Rea Rea turns 4

Eight days after the birth of her little brother, my Rea Rea turned four! I can hardly believe how big she's getting...it seems like only yesterday that I was bringing her home from the hospital.

Each day that passes, her personality has blossomed more and more. No longer my shy, quiet little girl....she is competitive, spunky, sweet, caring and my oh so smart big girl. Her favorite food is anything with sugar in it, she still carries her beloved bunny everywhere and she strives to beat her older brother at anything and everything. She is so incredibly helpful with her baby brother--retrieving pacifiers, diapers and singing songs constantly. What would I do without her these days? When she grows up she wants to be an artist! She loves to draw, color, paint and create. Her need to organize makes her daddy so proud.  She refuses to let me style her hair in any way...she likes to let the curls speak for themselves. Where did my baby girl go?

Rea, mommy loves you so much and am so proud of who you are and you are becoming. I love that we girls are a "team" among all of these boys and I can't wait to watch you grow up. You are my "queen in between" and your daddy's "sweet pea". Never change, sweet girl...you are perfection.

Loyal James Frank Keever

Our newest addition arrived, right on schedule, at 8:23am on December 10th.  He weighed in at 8 pounds 7 ounces and we were told he was 19 inches long. Come to find out, he was actually a lot longer than that...he was measured wrong. Oh well!

Josh and I were up early that morning.  We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 and we were scheduled to be the first case in the OR.  I was a nervous wreck...I think I concealed it well, but I was definitely jittery.  Josh was excited but I'm sure he would say it was a morning of anxiety for him too....I mean, we were about to be the parents of three children! And I was about to undergo a surgery! Did I mention how huge I was the morning I delivered?

The surgery went great! Although they had to do my spinal twice, which was quite painful.  When it was all said and done, we had a healthy and perfect baby boy!  I have never been so relieved to get something over with in my life.

While we were in the hospital, my mom and dad took care of Wyatt and Reagan for us...God bless them. I know the kids just wore them out! Especially my mom....she was running them back and forth to school and the hospital for visits.  The day Loyal was born, my parents dropped both of the kids off at school and then came directly to the hospital to meet their newest grandchild. At lunch time they headed back to get Rea and waited until picking Wyatt up from school at three before coming back.

Seeing Wyatt and Reagan meet their brother for the first time was so precious. They loved him instantly and Loyal instantly recognized their voices. Every time one of them would speak, he would try to look around and find them.  Melted my heart!  Reagan had a hard time leaving me at the hospital. I think it was a mixture of missing me and being upset that mommy was hurting. She was a brave girl, though, and Nana eventually coerced her into going home. (It was a daily battle). My dad had to leave mid-week, but I was so thrilled that he got to be there to see Loyal enter the world.

We spent just shy of three days in the hospital and then they sent us home. It was nice to get home and start to develop a routine. Mom stayed with us for one more day and then she had to head back to Alabama. After she left, Josh took the next week off of work to help me get used to having all of these little ones around! At the time, Loyal was waking every two hours to eat....we were exhausted!!! So glad we've gotten past that stage. Although I already miss that precious newborn baby that he was...

Backtracking

I am finally going to do a bit of backtracking. I'm here to catch up...so here goes.

Let's go back to the beginning of December...

Rea had her Christmas program on December 5th. It was basically identical to the programs that Wyatt participated in when he attended school at First Baptist, and it was precious. There's almost nothing cuter than little boys and girls dressed up like angel, singing about Jesus!  Rea did great! She's normally pretty shy in front of an audience, but she sang all of her songs and did all of the motions like a champ! I was one proud mama!

Two days after Rea's program at school, my mom and dad flew out to be with us for the birth of our newest little one, Loyal.  But before Loyal was born we still had a few activities to go.  On December 7th, Rea's ballet class rode a float in the town Christmas parade. It was a lot of fun, even if I was 9 months pregnant and freezing! Then the morning of the 8th, was her ballet recital at the big breakfast with Santa. I got a little upset because they started the performance early which caused Josh, Wyatt and my dad to miss her dance--they had run to get her some flowers on their way to the show. That's alright though...Rea had no idea and her Papa still got to see her all dressed up!

The days leading up to Loyal's birthday were so busy and so full...I was wiped out by the time the csection date rolled around...

Promises, promises

I promise I will find a day to sit down and update this blog...until then, here is a picture of my sweet baby boy to hold you over...he's nine weeks old and he's adorable!

Overheard in the kitchen...

Sister says to brother: 

Well I'm going to pray to Jesus that you'll start being nice.

Brother says to sister:

Well I'm going to pray that you get over it.

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Sigh. Siblings. At least they know they can pray about their problems.

Smiles!!!

We got our first real smiles yesterday morning! Just melts my heart!

My three...

I know I have so much catching up to do on this blog...I still haven't posted from Loyal's birth, Rea's birthday or Christmas...

I promise to get to that soon. But for now, I wanted to post some pictures of my three that I took today. Still seems so surreal that I have three babies now...my heart is so achingly full!

I'm biased, of course, but aren't these little ones beautiful?