Bitten

Mallory started Mother's Day Out for the first time last week. Yesterday was just the 3rd day of her entire school career.

Day 1- Went really well with just a little crying at drop off.
Day 2- She fought her nap a little but had a pretty good day.
Day 3- She was bitten by another child.

My poor baby wanted the same toy as an anonymous classmate and ended up with a bite to the cheek.



This is where being a second (or third) time Mom comes in handy. For a split second I wanted to be very upset that this happened to my poor baby but then I remembered being in the other parent's shoes, totally helpless to what your child had done. Peyton had a school biting incident of his own (after being a little bullied by a bigger kid)- but he was the biter not the victim. At 18 months old they don't know what they are doing and don't have the words to negotiate, so some will bite. It is just what happens. I just hope Mallory doesn't start biting back because knowing her she just might. She doesn't put up with much.

When the teacher said there had been a bite I panicked. I think I feared her being the biter more than the bitten.

Just a little dose of "Mommy Karma". If you have a biter you will probably also have a bitten. So try to be graceful in both situations. :)



Sweet Baby Girl, school will continue to be fun for you, I promise!

Nolan "Nolie" 2 Month Stats

Nolan turned 2 months old on May 28th. Obviously some time has passed since then so the picture taken today is actually him at 11 weeks old. I am guessing there is about a pound difference between these weeks.

Here are his stats from his 2 month appointment on May 24th:

Weight: 14 Pounds, 90th percentile
Height: 25 inches, Greater than 98th percentile (or off the charts)
Head: 15 1/2 inches, 55th percentile

Still a VERY big boy.

He is wearing 6 month clothes and size 2 diapers.

What can I say about sweet Nolie? In the last few weeks he has started smiling a lot. He wakes up all smiles and smiles whenever anyone catches his eye. The past week he has really started "talking" and loves to hold conversations with you. He even started laughing a bit and it just melts my heart. He SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT for the first time ever last night and although I'm not going to get used to it too soon at least we are headed in the right direction. He sleeps the best swaddled, laughs at his mobile, likes his bouncy seat, and enjoys looking at fans. He looks a lot like Marshall but also looks like my brother.

Peyton still adores him and can't keep his hands off him. Peyton loves to push him in his stroller during pick up and drop off at his school. Mallory has learned a new word "Eyes", and , well- you can see where that is headed. I think we may need to buy Nolan some plastic goggles until she learns a new word.

Brobee Outtakes:


Look at this precious smile!

Griswold Part 2, Pippa, Perspective, and 12 hours later......

After Orange Beach we set off for Thomasville, Georgia for the beautiful wedding of Marshall's cousin Laurel. It was wonderful to see so many family members and to see Laurel and Beau get married. Peyton was the ring bearer and although he did a great job at rehearsal decided he would NOT walk down the aisle at the wedding. Thankfully Bebe "pulled a Pippa" and walked him down as an impromptu flower girl. Remember how Pippa walked the kids down during the Royal Wedding? Well you can call Bebe Pippa from now on :)

Photography was discouraged during the ceremony so here is the best I could get of Peyton and "Pippa".


We met up with Peyton's boy cousins at the wedding and he had a great time running around with them all weekend and playing at Aunt Nicki and Uncle Chuck's amazing house out in the country. Laurel was a gorgeous bride and we had a great time in Georgia. I will try to get ahold of some pictures to post later.

Our next stop after Georgia was supposed to be a night in an Alabama hotel on our way to the lake house in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We were pretty tired of being in the car at this point and at one point I strongly questioned my decision to take such a small baby and a toddler on this trip. Here is just a snippet of what was happening in our car: You hear me say we are somewhere near Birmingham Alabama.



Shortly after arriving near Birmingham we were hit with a strong dose of PERSPECTIVE of how lucky we were to be together on this trip. We had unknowingly stumbled across the aftermath of a massive tornado. It literally stopped us in our tracks and we pulled over just to take it all in. Our drive had led us to the doorstep of the tragic and deadly tornado that went through Alabama the previous month. We had absolutely no idea that this was on our drive The devastation was indescribable. Below is a short clip of an entire neighborhood that was flattened directly off the highway.


