Summertime!

I know summer is officially over for all intents and purposes on Labor Day weekend but with Sophia starting camp this week and preschool in 2 weeks it just seems like it's wrapped up.  I can summarize the summer in several words:  fast, fun, at times overwhelming and draining.  Quite honestly since I started back to work the word drowning is how I feel at times.  I have never been busier with work and at times feel like between work and taking care of the kids/ finding time to play with them and enjoy them and having family time with Trey there's just no time for anything else some weeks.  I keep telling Trey with how busy I've been traveling and working nonstop it feels like it's always Friday.  More on that later.

But all in all, as I said this summer has been amazing and flew by as they all do- way too fast!  While work has been a beast it's been fun at times too.  The timing of me returning to work coincided with a lot of my client's annual summer conferences and where does one go on a conference in the summer but the beach (can't complain when they invite me to work at the beach ;) !  My first work trip back at the end of June I didn't want to leave Will behind at just 3.5 months old so we loaded up the family and everyone came in tote down to Perdido Key, AL.  It's a great little beach town on the border of AL and FL and it was nice to have a work/play trip.  While I had to work more than I hoped it was still nice to have my family there to spend late afternoons at the beach and enjoy the local restaurants.  I can definitely see the allure for families to vacation there and Trey and I both agreed it'd be a good spot to return to.  Can't beat the Gulf water and sand either...

Being silly with mommy on our road trip

Then not even a week later we packed up the kids and the car again and headed to Wilmington for 4th of July!  It was Will's first trip to Wilmington and he did great.  Sophia attempted to attack the puppies with her aggressive loving every time she saw them but had such a great time and bonded with Mimi on the trip.  We all enjoyed taking the boat out and enjoying the beach at Duneridge... helped that Bill and Barbara reserved the cabana by the pool so we could bring Sophia's pack and play every day for her to nap.  It was a nice bonus that we got to stick around that Sunday to celebrate the twins' 1st birthday party!  We had a great time watching the fireworks from Mimi and Dadaw's new place on the intercoastal.  Can't beat that view!

this view would never get old!

pure livin'  This kid knows how to relax. (here on shell island)

Loving her some Mimi time!

Go 'merica!

meeting Uncle Cameron

4th of July is not complete around our house without our annual flag cake

early morning Wal-mart run on 4th of July for our cake supplies

daddy can't wait to take his little girl fishing!

meeting Aunt Julie and Uncle George and getting his first intro to Capt'n Bills

We packed up Sunday after the party and headed to Columbia for my work appointment Monday morning (no rest for the weary).  I have to say... it was nice having my family come along for my first overnight trips and nice we could swing a family trip in en route.

Next up in July my baby boy was 4 months old!!!  I really should've posted this one last month because it is hard to remember all details even 2 weeks later but I was happy to get a good report at his 4 month check up.  He was still a teeny tiny little nugget at only 12 lbs 3 oz.  He was in the 2nd percentile for weight but at least his thrush was gone, his jaundice cleared and his doctor said he was gaining and growing just fine in proportion to how teeny tiny he was at birth so not to worry.  That's all I needed to hear.

His doctor also said he could sleep through the night but I was hesitant to push him for a few more weeks since he was so tiny and always seemed to cry of starvation in the night.  But back to the drowning this summer bit... I really don't now how Trey and I survived July because it seemed like Will woke up about 3 times a night for 3 weeks in a row.  You can guess who had to help him since even though Trey would try to attempt a futile pacifier plug, baby Will just wanted la leche.  I thought some days I was going to die.  It was just so exhausting never sleeping more than 2-2.5 hours straight in the night and then waking up and working a solid day (while also taking breaks to pump or feed Will).  Then as I said, my travel schedule picked up so also throwing that into the mix and just feeling like I was always running around I think made me feel a little crazy the past month.

Anyway, a migraine or two in the past week was a tell tale sign that things needed to change (didn't help that our nanny just doesn't seem to be getting the hang of taking care of 2 kids which has compounded my daily stress levels but that's a story for another day).  All this brings us to the best news ever.... Drum roll please!!!!  We finally decided to put Will in his crib around 4 months and the past week we've been sleep training him and he's really getting it! (knock on wood).  Not saying the little guy doesn't whimper in the night but we can usually just go in there give him his pacifier and he's good until at least 6:30.  Given we hadn't had a consecutive 4 hours of sleep in weeks, him sleeping from about 8/8:30 until 6:30 or 7 has been AMAZING!  Both Trey and I feel like new people which has been great since work hasn't slowed down much.

Will's first night in his crib (we learned giving him a sleep sack worked much better!)

