The Binky Fairy

Wow, we can barely believe that Addie is almost three! She has had so many changes this year and has really transformed into a BIG GIRL! She is potty trained (even through the night!), sleeps in a big girl bed, takes dance class, and is a HUGE help as a big sister. There was one thing though that she just couldn't give up! THE BINKY! This has been her special friend throughout her life and she just loves it! She usually had to go to bed with three of them! One for her mouth and one for each hand.

I have dreaded getting rid of this thing! I haven't known how or when to do it. So...Daddy made the decision (he got to be the bad guy! ;)....

I read on another blog about this idea, so we implemented it!

Justin told Addie that she was a big girl now, and that because of that, we needed to give our binkies to the Binky Fairy so she can go and give them to other babies that need them. She was ALL FOR IT... in the beginning. Justin and Addie went and bought stuff to make a "Bye Bye Binky Cake". They baked it, decorated, and put candles in it. (Can you tell a man helped make this cake?)



After singing our "Bye Bye Binky" song, Addie blew out the candles.



Then we went and hung the binkies in the tree, for the Binky Fairy to come and take them.



(We ended up doing this at Nana's & Papa's house too, where she had another set of binkies...)



After the Binky Fairy took the binkies, she left presents for Addie to thank her for giving them to the babies that needed them, like a new baseball and bat!




This went well....UNTIL it was bed time! Then there were many tears shed, many talks about wanting to be a little girl again, and that night daddy ended up sleeping with Addie to comfort her. But after that, we've only have a few times where she's asked for them and seems to accept our answer that "the binkies are now with other babies".

Addie has informed us though, that her binkies are now with her brother Peyton (aw...melts my heart), and also that she plans on buying herself a new binky next Christmas! She cracks me up!

Dear Addison,

Dear Addison,

Mommy's memory is not the best. So I'm writing you a letter right now to tell you all the amazing and funny things you do as a two and half year old. I don't ever want to forget them, and I want you to know just how cool of a kid you are, so I figure if I write it down, then we can all look back on it and enjoy it all over again.

First of all, you are SO SMART! You amaze me at how smart you are! And your memory! You kill me. You still talk about your second birthday party like it was yesterday! You love to relive it. You say "Mommy, Ariel came to my party". I just love it.

You crack me up with the things you do and say. Here's a list of things I tend to hear or see on a regular basis from you:

* "Mommy when I get older, Daddy is going to marry me."

* "So yummy in my tummy! So yummy in my tummy!!"

* "I'm Snow White, and I ate the apple" (cue you falling on the floor and falling asleep)

* "Mommy, fall asleep" (while we wait at a red light), then "Wake up!" (when the light turns green)

* "Mommy, there's Target!! Your favorite store!"

* "Mommy hold me!!!!"

* "Mommy, you're so proud of me!" (after you've gone #2 in the potty)

* "Oh Brynnie, it's okay, Addie's here...."

* "I'm not Addie, I'm a princess!"

* "Mommy, twril-lel me!" (twirl)

*"Clap for me!" (when ever you do something you feel is worthy)

*You love to sing and you sing certain songs over and over...ABC's, Twinkle, Twinkle, Take me Out To the Ball Game, Jesus Loves Me, The B-I-B-L-E, and Jingle Bells.

*You love to say "Pray like Mary", and make us put our hands together and bow our heads like Mary does in Nana's nativity scene.

* You are in a dress up dress EVERY day and would wear it everywhere if we let you.

* When asked what your name is you always respond "Addison Emily Blythe". Never just Addison.

* You make friends where ever we go. You are so friendly and love people!

* You totally LOVE Disneyland. Some of your favorite rides are Dumbo, Small World, and Storybook boat.

*When we tell you you're being a "Drama Queen" you say "No, I'm a Drama Princess".

You seriously are the coolest kid I think I've ever met. Every one who knows you falls in love with you instantly. You have so much joy and personality, that it's contagious. People can't help but want to be around you. Yes, with all that comes a strong personality that can sometimes get you into trouble, but overall you are a loving, sweet, animated little girl and I can't imagine my life without you. You make life so much fun! I can't wait to see how you blossom and grow. If you're this amazing at TWO, I can't imagine how much more you'll be when you're older. I just know we'll be best friends! I love you, from here to the Big Dipper my love!

No one told me about the poop!

So as a little girl, when I would dream of being a mom, my thoughts would go to playing tea parties, dress up, reading books, and going for walks with my kids. Now, yes that is a PART of motherhood. A part that I love!

