A beautiful day

It has been a while... honestly, over a year since I posted last and have decided I want to get back started with blogging, for the sake of sharing my little loves adventures.

A friend of mine, Dawn Roberts, came to the house and made some gorgeous photos of our family. We had a blast and she has such a talent. Makes me miss my sister, Heather, while she is out of the country in the final stages of adopting her new addition.

The kids had a blast. The little boy was hilarious with this firetruck. He loved ringing the bell.

I will share more later.

xoxo,
Kellie

My God is real

Wow. Where has the time gone?

I have put some thought into starting back on the blog. I really have wanted to be blogging over the past several months, but time and energy and a pregnancy have gotten most of my attention. So, I hope to be more faithful in recording our life story. After all, I want Ella to look back on the joyous life we have created for her. And, of course, her baby brother will see the fun he had with Big Sis.

Before getting back to life, I want to share a story about past times. I would love to give the full story, but I think I will make it as short and sweet as possible... for my sake.

Today is October 15th, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I have so much to remember.

Last week was 5 years ago that we lost our first little love.  Hard to believe it has really been five years.
Back in 2000, I had my first emergency surgery removing my left ovary and part of my right one. I won't go into details about cysts and blood and other bodily issues, but it was tough to handle physically and emotionally. Waking up to the news that my left ovary was completely infected and my right was partially dead, and had to be removed, was so bizarre. I had been seeing an OB for years and had never been told my uterus was covered in cysts, small and large. My doctor, which I believe we met because of fate, said he removed most of the problem, however, he diagnosed with me with Severe Endometrosis. I had heard of this before because my Grandmother had the same problem. Hereditary, yes. He then continued to see me year after year, and more than once a year.
I constantly lived with pain, stress, and depression.

Year after year, I had some form of issue that caused hospitalization. Whether it was laprascopy because of so much scar tissue, removing cysts and draining blood, removing gall bladder, removing appendix(the last two were not due to the endometrosis, but because mine were in bad shape).. and so on, to cause 17 total scars.

December 12, 2006 was a rough one and I remember it well. It was my last surgery.
We decided it would be best for me to go on Lupron injections since every type of birth control, which I took to attempt to reduce the menstrual pain, never worked. Lupron is menopause in a shot. Yuck. Let me just go on the record saying that one day when I go through menopause again, for real, it will be just as bad as the first time, I am sure of it. I can't believe at the age of 26, I was like that of a 56 years old. Night sweats are real.
So, January through June, I saw my doctor every month to get my little bit of craziness.
Aaron and I married in July. I told him he was marrying an old lady. We had a fantastic wedding and perfect honeymoon. We must have had a perfect honeymoon because I got pregnant. :)
It was a difficulty pregnancy and at 12 weeks, I lost the baby. I will never begin to be able to describe how I felt learning that my baby had problems and would not make it...... Let's move along...

On January 4, 2008, a miracle happened. I got pregnant again. I had Ella at 37 weeks on September 23rd, and was the happiest mommy in the world. My pregnancy with Ella was a tough one. I was beyond sick the entire time. My final weight gain(or loss) was a negative 1. Labor and delivery was so much easier than everyone had ever explained to me. The whole pushing for hours and days or whatever, blah, blah, blah, this was not my situation. I said I deserve a simple delivery after vomiting for 8 months. And thank you God for it.

Ella is so wonderful. She was born healthy and has not been a sick child at all. I know our time is coming when she starts pre-K next year that the germs will get to us, but I hope it moves along quickly.
Our lives have been nothing but joyous because of our little Ella-bella. The bouncing curls, the love to dance, and her serious passion of being a born leader have filled these first four years.