Other than trips and work, we also had a good time on the weekends this summer spending lazy days by the pool, doing dinner dates with friends, enjoying festivals the city has to offer (We had a great time at the Piedmont Ice Cream Festival and afterward let Sophia run around in the fountains at Centennial Park... she was a little timid so I took one for the team - secretly I was dying to jump in anyway since it was around 100 degrees!  Seriously- this has been a hot summer!!!)

All in all, it's been a great summer filled with laughs, family and good times.  I've loved watching Sophia learn more and more by the day and be super sweet with her brother or her "bubba" as she calls him.  She loves him to death at times but I catch glimpses of the two of them giggling at each other and makes my heart melt.  I know they'll be best buddies soon enough.  I'll have to post more on that later.

she loves watching Super Why with Will

So, while it's always sad to see summer go I know fall will bring with it many more fun memories for our party of 4.  Can't wait to see how Sophia finishes the week with her first Camp and how she'll do in the 2s preschool class in 2 weeks.

I'm also loving the phase Will is entering into now because he's the cutest little smiliest thing ever.  I know I'll blink and he'll be in Sophia's shoes starting school in no time.

 More on Will @ 5 months and Sophia's Camp at First Baptist next time...

What a Week!

Now you might be reading that title and think what an Amazing week they must have had.  But I assure you the exclamatory ending is not what you think.  By "What a week!" I mean, what a crazy and at times frazzling, scary, frustrating and exhausting week!  I've been back to work for 2 weeks now and for the most part the transition back to reality has gone quite seemlessly.  I've been drowning in work but I expected as much.  It's the weekends that send us scrambling and running all over town and I think I've come to realize at times make the weeks a little harder because we never stop and then it seems like it's back to the rat race Monday and repeat all over again.  Don't get me wrong.  I love all our friends and family and love that we always seem to have invites to fun things (we are really lucky... I know!) but every now and then it seems like it'd be nice to just have a chill weekend.

Anyway, last weekend was far from that.  It started off as usual with fun parties and Sunday morning we celebrated Will's Baptism.  It was a nice service though as predicted fell during his nursing time that day.  Thankfully, I came prepared with a bottle and despite the slight chaos of the moment with Will trying to feed and little kiddos running around it was a beautiful little service.

Will and his Godparents, Uncle Jon and Aunt Lisa

We had the family over to our place after the service and when everyone was gone because we'd turned down an invitation to our monthly dinner club we headed up to the pool to try to relax a bit and unwind before the next work week.

Well, Murphy's Law I suppose... we got up to the pool and our neighborhood friends happened to be there.  Everyone had brought food up so we all just started eating dinner and enjoying the chill night.  I remember thinking for the briefest of moments how relaxing it was just sitting there with good company, good food and listening to relaxing tunes coming from my friend's iphone on the Jack Johnson pandora channel.  Then, not even 15 minutes later all hell broke loose.

I'd been trying to wrangle Sophia in to eat and had fed Will, then asked Trey to hold him so I could eat.  He started fussing again so I grabbed him and attempted to eat holding him when a friend asked if she could hold him to help me out.  I handed him to her and started to take a bite.  I remember seeing her propping Will on her knees as she grabbed his hands and sat there talking to him.  I really don't know what happened next but I glanced out of the corner of my eye just in time to see Will's wiggly body arch backward and twist around, slam his head into the metal arm rest of one of the pool deck chairs before falling head first on the concrete.  I swear I saw her holding him only by his ankles or calfs when he fell and for a few moments I think I blacked out.  I just remember looking back and noticing the chair I'd been sitting in had been knocked over (I hope I didn't hit Sophia who'd been standing next to me because she was crying).  I ran over to grab Will who was screaming his head off and my heart was beating out of my chest as I screamed out oh my God!  It was terrifying seeing him fall like that and I think in the briefest of moments I feared the worse that he could die from it or have permanent brain damage (thankfully at that point I hadn't had a chance to scare myself and think he could've been paralyzed had he hit a certain way).

Anyway, mom in me took over.  I had neighbors scrambling to help me (that saying, "It takes a village" really came to mind... we really are blessed to live in the best neighborhood with some of our now best friends who just stepped up to help me in that moment in every way you can think of).  I immediately thought I should call 911 and it was a thought reaffirmed by an older mother who came up to tell me I certainly should take Will to get his head checked out because her daughter seemed to be the only who who saw how Will fell and said it was awful!

So I took him home, called 911 and when the paramedics arrived my friend, who's a nurse and had been there with us (but left just shortly before it happened) came over and helped me think in that moment.  She works in the neuro unit at Children's here in Atlanta and just again advised me to take him in but not to worry that he seemed ok and she deals with those falls everyday.  I knew I wouldn't be ok until he was checked out so off Trey and I went.  Again- so grateful for wonderful friends who swooped in to take Sophia off our hands... they came in to get our pack and play and Sophia's pajamas, etc. I knew she loved our friends Jaime and Warren and her boyfriend Colton so at least I didn't have to worry about that.

