing that I was really feeling. While they were there I had a horrible contraction that I was feeling right in my back and I thought I was going to die because it lasted so long. Then nothing again for a while. Sometime around 4:00 I was getting pretty regular contractions that were very strong and lasting a REALLY long time. I was still just 4cm and my water hadn't broken yet, but I was ready for my epidural. So about 20 minutes later the anesthesiologist came to my rescue. The relief lasted about 5 whole minutes before I was feeling serious pressure that I could hardly stand. The resident and the nurse said it was just my bag of water and as soon as it broke the pressure would be gone. Just a few minutes later my water did break on it's own and then the pressure was worse. The babies heart beat kept going down with contractions and they some how manged to get me on my hands and knees. I wasn't feeling the contractions just a lot of pressure. The resident checked me said I was 6cm then he left the room. Literally a minute later the doctor checked me and said I was ready to push. The baby was still up pretty high but as soon as I started pushing she came right down. Her heart rate was still dropping with the contractions so the doctor asked if she could make a little cut just to help get her out faster. I think I said something to the effect of I don't care just get her out!!!. Next push Bella was born, beautiful pink and screaming. They were worried that cord might have been around her neck but it wasn't. It was just a really fast labor and she was ready to come out. It was wonderful to get to hold her right away. With all the complications Molly had, it was several hours before I saw her and longer before I could hold her. Having that time with Bella right away was something I did not take for granted. She was finally here and healthy and she was mine. And per her father's request she did show up in time for Monday night football kickoff! Daddy has another little princess and I swear she swoons when he speaks Italian to her. Bella's name means "beautiful happiness" and so far she has lived up to her name.

*On a side note, I appreciate that residents need to learn. I do not however appreciate that they need to learn about stitching on me. It a little unnerving to hear the doctor, on more than one occasion say,"No! No! Not like that." I just tried to block it out. I also forgot how painful those stitches are to heal from. I hadn't had them since Lucas was born. Stairs are not my friend!

Some Beautiful pictures of my beautiful Bella:




*pictures by Jenifer Lee

First day of school for Lucas AND Emma...

September !st was the first day of school for my 2 big kids. How is it possible that we have 2 kids in school??? It happened so fast!




Emma started kindergarten and has the same teacher that Lucas had last year. It was good for her to start out with that comfort level and we LOVE Mrs. Schauf. She has 2 little girlfriends that she sits with everyday and now there is a new friend, a boy named Ayden that she likes to play with too. Emma seems so grown up now. She had a little more apprehension then Lucas did about starting school, but within a few days she came into her own. No more taking her inside or even walking her to the front door. "Just drop me off at the curb Mom." Emma is making friends and having fun and today she got to be the sharing friend (show and tell) which is exciting and last week she got to celebrate her birthday on the 3rd day of school, complete with cupcakes from Mom. Emma may be the youngest kid in her class, but she was so ready for school. She can hardly stand the weekends because she wants to go to school. Emma is doing great. I couldn't have hoped for a better start to the school year for her.





Lucas moved on up to the the PC (primary center where 1st and 2nd grade attend, across the field from Emma's school). He was so excited to start back to school and see his friends. There are a few people in his class that he knew from last year, but Lucas has already made a ton of new friends. He loves his teacher Mrs. Prehn. She plays the guitar and their class puts on a musical later in the school year. Lucas has already got a few rewards for making good choices and being a good friend to his classmates. He loves playing basketball at recess with some 2nd grade boys that he met. Then when school is done he walks down to Emma's school where the girls and I are waiting. Lucas is thriving as usual. And just like my little brother, Lucas has already lost a jacket before the end of the second week of school!

I somehow made it through the start of the school year without any tears! Even without all the water works, it someways it was harder to leave my daughter on the first day of school than my son. I just have more of an urge to protect her or something. Molly is adjusting to being alone with Mom all day. She is a self entertainer and I am so grateful for that! And now that it's quiet around here Molly finally started talking a ton and using complete sentences. She was just waiting for a chance to talk! We all survived the beginning of a new school year and we are going to our first school sponsored activity tomorrow night. Now onto preparing for our new baby who should hopefully be arriving in about 5 1/2 weeks...

A few cute pics to tide you over...

A few of my favorite summer photos:

We're still alive, if there was any doubt...

All though it may seem as if we have just disappeared of the the face of the Earth, we have not. We've just relocated. We found and bought (with much much drama) a house we adore. Still working on unpacking, getting the baby's room ready and how exactly to care for our 1.2 acre yard that is currently harboring house guests...moles. Most of the summer has been spent planning, packing, moving and unpacking. We also played soccer and t-ball, went to 6 Flags and a trip to Indiana too. In the last few weeks I sent my 2 oldest to kindergarten and first grade, celebrated Emma's birthday and moved into our new house. I think we were trying to see how many life changing events we could go through at one time and besides everything is more fun when you are 7 1/2 months pregnant! I will at least try to post about the big stuff I missed like first day of school, Emma's birthday, the new house, and the latest baby news. They all deserve there own post and there are some cute pictures you need to see too, like Emma's new short hair cut! I just need to get through this weekend and maybe then I can blog a little before baby #4 shows up.

Good news from the eye doctor...

Emma had her eye appointment after 2 months of patching. I was nervous about what the results were going to be. I was just hoping that it was working and maybe we could patch a few less hours. Emma did AMAZING!!!! In just 2 months of patching her vision her weak eye imporved 6 lines on the eye chart! SIX LINES!!!!!!!! That is so amazing. She went from only being able to see the big E and squinting and straining to see the next line, to reading just 4 lines from the bottom. She is now just 4 lines away from 20/20 in her weak eye with her glasses on! We celebrated by going out to lunch at McDonalds. Dr. Bradfield said she has never seen such drastic improvement in such a short amount of time of patching. Now we only have to patch 6 hours a day and we go back in 2 more months for another check up. Her glasses prescription stayed the same. We should have more to report in 2 months. We are hoping that by then we will be down to 4 hours of patching a day so Emma won't have to wear her patch to kindergarten. Emma is fine wearing her patch to school, but Mommy doesn't want to if we don't have too!

Other news:
We have a very busy month with tap and t-ball, Daddy traveling for work, going to 6 Flags and coming to Indiana the 1st of July. Summer is going to fly by. We are still looking for a house and hoping to find one before the baby comes, but we'll see.