What you are seeing is a nice neighborhood that is just no longer there. Trees were completely uprooted and split in half, houses destroyed, personal belongings strewn about. We've had our fair share of tornado sirens lately so it made me so thankful for my sweet family, the babies crying and all. I will never forget what I saw in Birmingham that day. Prayers for all of those that have been affected by these horrible tornadoes.

So if you are keeping track we had now driven through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and back through Alabama on our way through Tennessee and then to Arkansas. Rather than put our kids through another random hotel room we decided to push on through and skip a hotel in Alabama and go on to Hot Springs. TWELVE hours later we arrived in Hot Springs and this is where we spent a week on the lake and celebrated Peyton's 4th birthday. That post will come soon!

Griswold Family Road Trip: Part 1: Orange Beach

I have a lot of blogging to do to catch everyone up on our last couple of weeks. I will be hard at work! But starting off the slew of blog posts will be day 1 and day 2 of our Epic Road trip. Our sweet family of five just returned from a 12 day trip in which we drove through 7 states and spent a week at the lake house. The word "CRAZY" has been hurled at me multiple times in the last month when I described our trip to friends and other moms. It was daunting to take an 8 week old, 18 month old, and 3 year old on a drive that started in Texas and ended in Georgia and in Arkansas, but the alternative was to stay home and miss out on the fun, as well as be alone with the 2 youngest kids. I figured I'd take my chances in the car where everyone could share the fun:) Well, we survived it and although there were stressful times (flat tire, no hotel rooms available, crying children, etc.) we made some great memories along the way.

Kicking us off- here are the notes on Day 1 and Day 2 of our trip. Dallas to Mississippi and to Alabama

We left Dallas late afternoon and planned on driving to Monroe, Louisiana. The kids were doing so well in the car that we cancelled our hotel reservation in Monroe and decided to push it 2 hours further, to Jackson Mississippi. Around midnight we arrived in Jackson and had to stay at the only hotel that had rooms available. A very DATED, thin walled with hard beds, Comfort Inn. We mistakenly thought our kids would sleep through the transition from car to hotel bed. Wrong! It was party time once we got everything up into the hotel room. I knew we would laugh about it one day but we were exhausted, had a full day ahead of us, and Mallory didn't go to sleep until 3 AM. She fell off the bed head first and screamed so loud that I heard the people around us talking about it at 2 AM( thin walls) and this also sent Marshall all the way to the parking lot to get a pack n play since she obviously needed to be confined. (she was fine after the fall, don't worry!)The AC only had 2 settings. Off and muggy or what felt like only 32 degrees. After a freezing few hours of sleep we loaded back up and headed for Orange Beach, Alabama to spend one night on the beach. It was a rough night but I can laugh about it now. Also worth mentioning is that during our midnight check in Marshall tried to open the wrong hotel door and surprised an elderly couple that had just checked in. With that mistake (it was the hotel clerks fault), and the crying kids I'm sure they were glad to see us leaving first thing that morning! Now, off to the beach!

Orange Beach was adorable and a beautiful beach setting. Our hotel was smack dab on the beach. A beach vacation is anything but relaxing with 3 tiny ones but we had a great time. Peyton didn't remember the ocean from when he was a baby so he was seeing everything for the first time and fearless Mallory kept running head first in to the waves. Little Nolan was happy as can be in the baby bjorn with me listening to the waves. We stayed in a brand new hotel with a perfect oceanfront swimming pool for kids and really had a nice time. All Five of us to a small hotel room and we still had a great time :) We did get a flat tire on our way to dinner that night but quickly got it fixed. There were a few tantrums from exhaustion and Mallory pretty much climbed on everything in the hotel room but it really was an awesome way to break up the trip.

Here is a short 1 minute video footage of our kids in the ocean for the first time. Such amazing memories and this beach may be worth a 12 hour repeat drive in our future.


