Nothing revives a blog like a new camera...

 Abram turned four on Tuesday...he's just as delightful as he looks.

 Yes, this is Finley.  Yes, these eyes are for real.  No, you can't have her.

 Thomas is just six weeks shy of 8 years old.  He would like to invite the whole world  to his baptism on December 1st.  Have we mentioned that Florida has beautiful balmy weather in December?  Why not escape the gloom of your city in the grips of winter and come bask in the glow of the most sun-shiney little boy you've ever met?

 Oh, and this one:  You can't have her either.

  Lilly will be two in just a month.  She is delightful and taciturn.  And she pulls it off beautifully...

Stay tuned, folks.  I think I'm remembering how much I love this blog.

To Those of you Exhibiting Super-Human Loyalty:

Exactly one year ago today I posted.




then....Nothing




.......for twelve full months.

The highly logic among you will have deduced that I did indeed have that baby I was talking about last year. Yes sirree. Sure did.

It was awesome.
And it kept on being Awesome for twelve full months.
So Awesome, in fact, that I couldn't find one single moment to sit down at the computer and tell you about it.
That's pretty awesome, no?

Well. Suffice it to say: Our Lilly Ella was born on Nov. 11, 2010.
and today,

11/11/11
she's

1

Figured I owed you some baby bliss I promised all those many months ago.
She's about 311 kinds of Awesome.

Multiply that by 5 other Spraguelings and their various wonderfulness.

That much awesome keeps a mama pretty busy.
So, no snide comments about falling off the face of the earth.
I only fell into a black hole's worth of Daily Life.
And now I've arrived on the other side. Hello.
It's good to see you again.
Thanks for sticking around.
I love your faithful little hearts.

Keeping Odd Hours

Pregnancy is the triathlon training for parenthood. It prepares you for the three endurance sports of sleep deprivation, ignoring bodily discomfort, and surrender of personal needs on behalf of another. Newborn care might be too overwhelming without having first had several months of getting up every couple of hours due to body ache and the call of the potty. By the time this little one is here, I won't mind hearing her mewling cry throughout what should be "the night" because it's so much better than what I've been waking up for. Pretty ingenious plan, no?
Added bonus: we kind of get to know her before she's even here.

Oh, yes. There are some things we already know about our Lilly.

Firstly, she keeps odd hours.

She gets most active very late at night. I can go to bed at 8, lay there for an hour or three reading, and just as 11 or 12 creeps near and I'm ready to sleep...Zing! She's up, awake, dancing the conga. It's not the lack of activity that cues her in, or she'd start wiggling at 8 when I first start relaxing. If I fall asleep at 8:15, she'll still ring in the new day somewhere around midnight. She'll wake me out of a dead sleep.

And she can go, and go, and go.

Like the energizer bunny.

Vigorous little thing. I wondered early on if she maybe had and extra appendage, too many arms or an extra leg. But really, it's more like...a spare kangaroo tail. Is that possible? Have you seen anything like that on Discovery or The Learning Channel? I should get cable, I need to be more informed.

And in just a matter of hours we should be able to tell you more about our Little Lilly's attributes. We head into to hospital in 4 hours or so for induction. Since they've already sent me home twice, I'm dilated to 4cm, and prone to deliver fast, we expect to meet her very soon. As I struggle throughout the night to get my pregnant little body out of bed, like Ralphie's little brother in the snow, I am comforted to know that this will be the last night I spend as a pregnant woman. That's no slight thing, folks. I've spent 4 1/2 years of my life growing Spraguelings in utero. It's the end of an era.

So, what am I doing at 4 am on the morning of my Labor day festivities?

Keeping odd hours,

watching Lilly dance the conga,

diligently doing my triathlon training for parenting.

I'll catch you back here after my big work is done. Be prepared for baby bliss.
For now, I'll refrain from whining..."Hey you kid. Ralphie, I can't get up!"

The Waiting Game Series: Part V

Parents joke about taking ridiculous amounts of photos of your first born, and subsequently fewer and fewer with each child. Well, I'll propose that at a certain age, that dynamic reversed itself. Is it because they're not as cute when they're older? Do kids do fewer adorable things in their pre-teens, or are they just vying less for camera time? Whatever it is, I have way fewer photos of my first and honored son than of anyone else. I still think he's cute. I just don't snap photos of him in his undies and bow-tie...and maybe that's only proper. Contrary to popular belief, I DO have a certain amount of judgement.




Eleven-year-old boys are hard to document on film. Most of Jared's "trying to be funny" moments come in the form of wit...perhaps more commonly referred to as sarcasm. And trust me, I don't want to preserve those moments for posterity. Do I understand my own mother's exasperation better now? Yes, I do.

• For those of you dear family and friends who have not yet encountered the fickle creature known as a "pre-pubescent male child" let me shed light on what you may have to look forward to:
• conversations that reveal their depth of character and understanding you never knew they had
• growing awareness of other people's opinions
• an overlapping mutual interest in music

These guys are actually Fun to hang out with. Maybe not in a large group, but one on one, cruising around, chatting about nothing and everything...it's like chilling out with a friend. I'll admit, I like this guy. He's learning to play guitar and has mastered the intro to some of our favorite songs. I hadn't realized before that, but he actually thinks I have cool music. That may be the last of my coolness for a while, but it feels good to have something of common interest. Since I'm not a football fan, don't get into video and computer games, am not a math whiz, and don't collect Chuck Norris jokes..we're not exactly cut from the same cloth anymore. But Jared takes us as we are, and we return the favor by rolling our eyes and ignoring the 11 year old humor when necessary. It's a give and take. It works.

