Going through the January Motions

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

January is one of my least favorite months ever, no matter where I live. It’s just so blah. The excitement of Christmas is over, it’s winter, all the trees and grass are dormant, it’s not pretty outside…it’s just blah. And it always seems to last forever. However, we know that we still have a lot to be grateful for, and a lot to look forward to. This January brought some hope that we’re *hopefully* seeing the light at the end of this very long Covid tunnel. More Americans are getting vaccinated each day, and I am (not so) patiently waiting my turn. In the meantime, it’s very reassuring that Ryan is now fully vaccinated, so that risk of him becoming infected at work is significantly lower. We’ll just keep trucking along in our little Covid bubble until things are safe for us to come out of it.

With all that said, my monthly blogs with continue to be somewhat boring because we don’t go anywhere! But hopefully you’ll still enjoy some pictures of our activities from home!

Home Activities and Projects

Luckily the kids have been able to go to school so far this calendar year. They need the social interaction, the time away from home, and the time away from each other. But when they aren’t at school, they are home. And they do a pretty darn good job of keeping themselves busy and entertained!

Kinsie loves arts and crafts. It’s one of her favorite things in life. For Christmas, she got a Disney craft book, and she has already set to work. The first craft she made from it was an Aladdin puppet theater. She did an amazing job!

Brax received several Lego sets for Christmas, mostly dinosaur sets since that is his favorite thing in the world right now. So we took some time after school for a few days to build a T-Rex, a triceratops and a pterodactyl. He can’t wait to display them in his new room! On a separate note…Legos are surprisingly extremely satisfying for my busy mind. I also built the Knight Bus from Harry Potter on my own one night when the kids were in bed!

Kinsie and Brax have both inherited my and Ryan’s love for all things Harry Potter. So we decided to start reading the books together as a family. It helps that we have the illustrated versions of books 1-4 to keep them intrigued in the story. We already finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and they loved it! Ryan did the best character voices, British accents included! Kinsie especially can’t wait to start the next book.

On MLK Day, Kinsie’s school encouraged the students to use it as a “day on” instead of a “day off” and do some kind of service project. Kinsie decided to make valentines for frontline healthcare workers. When she was done, she had Ryan take them to work and hang them up around the emergency department so everyone could enjoy seeing them.

The kids can get so creative with the games they come up with. On this particular day, they created a zoo with all of their toy animals. Each animal species had their own containment, and sometimes an animal would break out and create chaos and would need to be tranquilized by a helicopter and brought back to its cage!

On weekends, we always try to find little projects for the kids to do. Ryan found a dinosaur fossil dig site for Brax at the store, and Brax was pumped. He worked so hard digging out his dino!

Lately when Ryan is home in the evenings, the kids always want to do something fun with him. Sometimes it is play a video game with him, but usually Kinsie wants to do science with him. She got several science kits for Christmas, so they’ve had lots of fun trying them out. They’ve played with slime and kinetic sand, dug for crystals, made a volcano, and even made their own ice cream and slushie!

Cousin Visits

When Ryan worked one Saturday, we needed a change of scenery, so I loaded the kids up and we drove to my parents’ house and had the kids’ cousins come play. I have lots of stuff stored in my parents’ basement, so while I sorted through all of that stuff, the kids had a blast playing with their cousins all day. Their favorite thing was playing their new “The Floor is Lava” game with them!

Another day, my sister’s family came to visit us and see the progress of our house. We made a day of it and had a picnic at the house, then they came back to our rental house for a while. We loved having them visit and the kids always love cousin time!

Snow Day!

The kids have been dying for snow ever since we moved. We’ve had several small drizzles, but not enough to cover the ground for more than a couple of hours. Well…they finally got their wish! We finally got a good, somewhat heavy snowfall…enough to cover the ground and make the roads slick. Because of this, they had their first official snow day. Kinsie technically had an e-learning day, but she was done with her school work shortly after lunch, so then we were able to go outside and play.

We all went out as a family. Brody loved sitting in the sled and watching the kids run around in the snow!

Snow angels, sledding, and snowmen…oh my!

Our current yard is big, but it isn’t the best sledding yard, so Ryan attached the sled to his jeep with a rope and pulled them around the yard. They had a BLAST! And Koda loves snow too, so he ran around like a puppy chasing them in the sled!

I wasn’t always the biggest fan of snow…especially in high school and college. I always swore I would move somewhere warm where I would never have to see snow again. Well, that wish somewhat came true for a while! But now my perspective has changed. Not that I love cold weather by any means…but now I embrace it. I had my time in a warmer place, and let me tell you…the grass is not greener on the other side! Yes the winters in Arkansas were MUCH better, but the intense heat of the summers were almost unbearable. I traded one dreadful season for another. I’ve learned that there is no perfect place to live. But after being away from our loved ones for 3 years, we decided that we’d rather endure the rough winters if it means we’re close to family again. And to be honest, I missed the season changes of the midwest. I’m sure I’ll be over the snow and cold weather soon…but at least now I have a little more perspective, and I’ll remember that I chose family over mild winters.

100th Day of School

Kinsie recently celebrated her 100th day of 1st grade. Her class was encouraged to dress like they are 100 years old. At first, Kinsie was skeptical…she said she didn’t want to look weird. But I told her we wouldn’t go over-the-top and we would make her a cute old lady! I gathered a few items together, and Ryan made a cane for her. We let her try it on the night before and she approved! She was the prettiest little old lady I’ve ever seen!

Progress on the House

The progress is really picking up at the house and we are so excited! They got so much done this month. It is hard not to go visit every day…which I basically do!

Working on the exterior…

We have a front door… and a pretty little model!

We have cabinets! I am SO excited for my new kitchen!

We have tile in the mudroom and bathrooms…

Obsessed with our vinyl floors!

Kinsie showing off my new farm sink…one of the things I’m most excited about. And I’m not even kidding!

We LOVE the way the exterior turned out!

The kids always have so much fun when we visit. They like playing hide-and-seek in the cabinets. We also try to bring Koda whenever we can so he can get used to it and not feel the need to “mark his territory.”

The house is estimated to be done in March. We’re so close!!

Brody at 8 Months

Not sure how I blinked and my baby turned 8 months old! I have to admit that I am enjoying and savoring his precious baby days more than I did with Kinsie and Brax. Maybe it’s because I’m not working now. Maybe it’s because we’re in a pandemic. Maybe it’s because he may be my last baby. Whatever the reason…I am savoring every precious smile, giggle, and snuggle with this boy. And even the tougher moments like teething, fussiness and when he decides not to sleep at night…I know that those moments are temporary. I know it’s just a season, and it will be over soon…just like his time being so little.

His monthly photo shoots are getting a little harder to do since this boy is ALWAYS on the go!

Here are some updates of our Bro Bro at 8 months old…

He is starting to pull up on things. We have to watch him like a hawk!
He LOVES table food. He’s been trying lots of new foods and likes almost everything he has tried. His current favorite include strawberries, carrots, avocados, and pears. He suddenly decided he does not like scrambled eggs anymore. He is definitely showing preferences for certain foods!
He often does the “downward-facing dog” yoga pose.
He is still army crawling. We know he is physically strong enough to crawl normally, but he prefers to scoot around. And does so very quickly!
Unlike his siblings, he has never been a huge fan of baths. However, now that he can sit up independently, I’ve been letting him take his baths with Brax. The first time I was going to give them a bath together, Kinsie was super jealous so I let her join in for the first time. But now that Brody is taking his baths with his brother, he has SO much fun. He even splashes in the water like crazy!
He and Brax have their own language. They will often mimic each other’s noises, and then laugh.
He is currently popping his two front teeth.
He is still obsessed with his mama. But he has a fun relationship with his daddy too.
He is really starting to play with his siblings…not just sit and watch. He’ll chase them around and interact with them and try to play what they are playing.

Showing off his standing skills!

Loving his food!

Bath time for Bro!

Just doing some yoga!

Mama love

Brother and sister love. He already has such a sweet and unique relationship with each of them.

More sweet Brody faces!

The best thing to come out of 2020! Thanks for the perfect onesie, Yaya!

Our growing little boy! I’m not ready to accept the fact that he’ll be a year old in just a few months!

And that’s a wrap for January. And we are one month closer to moving into our dream home. I am SO ready to not only live in our new beautiful house, but to finally become somewhat settled. To not live in limbo anymore, where we have that nagging feeling that we’ll have to pick up and move again in a couple of years. That has been lives together so far for the past 8.5 years. Med school and residency and so many changes and moves…I’m ready to finally be in my forever home. And by the end of February, we should be pretty darn close to doing just that!

And as always, here is our January 1 Second Everyday…the first of 2021. This has become such a fun tradition. We all LOVE going back and watching them all from the past, and watching the kids grow through the seconds. It’s a tradition I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Enjoy!

2Jan2021

A Sweet, Slow-Paced December

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

Our December is usually SO busy. We usually have Christmas programs, Santa visits, Christmas parties, traveling, and LOTS of family get-togethers. But this is 2020. Nothing is normal. And this has become our new normal. This December, we hardly left home (well, Ryan did for work…but the kids and I stayed in our pajamas throughout the majority of the month!) With Covid raging through the midwest, we’ve been extra cautious and have limited our contacts as much as possible. Part of me craved the crazy, busy lifestyle that we’re used to in December, but overall, we truly embraced being home together as a family.

Here is a recap of our December…

Ryan’s Birthday

Ryan actually had his birthday off, and I wanted him to actually relax and enjoy it, so we drive up and spent his birthday at the lake. It was such a nice, relaxing day. Ryan got to spend his day with his favorite people, we had ice cream cake, and on the way home, we saw Christmas lights.