View from our Room:



Wish we could have stayed longer than one night at the beach but next it was off to Georgia for a family wedding and Peyton's ring bearer appearance! Stay tuned for the next chapter of our trip :)

I see a baby, I see a smile, I see a DIMPLE!

Nolan is 8 weeks old today. We will have his 2 month stats after his appointment tomorrow. He is changing daily and today I kind of caught his smiling on camera. Those of you that have seen him lately know that he looks exactly like Marshall, so I am THRILLED to announce that he has a Dimple, which is all from ME. It isn't as pronounced as Mallory's but definitely comes out when he smiles. Here is a first glance at this surprise trait.





I didn't have many dreams about him during my pregnancy but remember one very vivid one in which I had the baby in a hotel and it was a boy with brown hair, blue eyes, and one big dimple. The jury is still out on the eyes but this dimple shows that God knew all along that you were meant for me little baby!

And sorry about the boppy. There is a lot of pink in your world- you can thank being so close in age to Mallory for that. :)

Speaking of Sister- She is a HANDFUL. Still a delight but a handful. Rumplestiltzkin, or Rumple, is her new name. No one knows this better than little Nolan.She actually has been awesome towards him, just wants to get her hands all over him and doesn't know how to be gentle.

Nolan pleading "Can I get some help here!!!!"


It's a dangerous World as Nolan sees it.


Rumple doesn't like to be told "No HIT!"

On the flip side, Peyton is Nolan's BIGGEST fan. The poor baby tries to do some tummy time and work on holding his neck up,

Only to find that his big brother needs to be everywhere he is. So it is Tummy TIme for all!

Whew! All the group tummy time wears him out!


So things are settling in. It has been a rough but rewarding road. I've had a C Section, umbilical hernia surgery, and a sprained ankle all in the last 8 weeks, BUT seeing this baby smile at me makes it all worthwhile. We never know what the day is going to bring but we are facing it all together. Happy 8 weeks Nolan!

Room to call their Own

Major Drum roll please.............Introducing the new nursery of Nolan Mark and the new toddler room of Mallory Ann! A HUGE shout out and thank you to Kristen Brown, a wonderful friend, who spent five nights with our family, helping out with the kids after I had surgery and helping us switch over their rooms. I am so glad that everyone now has a place to call their own. The rooms aren't in perfect order but you can get the idea.

Mallory will move out of her crib in the next few months and we have a nice desk/shelf to put in when that happens, but here is her sweet big girl room that matches her nursery. The closet has decals on it, love it!




The biggest accomplishment- her CLOSET! She doesn't have room for a dresser right now so everything is in here, and you should have seen it before when it was our junk closet. Cleaning out all of our junk and perfectly organizing her belongings was probably the biggest accomplishment of the weekend. Thank you Kristen!



My kids love Curious George, and i love that he is timeless, so baby Nolan has a Curious George themed nursery, the only thing missing may be a window valence. Such a sweet boy nursery. I did a lot of the customized stuff (prints, lampshade, etc.) off of Etsy.com. There are some great finds on there.




Here are some close ups of the Etsy finds, the lamp shade is made out of the same sheet on his bed. And the set of prints matches his bedding and has images from famous Curious George stories. (Kite, hot air balloon, etc.)


Now we will work on getting Nolan to actually sleep in his adorable crib. Thank you again Kristen for all of your help this week.

One Month In

Little Nolan turned 1 month old on April 28th. We went to the doctor earlier that week and his stats were:
Weight: 11 lbs 7 ounces
Height: 23 1/4 inches
Head: 15 inches

That puts him in the 90th percentile of weight, 98th of Height, and 75th of head. Still a VERY big boy. He is wearing clothes that Peyton wore at 3/4 months old, they are just so different.

Here is Nolan at 1 month, next to Mallory's Yo Gabba Gabba "Brobee" doll. We are going to use Brobee as a marker to see how big he is getting each month. I thought Brobee was a big stuffed animal but Nolan already looks huge next to him!