We were totally set with our one baby girl. Little did we know that I could and would get pregnant again. I found out I was pregnant and was scared and cried a lot. The nervousness made me a little crazy. I look back on it now and just know I was afraid of rejection again. All thanks to God that he gave us Caleb on August 6th, the day before Aaron's birthday. Again, a 37 week baby and a very rough pregnancy. However, this time I gained more than I would like to admit. I'm not sure how that happened after hugging the toilet so, so much.
On the morning of August 6th, at 2:45 am, my water broke. I had been up and down all night, as the same of every other night, because of the pain in my leg from the pressure on my sciatic nerve. I woke Aaron up and told  him it was the day. We got up and I took a shower and shaved my legs while Aaron called our moms and I called Heather. They all warned me to not wait too long becasue Caleb would come much quicker than Ella and my tolerance to pain was so high that I could actually be further along in labor than I thought. So, after my lengthy shower and detailed cleaning, going through our bags again to make sure everything was packed, getting Ella off to my mom's house, and watching Aaron pace, we were ready to go. We arrived at the hospital and were checked in a few minutes before 6:00 am. Secretly, I would have stayed in the bed a little longer if it was up to me.

Caleb arrived at 11:40 am. I could have delivered a lot earlier if they would have just given me a Coke as requested and if Dr. Blake wasn't so busy. I mean, what is up with telling me to not push? I didn't mind who delieverd as long as someone was down there to catch the boy. Feeling those contrations could have been over long before.
But, I will say that I loved feeling the process of delivery and next time, I want to give birth at home. :) Yeah, right... next time.... I'm not a young mommy....

Be thankful I left out years worth of details, whew... that brought bittersweet tears to my eyes.

I know God is real. I see him every day when I look at my babies.

Until next time,
Kellie

So alarming

I am not sure we will ever adjust to the time change. After all, it has been weeks since my body has wanted to change bedtime to 6:00pm. However, no one else in this house agrees.

Mornings are also rough around here. Nobody wants to wake up at a decent time. Even with our battery-less automatic alarm clocks, it is difficult to convince our feet to hit the floor.

These guys are so alarming, and yet they never go off at the same time morning after morning. I thought they did their thing at the break of daylight.... this is not true. I think they believe in, 'The earlier, the better', or 'Let's see what kind of response we get out of this'. They just better be glad they are so pretty and fun to watch.

Cock-a-doodle-doo,

Kellie

Up to date

So, as it turns out, I am not a pressional blogger. Quite frankly,  I am a terrible blogger. I think I will put this on my list of New Year's resolutions. We will see.

Just to give a quick update on what has been going on around here, Ella is THREE!! (That is the most imporant thing.) Also, Ella talked me into getting her a cat a while back, Cattie, and they have become super friends. Actually it is a very interesting relationship.
We had determined the cat needed her own place to sleep so she wouldn't sleep with us, and by "us", I mean Aaron, Ella, Chochy, Phoebe, and myself. I just do not think we should add a cat to that lovely mix. So, as a team, we decided the bathroom would become Cattie's bedroom.
This has turned out to be a good thing for everyone except Cattie. Like most kittens, she gets in trouble alot. And when she is doing something Ella does not approve of, Ella grabs her up and throws her gently(ha!) into her 'bedroom'. This is followed with Ella screaming, "Bad cat. Stay in your room!"   ......Poor kitty.

This is my precious little cat-loving, fake smile angel.

Will try to post more often,
Kellie

The birthday girl

I truely cannot believe Ella turned 3 in September. She is absolutely an amazing girl. My BFF. My little angel. My true love. My everything. The past three years have been totally awesome having her at my side.

The feeling in my heart for this little girl is like no other. I look forward to many more years.

The perfect weather

We have been having a lot of outdoor play time the past several days. It is lovely outside and it is SO much easier to clean up outdoor toys than the gigantic mound of multiple messes Ella makes while playing inside. I really think she can not stay focused on the same activity for more than 3 minutes at a time.
Also, I like to sit back and watch as she plays and creates. My little doodlebug is an amazing creature.

I think the little artist is adorable... even though she is missing something.

 And that "something" would be her pants.

Pants or not, she can still climb the gate.

Playing peek-a-boo was fun too.

We just love this weather. It is perfect.

Dinner Time... or not

Ella and Katty are inseparable. They really do love each other, maybe... and you can really tell... maybe. I still haven't decided if this is appropriate behavior from a two-year-old and her cat.

But I have always heard cats have nine lives. I hope so.

DING!! It's done.

Oh well.