Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for my firstborn, Jacob. Born at 24w and weighing only 1 lb 7 oz he only had a 39% chance of survival. Thank you God for the precious miracle you have given us. I love you, Jacob!



I am thankful for my baby girl, Grace. She is a little spitfire, and at two years old, has plenty of sass and attitude to go around these days, but we love her more than anything and don't know what we would do without her. I love you, Gracie Girl!

I am thankful for my sweet baby Eli. I am blessed with the happiest, most content of babies and for that I could not be more grateful. He is definitely a "roll with the punches" kind of kid and being the third in line I think that is a good thing. I love his cuddles and how his face lights up every morning when he sees me. He makes my heart swell with joy every day (and secretly makes me want 10 more babies, but that is just between us). I love you sweet boy!

I am thankful for my husband who goes to work every day to provide for our family so I can stay home and raise our children. It has not been easy to run your own business in this economy and he has struggled, but has never given up. He pulls more than his share of the workload at home as well and I don't know what I would do without him.

Happy Thanksgiving!

World Prematurity Day

Each year in the US one in eight babies is born prematurely. Worldwide, 13 million babies are born too soon every year. Prematurity is the leading killer of America's newborns and those who survive often have lifelong health problems, including cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, blindness and hearing loss.

Today is the first ever World Prematurity Day!



For those of you new here, my son Jacob was born at 24w5d in 2008 weighing only 1 lb 7 oz and 11.5 inches long. He spent 4 long months in the NICU before he could come home to be with us. Those first few days in the NICU were numbing and I don't know what we would have done without our NICU nurses and the March of Dimes representatives. Until you walk into a NICU and see your baby attached to tubes and wires that are keeping him alive you will never quite understand. Those four months were the longest months of our lives and we lived in fear every day that we might never get to bring our baby boy home.




The March of Dimes uses campaign funds to research and find the causes of premature birth, and to identify and test promising interventions. Premature babies are at risk of many serious medical complications. One of the most common of these is respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). Babies with RDS struggle to breathe because their immature lungs do not produce enough surfactant, a protein that keeps small air sacs in the lungs from collapsing. March of Dimes grantees helped develop surfactant therapy, which was introduced in 1990. Since then, deaths from RDS have been reduced by two-thirds. Jacob received surfactant at birth and would not be here today if it was not for the grant that was used to develop surfactant therapy.

Today we wear purple to honor all babies born too soon and to help bring awareness to prematurity. Please visit the March of Dimes website to make a donation or find other ways you can help!

A TV update

Well, you probably remember this post from back in May when we decided to haul our 46" LCD TV to the basement and subsequently decided to sell it at a yard sale. I figured I would give you all an update on how life is going without the TV in our living area.

When we first got rid of it right before Memorial Day weekend, I wasn't that concerned about the long term effects of being sans television. The weather was finally starting to get nice and we were outdoors far more than we were in so we weren't missing it all. Jacob was still wrapping up his first couple of months in the public preschool program as well so we were preoccupied with that.

Eli was born in July and we transitioned rather nicely. Unfortunately, work slowed down considerably for Ian due to the economy so he ended up having almost two months off with only a few small jobs here and there. I don't think he worked more than 2-3 days a week until the end of September. I have to say it was quite the luxury having him home that long as we transitioned from a family of four to a family of five. The first week and a half of school I didn't even need to pack up all the kids to bring Jacob to school since I had Ian at home to sit with the other two. Slowly but surely, his work has started picking up. He is now booked solid through the Spring and I am on my own once again.

When Eli first came home from the hospital my sole responsibility was recovering from my c-section and taking care of Eli. For the most part, Ian was wrangling the other two. He took them outside to play on the slide, took them for long walks around the neighborhood before dinner and helped them ride their bikes in the cul-de-sac. I don't think they even noticed the TV had disappeared.

Now that the new school year has started, Jacob is in school on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and we decided that in order to get them into good TV habits now we would set a family rule that there is no television on school days. We go to church as a family on Sunday so we also decided that there will be no television on Sundays. This leaves Monday, Wednesday and Saturdays. On Monday and Wednesday we take our time around here in the morning since we aren't rushing out the door to school so I let them watch one half hour show in the morning on our bedroom TV (which is now the only TV in our house) while I feed Eli and get him dressed for the day. We have shows pre-recorded on the DVR and they usually watch The Fresh Beat Band or Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Once that show is over they don't watch TV for the rest of the day.

