A new addition

Our family has gone through quite a change since my last entry. We settled into our home here in Washington, Dave has been submerged in his CPE course which is really intense and often emotionally draining...and, oh, yeah, we had a baby! Things could not have gone better. She was born at 12:35 in the afternoon, coming in at 8 pounds, 12 ounces and measuring just slightly over 21 inches. There weren't any complications from the 4th C-section though I did develop a fun skin infection after the fact. It's been treated and all is well now. I am incredibly thankful that I did not have a single migraine in this pregnancy. It was an almost perfect pregnancy. I had some morning sickness at the beginning but then felt great!! I only gained 26 pounds (which is half what I gained with any of the others) and felt so good the whole time. We took a trip to the Olympic Peninsula just a couple weeks before the baby was born and I hiked through the forest and climbed over huge driftwood logs to get to the beach. It was too beautiful not to explore.

My little girl is a perfect baby. Hardly ever fusses unless I don't get to feeding her fast enough. She sleeps at night, for the most part. We've only had a few nights in the last month that she has not wanted to let me sleep. Her siblings are completely smitten with her. They fight over who gets to take her diapers upstairs to the diaper pail and who will pick out her clothes for the day. She gets lots of hugs and kisses every day. We enjoyed my mom being here for the first week after we brought her home from the hospital (we really missed not having my dad here but talked to him on the computer) and Dave's parents here for a week after that. Life with 4 children is certainly hectic but I love it! :-) My oldest (8 years old) has really stepped up to the plate lately. The last 2 mornings she has woken up and fixed cereal and juice for herself and her brother and sister so that I could sleep in. She does a great job, even putting the cereal, milk, and juice away. And she started doing this without being asked which I think is very impressive!

In non baby news, my 5 year old has a memory like a steel trap. I am constantly amazed at how she can recount conversations from weeks ago, word for word. I am certainly going to have to be careful what i say around her because she doesn't seem to forget a thing! We read Bible stories every night an din an effort to make sure they pay attention, ask the kids to tell us what the story was about when we are done reading, as well as asking what the story was from the night before. She can basically retell the stories in detail everytime. A recent story was about Ruth. At the end they said that Ruth had Obed, Obed had Jesse and Jesse had David. My husband asked if the kids knew who David was and my 3 year old son promptly responds "me!"

Since our big news is the birth of our daughter, I have included some pictures. Enjoy!!