When we got to Children's we lucked out because there was hardly any wait but literally 5 minutes later the waiting room filled out completely.  We got Will back so fast but still had to wait on the test and the CT Scan.  I kept getting emotional in the trauma of it all but I was so relieved when the dr came back and told us everything was ok.  I still couldn't believe it and I think when we got home and all the next day I just couldn't believe it because I kept replaying his fall in my head.  Anyway, so blessed that he's ok and he certainly had his Guardian Angel watching over him and all of us.  It's moments like that that put life in perspective but it was a little too much excitement for all of us.  Still so relieved a week later that he's ok.

Little guy finally fell asleep at the hospital while we waiting on results

So... you'd think we had our fill by Sunday but no no no... the "fun" continued.  Sleep deprived we trucked on to Monday only to find by Tuesday afternoon our upstairs AC unit went out... did I mention it's been close to 100 degrees here all week?  Yea... so that's been fun, especially since it's now Saturday and we still haven't had anyone come fix it.  The earliest appt we could get is for Monday... ridiculous!

Oh yea, Tuesday night we also had an incident with our carbon monoxide detector going off.  We couldn't figure out how to stop it (it wasn't so much the alarm sound as a constant beep beep beep like a battery failing makes.  But it wouldn't stop even with changing the battery so finally around 1 am we called the gas company feeling like it might not be safe to sleep there (which we had all of us in the downstairs room to sleep together btw since the AC wasn't working).  The gas co said they were sending someone out so we were told to wait outside.  ha!  At this point we'd had enough so I packed a bag and took the kids to my parents house.  Our nanny was going to be out the next day anyway (she's gone until July 5th on a trip to Honduras) and I was going to need my mom's help to work so we just headed that way.  You'd think that was enough excitement for the night but no no no... at 1:30 in the morning what did we come across?  STANDSTILL on 285 by spaghetti junction.  I couldn't have dreamed it better.  What a nightmare.  We finally made it to my parents by 2 am.  I was alone with the kids because Trey had to stay behind and wait on the gas guy.  I got the kids back to sleep and slept a few more hours until Will woke everyone up around 7 and off to another day it was...

Wednesday finished uneventfully and we headed back home with the all clear from the gas co (still don't know what happened but no traces of carbon monoxide were found).  I slept the rest of the week downstairs with Will and Trey and Sophia slept upstairs with fans on.  When the sun went down it wasn't quite as hot up there.

And then came Friday.  I had my first work appt out of the house and my mom and grandma were over helping watch the kids.  I came home and noticed the rug under our kitchen sink was completely soaked.  Finding that strange we looked under the sink so see a pipe had come loose or burst.  There was water everywhere!  It had leaked under the floor boards and was bubbling up in the parts where they join together.  Just what Trey wanted to see when he came home from the longest week ever!  We had to laugh about it.  You just can't make this stuff up. :)

Anyway, thankfully one of our neighbors had a dehumidifier we have running now to soak up the water and while the floor looks damaged it could be worse.

They say things come in 3s but to my count that would be 4 for the week.  Let's hope we're not on the 2nd round of 3.

Trey and I got invited by my friend Puja to the Braves game tonight and there's a free concert to see Boys II Men afterward.  Her tickets are through her law firm Troutman Sanders and they're right behind homeplate in the SunTrust seats.  We are so excited for this much needed date night and I think it's going to be the R and R we need.  Here's hoping nothing eventful happens this coming week because we are done ;)  But like we keep saying, at least everyone is ok and at the end of the day that's all that really matters.

So long Maternity Leave

I can't believe I'm staring down the barrel at the end of my maternity leave.  :(  In some ways it feels like I've been on leave way longer than 3 months but in retrospect it seems like just yesterday that I heard my sweet baby scream that first cry out of my belly.

It's been a few months of ups and downs as we've all adjusted to our new normal.  With Will's colicky spell, his difficulty eating with his thrush, and his fussy spells due to reflux we certainly had some challenges.  Not to mention just the normal challenge of dealing with Big Sister's adjustment and the recovery a c-section brings.  It was just a crazy but amazing and fun time.

I've honestly not allowed myself to think of the end as hard as that's been and when it's come to mind I just remind myself that all my fears of Sophia loving the nanny more than me and not wanting mommy, etc etc. were so unfounded last round that I have nothing to worry about this time with Will either.  And to be honest, I realize how challenging and all consuming it is to care for both of them all day at the same time that I hate to admit it but at times the thought of having some adult time/me time has a nice ring to it ;)  I know it'll make me appreciate my time with my sweet babies even more when I get it.

