Long Time No Blog

Hello all :)

I can't believe the last time I blogged was in 2011!!. I was reading over my blog and have probably missed a ton of stuff I would have liked to remember.

The kids are growing up and doing well. Sam is almost 5 (Ahhhh! Make it stop!!), Liam just turned 3 a few months back, and we have our sweet Lily May who turned 1 at the end of November. The kids keep me busy, as does being a full-time homemaker. We have our ups and downs, but I'm enjoying the ride and (slowly) learning to be content with what God's blessed us with in the here and now.

I read something the other day that talked about how we can always be looking ahead to a "future self". She's just so organized and put together. She menu plans and schedules like a beast. She's dressed every morning and never wears pajama pants all day. Dinner is always ready on time and laundry never piles up. My favorite part was that this "future self" is a total flake. For some reason she just never shows up. It made me laugh, but it also made me realize that I have to stop longing for this made-up, future self and learn to love who I am now. It's right where God wants me to be. The kids will never again be 4, 3, and 1, so I need to enjoy them now. Someday they might not want me to snuggle them, or read to them, or build Legos with them. They'll be able to bath themselves, read to themselves, etc. Those days will come and I want to look back and be satisfied that I did all that I could to enjoy every little bit of them and give them wonderful childhood memories to look back on and, most importantly, a solid foundation, Jesus, to stand on.
Just a little something I'm working on. I truly believe that parenthood is the ultimate refiner.

And now a little update about our family:
(I'm sorry that the pictures seem all over the place. I have no idea how to get them put on here in an orderly fashion).



We're going on 8 years come March. Woo hoo! Thank you, Lord! I love this man! This picture was taken February 2011, so it's a bit dated, but we have very few pictures of us together and I just love looking at this one. This was taken at my lovely sister, Kerri's, wedding just
weeks before we found out we were pregnant with Lily.

Sam

Ah, my Sam-boy. My almost 5 year old. Eek! I almost have a 5 year old!!

Sam is such an awesome kid. He is so smart! And fun! He comes up with crazy ideas and can draw better than any kid I know. He is incredible to say the least. He's a lefty and after reading a bit about lefties I feel like I understand his way of thinking a bit more. Lefties use the right side of their brain which is the creative, imaginative side, so, needless to say, he is very creative and imaginative. Not to say that right handed people aren't, mind you.

Sam likes to build with Legos. I broke down and bought him the tiny ones and he's a pro at them. He's very methodical at his placement and very matchy-matchy. He also likes to shoot guns and pretend he's a pirate. I seriously tried to keep him from ever knowing about guns, but, let me save you some time and tell you that, weaponry is ingrained in boys. Just go with it. He typically leans toward "protecting" me, but when we start shooting Mama the guns are put away.

I am excited about our upcoming season in life. Sam will be 5 in March and, come June, we will be starting our first official year of homeschooling! I'm following a trend of a few friends that do the bulk of their schooling in the Summer and Winter when the weather is just insane. Too hot/cold to go outside. We will take a month break in the Spring and Fall and around holidays.

I've been working on turning the 4th bedroom we added to our house last year into a school room. It's coming along nicely and I think it'll be really fun when it's all finished.

Liam

I read past posts on Liam and boy was I ever right about the fiesty, craziness of this kid. It's just grown bigger along with him. He's my big 3 year old, rough and tumble, nutcase. Liam has recently acquired the urge to act and talk like a puppy. He will respond to me only in "ruffs" and attempts to eat from his place via his face. He is definitely a goofball and cute to boot.

Liam loves trucks and driving them around. He is content to sit quietly by himself playing with the truck of his choice. He is also quite happy to pester Sam and Lily. Or to have a complete, total freak-out melt-down because something fell apart, or he can't button his pants, or his reflection looked back at him. You just never know with this kid.

He's fun and sweet and always down for a snuggle and a kiss. On the other hand, he's got a huge attitude and has been rolling his eyes at us for years. He follows right along with Sam and is happy to join in on anything Sam's heart desires, good or mischievous.

Since I'm going to be schooling Sam I've got to come up with a way to keep Liam occupied, as well. So I'm working on building a preschool curriculum for Liam to work on. That way he feels included, is busy, and is learning along with us. I look at it as more of a trial run for our schooling years. Kindergarten is definitely nothing to stress over; it's mostly learning through play and interaction, so it should be a good time for all of us.

