Family Picture 2012

Here is our family picture that we will send in our Christmas cards this year.  Thought you all might like to see it.

And here is the picture of Malachi that we are sending.  I’m counting this as his birth announcement rather than sending separate ones.

4 months

Malachi had his 4 month check up today!  He is doing so well!!!!  He is 13 lbs 6 oz. and 25 1/4" long.  Using his actual age this puts him in the 50th percentile for height and the 15th for weight!  Not too shabby!  And it would be even better if the doctor had calculated on his adjusted age.  :-)  I'm so proud of my little guy!

Heads up...

Hi Everyone!  Just wanted to give you a heads up that I haven't forgotten you!  I tried to put together a couple of posts this last week only to be informed that I was out of space to upload any more pictures! So, we are thinking and praying about what to do next.  I can continue to post but without pictures.  It will cost a monthly fee to continue to upload pictures and we are just not sure what to do next.  Pray that we will have wisdom in this decision.  Thanks for your patience as we work this out!

Jeremiah's Birthday!

We celebrated Jeremiah's birthday this month.  He is a big 4 year old now!!!   We invited only family (we have decided to invite friends once they get to their 5th birthday), and it was a nice size crowd.

The Birthday Boy :-)

 The theme of the party was construction.  A friends of mine gave me her decorations from her son's construction party so I didn't have to make them, such a blessing!

I made the cake as always, as well as the cupcakes.  I went with very simple, to make things easier for me.  I still got lots of compliments on the cake though.

Baby Shower

My mother in law and sister in law threw me a baby shower a few weeks ago!  It was a lot of fun!  We had a tea followed by the shower.  I was so happy with how it went, and so pleased that so many of my friends could come!

Kid Pics

Here are some pictures of the kids from October.  I hardly ever remember to get out the camera and take pictures, I'm so busy, so I appologize for the lack of pictures.  Also, I just realized there are no pictures of Elijah.  I guess he was working on school or reading a book or something when I took these.  ;-)  

Jeremiah and Malachi

The youngest 3: Jeremiah, Micah, and Malachi

My "Babies"  :-)

Josiah and his airplanes.  He's such a ham, he always wants his picture taken!

Emmy and Malachi.  She is so proud of her little brother and loves to hold and take care of him. 

Malachi

Love Malachi's hair in this pic, freshly washed!

And one final picture that Emmy took of me and Malachi.  :-)  Pictures of me with any of my kids are precious to me, since I'm the one normally taking the pictures I'm rarely in them.

Leaves!

The kids had a blast raking up all the leaves in the front yard and jumping in them!  They buried each other, made "leaf angels" and jumped in the BIG pile they made, over and over again!  So fun!!!

First 4 weeks

Malachi has been home now for 4 weeks!  It's hard to believe it's been that long, it feels like just yesterday we brought him home.  The weeks have passed by in a blur, each day flies by so fast...  I am REALLY busy with taking care of Malachi.  He is learning to nurse so I'm pumping every 3 hours in addition to trying to teach him to nurse and bottle feeding him.  It takes about 1 1/2 - 2 hours of every 3 hour period to accomplish those things, so needless to say, I don't have much time! 

The big news for him is that he was able to go off the oxygen this week!  It's so nice to carry him around the house, instead of being tied to one spot in the living room.  :-)  He's growing well and has really filled out.  Last week he was 8 lbs 2 oz, and 22 1/2" long, he's getting to be a big boy and finally looks like a newborn, now that he's almost 2 months!  Here are some pictures of his first 4 weeks at home.

In the car seat at the hospital, ready to come home!  He was 6 lbs here.

Settling in at home...

Our set up in the living room with Malachi's oxygen machine.  We bought this pack and play special for this set up.

The kids were so excited to have him home, they decorated for his homecoming!

snoozing on our bed!

The proud brothers!

Mark and Malachi

Me and Malachi

starting to fill out!

Finally without oxygen and wide awake!

Yay!

Just to let you all know, Malachi is HOME!!!!!

And then there was six...

On Friday, August 17, Mark and I rushed to the hospital at 7 in the morning because I was having very heavy bleeding.  After a quick check it was determined that I was 4 cm dilated, and the reason for my bleeding was a placenta abruption - the placenta was coming away from the wall of the uterus.  This is a very serious condition and the doctor gave us 2 options: 1. break my water and see if my labor progressed or 2. do an immediate c-section.  We went with option 1, the doctor broke my water, and an hour later our little guy was born.