But, alas... the reality that this special time is ending soon just hit me like a ton of bricks tonight and I have to say I'm pretty sad about it.  I realize in the last few weeks I've finally found my groove.  I have so enjoyed the sweet one on one time I typically share with Sophia in the mornings and with Will throughout the day but mostly in the afternoons.  I have tried to take Sophia somewhere for the past 6 weeks or so whether it's the library, her tumbling classes, the park or for a quick jog with mommy on the Silver Comet trail.  Then when we get back it's usually her lunch time.  I feed Will, she gets lunch and heads to take a nap while I go off with Will either on walks, out to lunch with my friends on leave too or off to run errands.  I've had to reserve this time for Will to take off because I realized it was really affecting Sophia to see me leaving her behind so I try to go and take Will for one on one time when she's asleep and won't get her feelings hurt or be too jealous.

Nothing like a freezer pop in summertime!

Fun at the park after mommy's run

all ready for naptime in her bathing suit (sometimes the only way we can get her down is if we promise she can go swimming when she gets up)

These past few weeks it's been really fun too because it's been so warm and we've been bringing out Sophia's baby pool and water table for outside fun or head up to the neighborhood pool.  Seeing how much fun Sophia has is just such a special thing for me to see and I'm glad I've had this time with her as well.  I feel like developmentally she's grown in so many ways these past 3 months and I'm grateful I had such quality time to spend with her.

heading to the neighborhood pool for the first time she was sooooo excited!

I suppose I'm mostly sad or should I say have mixed emotions about returning to work because I feel like Will is in the cutest state these days and I just can't get enough of him lately.  It's like he's gotten easier and now sadly I have to leave him in someone else's care.  He's been sleeping through the night for 2 weeks now.  He's all smiles for his mama lately and is so observant and alert.  I love watching him and seeing him stare at me and give me that gummy smile and I can't get enough of his cute little head and body nuzzling into mama's neck and resting on my chest for naps throughout the day.  I try to cherish those quiet moments and those sweet glances he gives me because I know one day he'll be all grown up and I'll miss these moments.

Which leads me to another thought of how crazy these times have been.  At times Sophia can be the sweetest thing with her baby brother.  Honestly she loves him all the time but knows how to push buttons for attention sometimes and has been scared she's going to harm the baby (I know it's never intentional but she's 2 so let's face it, she doesn't know what she's doing).  I have found myself wishing for a glass of wine on occasion when the madness seems to peak... especially when both Will and Sophia are whining or crying simultaneously and I'm alone.  It's amazing how the daytime can go off without a hitch and the second our nanny leaves and I'm alone for the night (like if Trey's out of town) they both seem to just know and lose it together.  But I have to keep reminding myself that I'll miss the chaos one day and I keep telling myself to just love the moments with them now because they're still my little babies and I'm going to keep blinking and they'll be big and dare I say grown up and out of the house.  :(  Ok, one step at a time here. lol

Sophia loves seeing Baby Will in the morning- here with her biggest "cheese" face

loving big sis always wants to hold 'baby Woo' (baby Will)

Ah anyway, I guess the point to all the rambling is so I can look back one day and realize that I did have a wonderful leave and I'm just grateful that I have 2 beautiful babies to call my own and while returning to work will bring with it a whole new set of challenges and routines to adjust to, I know everything will be alright in the end.

As they say, all good things must come to an end but I know deep down that this is just the beginning of another great chapter.  While I know I'll still get misty eyed when I have to travel and leave my kids for the first or second or maybe third time, I know I'll get through it as all working moms must do and I can take solace in the fact that I get to come home to these sweet faces!

Will 11 weeks

what happens when you turn around for 2 seconds and leave a toddler with a blue mini cupcake

Feels like a new house!

This weekend was pretty darn productive around the Spivey house.  When we got home Tuesday from Hilton Head we just missed the painters who were starting on painting our exterior.  It's hard to believe we've been in our home 5 years this May and it was time for a new coat.  They did such a great job and as they were working we asked if they would be able to paint a few rooms on the inside of our house.

Our downstairs was still builder beige and we'd talked for years about painting and adding color to the house.  Then because the painters gave us a good price and said they could do it on Saturday so we kinda impulsively just went for it.  We didn't even have colors picked Friday but I was able to convince Trey to go with it and we used a Sea Salt color we had used as a sample when we were trying to pick a color for a room a year ago.  It's a really pretty blue green and I love it!

We chose Sherwin Williams Lemongrass for the dining room and a coralish/peachy color for our guest room.  That's the only room I'm not too crazy about and kinda wish we'd gone a little darker but we were scared to be too bold.

Trey painted the dining room and did a pretty good job!

Anyway, I'm digging the new colors and it really feels like we've got a new house inside and out!