                                                                                              

Lily

Beautiful Lil. My little, sweet, baby girl. 13 months old.

How set I was to have all boys until she came along. I'll take more girls, please! I've been super blessed with awesome babies. Lil is no exception. Amazing girl, sweet and happy. Loves to be around her bros. She is spunky and fun. She likes to pretend she's talking on the phone, saying "Hel-lo" and "Hiiiiii". She especially loves talking on my phone to her Daddy whom she adores above all others. That is her man!

She'll play happily by herself and will crawl around the house hollaring "Ma?!" when she's ready to come find me. She eats anything and everything. Baby food? Pass. This girl eats real food; the bigger the better. She has been pulling up to her knees. I'll have another late walker, but that's ok, keeps them little for a bit longer. She is FAST and content to army crawl herself around.

She has tons of teeth; molars are making their way through. She doesn't seem to mind them.

Her best buddy is her cousin, Deacon. They are a hoot. As soon as they see each other they laugh and swap pacis. Hers is pink and his is blue. I don't know what it is, but they've been doing it for months. 

 

   

 

Speaking of Deacon, I wanted to mention this little cutie. He is my sister, Kerri's, little guy and he is a wonder! He is 10 months old and his Auntie's little sweet. Deacon makes grandbaby #8 for my Mama.

Come March and my sister, Shelby, will be welcoming her first little boy! 

Fun sibling fact: all 4 of us girls had boys first and my brother had a girl first.

 Here's a few pics from our lovely snow day on Christmas:

 And here's a couple more shots from our Fall photo shoot:

 

Hope you feel a bit caught up! Thanks for staying with us!

Her Name Is...

Lily May DiGiacomo!

I am relieved that she has a name and that it came a lot quicker than Sam and Liam's names. Now I can get on with the rest of this pregnancy. Not that it was going to wait.

I'm assuming you want to know how we came up with her name. Stephen came up with her name on our drive back from Tulsa last weekend and we mutually agreed on it. He is taking great pride in letting me know that he named her and is already quite smitten with this little lady.

Her name comes from Song of Solomon 2:1, 11-12:
"I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys...for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come".

Lily of the Valley is a name for Jesus, hence Lily.

May comes from my name, switch the A and the M and you've got Amy. May is actually a nickname that Stephen has called me for years. He's already nicknamed this baby "Lil' May" referring to her as a little me. He totally got me there. (I'm not intentionally making this a trend in our baby naming, it just tends to happen that way).

I also love that May flows right along with this scripture. Lilies bloom in May which is after the rain (April). It was cool how it worked out that way.

Love her and love her name!

It's a Girl

Here she is in all her little baby glory!

I can see a bit of Liam in this pic, the lips and nose. She had her hands up by her face a lot and was constantly moving. It took the u/s lady a bit to get a shot between the legs. When she finally did get a clear view the little stinker had the cord pulled up between her legs, so we had to wait for her to move. She is definitely a mover! She was kicking and flipping the entire time. The boys moved a bit, but they pretty much stayed in place. She was going crazy. Hopefully she'll be chill when she gets here.

She measured at 17 weeks, but I'm pretty sure I'm 19 weeks. So I'm just gonna start saying I'm due around the end of November.

Family Update

Hey all, we're still here and doing well.
Here's an update on the kiddos and some pics.
I'm gonna try to keep this short, but that never happens.

In March we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Our kids stayed overnight at their grandparents house and we had a fabulous time together. We took our bikes to Little Rock and went geocaching in the downtown area. It was really fun, highly recommend this free activity. And because no one knew what I was talking about when I said we were going geocaching here's the official website. Geocaching is like a scavenger hunt using a GPS to locate a "cache" or a camouflaged container using specific coordinates from the website. The caches we found had a log in it that we signed and dated. That's really all there is to it. We ended up riding our bikes 5 miles. It was lots of fun.

This was our first cache that we found.

6 years! Woo!! Love that man :)

Awesome snow that we had for days. Loved it!
Winter come back soon!!!

Sam:

Sam turned 3 years old in March. It's sad, but fun to see him growing into a little boy. He has definitely taken on the first child, leader role although I've had to reign him in a bit or he'll walk all over Liam...and me.