About a month ago, we decided to try and implement "Friday movie nights" and eliminate Saturday TV since we were usually so busy on the weekends that they ended up not watching TV anyway. The first week we did this we decided to try out Peter Pan. I didn't have high hopes since Jacob isn't really into things he isn't familiar with, but we figured it was a good start since he is OBSESSED with Captain Hook and Smee from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. I was blown away by the fact that he sat through the entire movie and laughed hysterically the whole time.

**On a side note, can I also mention how violent Peter Pan is? I don't remember Disney movies being so ruthless, but Hook was calling people "blithering idiots", smoking like a chimney the entire movie and shooting fellow pirates with his gun. I digress, but I think we're retiring Peter Pan for a few years.**

We have since watched Cars, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Cars 2! The kids love our Friday night tradition (we also order take-out) and start talking early on in the day about what movie we should watch that night.

Since selling our TV, we spend more quality time together as a family. We are reading more. I am a cleaning/organization fool and I have been baking and cooking more. I have also been going through all of our pictures and creating photo books with the 3,000 pictures I have taken in the last three years.

Most importantly, the kids are spending more time playing together, doing puzzles, reading books, etc. It was the best decision we made to eliminate the TV from the living area! I will say that I am happy that we kept our small TV in the master bedroom. The kids and I have been sick once already and we spent one whole day in bed watching movies and for that I was grateful. I also still rely on the news every morning and evening for weather updates and I still watch my DVR'd episode of CSI on Thursday every week, but if anyone else is considering making the leap I say go for it! As a former TV junkie, I thought it would be way too hard, but it has actually been quite liberating.

Trick or Treat

Three Months

Eli, you are three months old today!


This month has been the best so far! You are doing much better with tummy time and we have even started sitting you in your Bebe Pod. Last night you rolled from belly to back for the first time and you did it TWICE! You also started laughing this month and I find myself doing everything I can to pull that belly laugh out of you. I absolutely LOVE that sound!

You are currently wearing 3-6 month clothes and are still in size two diapers, but only because I am desperately trying to finish off the size two diapers we have left. You should definitely be in size threes and I don't know how much longer I can squeeze your fat, little tummy in these size twos!

You have become so much more aware of your surroundings and it is getting kind of hard to nurse you. You are constantly rubbernecking and want to look around to see what is going on. You are still nursing exclusively and still sleeping through the night. The other night you went 12 hours for the first time ever! I was thrilled to be able to sleep in until almost 8 AM! You typically feed when you wake up (average is around 7 AM) and sometimes you can go 4 hours until your next feed. Every other feed during the day is typically three hours.

This past month we took you to Day Out with Thomas, leaf peeping in New Hampshire and the pumpkin patch. You did well at all three and slept most of the time.

You are such a good baby and your Daddy even commented the other day how you seem to be the most happy and content out of all three of our babies. We hope you continue that! You are such a joy to be around and we are anxious to see what you will do in the next month. We anticipate you will start rolling from back to belly and we are a little scared. I don't think we are quite ready for you to be mobile yet!

Jacob and Grace still love you to pieces and Grace tends to dote on you more than Jacob. She mimics us a lot and will talk to you in a sing song baby voice saying, "Hi wittle, wittle, wittle, wittle boy." It cracks us up! They both love to hold you and let us know when "Baby Eli sad". Grace tries to give you a bink and Jacob will lean his head on yours and say, "Awwwww".

Unfortunately, it is hard to get a picture of the three of you together. Usually nobody is looking or smiling. Kind of like this:

I hope you will all grow up close and stay that way when you are older and have kids of your own. Uncle Josh and Auntie "Ria", as Grace calls her, are coming over tonight to visit you. I hope someday you can look back at this blog and see how much you were loved by so many people.

We love you, Eli!

Pumpkin Muffins

As I said in a previous post, I am currently obsessed with pinning. It has helped me rediscover my love of cooking and I have been trying new recipes every week.

My kitchen leaves much to be desired and I was having a hard time getting motivated to cook. I have no counter space, no cabinet space, no pantry, etc. It is near impossible to prep to cook a decent meal, but since finding Pinterest and rediscovering my crock pot I am more motivated than ever.

I am also on a mission to save money and I am spending about $50 less a week on our grocery bill by digging through our cabinets and finding recipes to use up the goods we have in there rather than buying more stuff to fill up the cabinets. That is how this week's recipe came to be. I present to you:

2 Ingredient Pumpkin Muffins!

1 - 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 - Box of yellow cake mix

Spoon the mixture into a muffin pan or paper liners and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

THAT'S IT!!!!

