What does it mean to be all girl?

For Autumn, it means she loves pink, chocolate, cats, getting dirty in the garden, chocolate milk, painting, aikido, her octopus shirt, her "best friend" Tyler, school, music, Little Einsteins and Belle.



She is tough and silly and always wants bandaids. She is right handed but kicks a ball and dribbles with her left side. She likes to look at herself in the mirror and, lately, shadow boxes with her reflection in the oven.

Like her papa, she can be a little anti-social and usually needs some time to warm up to a crowd or a new person. And like her mama, she loves a party and can be very opinionated. Her mama wanted to give her a princess party this year, but this year, she asked for a Little Einsteins party. She wanted a cake.


And ice cream and juice.


She wanted Little Einstein plates and napkin, party hats...


and blowers.


She wanted friends both from church


and from school.




And so it was.

Happy birthday to our spunky, funky, silly, slightly high strung, strange mix of tough and delicate, busy, lively, doesn't-fit-in-a-box little monkey!

Autumn has an announcement:

So, there you go...baby name! We've known for a while but kept forgetting to video her saying the name, haha. The story is that we were keeping a shared Google doc with boy names we liked. Mike kind of wanted something nature-y but, really, it's hard to find nature names for a boy if one is not a hippie or Native American. And the one name we did like, Ashe or Asher, just didn't sound right with Colley. Well, one night, Tamara and I were looking at names and she mentioned Garrett. I liked it and added it to the list. Long story short, have some chat logs:

Mike: Did you put down "Garrett" as a name?

me: yes. is that one you like? or don't like?

Mike: I was about to put that down.

me: oh, cool

what made you think of it?

Mike: I'm going through the list of all the names in my mail server.

And the next day:
me: is garrett your favorite name right now?

Mike: Kinda mebee?

me: i don't remember if it means anything

Mike: Rule of Spear

me: other than, "it sounds nice with colley"rule of spear? well, that's a very kali name

Mike: Mighty with a spearme: i can dig it

Couple more days and conversations later, we added Michael (Autumn's middle name is Rose which is also my middle name) and voila! Baby name! And it was way, way easier than I was expecting it to be.

Today was our 3d ultrasound and...it was weird. :) We brought Autumn and she did great although she's still trying to figure out how some gel and a wand made pictures on the screen. She took one of the pictures and put it in a magnetic frame on the fridge that Penny gave her about a month ago. We didn't get a 3d with Autumn so this was a totally new experience. It's crazy because it's so vivid but at the same time we are now afraid he might be ugly, LOL. In a couple of the pictures, he looks like a creepy old man with a freakishly large schnozz. But in a few of the photos, he looks like me or Donnie. Mike took one look at the first face shot and said, "that's your family's nose." Hahahaha. He's right. But, Autumn had a very my side of the family nose when she was born and it seems to be okay so maybe baby Garrett won't be grossly out of proportion. And if he is, we'll just make sure he's confident and dresses well. :P Anyway, have the least disturbing photo of the bunch:


Ok, that one's pretty cute. Also cute? He kept sticking his tongue out at us.

So, that's all the good stuff. We do have a couple of prayer requests. Because of Autumn's growth restriction issues, they have been keeping a vague eye on this baby's weight. The general consensus has been that there's unlikely to be an issue since his umbilical cord is fine (hers only had two vessels) but if there's any kind of history like that, they check just to be safe. Last time, he was in the 36th percentile. This time he was at the 23rd. They aren't crazy concerned that he's small because, seriously, I'm not exactly a big person but the doctor does want to make sure that he's not on a steady downward decline, as opposed to it being a normal fluctuation. I will go back in two weeks for another weight check and then they'll decide what to do from there, depending on the results.

Autumn, covered in spaghetti sauce and practicing her skills on baby Hudson.


