Look who's smiling! :)

Colin gave me his very first smiles today, right when I was snapping pictures!! :) :)
Made me so happy :) I'm so glad I have his first grin on camera! :)
Speaking of pictures, these loaded in an odd order..but it's midnight and I'm too tired to fix it. ;)
We got back today from an overnight trip at my friend Magan's house, it was so much fun. We ate yummy food, watched Fireproof (really great movie!) and the kids played on the swingset and colored the sidewalk and each other's hair with chalk :)
(And I had to share my little Colin's cute tiny feet, I snapped that picture the other night)
Good night! :) :)
Charin

My day

*Taking a trip to my Mother-In-Law's school to show off my little Colin :) Getting completely soaked...not the best day for a road trip! ;)
*Coming back home and immediately changing into pj's...at 4 in the afternoon! haha
*Noticing how big Colin is getting and how much he's starting to hold his head up and wanting to spend time looking around instead of sleeping :)
*Putting Katie's new Dora the Explorer bedding on her big girl bed that got put together today (go Daddy!) Hoping that she sleeps the night with the change in bed :) She was really excited about seeing it built and she started kissing her bedding when I put it on. Silly girl! :)
*Pricing items for the yard sale that my sister and I are having in a few weeks. I'll be sooo glad to de-clutter our house! :) Speaking of which, if you are local and have children she and I are both selling tons of kids stuff..I'm selling lots of Katie's clothes and she has lots of books and toys for sale :)
*Cooking the ultimate southern comfort food, cheese grits :) and drinking a Pepsi while I eat them...ooopsie. I shouldn't be drinking Pepsi, I know..but it's so good! :)
*Cleaning and thinking about how much more cleaning I have to do ;)
*Calling my best friend Magan and planning a trip to see her next week! Can't wait :)
*Blogging about really random things :) :)

Silly silly boy :) :)

Pictures of my silly boy and his cute face (and feet!) today :)

Today...

*Kissing these sweet faces a million times :)
*Spending time with Katie and Colin in my bedroom while Katie watches Shrek/I fold laundry :)
*Slowly getting this dirty dirty house clean...I have a lot of things that are more fun to be doing! ;)
*Keeping a close eye on my little noonie thief, Katie :) We really need to break her of the pacifier..and I think it's funny that as soon as it leaves Colin's side she's trying to take it :)
*Deciding to spend some time snuggling on the bed with both of them...housework will always be there :)
*Taking nerdy self portraits because...I am a nerd. Basically. :)
*Watching You've Got Mail tonight, love that movie :)
*Planning on photographing a wedding Saturday :)
*Realizing that every single sentence I've written has a smiley face on the end of it..so happy to be this happy these days :)
*Just finding out that my take on the scribble project is featured on their blog!! Eeek! :) Feeling very flattered, and wishing I was about a million times better at drawing :)
*Planning my day tomorrow..and I'm off to go kiss my babies face again :)
Good night!

My heart melted :) :) :)

When I saw this sneak peek of Colin's pictures on JClare Studio's blog today!! :) I can't WAIT to see the rest!!!! :)
Jennifer is my favorite photographer ever :)

I have missed you, scrapbooking!! :)

*sigh* I have missed this soooooo much!! I hadn't scrapbooked a single page since October, crazy!! So happy to be feeling better and back to my old self. :) ( I stayed up till 2 am scrapping, that's proof that I'm obsessed again! haha)
Katie made her Mama feel good about these pages, she said "Ooooh, Mama!! So pretty!" when I was putting them in the album today. :)
I hope your day is a great one! We're busy trying to get things crossed off of our to do lists and spending lots of time snuggling with Katie and Colin. :)
(P.S. He's going to get his first "real" bath today, no more sponge baths because his umbilical cord finally fell off! Yay!!" We'll have pictures to share for sure.) :)

Sooo random :)

I am all about random updates where I post about a little bit of everything...but you've probably noticed that by now. :)
So here goes, ready? :) The lovely Rachel had posted on her blog awhile back about the scribble project and I had a little fun with it last night :) I am *not* a very talented artist, as you can tell. haha :) But it was still fun!


I also wanted to share a few favorites from American Idol this week..who's watching? :) (Danny's a favorite of mine too, but I couldn't find a decent video from this week to upload)
Adam has some serious pipes! :) I think he may be my favorite now, awesome awesome voice :)

Matt. He sounded really great last night!


