S Slept Thru

The night last night! He was 5 weeks old on yesterday! Totally surprised me as he was super cranky last night and screamed instead of hanging out with J while I did chores. J ended up finishing chores while I tried to settle S. I got him all fed up and he fell asleep and we both woke up almost 8 hours later! He slept from just after 11 pm to ten to 7am!! Way to go S!!

Random notes: I'm not sure my body knows what to do with all that sleep. I'm pretty sure S isn't going to sleep that long every night but I think we are going to be catching up a bit on rest from here on out. The longest he'd slept before today was 6 hours. He is still exclusively breastfed and likes to cluster feed in the evening. Often nursing for over an hour at a time. He likes gripe water :) and it helps him not spit up so much.

Sleeping Frog~S

Visitors Part 1.

Some of the visitors who came to visit S and I in the hospital.

Thank you all SO MUCH for coming!! 

My niece K. 

Her friend who really loved babies!! 

The only picture I got of my sister M who also loves babies. 

"Imagine that it's a tiny little human!!' 

My sister A and S checking each other out. 

My niece M, proud as punch! 

My cousins son C who totally loved holding him!! 

Oh and B!! C asked if his eyes were opened yet!! :) 

My niece C. 

My good friend R stopped in with her two little people W and R. 

                                       M and S some friends of ours stopped in to say hello too.

And there is more... for another post on another day!! 

Thanks so much for coming to celebrate S's birth with us!! 

S's First Scream Fest.. I Mean BATH!!!

I love the expressions on his face!! I'm not going to say much about these photo's the pictures and the title pretty much say it all. I will say that it was probably the fastest bath any of my children have EVER had. He hated almost the whole thing!! 

These two are amazing pictures.. J must have taken them very fast in the 25 seconds that he was not screaming. 

 This picture is much more realistic!! 

We had to have a pretty serious snuggle afterwards to calm down.

I'm hoping this is not an every bath occurrence.

Samuel Is Here :)

My wonderful Dr. Nicole, S and I,and Papa about 45 minutes after he was born. It was a quick labor and delivery and we were all relieved that it was over and that Dr. Nicole made it there on time. She RAN in and arrived soaking wet from the rain. Other then a couple of things; he had a LOT of water in there with him and soaked the entire room, he was born face up, and he was a bit limp at birth, but still pink and crying, and had to be assessed for a bit, everything went super well and fast. 

The proud Papa holding S for the first time!! 

The afternoon after he was born I woke up to find my whole family staring at me. They'd come in to my hospital room while I was asleep, S asleep on my chest. S slept through the whole visit and the kids loved on him the whole time. 

J walked into my room and said.. I'm the oldest I get to hold him first :) 

He was the least impressed about the new baby during the pregnancy, and even then not unhappy just sort of vague, so I was very pleased to hear him ohh and ahh over S right from the start. 

Tickled PINK!! That is the only way to describe the kids reaction to their new brother. 

E and S. 

G petting him. E is so proud of him!! 

R looking serious. He weighs almost a 3rd of what she does which made it a bit hard for her to hold him. J3 was waiting for his turn.

Kissing that little forehead! 

J3 loved him and was so pleased he got to hold him! 

G kissing him.

G loved him, kissing him and petting his head, until we tried to get her to hold him...
NOPE NO WAY!! I love how S looks so peaceful and G is the one that looks like shes going to cry..

normally it's the baby who is unhappy and the older kid looks pleased. 

The Griggs Family... numbering NINE!!! Thanks Crystal for taking the pictures!! 

My flowers from Papa and the girls flowers they picked for me. 

Samuel is named after my cousin Blair Owen, B&B on here :), and Papa's childhood friend Brett Quinn. He's a beautiful baby, peaceful, eats like a champ (I call him my little Barricoda!! for his latch!), sleeps solid and rarely makes a fuss. He has the Griggs baby nose and Papa's ears. His toes are short and stubby and his fingers long and slim. He was born with large bruise on the top of his head which is slowly going away. My labor with him was from 5:30pm to his arrival at 7:45pm. The fastest labor I've had yet. 45 minutes shorter then E's. He was 8 days over due and was born a day before his father did 36 years earlier. He shares a birth month with Papa but is the only Griggs kid born in June. Keeping up the tradition :) Each of our children, so far, have their own birth month! 

We are both doing fantastic! His bruise is going away nicely and I'm feeling almost 100%!! I'm still resting lots, and will continue to rest lots until Papa goes back to work next week, but physically I'm amazed at how fast I felt pretty much back to normal already. So much different then G's birth 19 months ago which took several months to recover from. I'm pretty sure that the 5 week herbal formula and the red raspberry leaf tea have been very beneficial to a fast birth and healing! If #8 is in Gods plans I will be taking both of them again :) 

Update.. April 15th :)

Oh this is a general life update. I've got a few minutes to type while the kids are doing school..

