The Lees come to town

Holy cow I have been a terrible blogger!  Two in September?  Really?  I stink, but I will try and be better however I'm not sure I will ever be as frequent as I used to be.  At least people are giving me things to blog about! Ashley and Adam came to visit us almost two weeks ago and we had so much fun with them!  The kids had never meet Adam and Ashley hadn't meet George yet, so it was fun to get the cousins together.  It was really great having Ashely here and helping me clean up, make dinner and have adult conversations with, I loved it.  Even with all the fun we had I wasn't able to keep it together the entire time and had a meltdown while she was here, so she had the special opportunity to see me in full crazy mode.  I'm sure that was the highlight of her visit. Despite my insanity we were able to take a walk in Edwin Warner, go to Loveless Cafe, walk the pedestrian bridge, go to soccer practice, get hot chicken, to got Cheekwood, and eat birthday cake.  If you haven't noticed, we ate really good food.  It was so great.  We loved having Ashley and Adam and can't wait to be in Dallas with them next year!

Cousins meeting for the first time.

Adam giving George a foot five.  

Ashley enjoyed the slide but Adam was unimpressed.  He thought chewing on his binky was way cooler.

At the Cumberland River Park, love this place!

And on the pedestrian bridge, love this place too!

Waiting to be seated at Loveless Cafe.  A 30 minute wait on a Monday?  Not cool people!

Adam loved the biscuits.

And thanks to Ashley's pass to the Dallas arboretum she even got us into Cheekwood for free!  

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And after 11 years of not getting a birthday cake Ashley finally got one, and LIKED it even!  I was very happy, she's picky. 

And one last shot of all the cousins.  It may not look like it in the picture but Adam really did like playing with the kids.  As long as they didn't get right in his face like Graham tends to do. He did love watching the boys do flips and even tried talking to George a few times.  It was adorable!  Less than a year and he and George will be hanging out all the time becoming best buddies.  Can't wait! Thanks for coming Ashely and Adam! 

1 Month

I survived the first month with 4 kids!  I'll be honest though it hasn't been too bad.  Yes I've had my meltdowns, just see the last post, but as George gets bigger and I healed up things have calmed down a lot.  Last night (I know Ashely will hate me for this) George slept from 9:30 to 3 am.  It was so nice to get a nice solid chunk of sleep at night!  I'm a much more pleasant person when I've had a good night sleep.  The kids still adore their new little brother and love to give him kisses and constantly touch him so it can be a little overwhelming at times for me because I feel like I"m being mauled by kids all day but I'll live. At his 2 week check up George had already gained 1 1/2 pounds and I'm quite confident he's packed on at least another pound.  I have a feeling he's going to rival Devin in size.  That's fine by me, I love me a chunky baby!  In other kiddo news Devin can now tie his shoes all by himself and is right on track with reading.  I got his AR reading range from his teacher yesterday and sure enough I'm not failing him as a mother.  Phew!  So things are going well over here, at least for now.  Ashely is visiting in a week so hopefully I'll have more to post about soon!

 It doesn't really save us any time in the morning but it sure makes him feel good about himself. 

Graham showing off his ability to fall asleep in odd positions.

And George of course just because he's so stinking cute!

First Meltdown

It happened I had my first meltdown post baby.  I guess that's not entirely true.  When George's umbilical cord started falling off after just 6 days and looked pretty nasty I may have started to cry.  I may have cried again when George ate too much and threw up almost his entire meal all over me and I had a flashback to when Caroline did that after EVERY feeding and ended up needing surgery, and I was convinced for a moment George would have the same problem.  Luckily Shawn was home both times and quickly came to my rescue and talked me off of the figurative ledge I was about of jump off of.  Yesterday Shawn was not home, so when I was helping Devin with his homework and was sad because he is not nearly as good at reading as Caroline was at his age and I thought I had failed him as a mother and then quickly spiraled out of control into a mess of sobbing and tears.  The bad mom thoughts then turned into frustration that I'm 30 lbs overweight, still sore from giving birth, and just about anything else I could stress about I did.  So when I texted Shawn that I had failed Devin as a mother he called me back seconds later to fix me.  It was good to hear that all of this was probably just stemming from the raging hormones, and lack of good sleep I've been experiencing lately.  So Shawn put Caroline in charge of the boys and I got to lay down and watch a few shows and Shawn brought dinner home for me.  He's my hero, he works a lot but always pulls though when I need him.  I felt much better by the time he got home and got to see that Caroline had made the boys write superhero books.  That also made me realize maybe that I've at least done an ok job with Caroline.  That girl is a superstar and I don't know what I would do without her some days.  Anyways I'm sure this is the first of may crazy meltdowns to come in the next few months but its good to know I have a sweet hubby and kids to pull me out of them.  So sit back and enjoy the fact that while sometimes I may appear relaxed and calm, I'm actually a whole lot of crazy these days!

He's too cute not to show off!  Love this little guy!

Babies

Everyone or almost everyone that sees George says, "He looks just like Graham!"  Don't get me wrong I kind of think he does too but I really think he looks more like Caroline as a baby, but seeing as its been a while since she was a baby no one remembers what she looked like.  For some reason I thought George would look just like Devin but that's not the case at all. So I thought I'd post a few baby pictures of all of them and see who he looks like the most.  Don't judge, I have a lot of free time on my hands people and I'm loving it!

Here is Caroline I think just a few hours old.  Ignore the stupid monitors, man I hated that hospital!

And a few weeks old maybe.

My first sweet boy. 

Brand new here.