Another thing they'll be checking in on is a cyst in the placenta. The doctor said she genuinely has no idea what it might be, if anything, but she doesn't seem too worried. It might resolve itself like the one on the umbilical cord from early in the pregnancy. If it's still there in two weeks, she's going to send me over to the high risk doc I saw with Autumn just to check it out and make sure it isn't causing any problems.

All in all, though, things are looking good! Couple of little blips but so far nothing too crazy. I'll update everyone after the next ultrasound in 2 weeks.

Next post: party pics!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

We had a fun, if unusually non-Mother's Day-y Mother's Day weekend. Yesterday we had Autumn's birthday party at the Children's Museum. We had a blast and I have a lot of photos to post soon but, oh, man, I am soooo swollen from being on my feet and not drinking enough water. By the time we took this pic, we were all wilting. And Autumn had begun to go feral, ha.


By the way, when I was looking for photos of Autumn with her various mothers, I came across this one of me right before I found out I was pregnant. DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN I LOOKED LIKE THIS? T_T Seriously. I hope my children appreciate the blow to my vanity I am enduring and have endured for them (yes, yes, I'm totally vain, I know!)

From October 2010

:) Don't worry, I'll be okay. I know it is worth it.

Aaaanyway, today we went to church and then got to hang out with Mike's family. Mike went to play golf. He hadn't played in a while and his texts were pretty entertaining:

3:21 pm: 3rd hole and I've lost 4 balls so far. Brutal...

3:28: Man I'm out [of balls]. Gotta hunt for some more. This could be terrible...

From me to Mike: Are they about to die laughing? How's the heat?

3:47 pm: I'm spending a lot of time under trees so the shade is nice.

He did end up calling me at one point to tell me he had made it an entire hole with the same ball and hit par.

While Mike was entertaining the golfers, Autumn slept at Lainey's while I went home to put my feet up. It was very nice. Also very nice is that Lainey managed to take Autumn to Paint a Piece to make me a present and do it in such a way that Autumn never said a word to me. Autumn can't keep quiet about anything, haha. I'll ask her about her day at school and she'll be all, "I played at the gym but I was busy with the ball and didn't hear Miss Courtney so I sat in time out." I was genuinely surprised!

On the other hand, Mike has yet to tell me Happy Mother's Day. We're going to Bahama Breeze later this week which is what I wanted but this morning when I reminded him it was Mother's Day (I tend not to hint or wait to see if he'll remember, haha), he told me he was going to tell me when I was least expecting it. It's aboouuuut 10:43 and we've been teasing him all day that he's going to wake me up at like 11:59pm to tell me or something.

Autumn made me a gift at school that I loved. Her teachers did a questionnaire asking her questions about her mama. Autumn loves me because we make brownies together and her favorite thing to do with me is cook. She says her favorite thing for me to wear is a beautiful dress and pretty shoes, and she likes it when we play princess. My job is to teach the kids and cook. :) I decided to do something similar for nanny and lainey. I didn't do my mom's yet because I knew we wouldn't see her until later this week but I'll report those results, too. Here's a cute picture of my mom and Autumn from yesterday.


Autumn loves Lainey because she likes to spend the night with her. She likes to go to Sonic with her and likes to make Easter eggs with Lainey. Autumn likes it when Lainey wears a grey shirt and says what Lainey always does for her is help her write her name and all the letters. Autumn says that Lainey's job is to "look out the window and bring me breakfast." No one has any idea what that actually means, hahaha. Also, I need more pictures of Lainey and Autumn together.


Autumn loves Nanny because "she helps when people look at me." Autumn likes to touch flowers with Nanny and her favorite place to go with her is trick or treating. Her favorite thing for Nanny to wear is blue. Autumn says that Nanny always gives her cookies and that Nanny's job is making muffins. Also, Nanny calls Autumn stinkerpot.


