Wishing, Dreaming, Watching

Okay so I know the dance season is over but I ran across these pictures and I have to tell this story.

So your two years old and Mom drags you every Wednesday to go sit in a foyer with a bunch of other Mommies. While they have their hen party your stuck watching your big sister (who you love and admire) dance and play it up in pink leotards and tutus! Talk about unfair!


On the rare occasion that your leotard is clean and you wear it, you've been mistaken for one of the girls in the class, and was able to sneak in twice before they realized they had an extra kid in there.


Every week the question and the answer are the same, "am I old enough to go to dance class Mommy?" "Not until your three." "But Mommy I'm taller today!"


I am happy to say little dancer turned three in April and will be attending dance camp this summer. (Mind you, PRINCESS dance camp!)


But I was amazed this morning walking into the living room both my dancers doing the dance routine taught last year in class step for step!

Super Girl

She saves baby brother from the monsters!

She saves Mommy from the dishes!

She saves Daddy from boredom!

She saves big sister from Mommy!

She has her own pose, her own run and her own style!

I dont know where she originated from, she just showed up one day and I love her so much! Here are a few still shots I was able to capture.



(Note hand on hips.)


She takes her job VERY seriously!
When I asked her if she wanted me to sew her a cape, she said no, she had blankie. Apparently it has super powers too. I think I'll make her a cape anyway. :)

Book Fair 2010

As you can tell we love to read! Its a staple in our lives we cant do without. So when we hear that there is a book fair happening where you get free books and get to play games we are so there baby! To save some blogging time I'm just going to describe quickly a little of the fun, the girls and Aunt Lissa and cousin Abbie were all turned into princess's. I sacrificed myself for the sake of holding Timmy and was turned into a prince. (I make a mighty fine one if i do say so myself!)
Then to keep in with the trends the children's faces were painted to reflect personalities, Mae a heart, Liza and Abbie cats, Timmy slept through the event.
There was much excitement when fishes were caught with magnets, and when we got to create our own publications with cut out pictures and glue.
A very tiring but fun day, on a personal note, I'm really glad my sister was willing to give up a Sat. to spend w/ and my loud kids! LOL!

Teddy Bear Picnic!

As part of our school curriculum we pick one book to read once a day every day for five days then we do a related craft, science experiment, or activity. (Five in a Row by Jane Claire Lambert) Last week we read Corduroy. To end the week we kicked off with a teddy bear picnic. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a blast pulling out every bear in the house, even Mommy and Daddies old bears.

13 Pounds in 6 weeks!

As I posted in past blogs I'm doing Weight Watchers now, and I've lost 13 pounds! yeah me! I cant really tell a difference but I feel better and I have more energy, so maybe the hot mama I feel hiding under all the flab will come reveal herself soon lol!!! These pics were taken when I'd lost about 10 pds. But Timmy is a cutie so I'm showing him off now! (BTW this is his favorite snugly right now, a little half blanket half bear from G-Ma.)

Mae's 5th birthday!

We didn't do much this year, no friends over or anything, but we managed to have a great time with family and lots of one on one time. We started out with our yearly tradition of B-Day pancakes and singing!






She got her ears pierced and that was a big deal, I tell you what, it was like coaxing a frog into the mouth of a crocodile getting her to sit down in the chair. But she'd been begging us to to it for months and I wasn't going to let her turn back. Once it was all over she was ecstatic and shows them off to everyone. (Pink Butterflies.)







She then got a Easy Bake Oven from her G-ma and just LOVES to cook things for all the people (men) in her life! I think she has discovered early, that teenage uncles will eat just about anything, and the way to Daddy's heart is through his stomach. Her pappy was assigned the snack for F.H.E. and when Mae brought her cakes and he didn't have to lift a finger, and when she fed him, he thought she was better than sliced bread!










Her Aunt Lissa took her to the planetarium, just the two of them and that was a special treat. I've never even been there and hearing it from a five year old's point of view is great lol!

But the best thing in my eyes was that it just so happened that her Dance class scheduled their recital pictures to be taken that night. So her dance pics were taken on her B-Day, she thought they did that just for her lol! I'll have to post those when I get them though.

Baby Timmy

Well here's the story, I think I'm going to have to abridge it because this is one of those very small windows of time that I get while Timmy's asleep. I should be doing laundry but I owe it to my journaling (and all of the blogging fans, j/k,) to get this down.





Timmy was due November 10th, and I was ready and set to have a natural birth. No inductions, or anything else was going to interfere with my baby's birth! Well so much for having a plan! My little mama's boy didn't want to come out. When he was a week over due I drug my sweet little sister and our kids out for the day to walk that kid out of me.

