At Home in the Mountains

Note: Google won't let me upload pictures right now for some reason. I am writing this down here so I can remember Kelsay's birth story. You are welcome to read or not. I promise there are not too many of the gory details, just a few key points about what happened that I want to remember. Kelsay Tabitha Fletcher joined our family on the cold morning of February 5th, 2014. She was born at Baylor Carrollton Hospital and weighed 8 lbs 3 oz and was 20 inches long. It was a crazy day. I was schedule to go in for an induction at 7a.m. that morning. At about 3:30 that morning Maddy woke up because she had pottied the bed. (A very unusual occurrence these days.) Both Aaron and I got up to change her clothes, strip sheets, etc. Right as I got up I felt a strong contraction, but being 3 a.m. I was thinking that my muscles were hurting from laying in bed in one position too long so I didn't really think much about it. Aaron went to put Maddy back to bed and fell asleep in her room....

Of being pregnant and being a family of three. As Maddy said this morning, "Today is the last day that baby Kelsay isn't here!" Though we are all excited and looking forward to Baby Kelsay's birth, I think all of us sense what a big change is coming. Change always brings gains and losses with it. No matter how happy the change and how much good it brings, you also lose something, sometimes good things. That is just life and how it works. Being just the three of us has been so great. (OF course there were a lot of good things about being just the two of us too!) There are always people out there questioning judgement, giving those hints about having another one, and about how Maddy really needs a sibling, blah, blah, blah. But in the end, you have to make a judgement about what is best for your family and do the best you can. I am so glad we have had almost 5 years with just Maddy. It has been such a blessing to be able to focus our energies solely on her and to be abl...

I've done a horrible job posting baby updates on here. Mostly cause there's not a lot to update. Baby is growing, I'm growing, and I've been expecting to go into labor anytime the last two weeks so it's made it seem like I'm two weeks overdue already even though I'm just one day over due. This is a pic of baby on her due date. She did not get the memo. I had an appointment today and after talking to doctor, we are going to go one more week and if she doesn't show up, I'm scheduled for an induction on Feb 5th. So will Kelsay be born the day before Grandad's birthday or will she decide to come on Super Bowl Sunday and mess up her dad's plan to watch his beloved Seahawks play? Stay tuned. In other news, everyone else is doing great. We are loving Aaron's sabbatical schedule so far. Working three days a week from home is awesome! We set up an office for him in the guest bedroom closet. It's pretty tight but it works. Maddy is doing gre...

 We had a great Christmas that flashed by before we knew what was happening. My parents came to Dallas this year. They arrived Saturday night, stayed with Tammy and then went to Mansfield for a couple days On Monday, we went to Mansfield for Baby Jude's 1st birthday party and then my parents came home with us that night. On Christmas eve, the Hall clan (minus Brad who had to work til ridiculously late :( ) came over. We had one of our favorite Eckstein family Christmas meals--TAMALES! Yum!  After dinner, we opened gifts. The kids had a great time. Maddy and Bethany both made gifts for each other. Maddy got a play dough bead necklace from Bethany and Maddy made Bethany a little door hanger/ornament with lots of pink and purple and the intial "B". (She has been watching Mommy work.)  On Christmas morning, Maddy got her new kitty, Genevieve. Maddy LOVES this kitty. Now the trick is to get her to treat the kitty right so the kitty loves her back. Maddy has had fun ...

Holding her favorite kitty, "Genevieve"  We had a lovely ice storm over the weekend that started late Thursday night or early Friday morning. We were keeping some kittens and a momma for a friend for a couple of days and that turned into all weekend because of the storm. Good thing we had them to entertain us since everything else imaginable got cancelled this weekend--church, craft fair, Dallas Marathon, school, etc. Snuggling with James  Fortunately Aaron is a pretty good driver on icy roads so we were able to get out quite a bit to do errands etc. On Friday we went over to some friends and Aaron and Maddy went sledding with them. On Saturday we went out and did our Christmas shopping. Great day to take care of that and don't think we would have had another time to do it anyway. Lot's of businesses were shut down because of the ice and I would say Saturday was the worst day for the roads because it was so cold we never got any thaw that day. Tammy and Jeff ...

Wow! Where to start? We are going along at blazing speed it seems. I am so ready for the semester to be over and enjoy a few lazy days before Christmas hits full blast.  I will just give some pic and some news blurbs about what is going on. News blurb #1: At my last doctor's appointment (30 wks) I hadn't grown or gained so they decided to do a sonogram to make sure baby was growing correctly. I was very nervous, even though I suspected that all was fine, given our past history with Maddy. Sometimes you just can't help those bad memories coming in and nagging at the corners of your brain. Fortunately they had sono appts available that afternoon and Aaron was able to get off work and come to the appt. The sonogram went great. Baby was 3 lbs 7 oz and 15 in long--two days ahead of scheduled due date. We also found out for sure that we are having a GIRL!! Now to finalize a name.......... News blurb #2: Maddy is starting to read. After the sonogram we picked her up at scho...

I always stop and remember this day as the day that completely changed my life. No one but me remembers now, but this is the day that we had Maddy's 20 week sonogram. This day is not sad to me anymore; it is just an important day to remember. On that day I was not ready for my life to change so dramatically. I didn't want to have to be challenged or deal with the difficult circumstances that we were dealing with. I just wanted out...but there was no way out. Looking back I have to laugh at myself. There was no way to see it on that side, but God had an amazing plan for our family. He had a plan to give us more joy and more understanding of who he is. Many of the times in the last five years have not been easy, but they have been worth it. We would not trade Maddy for anything and love every part of who she is, even when sometimes part of who she is drives us crazy, like doing the exact opposite of what the photographers tell her to do when trying to take her picture (event f...