how old are you????

while watching american idol the other day...

olivia: mom, syesha must be your age mom. she has those big things like you do.


no, i'm not going to post a picture of myself for you to compare. but i think these next pictures will pretty well explain olivia's comment.







i give you my "obnoxiously large quantity of milk that accumulated in our freezer during josie's hospital stay even though i was taking a decent amount of milk into the hospital for her" picture.


and the equally "obnoxiously large quantity of milk that i recently took to my parents' garage freezer so we could buy ice cream again" picture.

so tired

these picture sum of the life of little josie.
sleep. sleep. and more sleep.

she's currently a whopping 4lbs. 15oz. and about 18.5"

keep sleeping josie...
our house is full of crazy, loud children*
i wonder what the secret is to tune it all out?



*in case you're wondering just how loud & crazy they are... ask kari. she got an earful on the phone today!!

the plan

1. procrastinate


2. procrastinate more


3. give the kids a few creative excuses


4. repeat steps #1-3


and viola... it's spring... and the whole glorious mess can happen outside!!!

happy feet

april showers bring...

...olivia in pigtails picking yellow flowers.

april 2008

april 2007

without a doubt... she's the little sister!!

geography - garrett style

garrett's friend caroline is on spring break in kentucky.

"hey mom, i know how my friend caroline got to kentucky.
she went to minnesota then through hannah montana then she got to kentucky."

come back soon caroline - garrett misses you at preschool!!

vocabulary lesson

olivia: mom, don't forget to swallow josie.

me: do you mean, swaddle?

olivia: oh. ok. don't forget to swaddle josie.

her royal highness

yesterday the kids were wearing their superhero capes*.

but instead of being superheroes, they were royalty.

olivia was the queen, garrett the king, and ryan was the lowly prince.

at one point i called olivia a "flower queen" (check out her cape).

immediately she turned around and very seriously said: "mom, i'm not a flower queen. i'm a drama queen."


*these capes are one of my favorite finds. check them out here. if you have a specific cape design in mind and don't see it listed, just email her. she's super easy to work with :)

happy due date due date + 1

yesterday, april 9th, was josie's due date.

we woke up thinking how cool it was that she was home with us... and how amazingly crazy it was that she was already 9 weeks old.

i was going to post some pictures of her on her actual due date enjoying the comforts of home.

well that post never quite made it...

when josie woke up, she had other ideas. she thought it would be way more fun to actually be at the hospital on her due date. silly, josie!

so due to high bilirubin levels (jaundice) were spent 7 hours in the er with her.

what struck me as incredibly funny was that we were at the exact same hospital that she just spent 57 days in... yet, every doctor or nurse wanted the details from us on how early she was, how many weeks she spent in the nicu, how much she weighed at birth, did she have any complications, did she need breathing support, etc.

seriously, is that information not all on the computers that the nurses and doctors carry around?

in the end (after lots of blood draws, an iv, xryas & an ultrasound), they couldn't quite determine why her bilirubin level was higher than it was when she got discharged on march 28th. (when she was originally discharged she had jaundice, but it was supposed to go down over time. and it wasn't the kind that could be treated with lights or a bili blanket.) so they are going to keep an eye on her and she'll most likely get more frequent blood draws to measure her bili.

here are a few pictures of our time in the er.

not quite the fun at home shots, i had planned. but at least she was in our arms :) and for that we are so thankful!!

such a trooper!!