Birthday Cupcake

Sam had been really fun to teach. We're not officially homeschooling yet, but I am taking any moment that he'll let me to teach him a letter, number, how something works, ect. He is very inquisitive, which has been fun and challenging. The other day he asked me, "Why do we put cotton balls in the sky?" (clouds). He likes to know what road signs mean and he is a big time back seat driver. His Grandma (Steve's mom) taught him what each light means on a stop light. He makes sure to let me know if the light is red and that "we need to stooooooooopppp", yellow "we need to be careful!" or green "you can go now Momma".

He loves to look at books by himself and to be read to. We started reading chapter books to him because he will sit for 20-30 minutes and listen intently to a story. Afterwards, he asks questions about what we read or will recap what happened. He amazes me.

So intense!! He's definitely a thinker like his Daddy.

Sam loves Stephen to read to him because he makes it way more fun than me. I stick with how the book goes with no frills. Stephen will add things in and gets very excited. Sam's favorite book right now is about firefighters ("fighter-fighters"). He loves pretending that the house is on fire and he's rescuing us (good practice). He points out fire extinguishers and hydrants anywhere he sees one. We visited the fire station a few weeks ago with a group of friends. That was pretty awesome. I highly recommend that as a free activity, too. The firemen gave them a coloring book, a junior fireman helmet, and we learned what to do if our house catches fire. Good stuff to know.
Today we were running errands, I got Sam out of the car and said, "We're going in". He shouted, "Fighter-fighters to the rescue!!" which is what his book says, lol.

He was laughing hysterically at something Liam was doing.

Sam lost a tooth a few weeks ago. He and Stephen were playing in a creek and Sam slipped on a rock. Completely knocked out his front right tooth. Thankfully it all came out, so nothing had to be extracted, and he doesn't seem to have any nerve damage. He will just be a little snaggle-tooth for the next 3-4 years.
I needed to take him to the dentist anyways, so this gave me the initiative
Now he just looks even more like a feisty little boy. Amazingly, he did great! I was prepared for lots o' screaming, but he let them inspect, xray, and clean his teeth with no problem.

This is a few months before he lost his tooth. I'll miss that cute, pearly white smile. However, he looks pretty stinkin cute with a missing tooth as well.

Some of Sam's favorite things are: trucks, trains, cars, heavy machinery, Legos, building towers and bridges, chocolate, dancing, wrestling Daddy, being tossed in the air. He's very boyish.

His absolute favorite thing to play lately is David and Goliath. He'll say, "Daddy, I'll be Dabid and you be Oliah". We have a Read and Rhyme Bible and the line goes like this: (Goliath/Stephen) "I come to you with a spear and a sword. (David/Sam) But I come to you in the name of the Lord!" At this point Stephen pretends to raise his "spear" and Sam pretends to sling a stone at him. Stephen falls, Sam jumps on him and cuts his head off, lol.
It's pretty cute. Stephen is a giant compared to Sam and Sam's voice is so small and squeaky. It is quite the show.

He told me he was playing football and this was his helmet.

Sam loves to help me with chores. He literally begs to scrub the toilet. I cannot turn that request down. He likes to vacuum the kitchen and sort laundry. He likes to pick out his clothes and dress himself. Socks are a little tricky for him, but he can put "easy" shoes (flip-flops, boots) on by himself and usually on the right feet.
He'll break whatever treat he has in half and share with Liam. Sweet boy. Although it's a different story when it comes to train tracks or trucks that are lined up just so.

Sam is super fun to have around. He is my little adventure-boy He's been calling me "Mom-mom" lately. Maybe its a lazy version of "Momma", but I love when he says it.
I love the heck outta that kid. He is definitely a great first kid to have.

Liam:

Liam is 19 months old and a spitfire to boot. He is my little clown and as weird as they come. (He is my child after all). I see way more of me in his personality than Sam. Sam is a lot like Stephen (not saying that's a bad thing).
Liam loves to laugh, to make people laugh, and to be laughed at. He is a very joyful little boy, but can turn into a stinker in an instant. Woo! Can that boy throw a fit!

I am currently working on potty training Liam. Sam was in underwear a week after his 2nd birthday and I have the same goal for Liam. We've gone 2+ weeks and have only had a few misses with #2. I'll deal with #1 once we get this down. M&M's and lots of consistency have helped.

This is the face Liam made while cutting his 2 bottom canines. Mmm, cutie.