But.....it's not the only part.....

The part that people DON'T tell you about is the POOP! Yep, I said it, POOP!

So, my first time alone with both girls. Justin's parents were over visiting us. When they left, I was alone with the girls while waiting for my friend Esther to come over in about an hour. Addie was in her bed (not napping of course, but having her "down time"). I can handle this, right?

So I'm nursing Brynn, and I hear from Addie's room "Mommy, I have to go poo-poo"! Now mind you, my daughter is VERY smart and has already figured out how to get out of bed when she's supposed to be sleeping. The usual, I need water, I need to go potty, I need my binky, I need my baby doll, etc... Well I had already gone up there about 30 minutes before when she yelled this very phrase "I need to go poo poo" and taken her. AND, she went!

So when she started to yell this again, I figured it was another stall tactic, so I ignored her....

BIG MISTAKE!

I look at the video monitor a few minutes later and it looked like she had something in her hand....UH OH!

So I take Brynn and set her down (she begins to scream because her meal was just cut short) and I run upstairs (which just after a c section, not so good!). I go into Addie's room and swing open the door, and the smell HITS me like a ton of bricks! I see Addie and she has POOP all down her legs, on her arms, on her sheets, pillow cases, comforter, and binky! UGH! It was everywhere. So I pick her up and strip her down and put her in the tub (again, not easy after a c section) and hose her down with the shower nozzle. I try to get all the poop off her, all the while trying not to gag and listening to Brynn scream!

So then I run and grab my wrap and put Brynn on me so she won't cry so much and then juggle bathing Addie and keeping Brynn's head from bobbing back and forth in my wrap! UGH! Then I have to go and strip the bed, throw the binky away, cause there's just not reason to clean that....so gross!

Needless to say, I got it all cleaned up, but was very sore after wards.

Yeah, no one mentions all the poop you have to deal with as a mommy...if they did, I think we'd all think twice before having kids!

Grace...

“What I need as a mother is grace. God’s grace, that allows me to fail and try again, that allows me to ask for help when I don’t have the wisdom or patience I need, that reminds me we’re not alone in this, and that God loves my daughter even more than I do. And grace from other mothers. I need grace and truth-telling and camaraderie from other moms. I need us to tell the truth about how hard it is, and I need us to help each other, instead of hiding behind the pretense and pressure of perfection.

————-

Let’s think about grace—grace from a God who loves us and values us and picks us up every time we fall, with just exactly the same love and tenderness you feel when you pick up your kids after they have fallen. And the grace we show one another when we drop the comparisons and the catalog images and really walk with one another, on the good days and the bad days. Let’s think about honesty and helping and telling our stories. Let’s give each other a break and a little help and some soft places to land.

If you’re a mom, what you do is nurture and protect and give grace. You do it all the time, and it’s very important, because it reminds us, in daily, tangible ways how God nurtures and protects and gives grace. And maybe today the one who really needs that nurturing and protection and grace is you.”

(S. Niequist)

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I saw this on another blog and it really spoke to me....

I want to be a grace giver. I want to be the kind of woman and mom that shows my girls what it means to truly have God's grace play out in my life. I have been in need of grace so many times in my life and I want to be the person that gives it back freely in return.

I've failed. I WILL fail again. Yet,I want to pick myself up and try again each time. I have had times in my life where I was not shown grace, and I remember how that feels. I don't want to do that to others. Especially other moms who are struggling each day too.

I also want my children to show me grace as we navigate through life. I will not always be the perfect wife, the perfect mom, the perfect daughter, or the perfect friend. But Christ shows me grace on a daily basis (sometimes minute by minute) and I not only want that from others, I want to be an example of that to others.

So...I'm working on grace....how about you?

Prayer Request

I am writing you with somewhat of a heavy, yet hopeful heart. We are only 4 weeks away from Brynn's due date! All is looking good with her testing as well as mine. (To put you at ease at the start of this). We are on track at this point to try for a VBAC (vaginal delivery after Cesarean). Of course we are ready and open if the doctors tell us at any point that they want to deliver her via c section if that's what best.

