Surprise!

After one miscarriage and a major broken heart, we welcomed our first baby boy, Reese in Aug. 2005, with opened arms! He was our world! After he was born I remember thinking "this is what I was born for". I never felt that overwhelming mom feeling of not knowing what to do. God just blessed me with the ability to follow my instincts and I was so happy to have him! We always knew we wanted more than one baby, but had never really talked about how many that was.
I remember once Rob jokingly said "lets have 6 kids" and I said, "uh...maybe you can have 3 with me and then 3 with someone else but this girl is not having more than 3 kids". That was really the only time we talked about a number of children.
About 7 months after we had Reese we got the news we would be moving home to Illinois! We were so excited! Rob got a job there and I could find one shortly after. Little did we know that we got a little going away gift from Wisconsin. 16 months after Reese was born Addison arrived! I remember thinking "who in the world has kids 16 months apart?". Apparently, after asking around, this is pretty common! We quickly and easily adjusted to having 2 children!
When Addison was 6 months old I decided to start a business with Thirty-One. My business really started taking off! It was crazy how fast things were happening! I suddenly realized that all of my dreams were coming true! I was able to stay home with my kids and have a job that I loved! Why not add more to the mix?
We were pretty sure we wanted one more baby and thought there was no way it would happen as quickly as it did with the first 2 so the winter after Addison was born we tried again and immediately I got pregnant again! Yep...if you're doing the math, that would have been 3 kids under 3! But God had another plan for our family. I miscarried that baby at 13 weeks. 3 months later I was pregnant again and exactly 2 years and 1 month after Addison was born, Griffin arrived!
I would love to tell you that my adjustment to a 3rd baby was easy, but it was an absolute nightmare! When Griffin was 11 days old he was admitted to the hospital for 8 days for RSV. To make it worse, the day before we left the hospital Griffin started crying and I am pretty sure he didn't stop until the day after he turned 3 months old. Both of us said "no way, never again"! No more babies! Part of me still longed for a 4th, but most of me was scared to death this colicky baby was going to happen again! We decided to wait until Griffin was one to do anything permanent. A funny thing happened though, after Griffin hit 3 months old he was an angel! The sweetest most content little guy you could ever ask for. He was...in a word...delicious! So we wavered back and forth...do we want one more or not? The thought was maybe in 3 or 4 years we will want just one more. But then I went to this great Leadership meeting for Thirty-One and got all excited about my business! I decided it was time for Rob to get a vasectomy! Woo hoo...freedom at last! But there was one last thing I had to do before I made his appointment... take a test...you know the kind... where you pee on a stick and hope it reads "pregnant". This time I hoped it read "not pregnant".
As always God showed me that he is in control of this crazy life of mine and the dreaded word "pregnant" popped up on that screen (I buy the expensive ones, the ones that cannot be mistaken).
So there it was... the decision made for us! Baby number 4 was on it's way and I have officially been pregnant for the majority of the past 4 years!
So that brings me here to this blog where I am going write what I am thinking occasionally so that between poopy diapers, mommy brain and my still thriving business, I can write down some thoughts and possibly remember how I get through a day!