While we were at the lake, we let the kids drop off their letters for Santa at a nearby Santa mailbox. Kinsie asked for science kits, a Fiona the hippo calendar, and books. Brax asked for dinosaur toys and the video game Jurassic World Evolution. Brody didn’t have any preferences this year, so he just came along for the ride!

Kinsie’s back to virtual school

We knew it would eventually happen again. And with the rising numbers, we saw it coming so we gave her a heads up. Kinsie was pretty bummed when her school district decided to go back to all online. Even though the schools are doing an AMAZING job with mask-wearing, cleaning and sanitizing and social distancing, the district makes their decisions based on the county’s positivity rate. Luckily, it was only for about 2 weeks before Christmas break, but I was sad that she didn’t get to enjoy all the Christmas fun and activities at school. She was sad, but enjoyed some extra time with Brody. She will get to start in person again to start the new semester, so our fingers are crossed that she’ll get to remain in person!

Staying Busy at Home

As most of you probably know, we have some BUSY kids! While they are usually really good at being creative and using their imagination when they play, they’ve had a little too much together-ness, so we’ve had to help come up with activities to keep them busy so they don’t fight so much! Our staying home activities included…

Playing in the tent and sibling reading time…

Learning how to make pottery with a pottery wheel that Kinsie got for her birthday…

Decorating a gingerbread house…

Christmas crafts…

and making Christmas cookies…

Rare Outside Time

Indiana winter has kind of slapped us in the face this month. I think it’s trying to remind us what we’ve been missing the last three years! There were about 3-4 days, however, where it was somewhat warm enough to be outside. The kids had severe cabin fever, so as SOON as we had the opportunity, we took it! They played on their ninja course, played “Hogwarts,” (complete with a ride on the Hogwarts Express, a Sorting Hat ceremony, and wizarding lessons), and even played in the snow when we had a small snowfall. And when I say small, we could still see the grass…and it was still more snow in one day than we got in 3 years in Arkansas!

Ryan got vaccinated!

We were SO excited for Ryan to receive his first Covid-19 vaccine! As a healthcare worker, he was honored to be one of the first groups of people to receive the vaccine. This is history in the making, and the biggest step we can take to do our part to help beat this thing (other than masking up and social distancing of course). He’ll receive his second vaccine in a couple weeks. We all can’t wait for our turn…hopefully sooner rather than later!

Progress on our House

They are still moving along with our house and we are so excited! This month they completed the electrical wiring, HVAC, and plumbing, which wasn’t very “visible” progress, but still exciting! They also added the garage doors, and now the entire house is dry-walled. We still love taking trips over there, and when we do, the kids don’t want to leave!

Standing in their rooms!

Christmas Activities

Christmas was definitely different this year, but we still found lots of ways to celebrate the season safely. This was a great opportunity to slow down and focus on the REAL reason for the season!

One thing I really miss about Arkansas is the amazing women’s bible study I was in. And as SOON as we are able to, we can’t wait to find another church home. Anyway, a few years ago, in my bible study, we made an Advent study for our kids using the Jesus Storybook Bible. My kids love doing this every year! They know the stories by heart, but they still love hearing them over and over, and celebrating Jesus as the best gift we’ve ever received!

Matching Christmas pajamas are always a must! My sweet boys rocking their Santa jammies!

We took a few opportunities throughout the month to drive around and look at Christmas lights and displays.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning is truly magical when you have kids. I am always so happy to watch their eyes light up when they see what Santa brought them! From Santa, Kinsie got the science kits and Fiona calendar she wanted, and she also got a “Fiona kiss,” a Hufflepuff mug (she recently took the official Pottermore Sorting Hat quiz and discovered she is a Hufflepuff and couldn’t be more proud!), and a unicorn nightlight. She was also super excited to get a Kids Kindle from us. She has already downloaded tons of books and reads from her Kindle every day! When Brax saw his dinosaur toys that Santa brought him, he literally dove at them and starting “swimming” in them. He was so excited! And Brody loved his Harry Potter bear, and fun books and toys! However, he spent most of his morning climbing on unopened presents and trying to eat the wrapping paper and bows!

Kinsie’s school did a “Penguin Patch Holiday Shop,” where the kids could shop online and buy little items for their friends and family. I told her how much she could spend, and she picked out small toys for her brothers, all of her cousins, and our dog Koda. She was SO excited to give her gifts to everyone! I think my girl has the gift of giving like her mama and grandmas!

After we opened our family gifts at home, we packed up and headed to my parents’ house for Christmas with my immediate family. We loved our day of spending time with the family and letting the cousins play all day.

The next day, we had Christmas with Ryan’s immediate family. We hadn’t seen both sides of our families since Thanksgiving, so it was really nice to spend some time with them. This is the extent of our Covid bubble right now, and even them we don’t see as often as we’d like. I’m just glad we live close now so we at least have the option to see them at all!

The kids LOVE their cousin time!

It was definitely a different Christmas than we are used to, but it was perfect. We loved our time with family and we loved taking it easy and just focusing on each other and Jesus…the best gift of all!

New Year’s Eve

The last few years, we have enjoyed just staying home and taking it easy for New Year’s Eve…so this year was obviously no different! Ryan had to work, so the kids and I had some New Year’s fun. We played board games, “Just Dance” on Nintendo Switch, and did a “countdown” with sparkling grape juice…all before 9pm! Since it was just us, there was no point in trying to keep the kids up. I barely made it to midnight myself! Ryan got home at 11:58pm…just in time to watch the ball drop with me!

The best thing to come out of 2020…my precious little Brody!

Brody is 7 months!

This precious little ball of sunshine is 7 months old! He is the absolute best blessing to come out of 2020. He has brought us so much joy during a difficult time in the world, and because of that I will always be grateful for the year 2020.

Here is what our little guy is up to at 7 months…

He still army crawls like a beast. And when he really wants something, he goes fast!
He is starting to get up on his hands and knees. You can tell he wants to start crawling the real way, but he knows he can go faster with his army crawling!
He snorts when he laughs.
He crinkles his nose when he smiles big.
He has very strong legs. When I’m changing his diaper, he’ll kick his legs like crazy and sometimes gets me in the stomach and knocks the wind out of me!
He is starting to pull up on things.
He loves playing with anything the kids play with. Particularly Brax’s dinosaurs.
He is still a major mama’s boy. If I’m not holding him, he will chase me around the room. If I walk passed him without picking him up, he melts. If I am sitting with him while he plays on the floor, it doesn’t matter if he’s surrounded by toys, he just wallers all over me. I’m sure there are lots of other 2020 babies who are attached to their mamas since they don’t get out much and see other people!
He has been trying lots of different types of food (real food – not just baby food). He always wants us to feed the pieces to him. He’ll pretend to try to pick up pieces on his own, then just opens his mouth for us to feed him!
We’ve also been introducing him to high-allergen foods, like peanut butter and eggs, and so far he has done great with no allergies (yay!) He loves avocados, blueberries, and mixed veggies…but his absolute favorite thing so far is peanut butter. I can’t blame him!

Loving on his brother and sister. They are still obsessed with him. We all are!

Enjoying some avocados

Pulling up. Not sure I’m ready for this!

Brody LOVED his first Christmas! He especially loved scooting over to the Christmas tree when we weren’t looking and grabbing the bows off the presents and grabbing any ornament he could reach!

Happy Brody faces are my favorite!!

Our growing boy!

And that’s a wrap for our December, AND 2020. What a crazy year it was! I knew it was going to be a big year with a baby coming, finishing residency and moving…but I had no idea just how big it would be. We grew SO much this year and all became stronger individuals and as a family. God really gave me a good, strong dose of humility with this pandemic, which I know I needed. I am not in control, He is…and I need to trust his plan instead of trying to make my own. We are excited to see what 2021 brings…especially moving into our new house! We are also hopeful for a less eventful year…and we are definitely hopeful for this pandemic to end sometime this year. However, we’ve learned with this year that no matter what comes our way, we can handle it together as a family, and definitely with the Lord on our side!

Here is our 1 Second Everyday for December…

And if you are interested, here is the 1 Second Everyday of the entire 2020. It is pretty entertaining!

30Nov2020

HALF a Year with Brody

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

November was somewhat uneventful, but we were completely fine with that! The pandemic is making its fall surge as per expected, and with the colder weather, we haven’t had as many outdoor adventures, so we spent most of our time at home. Even though our schedule isn’t packed full with activities, we’ve really been able to enjoy the simple, but more important parts of our life right now – like watching Brody grow and reach milestones, and watching our dream home being built!

Here is how our simple, quiet November went down…

Brody’s First Sickness

Our sweet little Brody had his first illness this month. He really struggled sleeping one night, and quickly became very congested and had a high fever. Ryan and I had to take shifts holding him throughout the night so he could sleep. The next day was Election Day, and both of my big kids had the day off (their schools were polling locations). After a night of pretty much no sleep, my mom came to help me since Ryan had to work. I’m so grateful she came, because she helped me tremendously with the big kids while I held Brody all day to help him nap. The next day, I took him to the doctor, and it turned out he had an ear infection. We got him some antibiotics and he was feeling better within a few days. It was an exhausting week (add on daylight savings time AND a new tooth in the same week), but he was such a champ, and I honestly enjoyed the extra snuggles with my sweet boy.

Progress on our House

They are doing WORK on our house. Like seriously, it is going up so fast and we are SO excited! They finished framing the entire house and the kids have loved visiting almost every day and running through the house. They would move in today if I let them!

The kids in their rooms – before the wall and bathroom was framed out in between!

One of our favorite parts of the house – the back patio!

Windows and shingles – done!

Recently they’ve been working on the electrical and plumbing, then they’ll be doing the drywall soon. This has been such a fun process and we’ve already created many memories at this house and we haven’t even moved in yet!