I had both of these on hand and was very excited to try these out since our house is a big fan of all things pumpkin. I Googled for some reviews of this recipe and everyone gave it 5 stars! I was a little worried, since it was just a boxed cake mix and one can of puree, that the muffins would be dry, but NO! Many of the reviewers did say they used a spice cake mix and since I had yellow I decided to modify the recipe by adding the following:

1 tsp of ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp of nutmeg
1/4 tsp of ground cloves
1/2 bag of semi-sweet morsels

Since I had all of these ingredients on hand, I cleared out some space in my non-existent pantry and used up some of the food we had. We'll have these for snacks and breakfast this week and that helped trim our grocery bill. Even though I added the spice and chocolate chips you CAN make this recipe with just the box cake mix and can of puree. It's so simple!

I have a lot of catching up to do this week with my blogging. There are lots of pictures to be uploaded and many events/milestones to be recorded. Eli will be 3 months old tomorrow so I should have that post up tomorrow afternoon and then Pumpkin Patch pictures and an update on how we are doing sans Television in this house. Until next time....

Day Out with Thomas!

Last weekend, we headed out to Edaville Railroad for Day Out with Thomas with my brother Jon, my sister-in-law Jean, Jean's mom Mary, my nephew Kevin and my brother Josh! Kevin is smack dab in the middle of Jacob and Grace age wise so it is great to have a cousin so close in age to hang out with.

My kids don't watch Thomas, but Jacob has a few Thomas train sets and they have a couple of books including a Thomas the Train Look and Find book which they love. Even though Thomas isn't a staple in our house like Woody and Buzz he is a recognized face and I knew the kids would be ecstatic to see him in person.

First of all, let me say that the people who run this event should be ashamed at how much they charge! Kids under 2 were free so we didn't have to pay for Eli, but the tickets for the four of us cost $21.65 EACH. It cost us $87 for the four of us to go see Thomas. Let me also say that many people who go to this event throughout the country don't have Edaville which is also a small amusement park in addition to the train. In other states, you simply get a 20 minute train ride and they have Thomas themed booths set up with story time, mega block playing stations, face painting, etc. Nationally, everyone pays the same price to get in to Day Out with Thomas regardless of the amenities. Needless to say, if we didn't have Edaville this would not be an event worth going to, but the kids had a blast on the rides and attractions at the park and I got fried dough so all was right with the world!


The day we went was a warm 75 degree day which is pretty unusual for the first weekend in October. The train was 800 billion degrees and we were literally all dripping sweat. The cars are heated in the Winter, but unfortunately they are not air conditioned in the Summer. There were a few windows at the front and back of the car so when we went around a bend we would get an occasional breeze that would pass through, but it was sweet relief to step off of that train when the ride was over!

The first amusement ride we attempted were those little two seater airplanes where you pull the lever and go up. We thought this was an adult friendly ride (most are), but unfortunately as we were loading the kids in we were told this was for kids only. In a split second decision, we decided to let the kids go on by themselves. There is a lap belt on the ride, but anyone who knows Jacob knows this could be a disaster, however, they both did great and stayed seated the entire time (phew!). Jacob finally caught on after we yelled to him the 100th time to "PULL!!" and he pulled the lever and they rode up in the air the entire ride! My heart was beating out of my chest the whole time they were up there and I decided that they would only be going on rides with us the rest of the day. :)

Next was a stop at the carousel! A family favorite. The last time we went to a local carousel Grace cried for 45 minutes after we left because she wanted to go back. This time they took their ride and climbed down with no temper tantrums!

We rode on the flying elephants, had our picture taken with Thomas and then the park was scheduled to close in about 30 minutes so we took a short walk down to the little kiddie train and let the kids ride that one. At this point, Ian somehow convinced me that it would be a good idea to take our kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Yes. The Tilt-A-Whirl. Bad, bad idea. Grace had that look plastered on her face when the g forces are too much for your little face to handle and Jacob instantly brought his knees to his chest and clutched Ian the entire time. I think we scarred them for life. There were no tears just looks of horror. Meanwhile you can hear Kevin (who was in the next car over) going WHEEEEEEEEE! Apparently, he enjoyed the ride and was not as terrified as my own two!

We stopped for a snack/dinner at the cafe and ate outside on picnic tables while the kids ran around and burned off some energy.


Overall, it was a great day with family and the kids had a blast. I would be very hesitant to take my kids to Day Out with Thomas if it was just at a railway, but since we had the amusement park to play on all day it was well worth the money! Just beware if you plan on attending this event locally that you may be in for a world of surprise when you find out just what is included with the ticket price.