I've been blessed with some pretty awesome moms through Mike's family! I probably don't say it enough and, to be honest, I haven't the slightest idea how I could ever say it enough, but Nanny and Lainey are the best mother/grandmother in law ever and I appreciate and love them for their roles in making Mike who he is, for accepting me into the family, and for being so amazing and supportive of Autumn. Mike and I say all the time that we hope that we do half as well as his parents and grandparents and that one day our legacy will be as rich and fulfilling as theirs. :D


(our legacy likely won't involve this many children, hahahaha)

The elusive sunny day

I hope this post finds everyone safe. I've gotten a few texts and emails asking how we are and we are fine. We haven't been directly affected by any flooding so far although some of the streets in and out of Germantown are flooded off and on. Ryan and Leah are also okay in Birmingham, thank goodness. Lauren is fine but Tuscaloosa is in pretty rough shape. Mike's parents had their neighborhood garage sale this weekend and are taking the leftover clothing and household items to Tuscaloosa for the people who have lost everything. Brad sent this photo to Mike and it's crazy. The tornado passed right by the condo. Fortunately, Lauren wasn't there or driving there during all of this. The buildings that are standing in the center of the photo are the condos. There used to be businesses and houses where there is now only debris.


Sigh. So much destruction and more to come with these floods.

On a slightly happier note, we took advantage of some nice weather last week and went to the Botanic Gardens again. Autumn and I went with Penny but only really saw the My Big Backyard area. When we went with Mike, we saw most of the Gardens before going to the playground. Mike's favorite area was the Oak Grove.


Happy girl on the bridge.


I think this goose was on a nest? I don't know but it didn't move even when we passed close by. Autumn chose to believe the goose was sitting on eggs. :)


Next time I want to bring food for the fish. They were craaaazy.


We tried to get a picture of Autumn's head next to this flower but it didn't really work out well. Seriously, the flower was huge.


I call this Contemplation on a Boat on Dry Land. Hahaha. Do you like her blue nails? My mom did them. :P She also has flowers on her toenails...they had fun that week with the nail decorating kit I got them for Christmas.


This is Mike ready to go home. :) There weren't any oaks around so he was all done. Aren't those worms on the hill behind him kind of freaky?


We had a good time together. I was surprised that Mike was all for this trip on his Good Friday off but he said he figured it was his last chance for a pleasant outdoor family trip before it got too hot. He's so funny. We are complete seasonal opposites. If it is 75 degrees or above, I am happy. If it is 74 degrees or below, he is happy. Autumn's like Mike so he's been joking that he wants to have me hypnotized to believe I like cold weather. Maybe our new little guy will be like me and then it can be two against two. :D Although maybe it would be two against three since Molly likes colder weather, too. What in the world am I going to do if I'm the lone tropical type in this family of hot people??

Easter Sunday!

I don't know about you guys, but there has been some wild weather here lately! Gorgeous days interspersed with serious storms. Today we had another tornado warning where the news people are all, "the main location for potential tornadic activity is approaching Germantown..." so Autumn and I had lunch in the closet. :)


There's supposed to be more weather drama tonight so I'm charging my phone and getting in bed a little early to try to get some sleep before another closet trip.

Anyway! Yesterday was Easter! I hope all my friends who celebrate Easter had a great day. Here's Autumn before we left for church. I curled her hair (princess hair) but I didn't do enough styling product so pretty much the second she started moving, the curls started falling out because her hair is exactly like her mama's.


She got those gloves in the small basket the Easter bunny left at her place at the table. :) Can you believe they are from the dollar bin at Target?? She didn't wear them to church but has had fun putting them on and taking them off.

Here she is coloring an egg before we dyed it.


We went to the 8:30am service. They only did childcare at 10 and 11:30 (there were three services just for Easter) so Autumn went with us and we served in the children's areas during the 10:00 service. Autumn did really well. I was concerned she wouldn't like the loud music but, oddly, the one thing that she was "scared" of was this blinking light on the ceiling that needs to be fixed.

Also, this was funny. There was a girl in front of us who was turning around to look at Autumn. Autumn stopped coloring, looked at the girl, looked at me, and then stage whispers, "MAMA, THAT GIRL IS LOOKING AT ME." And then spent a good chunk of the rest of the service sitting in my lap and putting my hand over her eyes so no one could see her and she couldn't see them. Silly monkey.