Picnic Dinner at the House

One evening when we had nicer weather, we got dinner from Subway, drove to the new house and had our first official dinner in our new kitchen – picnic style!

We also brought the kids’ bikes, so after dinner, they rode around the cul-de-sac for a little while. We also got our first glance at the sunset view we’ll get from our lot. It was a beautiful and fun family evening!

My Birthday

I turned 32 this month. And now we’re getting to the point where everyone has had a birthday in this weird 2020 year. It was different, but I still got what I wanted, which was time with my family. Ryan took the day off, and we spent a nice day together. We had carry-out Jimmy Johns for lunch and sushi for dinner. Ryan bought me my favorite Starbucks drink, and I got to do some Christmas shopping alone! It was all I needed. A few days later, we spent the day at my parents’ house and celebrated my birthday, and my niece’s birthday with family.

Thanksgiving

The kids had a week off school for Thanksgiving break. Before they were off, they both had some fun Thanksgiving activities at school. Braxton got to have a Thanksgiving celebration within his own classroom, complete with fun placemats and pumpkin pie. Kinsie got to create her own disguise for a turkey to help him avoid being eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. She disguised her turkey as Harry Potter! Usually, the kids’ schools do feasts at school with families invited, but things are obviously different right now. However, they continue to be champs throughout all of this and just enjoy life as it happens!

Unfortunately, Ryan had to work on Thanksgiving evening…but part of his job is knowing that he will have to work on holidays sometimes. While this isn’t ideal, it definitely helps that we are back in Indiana closer to family. The kids and I drove up to Indy to spend Thanksgiving with the family inside our current Covid bubble. First we stopped at Ryan’s sister Megan’s house to have a Thanksgiving lunch with his immediate family. It was nice, simple and quiet, and the kids enjoyed playing with their cousin, Griffin.

After lunch, we drove to my parents’ house to have Thanksgiving dinner with my immediate family. The kids had a blast playing with their Robinson cousins, we had a great meal and just enjoyed each other. Again…simple, but perfect!

Luckily, Ryan had the rest of the weekend off so we still got some good family time during the holiday weekend.

Kinsie’s Sleepover

My niece, Kerigan, turned 7 this month. For her birthday, she just wanted a sleepover with Kinsie, and their other cousin, Emery. We all went over to my sister’s house for dinner, then we left and let the girls have their sleepover. They did crafts, drove around the see Christmas lights, played “The Masked Singer,” and ate donuts for breakfast. They always have such a great time together!

Brody turned 6 months old!

How is our sweet little guy half a year old already? It is truly bizarre to me that just 6 months ago, our precious Brody came into this world at the beginning of a global pandemic. And then we were stuck in the hospital for a week. And then we moved to a new state. And then we had to spend a month without Ryan while he finished residency. We’ve had a LOT happen in the last 6 months, but we’ve accomplished and grown so much in that amount of time. What a weird, but wonderful start to Brody’s life!

Here are some updates of our boy at 6 months-

He weighs 16 lbs. and 12 oz. (34th percentile).
He is 27.6 inches long (86th percentile).
He got his first TWO teeth!
He is army crawling ALL over the place.
He can sit up independently. However, he doesn’t like to sit still so he can’t show off his sitting skills long because he dives forward wanting to be on the move again.
He still loves to chew on everything in sight. His current favorite chewing toys include a teether giraffe, my legs, and anything the kids are trying to play with.
His obsession with mama is intensifying. While I’m flattered, I’m hoping we can work through it and it doesn’t linger too long. My Brody-holding arm is exhausted!
He loves attention.
He is still the happiest little guy with the BEST smile!

And of course we are all still obsessed with him!

His sweet smile is my absolute favorite!!

Growing month by month…

This boy has been the sunshine that we desperately needed this year. We are beyond grateful for this perfect little gift from God!

Happy HALF birthday, Brody Ryan!

And that was our November. Simple and uneventful, but great. December is always an exciting month, and we all know things will be different, but we are ready for the holiday season. The presence of Christmas lights and Christmas music has already been so soothing to my soul. This has been a crazy year, and we’ve seen a lot of hatred and division in the last few months in our country, so I’m looking forward to the stillness and peace that Christmas brings. We all need the reminders of Jesus’s birth and what is truly important in this life. I’m looking forward to being home for Christmas and spending that time with my family celebrating the birth of our Savior.

And as always, here is our 1 Second Everyday video for November.

30Sep2020

Our September Stories

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

September was the first month in a long time that really seemed to go by quickly. Both of the kids are in school now, so just the driving around dropping off and picking up kids each week day keeps me pretty busy! Covid is obviously still lingering, and to be honest, hit a little too close to home this month…but overall, it has sadly meshed into our every day lives. Wearing masks, keeping our distance from people, constantly cleaning everything and washing our hands…it’s second nature now. We are doing our best to still be aware of it and do our part to flatten the curve, but also still do fun things and *somewhat* live our lives.

Here is a recap of our September…

Kinsie starts in-person school

This was probably the highlight of her month…and her birthday was this month too! Kinsie was SO excited to finally start at her new school, and she was not disappointed at all! She has absolutely loved every second of it so far. She has made several friends right away, which is amazing considering how shy she usually is. She and Brax both don’t seem to mind the changes to school this year from Covid. They have a great collection of cute masks that they genuinely get excited to pick out each day for school. If only more adults were more like these kids…we’d be over this pandemic a lot sooner! We know there is always the possibility that things will get bad again and they may shut the schools down again, but for now, the kids are loving their time at school.

Brax’s School Activities

Brax is loving his new school too! He seems to be fitting in well and making new friends. His class has a special private Facebook page where they share pictures of the kids activities. One of his favorite activities that they have done so far was dig for dinosaurs (while learning about the letter D). Recently, Brax was also the “Top Banana” in his class, which is like the student of the week. He got to bring in pictures of his family, his pet, and some of his favorite things. He also got to bring in his favorite book for the teacher to read to the class. He loved it!

Family Hike at McCormick’s Creek

During Labor Day weekend, we wanted to take a family hike somewhere nearby. McCormick’s Creek is only about 15 minutes away from us, so we found a cave trail to explore. It was more crowded than we expected, but we never go anywhere without our masks, so we just threw those on and continued our hike. Kinsie especially loved it, and she walked our dog Koda the whole time. Brax wasn’t feeling great. He had just had his flu shot, and he was having what we thought was side effects from that, but he continued to have symptoms that got us worried in today’s Covid world. He was a champ and toughed out the hike, but he definitely didn’t feel good. We ended up taking him to get a Covid test the next day and after 24 excruciating hours of waiting, it was negative!

Visitors

It is SO nice being close to family again. We love when grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins come to visit us for an afternoon!

Kinsie is SEVEN!

Our beautiful girl turned seven this month! She had quite the special day. First we started our morning with our traditional birthday donuts.

Kinsie had school on her birthday, which she was really excited about. Her teacher and classmates made it a very special school day for her. She got to bring in birthday treats, she wore a sticker that said “Today is my birthday!” and they made her a birthday book. She made the cover, and each classmate made a page in it.

After school, we got carry out from a sandwich shop (Kinsie wanted grilled cheese), and we took it to IU campus near the Sample Gates to have a picnic dinner.

After dinner, we went to a park to let the kids play for a little while.

Finally, we ended our night by getting ice cream from our favorite ice cream shop in town and ate it on our front porch. We had such a fun afternoon celebrating our favorite seven year old!

Kinsie’s Pinkalicious Birthday Party

Now that we live closer to family, Kinsie really wanted to have a birthday party with all of her cousins, so we had a very small family-only Pinkalicious birthday party at the lake house. We made sure to keep it small and outdoors so we were still being safe. It turned out to be a beautiful day so it worked out perfectly.

If you have never read the book, “Pinkalicious,” it’s about a little girl who eats too many pink cupcakes, so she turns pink. The doctor diagnosed her with “Pinkititis,” and told her in order to turn back to normal, she must eat a steady diet of green food. For Kinsie’s party, we included the cupcakes (but made sure nobody ate too many!), lots of fun pink food, and a tray of green food for the cure to Pinkititis!

The cousins all loved making their own crowns with stickers and jewels. They even made one for Brody!

Kinsie loved opening her presents, eating cupcakes, and hitting the piñata. She was completely in her happy place to be surrounded by all of her cousins!

It filled my heart to see her so happy. It was also so nice that Ryan was able to join us, since, in several years past, he had to work. The kids all had so much fun together and clearly wore our girl out! She usually has so much energy and NEVER falls asleep in the car, so the party was clearly successful since this is how I found her when we got home!

Fall Fun with Cousins

My niece Kolly had her birthday party at my parents’ pool near the end of September. It was supposed to be a pool party, and while it was a little too chilly to swim, it was a beautiful fall day! After the party, my family and I all sat around talking for hours while the kids played independently. No arguing, no adult intervention, no screens…just kids being kids. They had a blast playing in the leaves together all afternoon.

Breaking Ground

We finally broke ground on our home!! We are so excited to get this process started. It has been almost 6 months since we first decided to build, so to finally see a hole in the ground is so exciting!

Brody at 4 months

Our precious, happy little boy turned 4 months old this month! He is still overall a very easy-going baby, but he knows what he wants and we have a feeling he will be on-the-go as soon as physically possible. He adores his brother and sister, and the feeling is mutual. We all love our Brody time and love watching him grow!

