Day 5

it's day five of our nine day adventure! it's been wild and crazy, but we are surviving. the kids are doing as well as can be expected. the baby has been the best; eating well and sleeping as well as he can. my mom has been with us, so that has helped a LOT. we have a one to one kid/adult ratio. i only wish that could continue until they are around 5 years old or so!

anyway. we are doing a lot of touristy things, trying to make time go a little faster. the pics below are some of emily and ethan playing in the fountain at the kemah boardwalk and elliot chilling in his car seat. they had a great time. maybe we'll go to space center houston or the zoo to kill some time. the place we are staying does not have a pool. bummer, but it does not matter anyway, it's raining outside. but on the up side, dan hooked our computer up so i have the internet to use!

Moving day

well, today is the big day! the majority of our furniture is now in storage, the rest (except for the beds) will go tonight. it's odd to look around and see an near-empty house. reality has finally hit - we are moving! :) emily keeps asking if the other kids have moved out of our house; she thinks they should go ahead and put their things in storage and get out like we have to. needless to say, we are all excited. tomorrow our new address will be a hotel room in kemah.

i'll have a little bit of computer access, but not much. we don't own a laptop, so we'll have to rely on other sources to check email, etc. i'm sure my next entry will be full of cute pictures of the kids and our new house!

take care, and see you on/around june 1st!

Post-Elliot post

first of all, thanks for all the well wishes and prayers. dan posted last and did not give any real detail, so i'll fill you in. i won't be too graphic!

i went into labor straight up midnight friday night. at around 1:30 i told dan it was for real, so please call our friend kiki to come over and watch the kids. emily had already been up that night and saw me in a lot of pain, so she figured out something was going on. and strangely enough, ethan woke up in the night crying for me. he almost never does that. i think he must have sensed something going on!

so anyway, we went in and, yep, i was in labor. the night nurses, while nice, were complete buffoons. it took forever for them to get my iv in. one nurse tried to give me one while i was contracting and blew a vain. she left after the 3rd try to get one in. finally around 3 i had my epidural and things were much better. we rested until around 6:30 when my water broke, and after that things went real fast. he was born shortly after at 7:20 saturday morning. it was by far the easiest and the most painless delivery i've experienced. i'd been praying, as had many others, for an easy delivery; God answers prayer! (aub, i guess it was God's will for me to have an easy delivery? :) he looks nothing like his brother or sister. he has black hair and has a much darker complexion.

he is just perfect, and we are all adjusting well. he's a fabulous nurser; the only one of my kids to learn to breastfeed before leaving the hospital; again, another answer to prayer. he's sleeping as well as a 5 day old can - and i've begun channeling hannah rogers' newborn sleeping habits (she slept through the night at 6 weeks.) i'm feeling better every day.

emily and ethan are absolutely happy with him. every now and then emily will remark how small and cute he is, and how he finally got out of mommy's tummy! they fight over who gets to hold him when we take the camera out, emily has promised (on video even) how she'll share her toys with him and ethan just plain loves being around him. when elliot leaves the room he cries for him to come back. they are both very sweet and tell him not to cry when he's upset. also, they call him by his first and middle name. it's a little weird to hear them say christopher. my mom was here for a few days and i know it sorta tugged at her heart to hear my brother's name being mentioned so often. but hey, one life ends, another begins.

i do have to share one more thing about emily. elly made a comment about how she loved emily's eyes in one of the pictures dan posted. emily had the happiest and proudest look on her face and in her eyes when she first came in the hospital room that first day. i'm sure it was the drugs, but her expression made me tear up. i know siblings are generally happy to have another brother or sister, but my kids are truly happy he's a part of the family, and that makes me happy. elliot is loved.

we've had a website for the kids since emily was born. dan updated it to add elliot. we have not updated it in a very long time, but at least elliot has a page now! please continue to pray for us. we sold our house today and will close on our new house tomorrow. let the madness begin!

http://home.houston.rr.com/dmcneal/baby.html

Elliot Christopher McNeal

He's here!!!

Elliot arrived Saturday morning at 7:20 am...7 lbs 15 oz...19.5 in...mom and baby are doing great.

Emily and Ethan are very excited about their new brother.

Let's Party!

it was a crazy weekend.

the craziness started friday night with my Pamper and Prayer Party. a P&PP is a party i invented a couple of years ago. basically, our sunday school class has a girls night out type event for the pregnant girl. traditionally, we turn the lights down low and have candles, pig out on some desserts, pamper her by doing her nails, give her a pedicure, neck massage, etc. well, i don't like anyone touching my feet, so instead of letting them do that to me we all learned how to play Texas Hold 'Em and drank virgin margaritas. we had fun. oh yeah, the other part of the party is praying for the pregnant girl; her delivery, coming home issues, family adjustments, etc. it's a really neat feeling knowing your friends have lifted you up to the Lord before delivery, praying for the things that matter most. the party guests go in a room alone and have specific things to pray for, then they write words of wisdom or comments. of course the pregnant girl keeps the words of wisdom, etc. so she can look back on them when needed.

ethan's party was saturday from 12 until 2. the kids had a great time. tumbling toddlers is always a hit with my kids, and most others. the kids really had a good time when we got out the parachute. i never knew kids liked popping balls on a piece of fabric, they giggled like fools!

happy birthday ethan!

we left ethan's party around 2:15, came home and i freshened up for my church shower. we were a little late, but that's normal! :) i had a good time, the girls in my class did a great job. i requested albert's hot sauce and chips, and they got some for me! albert's is mostly a louisiana thing, so i was glad to introduce a truly good hot sauce to my texas friends...we got so much neat stuff!! it'll be good to look at elliot in something ethan or his cousin did not wear. the coolest gift we received was a humidifier shaped like a frog. i can't wait to use it - the steam comes out of his eyes! i hope it does not freak the kids out!!

we also had a house full of people. my mom, dan's mom and aunt and two of dan's nephews were here. it was nice to have all the help, but i'm glad we are alone again. i need a little time to recover from the weekend - i'm exhausted, and so are dan and the kids. below is a pic of emily, ethan, drew and jared. notice how the boys are playing rough and how emily is just sitting there reading a book...what a little lady!

so that was our weekend! it was non-stop fun and excitement. the only thing that would have made it more interesting was if i would have had elliot. but hopefully he'll come this friday!