Here is Peyton at 1 month wearing the same outfit (it was huge on him and barely snapped shut on Nolan)


And here is Mallory around 1 month:


He really reminds me a lot of Peyton and I think Peyton would have been big like him had he been born 3 weeks later, but I see a lot of Mallory in him as well. He is a perfect blending of the two of them. His temperament is very different- he is crankier than Mallory but in more of a routine than Peyton, we'll see what happens this month.

Nolan: at one month old you are a sweet baby. Like most newborns you can cry a lot but you are sleeping pretty good stretches. You love to eat. you've never pulled away from eating and would probably eat all day if I let you. But- you take a pacifier and a bottle. Yay!!! You make very funny noises and keep Daddy and I awake while you grunt at night :) You enjoy your bath and without fail, usually pee during it in a perfect arc over the bathtub onto a family picture on the counter. (same picture as the top of this blog!) Peyton calls you "Gnocchi" and loves to kiss you and love on you and sing to you and Mallory tries to attack you every chance she gets. She is very generous and aggressive with her love. You've already had your first cold, and subsequent ear infection thanks to your siblings but handled it like a champ. We see the beginnings of smiles and cooing so can't wait for the next few weeks when you start doing these. It has only been 30 days but we can't imagine life without you.

We love our little baby!

Hippity Hoppity, Easter 2011

Our first family holiday as a family of five, Easter 2011. Nolan was three weeks old and sick all weekend but was a trooper with all of our fun events. Here is a slew of pictures in no particular order of an Easter Egg hunt in Lake Highlands, our family's Easter morning hunting for our Easter baskets, and Easter lunch spent with ALL of our cousins and aunts, uncles, Bebe and Papa on the Yates side.


The Girl Cousins

All TEN Grandchildren, ranging in age from 3 weeks to almost 9.

Yup, this picture pretty much sums up our life right now.



Cant believe these are all mine.












Promise to do more "blogging" in the future! But at least I've got the pictures up :)

Little Nolan, Little Nolan

Photos taken by Rachellee Jones



"Little Nolan! Little Nolan!" is the new song in our house. Peyton created this song for his new baby BROTHER! Nolan Mark entered our world at 5:11 AM on March 28th, 2011. As expected he was HUGE. 9 pounds, 9 ounces and 22 inches LONG. He looks about a month older than he really is :)

The short birth story: I had a scheduled C section for Tuesday, but Sunday got really achy and with lots of back pain, etc. No consistent contractions though, just the same kind I had been having for weeks. My mom flew in to town in preparation for the C section and we went about our day. I had some pains all day but didn't really think I was in labor. At midnight I awoke with a knifing pain across my stomach, we tried to wait it out to make sure it was the real deal but soon I couldn't even walk or talk. The pain was CRAZY! By the time we got to the hospital-at 1:15 am, i was already dilated to a SEVEN. A Seven! I could have had that baby in the suburban :) I pleaded for an epidural because the contractions were coming super close and was the worst pain imaginable and once I got it I was pretty happy. After fully dilating, water breaking on own, baby moving down, etc. the OB suggested a C section because he worried about risk to the baby due to his size. It was a tough decision since we were so close to being able to have the baby without surgery but the doctor was right. We went ahead with the surgery and thank goodness we did because he was bigger than they thought.



Nolan is three weeks old today and such a sweet baby. First of all, he is beautiful. I may be biased but he is a gorgeous newborn. He loves to snuggle and sleeps a lot. He loves to suck and has taken nicely to a pacifier. He likes to be held most of the time, appears to have a dimple when he smiles, has a cute cleft in his chin, and is just super long. Those newborn diapers lasted about one week and we are in 3 month clothes.






Big Brother Peyton ADORES him. Big Sister Mallory isn't really sure what he is. A Toy? A Pet? She isn't very gentle with him : but doesn't seem to not like him either. We are all so happy to finally meet him and to start our family of five. He was perfectly designed for our family and we are so happy to have him.






Many more pictures, stories, etc. to come but for now we just wanted to announce this little baby. It is going to be a crazy couple of months so we may not have as many posts, but I can promise they will be interesting! Thank you God for our beautiful and perfect little family. Let the fun begin :)