Here are some stats about our Bro at 4 months…

He started to giggle and we are OBSESSED.
He loves when we hold him and walk around. He always wants to see everything around him.
His brother Brax often calls him “sweet boy” and its the most precious thing ever.
He has different interactions with all of us. My favorite is how he smiles at Kinsie.
He is ticklish under his armpits and on his thighs.
He rolls from his back to his belly…constantly. This often keeps us up at night as well so we’re hoping the novelty wears off soon!
He wants to be able to move so bad, so he works hard at scooting himself forward. He will probably be crawling in no time!
He is showing signs of changing eye color. We are thinking they may turn brown like me and Kinsie’s eyes.
Now that he is big enough, he loves looking out in my Ergo carrier. He loves being able to see everything going on!

We are all always loving on Brody. Like literally at all times.

The many adorable faces of Brody at 4 months.

Four months in and we are all still completely smitten with this little boy. And now I can’t believe that he will have his half birthday in less than 2 months. It is also crazy that his whole life so far has been during a pandemic. He doesn’t know any different than to see us wearing masks all the time. But someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, life will be somewhat back to normal and he won’t remember the crazy world he was born into.

And now onto October…one of my favorite months. We hope to still incorporate some of our favorite fall traditions while still being safe. Halloween may look different this year, but the kids will still be in costumes and they are excited to be close to home to spend that time with the people we love.

And as always, here is our 1 Second Everyday video for September 2020. Happy fall!

2Sep2020

New Adventures in August

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

August was a month of lots of new beginnings. Kinsie and Brax both started school, and Ryan started his new job. Covid is still raging, but at least we have somewhat of a routine now and school to keep us busy. The kids have spent WAY too much time together and have way too much energy for me to keep up with, so having schoolwork now has helped keep their mind somewhat stimulated.

Here is a summary of our August…

Kinsie Starts 1st Grade Virtually

Starting the school year online was definitely not our first choice. We had a talk with Kinsie about school earlier in the summer, and we all agreed that being in school, even if that meant wearing a mask and social distancing, was the best choice for her. She thrives in school, and she couldn’t wait to start at a new school and meet her teacher and new friends. However, about a week before school was supposed to start, the district decided to start the first few weeks online. She was really bummed, but she made the most of it. Her school day included several live meetings with her class, which was a great way for her to still get to know her teacher and classmates. Her teacher has done an amazing job connecting with the students and creating class community, even virtually. Luckily, after the last board meeting, the district has decided to move to “phase yellow,” which means elementary students can start attending school in-person next week, and middle and high school students move to a hybrid schedule. Kinsie is SO excited! I’m so proud of her for how she has handled all the crazy changes this year.

Ryan Starts His Job

We were all excited for Ryan to officially start his first real job! And it only took about 10 years to get there! So far he loves the hospital that he is working at, and all of his co-workers. He is still getting used to being “in charge” but he is doing great and we are all loving his hours.

After Kinsie’s first day of school and Ryan’s first day of work, we had to celebrate with a trip to Jiffy Treet for ice cream!

Braxton Starts Pre-K

Another new adventure was Brax starting pre-K at his new school. Luckily, he has been able to go in person. He has to wear his mask sometimes throughout the day, like walking into and out of the building, and he does such a great job with it. He was a little nervous to start at a new school, but so far he has loved it and loves his new teacher and classmates.

Outdoor Adventures

Even with the kids starting school, we still have to get the kids outside to play as often as possible. They have SO much energy, and they fight more with each other and drive us crazy if they aren’t active enough throughout the day. Luckily, we have a pretty big yard for them to explore and play.

Kinsie’s current obsession is American Ninja Warrior, so Ryan has tried to give the kids some “ninja-type” activities in our own yard. We even gave her an early birthday present and got her a slackline obstacle kit. The kids could spend hours on it!

Love these crazy kids!

We still make our way over to my parents’ pool for swimming days every so often too!

One morning, we went to the park that Kinsie calls the “American Ninja Warrior” park. This is a newer park so it gets crowded often. We went early, and had a good chunk of time without crowds, but it didn’t last too long. When there were too many people around, we had the kids put on their masks. Even so, they always enjoy any park time they get.

One day, Ryan’s mom and aunt Renata came to visit. The kids wanted to take them to our other favorite park, and to show them the waterfall. We also enjoyed a picnic lunch at the park, bike riding, and looking for fish in the creek.

Weekends at the Lake

We are taking full advantage of our summer time at the lake. We have gone pretty much every weekend, even if just for the day. Ryan’s parents recently got some paddle boards, so we have all been enjoying trying them out.

In August, we also celebrating our sweet Grandma Bev’s birthday. Even though she fell in the lake while trying to help dock the boat, her heart was so full the whole day with all of her kids and grandbabies!

And of course the kids always enjoy their time with their cousin, Griffin…even if its running around in random sun hats!

Building Our Home

We are in the homestretch of preparing to build our forever home. Just a couple more weeks and we will be breaking ground. We are all so excited, and we love going to visit the lot whenever we can. I will be taking lots of pictures of the building process so I will be sure to share the progress.

Brody turned 3 months

Our precious little Brody is growing so fast right in front of our eyes! He is getting so big and so much fun. We are all so obsessed with him. The kids literally fight over who gets to sit closer to him. He is so happy and BUSY…like his brother and sister. He is still pretty go with the flow because as a third kid, he really has no choice…but lately he has less chill days and more busy days and always wants to be on-the-go!

Here are some updates of our little Bro at 3 months –

He talks and squeals a lot – definitely discovering his voice.
He loves to suck on his hands.
He is much more interactive and LOVES when people talk to him.
When laying down on his back, he scoots backwards like a worm.
Most nights, he sleeps a 6-7 hour stretch. Some nights he wants to make sure I don’t forget about him and wakes up after just a couple of hours for a midnight snack.
He loves looking around and observing everything around him.
He often smiles with his tongue out, just like Kinsie did as a baby.
He naps best with loud music to drown out the noise of his siblings.
He is doing great with tummy time.
He is in constant motion. In fact, when I put him down on his playmat and walk away to do something, I’ll come back not even a minute later and he has scooted himself off the mat!
On the day he turned 3 months, he tried a new trick and can roll from his belly to his back. The kids love cheering him on when he does this!

These kids are ALWAYS loving on their baby brother. I feel like I say “Give him some space” a hundred times a day!

More sweet faces of our favorite little guy…

We love every single day with this boy. He brings us so much joy. I love seeing the kids in their roles of his big brother and sister. Even if they beat each other senseless often, they are so sweet and loving with Brody. We’ll see how long until he joins in on their wrestling matches!

Growing month by month…

Lots of new and exciting changes in August, and now we are looking forward to September. Our Kinsie Kay will be 7 this month!! We love fall and we have so many fun traditions we usually do in this season. However, it is 2020…the year of the pandemic. Things may look different than they usually do, but we still have each other and so much to be grateful for. We’ve been through so much this year already, and our kids have become absolute champs with all the change. We’re ready for our first Indiana fall, even if we mainly enjoy it just from our front porch!

Here is our August 1 Second Everyday video. Enjoy!

31Jul2020

A Much- Needed Family Summer

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

Even though the pandemic is still raging, our summer in our new home as a full family of five has been so refreshing! We’ve had so much quality family time that we’ve all been aching for for years! Since Covid is still going strong and we are still being protective of our little Brody, we really haven’t gotten out and about much to explore our new town and we haven’t really been able to meet people, but we know that will come soon enough when things get better. In the mean time, we’ve just been soaking up all the family time we can get, and enjoying being close to our families and cousins again.

Here’s a rundown of our July…

4th of July

We enjoyed going to the lake this year for the 4th. Our day mainly consisted of boat rides, fireworks and cousin time!

IU Scavenger Hunt

We took the kids on a long walk through IU’s campus, and I wanted to find a way to make sure they somewhat stayed interested, so I made a scavenger hunt. It included specific landmarks around campus, such as the Sample Gates, the Showalter Fountain and the Herman B. Wells statue, but it also included things like red and white flowers, a red clock, people riding bikes, etc. The kids enjoyed it even though it was about 100 degrees out that day!

Exploring new parks

We have tried to spend some time finding old and new parks to explore in our new town. The first one I wanted to go to was my favorite park from college, Lower Cascades Park. It is a beautiful little park with a hidden creek and waterfall. The kids LOVED the waterfall area! They spent a good hour climbing behind and all around it, and throwing rocks in the creek.

After the waterfall hike, we let the kids just play on the playground. This park is also nice because it isn’t usually too crowded. Another day, we came back to this park to ride bikes and had a Subway picnic.

Another park we tried was called Switchyard Park. Kinsie liked to call it the “American Ninja Warrior Park” because it had lots of climbing ninja-type activities, which is one of her current obsessions!

Pool Parties

We’ve gone to my parents’ pool about once a week this month. This is probably the kids’ favorite place to play with their cousins!

We recently let Brody have his first pool experience. He was pretty chill about it, like most things in life!

Lake Life

We’ve spent almost every weekend at the lake, our happy place! We always love going on lots of boat rides whenever we can.

The kids have loved spending time with their other cousins as well. We enjoyed visiting some cousins at the Heritage Lake Campground, as well as some much-needed Griffin time!

We always have fun at the lake. Whether it’s fishing, swimming, boat rides, paddle boat rides, kayaking, or just hanging out, it is always a fun and relaxing time!

Outdoor Living

The house we are currently living in is a great place to catch fireflies. The kids loved their first firefly experience!

Ryan has never had this much time off before, and he is not the type to sit around…so he did lots of projects. Just a few examples include a giant Jenga set, and a peg board for the kids to climb!

Fun at Renata’s

The kids are always asking when we can go back to Aunt Renata’s house. I took them one day and like usual, they had a blast. They loved playing with Nicole’s dog Winnie in the baby pool, running around outside, and doing lots of painting and art projects!

Kinsie the Biker Babe!