The reason I'm writing is to ask that you cover us in prayer. It seems that the consensus right now is that we should expect for Brynn to end up in the NICU because of Peyton and Addison's history of hyper thyroidism when they were born. I have to say that with ALL my heart, I feel angry at the expectation. I know that God is bigger than all of this, and I firmly believe that if it's His will, Brynn can bypass this and come home with us. We want so desperately to leave the hospital with our baby (something we didn't get to do with Peyton or Addie). We want so much for this to be the smoothest delivery and just a miraculous birth! I am writing to ask you to commit us to prayer for the next four weeks. I am asking that you pray that Brynn will be born naturally, without any complications. That she will NOT be born with any thyroid problems and will NOT require the NICU for any reason at all. Please pray that we can have the same bonding experience and birth experience that so many other families are fortunate enough to have. I will not accept defeat before she is even born. We will pray this baby home! I ask that you would help us to do that! If any of you have prayer chains that you are involved with, I would ask you to put our family on them. We cannot have too many people interceding on our behalf!

Thank you all for your support and prayers. We truly appreciate them.

1 John 5:14-15

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

Matthew 18:19

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

Our little fish

Here is our little fish. She started out on her first day of swim lessons just wanting to put her head in the water and float. She ended like this! Swimming with her arms and feet. We are so proud!!!! All this at just TWO. Where did our baby go? She's such a big girl now!

Update on Baby Brynn and Mommy

It has been a while! I guess pregnancy and a toddler can make time fly!

To be honest, we Blythes are in need of prayer!

To catch you all up, I am now 30 weeks pregnant with Brynn, and she is quite the active baby.

Addie is potty trained now! (PTL) and swimming like a champ after two weeks of lessons! Although she has found her independance and I am in the process of reading Dr. Dobson's Strong Willed Child! Yet she is the joy of my life!

I am living right now in a lot of pain. I hurt my back, back in high school, and it flares up from time to time, but pregnancy just makes it almost unbearable. (This is the first prayer request). It is so hard to be in pain everyday, and try to keep up with housework, shopping, and chasing after Addison. I will say that the pain is taking it's toll on me physically and emotionally. Please lift me up in prayer as I now enter the homestretch of the pregnancy.

As I've written about before, my thyriod tissue has grown back for a second time now. Because of this, throughout this pregnancy, my doctor has been lowering my thyroid medication. As of two weeks ago, he took me off of it completely. I will admit, I had a bit of a melt down, because it brought back a lot of memories of when we lost Peyton. But God is GOOD! I called my OB (who is the sweetest Christian man) and he let me cry and worry and he decided to put me in NST (Non-stress tests) right then ( I wasn't supposed to start for another two or three weeks). A NST is where I go to the hospital twice a week to the Labor and Delivery Floor and they hook me up to a monitor and they monitor Brynn's heart rate. The goal is that her resting heart rate will be somewhere between 120 and 160. This is considered normal. (She's been averaging 140) Peyton's only symptom was an elevated resting heart rate of about 180 to 190. We did these tests with Addison as well. Yes, it's kind of a pain to head to the hospital every Monday and Thursday, but I am blessed with an amazing Mom who watches Addie while I'm there at my appts. I am now in my third week of testing. It has had a calming effect on me because I get to see her on an ultrasound each time as well as be assured her heart rate is normal.

Today I had my testing and her heart rate was at 160. Even though this is "normal", I asked the nurse to talk to my doctor to be sure this wasn't a concern since it seemed to have jumped up. He assured me it was fine, but I will admit, I had some anxiety today. The nurse that was doing the test was talking to me and made a comment "you should expect that this baby will have to spend some time in the NICU too, due to your history". Wow! That hit me! I have had this thought in my mind, that somehow, Brynn's birth would be different. THIS baby would be the baby that I would bring home on the same day I leave the hospital. I haven't let myself believe that Brynn could end up in the NICU because it's not on option I'm letting myself entertain. I realized today that if I want this baby girl to stay out of the NICU, then I'd better be on my knees. And not only me! It could take an army of prayer warriors. I want this baby to be healthy and to come home! I don't want to endure the NICU again, especially with a 2 year old at home who won't take kindly to me being gone all day at the hospital trying to nurse a baby in the NICU!

So I am asking anyone reading this, please commit our family to prayer. Please lift us up! Please pray for complete health for Brynn, as well as wisdom for the doctors and a faithful heart for us to know that God has it all in HIS hands. Also please pray that Brynn's resting heart rate does not go above 160, because if it does, then we might have to deliver early, and then the NICU would be inevitable. We really could use a blanket of prayers from our loved ones. Thank you all!

God is faithful! We know that! We have Addison at home as proof of His faithfulness and promises! We believe that God will also let us bring Brynn home.