The Waiting Game Series: Part IV

Love This

Girl.

My Emma Kate

She's Nine now, a third grader.

Creativity flows through her like an unstoppable force. Her imagination is constantly on the move.

If she sees a documentary on wildlife, she's plotting her next novel to include the things she's learned.

When she finds a random scrap of what I'd call trash, she identifies it as a dragon scale and tells me the story of how it came to be in our world.

Her preschool teacher once lovingly called her "little miss contrary", but I wonder if Mrs. Bird would recognize this agreeable little girl now.

She's taking Karate--Tae-kwan-do, actually, and I am amazed by her ferocity and earnestness. You'd think she'd eat any bad guy who came her way. And that's a good thing in my book...

Because as you can see:

at nine years old she is only half a head taller than her five year old brother. But this little lady never did catch on that she was little. She was made for bigger pants than she actually fills.

Anyone interested in hiring her as a personal guard can contact me directly. But I get first dibs on her in any dark alleys.

The Waiting Game Series: Part III

Thomas

I'm tempted to leave this as a graphic novel type post, and just let the pictures tell the story.

Enough Said? No?

Tommy will be Six next month. He wears his undies backward so he can see the picture up front. He's the little gentleman who insists on opening my door. He's exuberant and talkative, he's a middle child vying for first-born status. His actions scream, "Give me your attention, praise me, worship me as your first and honored son!" So eager to please, dying to make me laugh.
Luckily he's very good at both.

He's started Kindergarten and Karate, and loves them both. He might start to seem like a very big boy, but is saved from young man status by those little speech quirks I love. There are a few sounds that just haven't developed yet. Like the letter L. And R. Those are both replaced with a W.
He has no idea that those random knock-knock jokes he makes up are no where near as funny as the things he comes up with in daily conversation.
A snippet from our goodbyes this morning:
"Dad, Dad, don't weave without a piwate bwow kiss (pirate blow kiss). Put it in your pocket in case you need to get cwanky (cranky) with someone".
*kiss* "AARG" *blow*"
Is it any wonder that I just kept having babies after getting a kid like this?

And it doesn't hurt that he's gorgeous and lets me run my fingers through his hair.

I just might have to promote him. Jared is much too fabulous to be dethroned as first and honored son, but he might have to share the pedestal with the middle child. The world is in need of incredible men, and if there aren't enough pedestals to go around they'll just have to share for a while. We're a big family. They're used to sharing.

Tales of Woe followed by Waiting Game Series: Part II

After a night of contractions, vomit, and uncertainty we got a five-minutes-apart pattern and headed into the svelte birthing center mid-morning. Do you remember those trash bag commercials..? ."wimpy, wimpy, wimpy" (bag breaks) "HEFTY, HEFTY, HEFTY" (bag bulges under insane pressure but still holds) Well it is a universal truth that wimpy, wimpy, wimpy contractions will not evict a Hefty, Hefty, Heavy baby. So me and my wimpy contractions got sent home. The injustice of it all is that I still get to put up with contractions, they just don't hurt enough to make any progress...blessing and a curse I guess. *sigh* As my wise OB once told me, "In the end, the baby always comes out." (He gets paid for that kind of sage advice.)

So, on with our Waiting Game Series of catch-up posts. Next in line is Finley Gracie.

In my experience the 31/2 to 41/2 year beats out the terrible twos in difficulty points. I know what I cannot expect a two-year-old to endure. So there are some things I don't even try, some battles I don't even wage. But at 3 or 4 they are capable of comprehending, controlling emotion, complying....some of the time. So I try it...and some of the time I glow with pride and congratulate myself on raising such a wonderful human being...who can go to the grocery store and handle being denied candy with grace and submission...who can stay up later than usual and still climb into bed and wait patiently for stories and stay in bed without so much as a sniffle.

And then there are the times I try it...and we drag our tantrum out of the grocery store before we even hit the check-out, or we come home from an overly fun day to find that a "funned out" child will hold on until 1am crying for the sheer joy of hearing their own screams.

Our Finley delights in pleasing her Mama, saying sweet things to me, cries when I walk across the street to get the mail, or -heaven forbid- go somewhere without her. She may be my biggest fan.

She also cannot be trusted with a writing implement of any kind, nor left in any reasonable radius of a a pair of scissors. Finley and fingernail polish should not share a residence, so one or the other must be thrown out.

These are the constants.

Everything else is a mine field...I don't know what to expect. But I try it... with my best attempt at a "bring it on" attitude.

I'm amazed by her capability for compassion and reason...

sometimes.

I'm in awe of her memory for the laundry list of do's and don'ts....

sometimes.

I bask in her sweet, patient, affectionate nature...

sometimes.

But I love being her Mama...

all the time.

Because without fail she is a daily delight and will make up for cutting her own hair, body-checking her brother, melting down when things go wrong--just with that look of adoration she sends my way.

(oh, and fluffy cheeks)

(and licking ice cream off of a comb)

She avoids putting the last straw on the camel's back by tickling the camel pink before the camel can spit in her eye.

And, yes, in this analogy I am the one humped camel.