Our big girl Kinsie learned how to ride her bike without training wheels…in about 5 minutes! We were visiting Ryan’s Aunt Rita and her family at the campground, and Kinsie wanted to ride bikes with her cousins. The only extra bike they had didn’t have training wheels, so Aunt Rita took her out and Kinsie picked it up SO quickly! It was so much fun watching her ride and all the kids running with her and cheering her on! We’ve been taking her places as often as we can to keep practicing. She’s a pro now!

Kinsie Dates

My sweet Kinsie has REALLY missed being in school. She was supposed to start her first day at her new school on August 5, but her district decided to do online learning until at least September. She’s super bummed, so I’ve been trying to find ways to keep her spirits up. Since she is at home with her brothers all day every day, she’s been needing some breaks…and since she’s good about wearing a mask, I’m able to take her on little dates. One day I took her to get special drinks from Starbucks and then to the park. Another day I took her to get school supplies and go see her school. She loves our girl dates!

Cousin Bike Ride

Ever since Kinsie learned to ride her bike with no training wheels, she wants to ride ALL the time! Our rental house is on a main road, so she can’t ride there, so we take it to parks and my parents’ house often. One day, my sister brought her kids and their bikes too and all 5 of the kids had a cousin bike ride.

Brody is 2 months!

We are SO grateful for our precious Brody in our lives, especially during such a weird time. His sweet noises and smiles can brighten up any dark day we may have.

Here are some updates on our Bro at 2 months:

He is 12 lbs. 5 oz. – 55th percentile for weight.
He is 24″ long – 85th percentile for height.
Like my other kids, he has quite a large noggin! His head circumference is in the 95th percentile!
He sleeps a good 6-7 hour stretch at night in between feedings.
He is talking and interacting much more.
He is SO smiley…especially in the mornings.
He recognizes voices and faces and love his family.
He loves doing bicycle kicks with his legs. When his belly hurts, this is one of the only things that calms him.
He loves when people talk to him and love to be involved in whatever we’re doing.
Car rides, boat rides, and being worn in a carrier always soothe him to sleep.
He is getting on a more consistent eat – wake – sleep cycle… a Babywise method that worked well for my other kids.

The kids are still completely obsessed with their little brother. They love cuddling with him, talking to him, playing with him, helping give him baths, and cheering him on with tummy time!

His smile is seriously my favorite…

More sweet Brody faces!

As you can see below, he has already grown a lot! He is really filling out and getting some cute chubby cheeks!

We are all head-over-heels with this sweet little boy. Even though giving birth and living with a newborn in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic has been extremely difficult, his laid back personality and overall sweetness has made every difficult second completely worth it. He was an unexpected, but perfect gift from God. If it would have been up to me, of course I wouldn’t choose to have a baby during a pandemic. But God knows better and I can’t imagine life without this precious gift He knew we needed!

Ryan is excited to start his official job in August, Kinsie will start online learning, and Braxton gets to start at his new preschool. We also should be breaking ground on our house in August as well. We are grateful for these things to keep us busy and give us something to look forward to during an unpredictable time.

Enjoy our July 1 Second Everyday video!

1Jul2020

Our First Month Back

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

We have officially lived in Indiana for one month now. Well…the kids and I have, Ryan has only been back about a week! It has been very different than I originally expected pre-pandemic. We are obviously still living in quarantine as much as possible and haven’t been able to visit as many friends and family as we’d like, but it has still been nice being close to our immediate family, especially with Ryan away. We are definitely still reeling from the crazy roller coaster that our lives have been the last few months, but it helped to have our family close to help me and entertain these busy kids!

Here is a recap of our month of June…

Swimming at Yaya’s

The kids and I stayed at my parents during the month of June while Ryan finished his residency. We spent lots of time swimming! One of Kinsie’s summer goals was to learn to swim completely on her own with no floaties. Well, she accomplished that goal in about 5 minutes! My mom worked with her in stages and had her swimming and jumping off the diving board independently in no time!

Play Dates at Aunt Renata’s

We’ve always been close to Ryan’s Aunt Renata, and she used to help watch my kids when I was working. We really missed her during our time in Arkansas, so we’ve been making it up with lots of play dates at her house! The kids are always busy when visiting her house, whether it’s throwing rocks in the creek, painting rocks and birdhouses, making cookies, or just lounging in the hammock!

Lake Days

Oh, how we’ve missed our days at Heritage Lake! It is one of our absolute favorite places to be. We spent several days on the lake with Grandma Bev and Papa Tim this month.

Fishing

I spent as much time fishing as I could since I haven’t done it in far too long. The kids like to fish too…but they don’t have the attention span to do it for long. Usually what ended up happening was they would do other things while I fished, then when I caught one, they wanted to touch and hold it.

Boat Rides

Boat ride are always a favorite activity at the lake…and now we have Brody to enjoy them with! Brody was extra calm on boat rides, and they always rocked him right to sleep!

Other Lake Adventures

The kids loved taking cubby rides around Heritage Drive, and especially to the marina. They enjoyed ice cream lakeside, and then loved playing on the playground.

Cousin Play Dates

The kids have LOVED being back home closer to their cousins! We’ve tried to squeeze in as much cousin fun as possible this month. Their cousin Griffin was born in the middle of residency, so we’ve only gotten to spend time with him in small chunks during our short and busy visits home, so now the kids are loving spending lots of time with him now that we’re back!

And of course the kids love their time with their cousins on my side of the family too. They call themselves the “Super 6” and are so excited to add Brody to the cousin crew!

Our 8th Anniversary

Unfortunately, Ryan and I didn’t get to spend our anniversary together this year, but with residency life, this is somewhat the norm. Our entire marriage so far has been simultaneous with Ryan’s medical journey, so we’ve never really had “normal lives” since we got married in 2012. However, we’ve made the best of it! Our marriage has already been tested with the craziness of med school and residency life, even several periods of time where we didn’t even get to live together, and we’ve only come out stronger because of it. We are hopeful that from now on, we’ll actually get to spend our anniversaries together and maybe even get to have a date night here and there…something that has been few and far between for us!

Father’s Day

We also didn’t get to spend Father’s Day with Ryan this year since we were in Indiana and he was still in Arkansas. However, we tried to still make it special for him. We took a picture (below, right) and put it on a canvas and mailed it to one of Ryan’s co-residents’ houses. The kids also drew pictures for him, and we sent those as well. Ryan’s co-resident then wrapped them for me and gave the gift to him while he was on shift on Father’s Day! He was surprised and loved his gift. We also got to FaceTime with him before he went to work, so we gave him as much love as possible from a distance.

Other Fun Activities

My older two have been through a lot the last few months…with the pandemic and not getting to finish school, moving, and getting a new sibling. With all that, they have definitely had their moments of feeling overwhelmed, but overall they have handled all the change SO well. However, they are busy kids, and they behave much better when they stay busy. We played outside as much as we could, spent days at the homes of different family members, and even visited our rental home in Bloomington a few times. They enjoyed driving cars and tractors at both grandparents’ houses, picking strawberries in Grandma Bev’s garden, and having reading time together.

Tours of IU Campus

IU Campus has my heart. It is so beautiful and I’ve always loved visiting whenever I had the chance. Since this is now the location of our new home, I’ve loved showing the kids the campus that I love so much!

Ryan’s Homecoming

It was a long month without Ryan, so we were counting down the days until he came home. Ryan finishing residency was very different than it was supposed to be. He was supposed to get a special graduation ceremony, but they had to do it via Zoom instead. Luckily, they livestreamed the ceremony on YouTube so we could watch. I was an emotional mess watching the whole thing because a) I was sad that it had to be this way and b) I was so proud of Ryan. He even won the Resident of the Year award!

We wanted to make it a big deal when he came home. We invited both of our families, ordered a big yard sign, made food, ordered a cake, and decorated the house with streamers and signs. We were all so excited when he finally made it home and we had a great night together with our favorite doctor finally home for good. If you haven’t seen it already, be sure to watch the video below of his homecoming.

Brody turned 1 Month Old!

Our sweet Brody turned 1 month old in June! We have adored every second of our time with him. He is the absolute sweetest baby, and I am convinced that with all the craziness going on this year, God knew we needed a sweet baby like him. He has made a very difficult time in the world a whole lot better for us.

Here are some stats about Brody at 1 month old…

At his 1 month checkup, he was 10 pounds and 2.5 oz (55th percentile), and 22.5 inches long (80th percentile).
Like I said before, he is SO sweet.
He is very laid back, something I did not expect based on the energy level of my other two, and how he acted in utero.
He rarely cries, something else we weren’t expecting based on our last colicky child.
He may not cry often, but he sure makes a lot of noises. He squeaks and grunts a lot. His little squeaks are the sweetest sound, and the kids call him “Squeaks” because of it. Whenever he’s hungry or gassy, rather than crying, he just grunts. I’ll take grunts any day over excessive crying!
He is most comfortable when being held. He is such a snuggly baby.
When he is awake and happy, he wiggles and kicks his legs a lot.
He had his first social smile right around 4 weeks old, and it was when FaceTiming with his daddy.
He loves watching ceiling fans.
He enjoys watching his big sister and big brother while they play.
He is very tolerant of the love (more like smothering) that he gets from Kinsie and Brax.
He loves his pacifiers. He has a monkey and a frog pacifier, and he hugs them while he sleeps.
He is starting to be awake for longer periods of time, which we all love!

The many precious faces of Brody…

We love his adorable smile!

I’m always capturing his big siblings loving on him. They love playing with him when he’s on the floor, and they literally argue over holding him. I often have to set timers while they take turns holding him.

And that’s a wrap for our June. We survived with the help of our family, and now we are so happy to have Ryan home and to officially start our new chapter of life post-residency. Ryan has the entire month of July off, so we are looking forward to lots of Daddy time and trying to explore our new town (as much as we can during a pandemic).