I was huge, my feet hurt, and the kids were in full protest. But Lissa kept up a happy face for me, and we walked around the mall for hours! By the end of the day I was thinking that it was hopeless. When I getting into the car I felt a small pop and something warm.


You guessed it, I broke my water, but only the tiniest bit, little known fact; you can break a little and leak for days! Since it wasn't that big of a feeling I didn't go to the hospital.
But by the next day at church I could feel that I was leaking quite a bit of fluid. A friend off mine who's a doula reminded me that the amniotic fluid is replenished about every two hours, so as long as I kept drinking alot of water, perhaps I could let my body go into labor on its own.

Nothing I telling you NOthing happened! That darn kid wouldn't come on his own!!
So I called my Dr. and she scheduled me for an induction on the 19th.

I was so upset and weepy. Tim just told me that my body doesn't know how to go into labor by itself.
WWWWAAAAAAA! So now my body doesn't know how to be a mommy? On top of being oobber fat, and uncomfortable, that is SO not what I needed to hear.
Call me moody mama.

So moody mama here, totally does not want people looking at her while in pain. I told Tim he was the only one allowed in the delivery room, and even then I might have a Dr. throw him out. J/K.
However I did want my mother and Tim's to come see the baby, and Tim's mother lives in Ga. so we called her up and told her when to be at the hospital explaining that she could come see me for a bit but during the delivery she could go into the waiting room.
She got there right after I was all hooked up to the pitocin and in the bed.


Now lets back up a little, I've had two other inductions, the pitocin made me contract normally then the epidural helped me dialate, then wallah! Baby!

Not going to happen this time!!!!
My body knew what that pitocin was and went into contraction Over-Drive! I had the most painful super strong contractions every minute and a half on the button! I went through this for two and a half hours before I said if you don't give me a pain killer soon I wont have any energy left to push. Now Tim's mom was there for all this,,,,,,THANK GOODNESS! I couldn't have made it through w/o her. Her hands were soft and cool, her touch was gentle, her voice was soothing and she knew the right spots on my back to rub.

They finally gave me the epidural and I got some rest. Then it wore off and we were right back where we were before. I vaguely remember the epidural machine breaking and being in too much pain to do anything about it but Angel going out and demanding they fix it soon!





Then I needed to push, I could feel it, the nurse confirmed it, the Dr. came a'runnin', Angel started to leave,,,,NOOO! I begged her to stay and help me. Now don't think that Tim was absent during this whole thing or that Angel took over for him. She actually was encouraging him to step up and help me more and he was right there trying to be encouraging.
But Tim's way of being a cheerleader is quite literal,
"Come on babe! Push him out! Push him out! WAAAY OUT!"
I feel like I'm at a football game hiking it all down field.
This pain was unlike the other births and I needed more than my regular cheer section.

I think that God knew that and sent me Angel, who was literally holding me up on one side while Tim held me up on the other.


Timothy Stark II was born Nov. 19th at 7pds. 11oz., 20 in.long.




The first thing I noticed was that he was my first baby that had that kind of cone head from being in the birth canal too long, then I felt a little elation when I noticed that he wasn't jaundiced at all! (Both the girls had to have Bili blankets for their jaundice.)

Is it weird to say a boy is beautiful? I don't think so, because I really believe I have a beautiful little boy!

But looking him over he is the perfect little mini-Tim, he looks just like his daddy. I love them both so much, I love too see how much they are alike. Not just in appearance but in personality as well. The girls absolutely adore their little brother.



Another great blessing of the day was my mom, she was able and willing to take care of the girls. So I knew right where they were, that they were being taken good care of and I didn't feel bad about them staying over night. I really am grateful to live near such loving family.


Mae has become quite an expert in changing diapers and getting him dressed, (with supervision of course.) Liza likes to say that he is HER little brother and she is HIS Liza.
They are both anxious to feed him. So at three months old he has already had a taste of pop-sickle, goldfish, ketchup, and suckers.

Sorry if my spelling has been off and I know this post was long, (I had to stop to feed him in the middle of it.) But I got it all down, so later we can read it again and relive the pain, Oh Joy!

And that's why he's called Cliff Hanger!

I dont know why but I keep relating my life to cartoons.
Here's my latest, I just cant seem to get away from my cliff. Normal people call it food. I call it my obsession! I love to cook and create and in so doing I've become very overweight.
I'm shocked I've gotten this big. My family all say "well you've had three kids, its baby weight!"
Then I see friends of mine that have had three or more kids and they dont look like me!
SO I've taken the plunge and joined Weight Watchers. I love it! I'm a nursing mommy so I get more points than normal, and in two weeks I've already lost 5.9 pounds!!!


Hopefully I can let go of that accursed delicious food and land on my feet. Wish me luck.

P.S. I'll post about my new munchkin Timmy later. I know your all "dying" to hear his birth story. j/k!