And Then There Were Three...

Meeting Mollie...

We finally got to meet our precious Mollie on Tuesday, October 26th, at 12:09 p.m.  She weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz. and was 20 inches long.  Welcome to our family, sweet girl!

 

  
A feeble attempt at a new family picture:  Matthew and Mason are not even looking, yet somehow Mason has his hand wrapped around Ellie's face.  Ellie is trying to choke me, and Mollie sleeps through the whole thing. 

Nine Months...

It's hard to believe that our nine months of waiting to meet our new daughter are coming to an end.  For months I have felt her moving, her presence is always with me, I have known her in a way, but yet she still seems like such a stranger to me.  But in just a few days, we will finally get to meet Mollie.  Since this will be our last, I've been feeling many mixed emotions.  I have loved every pregnancy, and as tiring as it can sometimes be, all three have been the most exciting times of my life.  It is a very bittersweet feeling to know that in a few days, that stage of my life will be over.  So I am enjoying every last moment of this!  Even though I've taken those infamous belly shots every month of all 3 pregnancies, I've tried to refrain from posting them on the blog, to spare others from having to view any visible stretch marks beauty marks.  :)  But as I've been preparing to meet my daughter, I've been doing a lot of reflecting back on the days Mason and Ellie were born, and I just couldn't help myself.  How amazing that God so graciously allows us to be a part of bringing new life into the world!

Nine months pregnant with Mason:

Nine months pregnant with Ellie:

Nine months pregnant with Mollie:

Two...

Today my baby girl turned two.  She walked around all day talking about her "happy to you" cupcakes and her "happy to you" presents.  It's so much fun to see her beginning to understand that this special day is about her.  I spent the day thinking back on the wonderful day she was born, and it's so hard to believe that two years have so quickly passed.   My 'baby' is looking less like a baby and more like a little girl every day. 

The day of Ellie's birth:

Ellie's first birthday:

So much fun to be two!!



Bedtime Buddies...

Mason and Ellie have been sharing a room for 5 days now, and I have to admit that it has gone much better than I anticipated.  Every morning, whoever wakes up first will wake the other, and then they will come get into bed with me.  They even sit on the floor and play in their new room together (lately with puzzles) before Mason heads off to school--a sweet sight for Momma to see!  But tonight was the cutest of all.  As we were tucking the kids in, Ellie decided to climb into bed with Mason.  But before sending her back to bed, I managed to get a few pictures of these sweet siblings: 

Painting Pumpkins...

After some experiences carving pumpkins with Mason when he was younger, I finally wised up and realized that painting pumpkins is so much better!  For one thing, with paint, the kids get to decorate their pumpkins completely independently.  (When carving, there's not as much they can do, since obviously there's a sharp knife involved.)  This was Ellie's first experience decorating a pumpkin.  She has recently discovered painting, and will gladly paint anything that is placed before her:

The finished products: 

Moving Day...

Today was moving day in our house...well, at least for the kids it was.  With the anticipation of Mollie's arrival in just over 2 weeks, Matthew and I have had to figure out how to arrange the kids' bedrooms, now that we'll have more kids than we have extra bedrooms.  Inevitably, two of the three have to share now.  But figuring out which ones has been a little difficult.  The obvious thing to do would be to put the girls together, but since Ellie and Mason were not good sleepers as babies (neither slept through the night until a year or more) we are not expecting that Mollie will be either.  Ellie is still a very light sleeper and wakes at the slightest noise.  It can also take awhile to get her back to sleep, so we are hesitant to put her in a room with a new baby who wakes multiple times a night.  Mason is the easy one--he could put himself to sleep, and sleep like a rock until the sun comes up.  So by default, we've decided to let Ellie and Mason become temporary roommates...starting tonight.  At first, Mason was really excited about sharing a room with his little sis.  But recently she's been having some rough nights, and naturally, this has caused Mason to feel a little concerned about his sleep being disrupted.  But he has been a real trooper through this transition.  He even helped me haul books, toys, and clothes from one room to the other all morning without one single complaint.  And by this evening when it was bedtime, he was actually excited again to be in the room with her. 

It has also been a very daunting task to try and figure out how to make a shared bedroom for a nearly 6-year-old boy and 2-year-old girl look even remotely cute, let alone match, without spending tons of money.  This is only a temporary arrangement, so I didn't want to invest a lot of money on things that would not even be used a year or so from now.  But thanks to Target, I was able to find some inexpensive bedding for Ellie that blended with Mason's things.  So even though it is definitely a 'boy' room, I was able to make a little feminine space for her too.  Besides, Ellie has never been much of a girly girl, and she's so accustomed to being around her brother's things, I don't think it will faze her one bit.  Here is the finished product.  It's nothing fancy, but I feel like I accomplished my goal of making it economical...and match!