Here is our June 1 Second Everyday video. Enjoy!

4Jun2020

One Crazy May

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

The last few months have been absolute insanity. And when I think that things can’t possibly get any crazier, they do. May turned out to be extremely exhausting and emotional, but also amazing since our sweet baby boy was born!

Here is a recap of our crazy month…

Brax’s 4th Birthday

Our boy Brax turned 4 this month!! Even before the pandemic, we knew that his birthday would have to be low-key because we knew that I would either be super pregnant, or have a newborn. Luckily we had a beautiful day to work with, so we filled our sweet boy’s day with lots of fun right from home!

My sister and her family wanted to surprise Brax with donuts in the morning, so they called and ordered them at a nearby donut shop and my mom picked them up. He loved the surprise from his aunt, uncle and cousins!

Brax was thrilled to get a new bike for his birthday from us! He spent a good portion of his day practicing riding it. We also had a picnic lunch in our front yard, a water balloon fight with Daddy, and sprinkler and pool fun.

After we came inside, we ordered his favorite dinner, pizza. After pizza, we called our families for a Zoom birthday song and cake. He loved getting to see everyone even though they all couldn’t be there.

Even though we never left the house, our boy seemed to have a great 4th birthday! And I was thrilled that Brax would still have his own birthday…I was genuinely nervous that the baby would come that day. Luckily (and surprisingly), he didn’t come for another couple weeks!

While we packed…

We had a LOT of work to do before we moved at the end of the month. My mom started packing whenever she could, and I spent half the month as a beached whale who could hardly roll over, so the most I could help was sitting with my mom and telling her what to pack and where. It was super frustrating because I felt useless. Anyway, one of the hardest parts about packing is entertaining your kids. They are usually good about entertaining themselves, but when they are watching you pack all of their toys, it often causes some issues! They spent some time dressing up, making forts, and drawing lots and lots of pictures. Kinsie recently discovered a YouTube Channel that teaches you how to draw hundreds of different animals and characters. She spent countless hours drawing during the moving process!

It rained a lot this May, but we would still try to get the kids outside whenever we could so they wouldn’t kill each other. They came up with obstacle courses, random games, and drew lots of PinkFong creations with sidewalk chalk.

Lots of walks trying to help get baby out…

I had been physically miserable for quite some time at this point. I was shocked that the baby hadn’t come sooner based on how I felt. I was so desperate to get him out, and tried to do whatever I could to help the process…mainly lots and lots of walks. We obviously couldn’t take long walks because my feet would get too swollen, but we took as many short walks as we could. One of our favorite walks was at a different lake in our town, closer to the kids’ school. There’s a giant swan that lives at that lake, so the kids call it “Swan Lake.” It was a beautiful walk with lots of wildlife, including the swan, a family of ducks, turtles, and fish. The kids loved it and could have spent hours following the duck family!

We also walked around the lake by our house. We always looked for wildlife to keep the kids entertained. During one of our walks, Ryan found a speckled king snake and PICKED IT UP. He is crazy. This particular type of snake is docile, and he had a good hold of it and Kinsie even touched it. Later on this same walk, we found a turtle, which Kinsie fell in love with and would have taken home if we let her!

We did the swan lake walk on Mother’s Day as well. Ryan was off for paternity leave at this point, so he was able to join us for a Subway picnic and more wildlife watching. This was the first Mother’s Day that I’ve gotten to spend with my mom since we moved here. I not only loved spending Mother’s Day with her, but I was beyond grateful for the time she spent with us in Arkansas. She was absolutely crucial to us this month with everything that went down and I am so blessed to have her love and support.

Last Day of School…Quarantine Style

Obviously the kids’ school year did not end the way we expected it to end, and we all had our moments of grief with this fact. However, I am so impressed with my kids on how they handled everything. They were still excited to take “Last Day of School” pictures. I always love seeing how much they’ve grown during a school year!

Graduations and End of Year Parades

Since the pandemic caused all school and events to be cancelled, Kinsie’s school decided to have a drive-through Kindergarten graduation ceremony. It was SO precious and she got her certificates and got to say goodbye to her teacher. Brax’s school also had a drive-through farewell parade. Unfortunately, I was not able to be there because I was still in the hospital with the baby (I’ll tell the whole story in his birth story coming soon), but Ryan and my mom recorded both events and took pictures for me.

Here is the video Ryan took with his Go-Pro of Kinsie’s graduation

Introducing Brody Ryan Matthews!

The biggest and most anticipated event of our month…the birth of our precious baby boy, Brody Ryan Matthews. He was born on May 17 at 10:24am. He was 7 lbs, 14 oz. and 21 inches long. He is the absolute sweetest baby and we are all so obsessed with him. We ended up spending about a week in the hospital due to high bilirubin levels, which I will explain in full detail in his upcoming birth story. Luckily now, he is doing much better and we’ve enjoyed welcoming him home into our family!

Lots of love for Brody

Brody only got to live in Arkansas for about 2 weeks before we moved. While we continued packing our house, the kids spent most of their time fighting over who got to hold Brody. The love playing with him on his playmat and reading lots of books to him!

Brody’s First Walk

Before we moved, I really wanted to take Brody on a walk around our favorite park. Even though he slept the whole time, we all enjoyed our first and last walk at our park as a family of five.

Brody’s First Bath

Kinsie was thrilled to get to help with Brody’s first sponge bath!

Moving Day!

Brody and I were only home for about a week before we had to load up the moving trucks and hit the road to Indiana! My dad and Ryan’s parents came down to help us load up and drive. It was a crazy, exhausting, busy few days but we made it! Ryan even drove one of the UHAUL trucks, helped us get settled, then flew back down to Little Rock to finish out his month. This definitely wasn’t the way we wanted to finish our time in Arkansas, but we are already planning a trip in the future to come back and visit our friends and our favorite places.

My mom helped drive with me and my kids. It took us about 12 hours since we had to stop every few hours to feed the baby. He did amazing on his first road trip!

RV’s for MD’s

Since we had to be out of our house on May 30 and Ryan still had to finish his contract, he needed a place to live for the month of June. He thought about staying with a friend, but most of his closest friends had new babies, and he didn’t want to impose on a family or cause potential exposure. My friend told me about a Facebook group called “RV’s for MD’s” where people who own RV’s offer to let frontline workers live in their RV so they don’t expose their families to the coronavirus. I joined the group and we were able to find the nicest family in Little Rock who had a huge, full-sized RV. They made dure the RV was clean and fully-stocked and they even gave us a baby gift! We worked it out to park it at the RV Park in downtown Little Rock right by the river. It is such a neat program and we were so grateful that Ryan had a safe place to live!

May was exhausting, and I’m glad it is over. However, it will be a month I will never forget for the rest of my life because I had a baby and moved across the country within 2 weeks! The kids and I are staying with my parents for the month of June, then when Ryan is finished, he’ll come to Indiana and we will live in a rental house while our house is being built. Things are still crazy trying to get settled and dealing with 2 kids and a newborn, but I am just so grateful for a healthy baby and the fact that we are closer to home!

Stay tuned for Brody’s full birth story and more summer fun in the upcoming months!

Here is our May 1 Second Everyday…enjoy!

1Apr2020

The March that Nobody Expected

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

Our March started out great, and we were looking forward to listing our house, and visiting Indiana to start house-hunting. Well as you all know, things took an unexpected turn for the entire world with the global pandemic, COVID-19. This virus turned everyone’s world upside down. For our family personally, it has been really hard with me being very pregnant with 2 kids now fully at home since schools are closed until further notice…and all of this while I was trying to get the house prepared to put on the market. Most importantly, Ryan works in the emergency department, so he is on the frontlines of this battle, which is the scariest part. We have been social distancing and doing e-learning and trying to come up with creative ways to let the kids get their energy out, but the idea that Ryan has the risk of being exposed every time he steps into work has caused me a great deal of anxiety. I have gone through several stages of emotions this month…from full on panic and anxiety, to somewhat acceptance UNTIL another major change happens, to anticipating more major changes and trying to find mental peace when they happen, and so on…but overall, the only thing that is really getting me through this is my faith. When I feel weak, I pray. When I feel hopeless, I pray. When I feel anxious, I pray. When I feel overwhelmed, I pray. I hate to admit that I haven’t been living this way the last few months. With so much going on in our lives, I’ve just been a little energizer bunny constantly going and doing and taking control of every situation and marking things off my checklist like a mad woman. God has really used this pandemic as an opportunity to humble me and make me slow down and let go of the control that I thought I had and just trust Him. This month has been so hard and scary, and I know the pandemic isn’t even over yet, but I am grateful that God has used it to open my eyes and realize that I need to fully trust Him.

With all that said, here is a rundown of our crazy month…

Enjoying the weather (pre-pandemic)

March has always been one of my favorite months, and in Arkansas, the weather is usually amazing from March – May before the intense summer heat comes. Ryan worked a lot of weekends and nights early on, so the kids and I had to find activities that I could physically manage and still let them run around. Before COVID-19 came around, we still made trips to our favorite park as often as we could!

Book Character Day

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday week, Kinsie’s school had several dress-up days focused around Dr. Seuss books, such as “Cat in the Hat” day (wear a hat), “Fox in Socks” day (wear crazy socks), etc. On Friday of this week, the kids got to dress as any book character and bring the book if they had it. Kinsie chose to dress as Pinkalicious! I always loved book character day as a teacher, and I’m so glad that I got to help Kinsie be a part of it now!

