Just Got the Call.....

and Brody is here!!! He was born just a few minutes ago. He's 4 pounds 4 ounces, 18 inches long and came out crying. Praise God!! He's been taken to the NICU so they'll know better how he's doing here in a little bit. Thanks for your prayers

Edited to add: I got to see a picture last night finally. Isn't he sweet! He was breathing on his own, but they put him on the ventilator so he could get some rest because he was having to work pretty hard. Other than that, he looks to be pretty darn perfect! Linsey's blood pressure is still high, but it is going down. She only got to take a peek at him for a second before he was whisked away, and as of last night, she still hadn't seen him.

More Prayers!!

I just talked to my mom and they're prepping Linsey for an induction right now, so Brody should be here soon!! Please just pray for a safe and smooth delivery for both of them and also that he's a big guy with a good set of lungs. They're guessing he's around 4.5 pounds. Wow, I cannot believe that my little sister is going to be a Mommy today; it's just unreal!

Keep those prayers coming.

Loudmouth

I took Clara to TCBY tonight to get ice cream because she pooped in the potty. (Did I mention she was in pull ups the second week of our trip?) Anyway, when we walk in to the very small TCBY, there were two groups of people ahead of us, probably 15 people total. It was super crowded and everyone in there was black.

So Clara immediately notices the small baby and says "Look, a baby!" very excitedly. I say, "Yes, I see the baby. Isn't he cute?" To which she responds (very loudly), "It's black!"

Why did I teach her to talk again?

Continuing......

Cody and Tanya brought Grayson home on Tuesday around noon. Cody made fajitas for dinner and Momma and Daddy and Tim and Linsey came that night to meet her. I did take some pictures, but only on Tanya's camera. Here are a few that I did take that week.

Old news

Tanya was pretty sore from having the tubal, so she and Grayson didn't get out those first few days. Her first outing was Friday and we went to Wal-Mart of course. Then we had lunch at a little tea room and dessert place. I had the caramel chocolate pecan cheesecake to go. Yum.

Momma came back Friday evening to get some more grandbaby time in and help out over the weekend. We took a few pictures before Clara and I left. Here's Bia with all the grands.

Then Clara and I headed to Kermit to stay with Tim and Linsey for the weekend. Chris was still telling me not to come home. We didn't have power yet, along with lots of businesses and the lines for gas were still long. We got to Kermit around 8:00 with the time change. Linsey had mentioned she'd pay me to clean her bathroom and mop her floors, so I had planned on helping her out (no charge of course), but she wouldn't let me. Instead we went to Midland on Saturday.

I convinced Chris to let me come home even without power. I had been gone over two weeks at this point and just wanted to come home. Clara had slept in four different places (would eventually be five) and was really starting to be a toot. Our zip code was scheduled to be back up on Thursday and restaurants and grocery stores were open for business, so he finally gave in. Sunday around 11:00 I decided to drive to Abilene and make the rest of the drive on Monday. So I called Aunt Jacki and asked if we could crash at their house. I gave her a whole 4 hour heads up. I'm thoughtful like that.

On the drive to Abilene I called our home phone and the answering machine picked up which meant WE HAD POWER!!! Poor Chris and the dogs went over 8 days without electricity. But that's ok; what mattered was that it would be on when I got home :)

Little Clara met us at the door when we got to Abilene. She was all smiles and squealed and clapped, running all over the place when we came in. She was excited about meeting another Clara I guess. Howard and Jacki fed us dinner and it was nice to catch up with everyone and meet Zach and Clara. My Clara looked like some amazonian pre-schooler standing next to the petite Little Clara. Oh, and the name thing was fun. I kept getting on to my Clara and Little Clara would turn around and give me this scowl like "what is your problem, lady?" So I had to keep specifying Big Clara. I had hoped to see Uncle Mark and Aunt Kelley, but they had gone to a party, so we missed them again.

The Clara's finally meet

We left Abilene around 8:45 on Monday and I'm really glad I split the trip into two days because traffic went down to one lane twice when we got south of Dallas. Both times we were in stop and go traffic at 5 mph for about 30 min. And I drive a standard. Not fun. We got home around 4:00 I think and headed up to The Woodlands for pizza with Glenn and Becky a little while later.

I didn't get that burst of enery I typically get after returning home from my west Texas trips. No washed dogs, dirty car, fence is still leaning, fridge is still mostly bare. It's taken me some time to get back into the groove of things around here.

As a side note, have I mentioned how much I love having this blog to look back on? I was reading the posts from when we got back from Abq in April and I wrote that I had been up once a night with Clara who was coughing. I really don't remember that. Well, wouldn't you know it, she started doing that Friday night in Kermit and has been ever since. I've been up with her, giving her cough medicine and changing sheets and pjs once every night around 3:00 or so. She coughs so hard that she throws up mucus. It's lovely. The coughing fits last for about an hour and then she sleeps for the rest of the night. During the day, she hasn't been coughing, just a runny nose. Weird.

