He melts my heart!

I honestly can't believe how much he has grown. It is a bitter sweet thing for me, as much as I love to see him get healthier and bigger every day I can't help but be sad that my baby is getting so big so fast! I absolutley LOVE his smile I could kiss those cheeks all day!

Busy Busy Life!

Wow I didn't realize how much life changes when you have a third baby. Maybe some other people don't feel this way but since Braxton has been born I can't seem to keep up with anything including blogging! I will try to sum up what we have been up to lately in this post then try to be better at keeping up on it.

We had a great Christmas with lots of family fun! The kids got everything they wanted and then some, (we need to work on not spoiling them so much) We had my mom come stay with us for Christmas it was nice to have her here. She has been in and out of the hospital with a bunch of different health problems so we were happy she was well enough to come be with us for that weekend. She has had 4 surgeries in the last 4 months one of which was to amputate her leg it has been a very emotional roller coaster, her mental state has been going down also. I am trying to cherish every moment I get with her now.

We were happy to welcome in the new year 2011 was full of lots of ups and downs and was mostly enjoyed. We hope 2012 is just as good or better than 2011.

We got a gym membership to our aquatic center and we have been LOVING it! I think I am going to run the 5k this July again ( I did it 2 years ago) The kids love going swimming there and running the track. We will be putting our passes to good use I am sure.

We booked our anniversary trip, Nate and I try to go away every year for our anniversary and this year our great friends the Aardemas are joining us and we are going to MEXICO! Cant wait!

Last but NOT least Braxton is growing and is FINALLY on the charts he is in the 1st percentile! We couldn't be more excited!Keep growing little buddy!

He smiles!!!! :)

We have been waiting for Braxton to smile for what feels like forever. My other two kids seemed to smile at a very early age so I kept feeling bad because we couldnt get a smile out of him. But he was holding out on us and let me just tell you it was well worth the wait!

Halloween

I always try to do a theme for Halloween and this year we had a hard time comming up with one since we have an addition to our family that we had to add in. After a few weeks of thinking we decidedd on the Mario theme. LOL So Sky was Mario Braxton was Luigi and Abbie was Princes Daisy. We thought it was cuter than princess peach. It was fun to take them trick or treating and see peoples expressions when they say that we even had a baby luigi. Of coarse they got TONS of candy and had lots of fun! :)

Princess' everywhere!!

Abbie turned 5 and I being the best mom in the world almost forgot until about a week and a half before. With all that has been going on I guess I got side tracked. When we asked her what she wanted to do for her party this year and she said a princess party..... SOOOo that is what we gave her. She invited a bunch of friends and we had a "Royal Ball" I had a friend come over and style all there hair then some cute girls in my neighborhood painted all their nails, we also had them make necklaces. It turned out really good especially for last minute planning. :) She got lots and lots of awesome gifts.
We are so blessed to have our sweet princess in our family she keeps us all in our place and makes us smile all the time! We love you Abbie!!!

1 in 9,000

Yep I am the lucky 1!! After I had Braxton the day we got home from the hospital I started to have lower back pain. I new instantly that something was wrong but I ignored it, by the time Friday came I was in so much pain I could barley walk Nate and I researched on line lower back pain after labor and thought maybe it was a pulled muscle or something to do with the epidural?!?! I started doing ice and heat packs and I had been consistently taking I.B profin and Tylenol nothing was helping. That night I decided to go in to the ER to get checked out I was sure I had a kidney stone. My AMAZING friend Sherry took me while Nate stayed home with all 3 kids. After I got all checked in they started checking all the possibilities. I went back for a ct scan and that's when I started to get scared! I was in so much pain it was unreal. They came and told me they needed to do another scan but this time with the dyes they wouldn't tell me why so of course I got very nervous. After that it took them FOREVER to come talk to me and tell me what was going on. The Dr. came in and the first thing he said was" I have never seen this before" Never what you want to hear! "but you have a blood clot in your ovarian vein" UMM okay what does that mean? "Well we are going to admit you into the hospital and put you on blood thinners right away" I was on very strict bed rest for the first 24 hours I couldn't even get out of bed to use the bathroom (bed pans are so not fun!) We found out that only 1 in 9,000 woman get this after a regular child birth.
The next day is when the fevers started and I would have horrible aches and the cold chills and shivers. So this is when they decided I had an infection, we tried numerous antibiotics and nothing was helping so we did MORE blood work and that's when we found out I had Septic Pelvic Thromboses (sp?) in other words the blood clot was releasing bad toxins into my body and causing an infection. After 3 long horrible and painful days my fever of 103.7 finally broke. I had to be fever free for 48 hours for them to release me.
Nate was so amazing those 5 days I was there, he stayed with me to help me with the baby. They let me keep Braxton with me since I was only 4 days post pardum and I was nursing they even put me in the pediatric unit so he wouldn't be exposed to all the germs on the medical floor. The hospital was so great the nurses were amazing and I felt very well taken care of! Our wonderful neighbors and friends took care of my other 2 children while I was there and I am so so so grateful for them all! The love and support that we were shown is nothing short of amazing. I am happy that this is behind us I know I have a long road ahead before I am in the complete clear but the worse in behinf us!

Braxton Richard Blass

Our sweet Braxton joined us in this world on August 8th 2011. He surprised us by coming 4 weeks early! My water broke around 10pm on the 7th I called Nate to come home from work then quickly started to pack our bags and called my sister to come get the other kids. When we got settled into our room at the hospital and set up on the heart monitors they told us his heart rate was dropping so I was moving from side to side and was put on oxygen. They started me on pitosin to try to hurry the process then when I was about a 5 I then asked for my epidural I wanted to go as long as I could natural but because it was just a slow process I decided to go ahead and get it. I regret it because the anesthesiologist was so rude and it was the most painful epidural I had ever had I am still having pain on my spine from it!!!!! I continued to move along slowly and when I got to a 6 I started to feel a lot of pressure I asked the to check me again and they kept reassuring me I wasn't ready.... I finally said CHECK me cause I am gonna push!!! At this point my epidural wasn't working and I was in a lot of pain they checked and hurried and called the doctor in. I started to push my first push and the Dr. told me to stop WHAT..... I can't stop I did everything in my power to stop because he then told me the cord was around the baby's neck. When i could push again I pushed once and out her came! They didn't let me hold him and that was very hard after they checked his vitals and made sure he was ok they handed him to Nate and he handed him to me. That's when I saw it, RED hair LOL. He is perfect! Weighing 5lbs 4oz and 19 and 1/4 inches long. He was healthy and doing great! We were able to bring him home with us and we all just love him!

Meeting their baby brother for the first time