Wye Daffodil Festival at “Daffodil Hill”

Every year, Wye Mountain has an entire field full of daffodils, and when they are in full bloom, they have a festival. I always saw people posting pictures of it, but each year it didn’t work out with our schedule for us to check it out. Luckily this year, we were able to make it work, even though Ryan was coming off of night shifts and was sleep deprived…but he knew this was our last chance so he took one for the team. The kids loved running and rolling through the fields of daffodils and I loved all the beautiful photo opportunities. Little did we know, COVID-19 was on its way, and this was our last real adventure before the recommended quarantine began, so I am especially grateful that we took the time to check it out. It is also funny looking back at these photos, because this was the last time Ryan had his facial hair. With the virus, Ryan has to stay clean shaven in order for his N-95 mask to fit properly. No complaining here…I love him no matter what and I’ve learned to embrace his scruff, but I do love seeing more of his handsome face!

E-Learning Days

When Kinsie found out that she wouldn’t get to go to school for a while due to the virus, she bawled. My sweet girl loves school so much, and she hated the idea of not seeing her teacher and her friends for a while. I always said that homeschooling would never work for us, and I still believe that, but I am very impressed and surprised with how well e-learning from home has been going so far. Kinsie stays much more focused than I expected, and all of her teachers have done a fantastic job keeping their lessons online as normal as possible, just like they would be had they been at school. Her main teacher posts videos every day with their spelling and phonics lessons, and even does a read aloud video every day. There are often fun activities the kids can do too, like make a leprechaun trap on St. Patricks Day. All of the specials teachers post fun lessons for them as well, and I about melted at the videos the music teacher posted singing her “hello song” to each individual class with her ukulele! This school has been such a blessing for Kinsie this year, and I know we will miss it. Brax really wanted to learn too, so I used my old online teaching resources and printed worksheets for him to practice letters, numbers, colors, and more. Once he finished his worksheets for the day, he could do learning apps on the iPad until Kinsie was finished with her work.

Kinsie’s school, and many other schools that I have heard about, have been providing free breakfasts and lunches to students while school was out. Kinsie’s school also made these meals available to any kids, not just students of the school, of any age, as long as they were in the car with you when you picked them up. The kids were pumped to pick up our free meals and enjoyed them all week.

St. Patrick’s Day

Not that we do a whole lot on this day anyway, but it’s a fun excuse to dress up and take a picture!

St. Patrick’s Day is always special to our family though, considering Ryan’s Match Day happened to be on this holiday 3 years ago. I have SO many emotions about this day, and now I am super nostalgic about it since we are ALMOST DONE with residency!!

Kinsie’s First Tooth

Recently, Kinsie noticed that she had her first wiggly tooth. She was SO excited because she sees her classmates losing teeth all the time and always wondered when she would start losing her teeth. She wiggled nonstop (of course during a pandemic, my first piece of advice to her was to always make sure her hands were clean before wiggling her tooth!) Each meal she ate caused her wiggly tooth to become a little looser. Finally one night, I told her it was SO close and I could probably get it easily. Surprisingly she let me, and it indeed came out so easily…so easily in fact that it didn’t even hurt at all! She was so excited and loved getting her first visit from the tooth fairy the next morning! The tooth right next to it is now starting to wiggle, so she’s been working on that one next!

Selling the House

We’ve been preparing for this for months. After LOTS of decluttering and storing, painting and repairs and deep cleaning…it was finally time to list our house! Getting our house “show ready” with 2 kids, 2 dogs, lots of rain, hence, lots of mud and dirt tracked in, all while being 8 months pregnant…definitely no easy task! On top of all that, this was right when COVID-19 came about, so then we had the added worry that people wouldn’t be out trying to buy houses right now. We went ahead and listed it, hoping it would at least get a lot of online attention while everyone was quarantined at home.

Our house officially went on the market on a Monday, and the VERY next day, we had 3 showings! We were supposed to be in Indiana the first week our house was listed, but we decided it wasn’t best to travel during the pandemic, especially being around our families with Ryan working in health care, so instead we stayed home. Before we found out about the 3 upcoming showings, Ryan had already planned on picking up a couple of extra shifts to make some extra “moonlighting” money. So I was on my own with getting the kids and dogs out of the house!

The first showing was around lunch time, so we loaded up the car and grabbed fast food and just hung out in the car. It was rainy out anyway, and the kids stayed entertained watching a movie and doing activity books.

The second 2 showings were in the evening back to back, and it was nicer outside, so we grabbed some dinner and had a picnic at the park. Apparently since this was the first sight of nice weather in about a week, EVERYONE else in the town decided to go to the park as well, making it very hard to implement social distancing. We sat at our own little picnic table by the lake, then tried to find areas in the park for the kids to play without other people. The kids helped me walk the dogs, and we used hand sanitizer after touching literally anything. Both the kids and dogs were very good, but even so, afterwards I was EXHAUSTED!

After just 1 day of being on the market, and 3 showings, we have officially accepted an offer and are under contract! It was truly a God thing that this all happened so quickly even during a pandemic. It is such a relief that I don’t have to continue having the physical stress of keeping the house ready, but even more not having the emotional stress of wondering if our house would sell before we needed to move. The best part is that we negotiated with the buyers to let us stay in the house until the end of May, which will be super helpful since the baby comes sometime in May. The kids and I will move out then, and Ryan will find a co-resident to stay with until he finishes out his contract at the end of June.

Social Distancing Spring Break

Like I mentioned before, we were very sad to make the decision not to travel to Indiana for spring break, but we definitely felt that it was the right thing to do. We were planning on house hunting, and even though that was our only chance to go, we’ve continued to look online, and we are very blessed that we at least have 2 realtors in the family that I fully trust to look at the houses we like and help us make a decision. Anyway, the first few days of spring break were rainy, so we had to entertain ourselves inside, at home. This included getting our the Easter eggs and having indoor egg hunts, lots of dancing and Go Noodle videos (short dance along videos for kids to follow), drawing and coloring, puppet shows, live stream videos of animals at the zoo, and even a few naps!

Luckily, we didn’t have gloomy weather for too long while the kids were home for spring break. As soon as the rain stopped, we busted outside as often as we could while still maintaining social distancing. On one of the days, we took a family walk (dogs and all) around the park. Ryan doesn’t get to do this with us very often, so it was nice to share this time with him.

The next few days we had WONDERFUL weather. We spent about 4 days in a row outside all day.

The kids loved having nature scavenger hunts and combining the nature items they found to create new “inventions.”

One day, we had straight up summer weather. It was 87 degrees! We took advantage of the weather and let the kids have their first pool and sprinkler day. They loved it! They even washed my car and found a lizard friend. This day made me very grateful that I won’t be pregnant through the real Arkansas summer, because the heat from this day was rough on my very pregnant body!

Another day, the kids were running out of ideas to do in our own yard, and it wasn’t quite warm enough to do the water activities again. I came up with the idea to make a “board game” on our driveway and they loved it. Both kids helped me plan out our game, and all the obstacles and accelerations that would come with it. When we were done, Ryan took an aerial picture from the top of his Jeep, then we played the game… a lot!

Some of the specific parts of the game included:

Frog jump ahead 3 spaces
Bubble Spill – lose 1 turn
Swimming with fish shortcut (Kinsie’s idea was to wear goggles while taking this shortcut!)
Stuck in the ball pit, lose 1 turn (they would literally sit in a bin filled with balls)
Scooter ride acceleration
Frisbee toss ahead 3 spaces
“God Bless America,” march ahead 3 spaces
Duck crossing, go back 2 spaces to allow them time to cross
Hit by a water balloon, lose a turn to dry off

I asked Kinsie what she wanted the “end goal” of the game to be, and she said that the goal is to get to “Princess and Superhero World!” It was actually a lot of fun creating the game with them, and they played it nonstop until it eventually rained and washed the game away.

Pregnancy Updates

At 32 weeks, we entered our 8th month of pregnancy. At the most, I have about 8 weeks left, but with my history, and based on how I’ve been feeling, I probably have less time than that. This month has been tough emotionally for obvious reasons, but it has also gotten much more physically difficult for me. Moving around in any way takes about 10 times more effort than usual, and my hips are really starting to hurt…I can physically feel my body getting itself ready for labor.

Here are some updates and/or changes at 8 months:

This boy has not calmed down…not even a little bit! It is safe to say that he is by far my most active child in utero. He also seems to be very strong, because his kicks send shockwaves of pain through my ribs, my hips and my bladder!
He is currently anywhere around 4 pounds and 17 inches long.
My ankles and feet are starting to swell. Lately I’ve TRIED to sit down as often as possible, but…you know…kids. Ryan is a MAJOR help whenever he is home. Kinsie usually tries to help, but is often is oblivious, and Brax is just Brax…he doesn’t really understand.
Like I said before, my hips are giving out on me. In the evenings in particular they really hurt and I can feel my ligaments stretching, making it painful to walk.
My carpal tunnel syndrome is slowly getting worse. It’s not unbearable yet, but I have to sleep every night with wrist braces, and now I wear a brace on my right hand throughout most of the day. The less I use my hands, the better it feels…but its kind of impossible not to use my hands!
I developed two new random cravings this month – apple juice and grapes. But not necessarily together.
We THINK we have his name picked out…but you’ll have to wait until he’s born to find out!
Bright side – at least this quarantine is happening when I’m too physically exhausted to run around anyway!

This photo was taken at 32 weeks – baby was the size of a cantaloupe

The kids LOVE feeling their brother move. When they snuggle with me on the couch, their hand usually finds my belly and just rests there so they can feel his crazy movements.