Malachi was born at 10:14 a.m.  He weighed 5 lbs 6 oz at birth and is 19" long.  He was immediately rushed up to the NICU, where he has been ever since.  The first few days were a blur as we tried to care for the other kids, deal with my healing and hospital rigamorole, and try to see Malachi as much as possible.  We now have a routine down and are waiting on Malachi to get stronger and able to eat consistently from a bottle.

First visit with our new little guy.  The thing on his face is called CPAP, it keeps his lungs open so he can breathe and also (I think) is oxygen as well.

After a few hours they were able to take off the CPAP and he was on room air for a few days before going back on oxygen, just the normal kind.

At first he couldn't maintain his temperature so he was in this special bed that kept him the right temperature.  The "horn" on his head is his IV.  They were able to take that out after a few days, but put in a feeding tube shortly thereafter to keep up his fluid level.

My parents watched the kids for the first weekend and brought them in to visit their new little brother.

Malachi had jaundice so in addition to everything else he had to be put under the jaundice light for 3 days, during which I could only hold him to change his diaper and try to feed him with a bottle, which was not very often succesful.

Finally Awake!  He is 1 week old here and had lost a bit of weight.  He got down to 4 lbs 12 oz before he started gaining back again.

 
We will keep you posted on when he comes home.

Dollhouse - Wallpaper, Porch Swing, and Other Stuff

I have been working like crazy trying to get stuff done on my dollhouse before the babies born because I know after he's born I won't have much time for it for awhile.  We moved my dollhouse up to our room when we had our garage sale because we needed to use the table it was on and have left it up there since then.  We will be moving it back down to the garage again soon, but for now I have LOVED having it in our room!  I have changed my strategy slightly, I am trying to finish all the wallpaper in all the rooms first, then I will work on the flooring in all the rooms, then the trim, and then I will work on furnishing and filling it with all the things I want.   To help accomplish that purpose, I removed all the furniture and decorations from in the house so I could have a good idea of what I was working with.

I installed the wallpaper in the kitchen.  I love how the blue looks!  I cut out the tiles for the kitchen floor and started painting them.  I really like how they look.  :-)
 

I also took the table and chairs that I already had and painted them white, I love how they turned out!

I finished the firebox for the fireplace and bought the fire insert to go inside.  It has not been wired yet, Mark is doing all the wiring so I will have to wait for him to be available.  I think it turned out great!  The only part of the fireplace left to make is the hearth so it's finally close to being done!

I decided not to do full length beadboard on the one wall in the living room that hadn't been papered yet. I just could not come up with a good way to cut out slots for my working light switches. I elected to go with partial beadboard along the bottom of the wall.  This is as complete as it can be for now as Mark wants to put in actual outlets on this wall.  (Yes, we're a bit insane, working light switches and outlets in mini is a bit out of the ordinary!)  This is unfortunately the only picture I have handy of this wall, you can see the light switch on the wall on the left (the little black square).

I installed the trim around the front door and all the rest of the trim on that front wall.  I also hung up some lace curtains, not sure if I like them yet, they turned out a bit big for the window.  Hmmm, I guess I'll have to decide what to do there.

Mark had bought me a porch swing for my birthday and I finally got around to painting it and hanging it up.  I love how homey it makes the porch look, I just want to be mini size so I could sit on it!

I decided on some wallpaper for the room above the living room, not really wallpaper just scrapbook paper in white.  I think this room is going to be a library/playroom.  I have decided I really like white!  I got the paper cut but have not glued it on yet. You can see it in the picture of the whole house up above.

I also choose and bought some wallpaper for the master bedroom, the top right room with the gable.  I'm going for a blue and white look and loved this paper.  I have not cut or installed any of it yet but hope to get to it soon.

Wallpaper for the master bedroom

I finished the chimney with egg carton bricks, mortared and painted it, then glued it on the roof.  Now to complete the shingles around it!

Finally, I splurged on a few fall decorations, an entry mat I've been eyeing since last fall, and a kit to make your own fall leaves.  The leaves were just supposed to be punched out but I didn't like how they looked so I'm adding veins/curling them slightly to look more realistic.  The pumpkin in the picture is one that I made for the fall season last year.

So, there is my dollhouse progress for now!