Oh, at church they showed this Gospel spoken word video. You might enjoy it...it is nicely done. Click!

My mom is out of town visiting Donnie and Liz so we went over to Mike's parents' house where, of course, the Easter bunny had paid a visit! He (she?) even left a note on the basket!


And there was much rejoicing.


Autumn is still a little confused about why the Easter bunny comes when we celebrate Jesus coming back to life again. See, I kind of don't think I thought about stuff like that when I was almost 4. I think I was just happy to get candy, haha. We talked a little about it (new life, eggs, and all that) but nothing too crazy in depth. I'm just glad that our reading of the bible stories and her church lessons seem to be making an impact on her.

We had a fun egg hunt. She loooooves hunting eggs. I need to set up some scavenger hunts at home or something. Autumn was particularly tickled by the eggs that the "silly Easter bunny" dropped in the fountain.


Our lucky ducky got some dollars and coins in her eggs again! She put them in her bank along with the ones from Roxie's birthday. It's getting full so soon she'll get to divide up her bank (we're doing the savings/donation/buy something fun thing) and get that soft My Little Pony!


Afterward, P'd, Boppa, and Lauren took turns rolling her around the yard. I wish I had taken some video because her laugh is just so infectious. Hardly anyone can helping smiling when she's cackling away.


On a different note, I made a cake! Mike had asked me to make this Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake from Cook's Illustrated. It was kind of involved so I made it Saturday to bring to Easter dinner. I assembled all the ingredients and they were really pretty all laid out. These are the dry ingredients. It took me a few tries to find some Dutch process cocoa. I used all mine and sometime since I ran out, regular grocery stores stopped carrying it so I ended up going to Penzey's, which wasn't a huge deal because I love that place.


The recipe has you make a pudding and use a certain technique for mixing the batter so you get that height and crumb of an old fashioned cake, as opposed to the rich, smaller cakes that are kind of in right now. The frosting was also a little bit of a chore, it needed a double boiler like the pudding and then an ice bath to get it to just the right temp. Was it worth it? Oh, yes.


I definitely won't make this cake for anything but an occasion or special request but it was soooo good. Mike took some to work today and one of his coworkers called it the best cake he'd ever had (I'm not sure he was entirely serious, haha) and asked for the recipe. It was fun to do something so involved!

In which I am very random

1. If Autumn were a dog, this is what she'd look like: clickie!

2. Did I tell you I am officially in my third trimester? Yay! Went to the doc this week and all is well. I feel like a hoss but I'm inside the target weight for this stage and everything is measuring fine. Next visit is a 3-D ultrasound. I didn't get one with Autumn because it was like $200 which, no. The 3d is routine at this practice and they are going to do a weight check because of Autumn's growth issues. I doubt there will be anything too funky going on though because she had umbilical cord issues and this time there are no (known) umbilical cord abnormalities.

3. This children's Bible is awesome. Our friend Michelle gave it to Autumn for Easter two years ago. I love the illustrations--it's one of the few books that seems to have people of every color in it--and the stories. I've been reading Autumn different parts of the Easter story this week. Today we read about how Jesus died on the cross and tomorrow we will read about His resurrection.

From page 292:
"My body is like this bread. It will break," Jesus told them. "This cup of wine is like my blood. It will pour out.

"But this is how God will rescue the whole world. My life will break and God's broken world will mend. My heart will tear apart--and your hearts will heal. Just as the passover lamb died, so now I will die instead of you. My blood will wash away all of your sins. And you'll be clean on the inside--in your hearts.

"So whenever you eat and drink, remember," Jesus said, "I've rescued you!"

4. Roxie's birthday was last week! I get the fail award because I didn't take any pictures of things like the fruit arrangement Valerie made. It was cute...she cut out the letters of Roxie's name in pineapple! It was a Minnie Mouse party which totally delighted Autumn. We all know how much she likes anything Mickey.