Liam loves to dance and play his harmonica. He can also whistle! Its the funniest thing! When Liam dances I call him "Cha-cha feet". He steps really really fast and just gets down while Sam runs circles around him, trots, and pumps one elbow. They are a funny pair.

Don't let that sweet face fool you. He's probably waiting for me to look away so he can pull on the blinds.

Liam loves to wear hats ("hot"). Especially things that are not hats, but will fit on his head. He cracks me up with the things he finds to wear. He likes big dogs (puppah) and playing in the sand box. Liam is also highly fascinated with the vacuum. To curb his desire to stand in front of the vacuum while I'm using it I pull out his toy vacuum and he'll follow along with me. Training and compromising all-in-one.

We call this hat "The Russian". That vacuum came from my Grandparents house. We played with it when we were kids.

Some words Liam says are: Momma, Da-da, puppah, hot, no-no!, dink du (thank you), mem men (Amen), pees (please), bite, pee pee (poo poo), potty, book,
Chee-see (Chelsea), Ke-ke (Kerri), bish (fish), nack (snack).

I had waited until those last bottom teeth came in and then I had had it with the paci. Liam was mumbling and whining a lot. I was about to loose my mind with the whining. (The same thing happened with Sam). Go figure as soon as that paci was gone Liam has been a much more pleasant child. I threw all of them in the trash a week ago and have been so happy with the results. The anxiety that it brought to realize I had left a paci at home and had an unhappy boy while we were running errands or whatever was not cool. I didn't realize I was so anxious with that thing. I am totally pro-paci and will down-right force my babies to have them, but once the whining amps up I know it's time to get rid of it. Liam has started talking way more the last week although he has started throwing some major fits as well. He's way past the age where fits needs to be addressed so it was good for us to get rid of it. He's learning quickly what flies around here and what doesn't and is a happier boy because of it. Not that he didn't know before, we just had a nice little plug to hush him with instead of dealing with him. Glad this part of his life is over and done with.

Love my Liam-boy. He is a super feisty kid and has a contagious fun-factor about him. He is my brave child and will climb up anything he can with no fear. I have a feeling that although Sam is a leader, Liam will be head of trouble-making, lol.

I love having boys so much! Rowdy, feisty, sweet, crazy boys!

And! Last, but not least:

Presenting Baby DiGiacomo #3

12 weeks
(Body on the left, head on the right, you can barely see the arms)

Kerri said it looked like the baby had a bow on it's head so it must be a girl.
(Head is on the left, body on the right)

You know I love to post pictures of my pee stick. Makes it more official.

This is actually old news, I'm that behind on updating. We found out I was pregnant towards the end of March. I had an ultrasound when I thought I was 8 weeks, but in actuality was 12 weeks. I've always been really aware of when I get pregnant, how far along I am, ect, so this was a total surprise when they told me I was a month off.


This pregnancy has been good, non-eventful up until a few weeks ago. I kept forgetting I was pregnant because I stay pretty busy with the boys. This little babe has become quite feisty! It definitely wants to let me know it's in there and to stop drinking A&W root beer! I have been craving hearty food like cheeseburgers and lasagna. Just some good, filling meals. With the boys I wanted fruit and cereal, sweet stuff mostly.
I did have morning (all day) sickness the first 3 months. I am so thankful that the boys synchronize nap which meant I was able to take a nap almost every day the 1st trimester. I missed a nap once or twice and had to go to bed by 7:30 that evening or else I was a crying mess, lol. I've thankfully come out of the sleepy 1st trimester and have gained some energy back.

This pregnancy has been fun because Sam somewhat knows that there is a baby in my tummy. He talks to it and blows raspberries on my stomach. He says, "The baby's pooting". That's a boy for ya. He believes that the baby will come out through my belly button and I am happy to leave it at that. He says we are having a "baby grill"...we'll see, maybe he's right.

17 weeks

We are finding out what we are having June 25th!! Yay!! Stephen is really really hoping for a girl (he's quite smitten with his nieces, but is happy with whatever God chooses to bless us with, as am I). I have a feeling it's a girl. I am going to be seriously surprised if they tell me it's a boy. I'm still holding out for twins, too, lol.

We are due around November 20th. I do plan on having another home birth and look forward to it very much. Nothing like it.

That's all for now :)