Please Pray

My sister Linsey was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday after going to her bi-weekly doctor's appointment. Her blood pressure was really high and she has super elevated levels of protein. She's due around the middle of November and has been handed over to a high risk doctor.

If things aren't better by Monday, it's looking like they'll induce. She's already gotten the steroid shots for the baby's lungs, so that's good. Even if she is doing better, I'm pretty sure she'll be on hospital bedrest until he's born. I know she's scared and would appreciate prayers for baby Brody and herself.

On To Hobbs

On Tuesday morning, I dropped Clara off with Grandma and Nanny in Carlsbad. Grandma drove down the night before so she could hang out with Clara for a few days. She wrote all about their few days together on her blog. Clara did awesome and didn't cry at all, was accident-free and went to sleep like a champ every day. She made her mama proud. This was the first time she was away from me (somewhere other than home) overnight for more than one night. I was a bit sad as I drove away, but she did great.

I drove on to Cody and Tanya's house in Hobbs where I had planned to help out with the boys and around the house before and (hopefully) after Grayson's arrival. The night I got there, Tanya woke me around 3:30 in the morning with contractions and because Cody was coughing up a storm all night, she needed me to drive her to the hospital in Midland, which is two hours away. Long story short, after walking the hospital halls for a few hours and downing the water, they sent her home, baby intact. We walked the mall, had a nice lunch sans kids, hit the bookstore and stayed the night in a hotel. She was checked the next morning and no progress, so we headed back to Hobbs.

I took Bryce and Wyatt with me on the hour drive to pick Clara up on Saturday. (This is the day Ike hit, so it was probably good that I wasn't at home watching all of the devastation on tv.) We played at a playground by the river and had McDonalds for lunch before heading home. I just love the action shot I got of Clara shooting out of the slide. And yes, she hit hard.

Sunday night around 9:30, Tanya's water broke. They decided to just have her at the hospital in Hobbs because they were afraid they may not make it to Midland. They got to the hospital around 10:30 and Grayson was born around 1:30 Monday morning. I took the kids up to the hospital that afternoon after picking Bryce up from school. And again, for once, I wasn't the last one in the family to meet a new family member. I was first this time! There are several pictures I took at the hospital with Tanya in them, but I won't post them here, for fear of being added to her bad list.

Linsey's Baby Shower

Clara and I left for Pecos on Friday the 5th to go to Linsey's baby shower on the 7th. For once the trip was completey uneventful. Linsey, Cody and Tanya got there Friday night as well. Also, for once, I was the first of us to see my parents new living room furniture and Daddy's miata. Usually I walk in and say "When did you get that?" and the answer is always, "Oh, about 6 months ago." So I was pretty pumped that I beat them, if only by a few hours.

Here is Clara and Wyatt riding Clara's bed the night we got to Pecos.

Brody's room is cowboy themed, so that was also the theme for her shower. It was all really cute and the hostesses are super crafty and made everything themselves. They even made her a special scrapbook of the shower and printed off pictures there and put them right in so she could take it home completed. Momma painted the rocking horse.

Clara was pooped that night because she didn't get a nap. Falling asleep on the couch is such a rare occurence that I had to take a picture.

Still There

For anyone interested in our well-being following the hurricane, Chris and the doggies survived. I talked to him this morning and he said we lost one panel of our fence and the rest is leaning. We also lost the pine tree in the front yard and maybe the tree in the back. He lost electricity around 2:00 am, but hadn't been able to get outside to check exterior damage yet. At the time I talked to him, the eye had just passed and they were about to get the back end of the storm, so hopefully we didn't get any more damage. Oh, I'm in Hobbs helping out Tanya before the baby gets here if anyone's wondering why I would leave my hubby during a crisis.

Labor Day

We spent most of the day laying around, but did manage to drag ourselves up from our naps and head over to the Labor Day bash at the church. We had fajitas and the gym was filled with inflatables for the kiddos. Clara was a ball of energy bouncing from one bouncy thing to the next and back again.

There was also a concert by an acapella group. They were young guys and had a lot of energy. Clara was dancing around, really enjoying herself when her daddy asked her if she wanted to go stand up front with the other people. She did, in fact want to join the others.

I watch from our seats as she slowly starts making her way to the front, when to my horror she begins going for the stairs up to the stage. The stairs are front and center. I barrel past Chris (who informs me later that he was standing up to go fetch her when I elbowed him back into his seat), run up to the steps and grab hold of her right as the lead singer just about stepped on her.

Oh my goodness, I was so embarrassed! Chris was dying laughing at me and the whole ordeal scared Clara and she was crying. Poor thing. She didn't know she did anything wrong; Daddy told her she could go up front.

How am I, the person who's goal in life is to just blend in, expected to survive the embarrassment that my children will inflict upon me??? The child doesn't seem to have the same blending capabilities that her mother has. And Chris is loving it.