Valerie also planned an Easter egg hunt. Autumn was the most mobile of the kids and the only one who had really done an egg hunt before so I tried to corral her into one area while the others did some hunting. Once they gave up, Autumn swept in and gathered everything else. :) She ended up with 4 eggs that had a dollar each in them! She was seriously excited and put the dollars in her mickey bank where she is saving up to buy a soft my little pony.


Roxie was so cute while everyone sang her happy birthday. At first she looked a little baffled. Then she started to enjoy herself.


Then she was all, "this is for meeee!"


This was part of her gift from us. It was not popular with her. :P


I like this picture.


The gift Roxie is leaning on above was as interesting to Autumn as it was to Roxie. Mike ended up putting it together for them to play with.


My mom got Roxie a little push/ride car. The second I took it out of the box and put it together, Roxie took off. Mike got all worried and followed her around. :) When my mom saw this picture she said, "Mike loves babies, doesn't he?" And yes. Yes, he does.


Want to see something crazy? Here's Autumn at her first birthday party:


HOLY COW WHEN DID SHE GROW UP??

What a Week! Part 1...

Seriously, this week was some kind of busy! On top of all the things we had to do, I started my biggest project. I went through all of autumn's old clothes and separated hand me downs for Roxie and future nieces from the consignment/to sell clothing from the things I feel comfortable putting in the garage sale. I still have a couple more boxes with toys and things like blankets to go through so the playroom is truly a disaster, haha. Does anyone in the Memphis area have a favorite consignment shop that takes kids clothes? Or is anyone interested in going through any of this for themselves or a family member/friend?

I didn't get any pictures of it, but last week Penny had Autumn and me over to her house and we had pizza and watched Tangled together. I really enjoyed Tangled...Autumn did, too, when she wasn't getting nervous about the two kind of bad guys. She was also really confused about how the mama ended up being the real bad guy which made for interesting conversation. We had another fun day this week with Penny. We're counting down until Penny takes a weekday job in May (she's a nurse and works on the weekends right now) by trying to do some of the things we've talked about doing. Wednesday we did My Big Backyard at the Botanic Garden. It was a lot of fun and not exactly what I was expecting.

We started off at the bird area where there's this big bridge the kids can go across and then take a slide down. Autumn must have done this 2 dozen times before we left for the day.


Penny's mother in law Mrs. Debby came with us and brought her grandsom Harrison. He is seriously adorable and was so happy the entire time. Autumn liked him a lot.


They had these wooden slat things in a natural puzzle area. I thought they were really neat and wouldn't mind finding some for our house. Autumn made basically a huge maze but we walked by some boys later who had made themselves a small box and were sitting in it. Super cute.


One of her favorite spots was the area with the playhouses. She had two that she really liked. One was made of big, um, sticks, I guess? And inside, the table and chairs were tree stumps and there was a washtub full of wooden blocks. Another had mallets in a box so you could play a wrench xylophone, some chimes, metal bowls, and wooden blocks.


We have a tendency to kill our grass so we have a yard service that comes and sprays weeds every few months--it ends up being cheaper than re-sodding every year! It's great but I do miss clover and dandelions. They had a whole area that was, deliberately or not, overrun with both. Autumn had so. much. fun.


There were also swings placed in various places along the path. This one was in the butterfly area and was shaped like a cocoon.


This is one happy little monkey.


On the way out, we stopped at the fountain and let the kids put their feet in. I'm not sure if this was actually allowed but, really, who could say no to these little feet??


By the end of the trip, both Autumn and Harrison were absolutely wiped out. I think Autumn could have stayed all day but I planned the outing a little too close to her naptime.


Sometime before it gets too hot, I definitely want to make the trip with Mike. I think he'd really enjoy it and I'd like to see more of the gardens. Autumn would certainly welcome the chance to stay longer!