I totally forgot how much Graham looked like an old man as a baby, it cracks me up!

And slightly older.

And the newest addition.

Really I can't decided if he looks more like Caroline or Graham, either way he's adorable and Shawn and I make the cutest babies!

George Allen Funk

Well its back to reality.  No more mom to take the kids to the bus stop and make me dinner and organize my entire house.  No more Poodle secretly doing my dishes while I sleep and fold my laundry for me.  Its just me now, and its ok but it was SO nice to have help the first week.  It also means I should probably get to blogging about little Georgie's birth.

So let me just start by saying I wasn't overly impressed with my experience.  Just read on and you can decide if I'm a snob or justified in my opinion.  Anyways I was scheduled to come into the hospital on Saturday the 16th to be induced.  So I got up showered had the cupcakes I was taking in ready to go and had the kids ready to leave for their friends house.  Then I get a call about 30 minutes before I"m supposed to go in and the charge nurse tells me they are all out of space and I can't come in yet because they don't have any room for me.  I was pretty disappointed about that.  I know they have people come in but I have been induced twice before and never had that problem.  I was a little worried they wouldn't have room for me all day so I decided to take things into my own hands and do whatever I could to send myself into labor.   So I call back at 2 and they now have enough room for me.  Great I head in get to a room and talk to the nurse assigned to me and she's great.  She gets me ready to start pitocin and has me meet with the my favorite person of the night, my anesthesiologist.  My ob had wanted to try a different drug to get labor going but for some reason I ended up doing something else.  I have no idea why honestly at some points I had no idea who was actually in charge of me.  It was annoying.  I had some residents coming in and checking my progress and midwives doing the same thing, no clue why I needed both.   So I got my epidural and loved the person doing it she was really nice and did a good job.  I think it helped that she knew Shawn, either way I really liked her.  So the plan was to break my water after my epidural, so I waited and waited then three hours later someone finally came in and broke my water.  Not cool Vanderbilt, not cool.  I"m quite sure I could have had  him hours earlier if they had been more on top of things.  Oh well not a huge deal.  Anyways finally around 10:45 I was ready to push and pushed for a few minutes then found out George was stuck and they needed to use forceps.  Holy cow those things are huge!  I'm just thankful I had drugs to help me not feel them, because I probably would have died!  Shawn saw the look on my face and said not to worry and keep looking at him.  The attending had taken over from the residents at this point, thank goodness, and George was born a few minutes later.  They put him right on me and it was amazing.  Its been a while since I've had a baby and it is just as special every time.  He was born at 11:04 pm 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 3/4 in long.  Almost exactly the same size as Devin, he was just 1/4 in longer.
After a few minutes of getting packed up we headed over to recovery into some ghetto looking room. We had people coming in and out most of the evening and I don't think I got more than an hour sleep at a time.  My nurses were pretty good but one of them gave me too much stool softener even though I asked about the side effects and well, it was just unpleasant.  I"ll leave it at that.  I had a melt down Sunday night because I was so tired and wanted to go home and of course this is when my nurse came in and then had me take a post-pardom depression survey.  She said they give it to everyone but I'm not convinced.  I was so tired and had George go into the nursery for an hour or two so I could get some sleep.  I felt much better after I got some sleep but I was so ready to get out of there Monday morning.  So much that I walked out of the room with George in my arms told my nurse I was leaving and didn't look back.  The only problem is that my mom didn't know where to pick me up so we spent at least 30 minutes trying to figure out where the other one was.  I was so happy once I got in the van, I have never been so happy to be home, and I never want to go back.  I"m really not impressed with the OB department, there seems to be a serious lack of communication there.  And the hospital is just run down, I was hoping to get a water jug so I could keep track of how much I was drinking but they don't do that or really give you anything else, no cute shirt saying I was born at Vanderbilt or cheap diaper bag, nothing.  That doesn't bother me that much though, I just really did not enjoy my time there but whatever, its over and done with and we are doing great now that we're home!  So here are some pictures finally!

He is the sweetest baby ever!

His head got a little beat up on the way out! Poor thing!

They love him so much in fact I have to remind them to give baby George some space. 

He loves to sleep, I'm hoping this trend continues!

I was so excited to catch a sleepy smile!

Big sister.

Big brother.

And another big brother. It feels a little weird to say we have 4 kids now. That's a lot! We love baby George.  Welcome to the family!

Back to School

I remember thinking at the beginning of the summer that the two months were going to fly by.  I was right.  Devin and Caroline had their first day back at school last Wednesday.  It was only a half day and kind of nice for them just to get all their first day nerves out.  Every year Caroline gets really nervous, I can totally relate.  I hated the first day growing up and never really wanted to go back to school.  If Devin was nervous he didn't really show it, he's really quiet and goes with the flow.  They both love their teachers and are excited to get working again.  When I asked Devin how his day was he said, "It was easy! I wish we did math."  And Caroline told me every detail of her day which I can't even remember now.  But to simplify she had a great first day too.  This is their first full week of school and I"m taking advantage and sleeping as much as possible because its been a LONG time since I've had a newborn and I'm pretty sure I need to get some extra rest.  Really I just want to take naps and I feel like I have a good excuse to take them so there.

Here we are walking to school with our buddies.

And you can see that now that we are actually in the school Caroline is getting a little anxious. 

And I decided it was about time to learn how to do some cute hairdos.  Caroline will actually let me do her hair now, and its been fun looking up new dos for school.  I can't believe they are in 1st and 3rd grade already!  Thank goodness I'm having another baby because my kids are growing up way too fast!