My sweet Kinsie has the tendency to drop something on the ground whenever she is done with it, whether it is a toy, her jacket, her shoes, etc. Ryan and I have been trying to explain that she needs to pick things up and put them in the right spot, especially now to help me out. This message was not quite getting through, so we had to take it a step further. We found a 2 pound medicine ball and wrapped it around her body with seran wrap, then I had her wear it around for a few minutes and try to pick up various things around the kitchen. She was not a fan (she wouldn’t even let me get a picture so I had to sneak one), but she started to understand! Now whenever she starts becoming “unhelpful” again, I remind her of the lesson and she starts to help more. My sister called this lesson “Empathy for the family way!”

I’ve been trying to soak up my time as just a mom of 2, and trust me, I’ve had LOTS of time with my 2 the last month! They often drive me crazy but goodness I love them and all their crazy and unique idiosyncrasies. I can’t wait to meet this new little one and get to know his unique crazy self too!

We still had lots of good moments this month, but it definitely was not the month that anyone expected. I am praying constantly that COVID-19 will start to slow down soon so we can all feel safe leaving our homes again and continuing our lives, but I am trying to prepare my mind for the possibility that it could still last a while.

My 2 biggest fears right now are 1) that Ryan gets infected and has to be put on quarantine when the baby comes, and 2) that the virus continues so heavily that the kids won’t get to finish their school year at their schools here in Arkansas. This is supposed to be such an exciting time for us, and the idea of the kids not getting to say goodbye the proper way to their teachers and friends just breaks my heart. With my first fear, I know that its a possibility, but I also know that Ryan is doing everything in his power to make sure that doesn’t happen. He is always wearing his PPE at work, and cleaning and sanitizing himself and all of his materials before he even comes into the house and hugs any of us. This month has proved to me even more that my husband is a freaking rockstar. He is handling everything so well both physically and mentally, AND helping me and the kids through it too. I am so grateful for everything he does for us and the fact that I get to do life with him every day. With the second fear, I know this is also a good possibility, and Kinsie knows it too. I told her that if this happens, we will do whatever we can to make sure she gets to say goodbye to the people she has grown close to here in Arkansas, whether its through FaceTime, or even if we need to come back a few months after we move when this has all been cleared. Only time will tell how the rest of this all plays out.

I’ve come a long way mentally and emotionally in just one month, but I know I have only been given the strength to do that through God. Don’t get me wrong, I still have weak moments…every single day. But I’ve been doing a LOT of praying, talking with family and just focusing on all the good things happening, and that is what is getting me through it. Praying for everyone else out there and hoping you all STAY HOME and STAY HEALTHY!!

Here is our March 2020 1 Second Everyday video…

11Jan2020

December Days

Posted in Baby, Family by klmatthews16

I apologize that it’s almost halfway through January before I even got around to posting my December updates, but things have been crazy since we got home from Christmas! We had a super busy and fun December like I expected! Between Christmas activities and being pregnant, I’ve been one exhausted mama. We had a great month though, and we are looking forward to all the exciting things happening for our family very soon!

We had lots of fun little activities or events all through December, such as…

Kinsie’s first Kindergarten Field Trip

She was mostly excited about riding a school bus for the first time. Since she attends a charter school, they do not use buses as transportation, but instead parents drop off and pick up. Kinsie loved her first bus experience, and the field trip itself was fun too! I came along as a parent chaperone. First we went to a theater to watch a really neat Christmas lights show. After the show, we ate lunch and the kids all played at a nearby park.

First BB Gun

Ryan has been anxiously awaiting this day for a long time now. He bought the kids their first BB gun! He found a great deal and couldn’t pass it up, and the kids were super excited to try it out. They went outside to practice right away. They did great for their first time! You’ll see later that the BB gun played a key role in our gender reveal!

Santa at Bass Pro

This has become one of our new favorite traditions. We already love Bass Pro, but it’s even better at Christmas time. We loved Santa’s Workshop where the kids could play and make crafts. The kids did great meeting Santa again!

Brax meeting Santa again!

Lucky little guy got to see Santa for another time at his school. He was really excited and loved telling us about it when he got home.

Brax’s Christmas Program

Ryan and I both got to see Brax perform in his Christmas program at his school. He was shy and a little nervous, but he did great! He’s come a long way since the Baby Shark incident at Kinsie’s graduation last year!

EM Christmas Party

Another one of our favorite events from the past few years. Every year, we go to the Christmas Party for the UAMS Emergency Medicine program. There’s always a great dinner, desserts, and the department coordinator’s wife buys amazing gifts for all the kids in the program. The kids were super excited about their gifts! We are so sad we won’t have this tradition once Ryan’s done with residency. We LOVE our UAMS residency family!

Christmas Cookies

The kids and I enjoyed making Christmas cookies together one weekend day. It keeps them busy for a while, sparks their creativity, and then of course there are cookies to eat when we’re done! It’s become one of my favorite things to do with them for holidays.

Dinner at All Aboard

Ryan was on an elective this month, and he chose to do a rural medicine rotation, where he had to do 10 shifts at a rural hospital up in northwest Arkansas. He did a few shifts before Christmas, then finished the rest when we got home. Since he would be gone for almost a week, and with me being halfway through my pregnancy, his mom flew down for the week to help me with the kids. We loved having Grandma visit, and we tried to do fun things like have dinner at their favorite restaurant, All Aboard!

Indiana Travels

Once Ryan was home and Kinsie was officially on winter break, we hit the road! We had Bev with us to help drive, and loaded up our gifts and dogs to spend Christmas with family.

We got to Indiana just in time to celebrate my mom’s birthday. She was in her happy place to get to celebrate with all her grand babies! We also took this opportunity to do our gender reveal with our families! But I’ll get to that soon…

It had snowed several days before we arrived, and the kids were SO excited that there was still snow on the ground. Every time we went outside, they ran around in it with no regard. They were super bummed when it eventually melted. I kept reminding them that we’re moving back and they will get PLENTY of snow soon!

Something we’ve done every year for the past few years is get together with Ryan’s Aunt Rita’s family and decorate cookies and let the kids play. They are all around the same age, so they always have a blast together!

Christmas Eve

Every year we attend the Christmas Eve church service with my family. The kids get to join their cousins in their classes, and we always love visiting our old church and listening to our old pastor’s sermons. After church, we headed to Aunt Renata’s for Christmas with the Matthews side. The kids loved sorting gifts for everyone and playing with their cousin, Griffin.

Christmas Day

On Christmas day, the kids were SO excited to wake up and see what Santa brought them. All Kinsie asked for this year was a Fiona calendar (her favorite hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo). Brax asked for something different every time we asked, so it was pretty much a free-for-all for him. They both seemed very excited about their gifts and loved playing with everything right away.

After opening gifts for just our immediate family, we ate a big breakfast that my dad made. After a while, my sister’s family came and we all did our presents together. While the kids helped pass out everyone’s gift, I went upstairs and got a time-lapse of the chaos!

The kids all had a great day together, and it was funny because they all showed up wearing very similar pajamas! Of course we had to get a picture!

After playing inside for a while with all their new stuff, we realized how beautiful it was outside, so we all went outside for a while and let the kids play. Later on, we visited some of Ryan’s mom’s side of the family. When we got back, Brax was SO tired, but he refused to go to bed. Instead, he ended up passing out right on the couch in the middle of the chaos!

We had a great visit with family and friends. It’s always tough traveling 10 hours with 2 kids and 2 dogs and a car FULL of Christmas gifts, but it is completely worth it. On the way home, we even stopped in Paducah, KY to visit some of our old residency friends. It’s been a good ride, but we are excited and relieved that this was our last “traveling” Christmas, since we’ll be back in Indiana next year.

New Year’s Eve

For New Year’s Eve, we were back home and trying to catch up on sleep and get settled again. Since we didn’t have a great reason to, we didn’t have the kids stay up until midnight, so we did an early countdown/celebration with them like we have the last couple of years. We made our own pizzas, had a dance party, drank fizzy drinks and ate cookies, and enjoyed our family night together.

Baby Updates: Month 4 (Weeks 16-20)

I can’t believe I’m already halfway done with this pregnancy. It has definitely flown by, and this little one will be here before we know it!

This month’s pregnancy symptoms include but are not limited to:

Really strong waves of fatigue again…but that could be partially due to the holidays and all the events and activities that came with it. We were very busy so I was very tired!
Appetite has decreased…which is probably a good thing because it was a bit out of control during the first trimester.
Hiccups…like huge, obnoxious hiccups.
Back pain…now that my belly is getting bigger, my back is getting out of whack, especially when trying to sleep. Fun times!
Baby kicks…ALL the time. And I could not love it more! I’ve already mentally accepted the fact that I will probably never have a chill child…this one will most likely be a wild child like the other two!

This photo was taken at 18 weeks – baby is the size of a grapefruit

Boy or Girl?

We knew we would be really close to that time where we could find out the gender of the baby by the time we came home for Christmas, so we asked our doctor if we could find out before we go. I wasn’t quite due for my full anatomy scan yet, but because my doctor is amazing, she gave me a quick freebie ultrasound at my next appointment so we could find out. My appointment was early in the morning, so we let Kinsie be a little late to school and brought both her and Brax along with us so we could all find out together. At first, the umbilical cord was right in the way…so the doctor kept wiggling the ultrasound wand around to see if she could get a good angle. Finally the baby moved a little, and voila….there it was! Baby Matthews #3 is a BOY!!

We had to keep the secret for about a week before we headed home to Indiana to tell everyone. I didn’t let the kids talk on the phone to anyone during that time!

When we got to Indiana, we invited all our immediate family over for my mom’s birthday, and our gender reveal. We had a paint-filled balloon pinned to a canvas, and Kinsie would shoot her BB gun to pop the balloon and reveal the color. However, things didn’t exact go as planned! As you’ll see in the video, Kinsie hit the balloon TWICE, and the BB just bounced right off! Ryan eventually had to shoot it point blank for it to finally pop!