Lucas turned THREE!!!

This birthday actually didn't surprise me for once! LOL Lucas grew, matured and developed so much when he was two. 

Since he didn't get his party we decided to go big with his presents. More so than just for his birthday, we knew the boys also needed to have something in the yard to play with. So they became more of birthday presents/Easter presents and new house/yard necessities LOL At some point, we want to upgrade to a full blown swingset/playground, but being the first year in our new house and with all the expenses the year had, we knew that this was the place the start! 

We made the boy's yearly height marks in their closet and they were the exact same height at 3-years old! I don't remember exactly when Seth was fully potty trained for the night & day, but that is our current struggle. Sometimes he rocks it for days in a row and earns a potty prize and other times he'll go weeks waking up wet. I really don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it - he just sleeps like his daddy!!!

He is learning and increasing his vocabulary like crazy, mostly because he follows right along with Seth in everything. They have a whole toy room full, but it's always the same thing they are playing with or fighting over. He is randomly in love with The Flash from DC Comics. He loves to color, do playdough, draw, read stories and make puzzles. Legos, board games, Crash Bandicoot and any kind of imaginary play are right up his alley as well! And we recently got the ability to watch Paw Patrol episodes again so they've become re-obsessed with their pup toys. 

He loves and fights with every bone in his body. He either has the biggest attitude that tests every inch of his Mommy & Daddy or he is loving you bigger than your heart can contain. He still remains 100% our sour patch kid and I wouldn't change one.....well..... 😉

Stay tuned for our next quarantine birthday!

Easter!

Oh man. I feel like every catch up blog is going to start out the same way here. We had such different plans for holidays and special occasions before COVID hit, but we made the best out of each situation and I'm just so thankful that our boys don't need the elaborate things in order to have a fun or special day! 

The day before Easter was supposed to be Lucas' birthday party, so we had plans on having all the family up for that and then for us to host our first Easter dinner with my side of the family at our house! 

At this stage of the game, I was still incredibly sick all day, every day, so we actually didn't even have an Easter dinner. Jeremy wasn't in the mood for ham and I wasn't in the mood to cook the whole thing when chances were I wouldn't even get to eat it. So we scrapped that portion of the day, but still had all the other fun moments with the boys!

Looking back on these pictures now makes the boys look SO little! I'll be honest y'all. When I first heard about the coronavirus I never expected it to become anything. I never expected to be quarantined or to worry about my/my family's health. I never expected for it to still be going on when the school year started. And now I just can NOT believe how fast time has flown during it all. My how these boys have grown up the past 6 months! 

I'M BAAAAACK!!!!!

Due to unfortunate technical difficulties that I could not get figured out, my blogs from our October recap to our February recap are gone. I'm super sad that our first moments in our home are missing, especially our first Christmas, but I'm thankful I didn't lose more. So we move forward!

I can't believe how long it's been. In my last blog (which is now gone) I said that it took a year for January to end and then February flew by....yet little did we know what March had in store for us! I'm not sure why blogging has seemed like such a daunting task during this crazy time of life, but it has been the last thing on my list. Then the longer I waited it seemed like too much work to catch up on 😂 I think it will be easiest to cover all the big events we've had over our quarantine and then have some miscellaneous fun posts to fill in the gaps!

Our first big event that will also help explain our quarantine life.......

We were (and are) excited to be adding a 5th member to our family in November! Being pregnant during quarantine has been an adventure in and of itself, not to mention the rest of the chaos. It has not made things easy at all and I think the biggest factor to that is our history...

Jeremy and I experienced our first pregnancy loss in April of 2019. It was a pain that I never knew or ever even imagined. When you see the + on the test, you never think of losing that baby. Not until it happens. And then it sinks you. We were already facing and battling so much during that time so this was simply unimaginable and unbearable. That is, until we experienced it again in December of 2019. A second loss sent me into one of the darkest places I’ve ever been. I was numb and I had no hope or understanding. In February Jeremy and I got away for a night to go to a Mercy Me & Jeremy Camp concert. It was one of the most liberating experiences of my life and for no other explanation than the Lord, I came out on the other side. He stood by me, He waited for me and He turned our darkness into a beautiful rainbow.

Everything (of course) worked out as it was supposed to. When we got settled in NY I picked out the OB I wanted to have and we saw her for our loss in December. When I called the office during that time, I came in contact with someone that I went to high school with and she told me she was the nurse for a different doctor in the building who specialized in loss and infertility. She recommended that the next time we make an appointment with him. So that is just what we did. Because of his specialty, he started testing me right away, blood levels every week to monitor my hormones and when they started dropping, he put me on the medication needed to continue this pregnancy. If we had been with the original doctor I chose, she wouldn't have done any of that testing and who knows what the result would have been ❤ 

It's been weird not having Jeremy at appointments with me. Especially the first one. That was incredibly hard for me - and then of course the anatomy scan! The fear and anxiety, especially early on and then during the coronavirus craze, has been crippling at times, but we are incredibly thankful and blessed for our doctor and every milestone that we hit. I can't imagine anyone who has had to get difficult news while being stuck in an exam room alone. 

14 weeks

18 weeks

20 weeks

32 weeks

After a couple stubborn ultrasounds we were finally able to find out...

(the boys found out by squirting this canvas with paint filled squirt guns)

It's a GIRL! I was INCREDIBLY sick for the first 16 weeks, which was very different from the boys, but I didn't want to get my hopes up too high without proof 😂 Besides the fact that it's baby #3 for my body, I can say without a doubt that carrying a girl has been a completely different experience for me! I started to feel those rumbles around 18 weeks and now of course, Jeremy and the boys have been able to enjoy feeling them AND seeing them. Everything is measuring as it should be looking good so far! It still feels like we have so long to wait, but given that it's already the end of September and life is INSANE, I know it will fly by and we are SO excited to meet her! I tear up every time I imagine that moment we first lay eyes on her.