A few other randoms...
*my baby boy is already two weeks old!!!! Where is the time going? :( I'm so enjoying every little second with him, he's precious :)
*Katie has slept through the night for the past 6 nights, yay! I'm really proud of her for that. Of course, we still haven't put together that toddler bed like I posted we would. I hope she makes that transition ok. ;) (I'm a little jealous of Mama's who can say that their baby slept through the night at three months!)
*My pictures still aren't here. I really really want to scrapbook! :)
*Tomorrow we are going to see my favorite local photographer, Jenn to have Colin's pictures done! I can't wait, she does such a beautiful job. :) And Crystal loaned us the *sweetest* baby cocoon and hats for him to wear, it is going to look so sweet. :)
* I just ran out of time to blog :) Katie's going to bed and Colin's going to be hungry soon. More later! :)
Charin

I was expecting a big envelope of fresh pictures from scrapbookpictures.com to be in the mail tonight and they weren't there...I'm so disappointed because I am really really ready to start scrapbooking again!! Eeek! :) It feels so good to be able to say that, it's been almost a year since I really have. That's just crazy. ;)
I can't wait to start scrapping both of my sweet babies faces :) I am so grateful to finally be *feeling good* again, to where I want to scrapbook!!! :) :) :)
(P.S. I love you scrapbookpictures.com...and I realize that since I just ordered Saturday I really shouldn't expect them in this soon. haha)
That's all for today, I'll leave you with a few more pictures of my little prince. :)

This is how I spent my day yesterday....

*sigh* I love this so so so much :) :) We spent the day snuggling, reading books, snuggling some more and giving kisses. (We all have the nasty cold bug now, so we may as well not worry about the germs!)
Katie is loving it when I put Colin in her crib for a little bit...she wanted in with him right away and said "pictures, Mama!!" :) She's getting moved to her big girl bed this next week so I'm glad I have these pictures of them snuggling in there together before it gets moved to his room.
Love days like this :)

A baby story :) :)

This is my sweet baby Colin Wayne! :) :)
I wanted to write down a lot of the details about his birthday for me to look back at later...so I'll forgive you if you skip over some of it. ;)

I was scheduled to be induced at 4 am Thursday the 26th, because I had been having really strong contractions every night from about 11 pm-5 am the whole week before, and my blood pressure was going up. I cried in relief when my Dr. told me that he would be born Thursday. :) (P.S. I guess the chocolate chip cookie bribe worked, after all!) I really don't think that Colin would have waited much longer to come though, he was definitely ready to be born. :)

So Wednesday night I didn't sleep at all...I was so very very very excited, a little nervous, and of course still having those contractions. ;)
My Mom had spent the night with us, because we were hoping that Katie would sleep through the night and wake up at about 7 or so. She woke up around 3. :)
We all went to the hospital and checked in, Katie cried when I came out in a hospital gown but she calmed down once she got moved to the waiting room. I was in labor for almost 9 hours and she did a great job!! My sister Jessica came at about 6 am, I think it was, with my nephews, and that really helped Katie. :) She loves them!

I did get an epidural (and it worked this time! Well, half of my body was numb anyway) but things got a little scary after that. I was really out of it...Kevin said it was almost like I was having a seizure. I don't know if it was an alergic reaction to the epidural or just more complications like I've been having all during the pregnancy, but I was shaking extremely badly and I couldn't focus my eyes at all. I think the scariest thing for me was that I was kind of hallucinating...I kept thinking that I heard Katie crying, and I couldn't get to her. :( They told me that it was a commercial on tv, of a baby crying. Anyway!!!

The great part is that once I started pushing Colin was here in about 4 minutes. :)
I was sooooo relieved to see that he was completely whole and perfect. And beautiful and healthy. :) The Dr. and nurse told me then that there was a knot in his umbilical cord that could have resulted in him being stillborn. That just hit me like a ton of bricks...God has really really had His hand on my sweet baby boy this whole time, there were so many times during the pregnancy that we had scares and every time he turned out just fine. I am so thankful for that. :) I don't know what I would do if it had turned out differently.
I don't mean to sound so bleak about the delivery but I just have SO much to be thankful for! It could have turned out a lot differently.

My family told me that Katie was looking at the babies in the nursery when the Colin was taken out there and she pointed right to him and said "awww! Baby so cute!" :)After a little bit, once he was brought back into the room with me, Katie came in and we introduced her to her brother. :)She did such a great job! No jealousy at all, she loved on him and gave him kisses and kept saying over and over "Aww, Colin's so cute!" That made my heart happy. :)
Katie spent her first night away from home that night*tear* and stayed with her Aunt Jessica, and she of course did really well. :) Jessica brought her back to me the next morning and I was so glad to see her!!! And we loved that she was still so happy to see Colin. She's a great big sister. Every day they spend snuggly time together and Katie's always handing me a blanket for Colin, or a noonie. :)

Colin is absolutely perfect. :) I am so in love with him!! He's *such* a content baby, he sleeps really well and he doesn't fuss at all unless he's hungry. I actually miss him a lot during the day because he sleeps so much that I don't get to see him with his eyes open enough. :)
He's so snuggly and sweet, and I love spending every second with him. The best part is that it's just beginning, we have a whole world of firsts that he hasn't even started yet. :) :)