Papa's two weeks off went extremely fast. No surprise there :) We actually got quite a lot done considering the weather didn't do a lot of cooperating. On his last day home we got 13 inches of heavy nasty wet SNOW!! J is doing a weather chart for the month of April and lets just say the weather was NASTY for a good chunk of Papa's days off. We did have some nice sunny days were we spent hours outside; kids in the snow and mud and Papa and I working on the house. We also had some OK type days where the kids played outside or inside while Papa and I worked on the house and came in for short warm ups/kid checks every time we could no longer feel our fingers. We also had some cold days where we did a lot of critter planning and school curriculum planing and fiddling with our house plans.

It was MUCH too cold to stucco though we did get all our stucco sand, lime and cement mix home :) We also got windows in! Some of the frames are finished but not all of them and we are waiting for our front 6 by 4.5 foot window to come in so we can install it :) I'm looking forward to that!! Most of the lathe is at least up where it belongs if not done and the stuff that's waiting needs the windows to be done first. We also have two outside corners we need to lathe and stuff straw into.. but with the snow pile off the roof these areas are really hard to get at so it will wait until we can get to them.

We got our chicken order in, 400 unsexed Cornish giant meat birds,  and they should be arriving May 3rd. Papa also got the feed ration figured out and ordered what he needed for that. Our normal supplier for wheat will not have any this year so we are shipping up corn from down south which will add a bit to the cost of the bird but not a lot.

We called the local dairy too and they didn't have any calves for sale in the start of April but told us to call back. So we did and they'd had their first bull calf that morning. If all goes well we'll be picking him up this Wednesday or Thursday :) The dairy is close to the place where we are borrowing a boar pig and we are hoping to get both at the same time :)

We also took some time and made some memories, helped others and had some fun too :) We got quite used to having Papa around and now will have to get used to his new schedule of day shift. We are looking forward to having him home for supper every night and having Saturdays off. It does throw a wrench in any doctor appointments I have for Baby S but we think we have figured out a way to do the appointments on his lunch hour. Hopefully it will work well and I will not have to look for sitters every two weeks for the next 6 weeks and every week after that! That's a lot of sitters :)

Baby S is doing very well.. growing and showing and giving my internals a workout when ever he's awake. He is a very active baby at this point and I'm just hoping he slows down some before he's born as I'd like to cuddle him instead of watch him run off!! Mostly kidding but he is very active!! Between 9 and 12 weeks to go :)

The kids re-started school today and only have about 5 weeks left, at their current pace, to get done about a month early. We should have about a month off before Baby S's due date and possibly 6 weeks between the end of school and the his birth. Right now the weather is still mostly wet and cool and it's a good time to be homeschooling in the North! Our next years basic curriculum is ordered and I'm having a bit of fun looking into fun stuff to do on the side next year.

Other upcoming events are the hopeful arrival of spring one of these days bring us some warmer weather, dry ground and green grass!! When this event finally does happen, we have big hopes for the month of May, we are going to be having a stuccoing work day!!! Come one come all :) But first..

SPRING WHERE ARE YOU??? COME ON SPRING LET's HAVE SOME FUN!!!!


(From one of my favorite Franklin Movies EVER!!)

Baby S's Blanket.

Here are the 6 types of squares for Baby S's afghan I'm making :) 

I've made one for each of our children before they were born. 

It's tradition :) 

If you didn't know what sex the baby is, I guess you do now :) 

I have to make one more of each and put them together and I'm done :) 

Birth Junkie :)

Yay!! I'm so excited!! Papa picked up the mail on his way to work and brought me a package with my 5 week formula in it from Birth Junkie!! I can't wait to try it and see if MAYBE just MAYBE I'll actually go into labor without having to be induced. Wouldn't that be fantastic!?! Hey and maybe I'll have a baby before I hit 42 weeks :) or 43 ;)

She also has a GREAT list of pregnancy birthing books on her website that she recommends. I love the list and have read several of them and I'm hoping to read several more before this baby comes.

 I'm a birth junkie too :) Are you??

The Littlest Griggs :)

Here is our newest family member :) 

Papa and I headed to the city to our ultrasound appointment on Monday and got some pictures and some other great information on the littlest Griggs :) 

The baby is healthy, whole, wiggly and looks pretty perfect :) 

Papa and I both guessed the sex of the baby wrong!! I'm always wrong but I was surprised Papa was. 

The kids all guessed right as did 3/4 of the other people who guessed!! 

********Disclaimer. Do NOT look below if you do NOT want to know the sex of the Baby or what we have named the baby. The picture on the bottom is the same as the one on top.*****************

The newest littlest Griggs is A BOY :) and his name will be Samuel :) We will tell you his middle names (2) when he's born :) But for now meet Samuel Griggs :)