We have a new baby!

Announcing Hailey Elizabeth Leishman - born Friday, November 20th at 10:32 am. She weighed 7lbs. 4oz. and is 19.75 in. long. I have to thank Julia and Sterling for these pictures. We thought we were coming all prepared with the camera, video camera and laptop so that we could put pictures up immediately. The only thing we forgot was the card reader for the camera, so we can't get any of our pictures on the blog yet. So, we will have to post more later.


Hailey is doing well. She is a typical newborn - very sleepy and not very interested in eating. We are having a bit of a problem with her latching on, but we are not giving up. I am recovering fairly well from my c-section and look forward to getting rid of the pain.


The kids have been really good with Hailey so far. Lexy is a natural mommy and is already telling Nathan to be careful. Nathan had been very gentle and also loves to hold Hailey. We will keep our fingers crossed that they continue with such loving behavior and jealousy doesn't take over. I will put some more pictures on when we get home and I have my card reader.

Belly Pictures

I have not been a good picture taker during this pregnancy. I feel like my life is so crazy that taking belly pictures just has not been a priority. I know that later I will wish I had some, especially since I have been in probably the best shape of any of my pregnancies. So, I finally took one. I'm going to spare everyone the bare belly shot on the blog. I have a couple other pictures that I have taken while pregnant, although they weren't specifically "belly" shots. I will post them just for my sake.

This picture is from our disney cruise over the 4th of July. I was approximately 20 weeks.

This picture is from our trip to Gainesville for the Gator game. I was bummed that I didn't get a picture of Aaron and I at the game so we took one with the family in the hotel the next day.

Here I am this past week - four weeks away from delivery.

Aint it great to be a Florida Gator!

So.....not to make all you Gators too jealous, but Aaron and I had the opportunity to go to a Gator game a couple of weeks ago against Arkansas. It was so much fun! We haven't been back for a game since we left over 7 years ago. The opportunity to get the tickets came a week before the game so we worked quickly to figure out what to do with the kids. Without going into all of the details I just want to give a HUGE thanks to the Haddocks - both families. We couldn't have gone without you!

We hadn't really looked too closely at the tickets prior to the game. We we got there we found out that we were in the first row of the end zone! It was so much fun to be that close to the players and all the action.

Here you can see Albert and Alberta coming to join us for some cheering.

Here the Gators were right in front of us. You can see Tebow (#15)!
The little dot in the sky is a ball coming through for a field goal. When the Gators had been practicing their kicks before half time ended I realized that when they kicked the 50-yarders the ball came in really low and barely missed us. At one point during the second half the Gators had to kick a field goal from around the 40 yard line. I turned to Aaron and said, "You are going to catch this one". They kicked it and he jumped for it and barely missed it. It bounced off of someone behind us and came up and hit my arm. It was soooo close! What a blast!

The other fabulous thing was the weather. I had been concerned about being outside standing or sitting for 3-4 hours in 90 degree weather. It has been so hot down here despite that fact that it is October and being 8 months pregnant in that kind of heat is not kind to the body. However, on Friday while we were driving up an amazing cold front rolled into town and we sat through that game in the 60's! It was so beautiful. It was great to be outside and it even allowed me to make a 45-minute hike up to the stadium without swelling beyond repair!

It was just a great trip - a wonderful, relaxing, get-a-way that helped relieve all the stress that I have been feeling lately. I am so grateful that we had the opportunity to go. (Thanks again Haddocks, we are sooooo grateful to you!)

Sleepless nights......already?

It is currently 3:55 am. I have been awake since 2-ish. This has been the story of this pregnancy. This has been the strangest, worst, yet best pregnancy I have had. I was soooo sick in the beginning. The entire time I have not slept well. It usually starts with having to go to the bathroom and then....I am wide awake, usually for a few hours. My luck is to fall back asleep about 45 minutes before the alarm goes off so that I have that "felt like I've been hit by a mack truck" feeling. Most times I just toss and turn trying my hardest to go back to sleep. Tonight is actually the first night I decided to get on the computer and catch up on all my blog reading - it's been a while. I think that being so sick in the beginning really helped with the weight gain. With Nathan I put on about 45 pounds. This go round I am seven months along and have only put on 16 pounds --nice! I am hoping that I will keep it under 30 total this time - you never know about those last two months and well...my appetite has arrived! Also with Nathan I had placenta previa and was not allowed any exercise after week 20. This time I have been able to keep up with the exercise and I think that has really helped keep the weight off and I don't have anywhere near the aches and pains I had last time. So aside from the exhaustion, which I am still plagued by, I actually feel really good and can't complain at this point. Yay!

I was contemplating a "natural" delivery with this baby since the only reason I had a c-section with Nathan was because of the placenta previa, so I sought out the only Dr. in Lee county that will do a v-back and am currently driving 45 minutes to Cape Coral to see him. However with lots of thought and discussions with the Dr. we have decided that with my history of complications (which I won't go into now) it is safer to have another c-section. At this point I don't know if the date is officially scheduled because they were having a hard time getting through to the hospital, but hopefully we are going to have this baby on Nov. 20th. I am due the day after Thanksgiving, but since we have the opportunity to schedule this I thought it would be nice to have a few days to recover before I host Thanksgiving at my house.

So..... I'm sure that you are all on pins and needles wondering what this baby is going to be.... Well, thanks to I kind post and gentle nudge from my friend Stacey I decided that I should go ahead and take this time to finally get a post on here and spill the beans....Thanks Stacey:)

We are going to have a baby girl! Her name is going to be Hailey Elizabeth. Lexy is very excited. Nathan and Aaron were rooting for a boy, but the girls won - in fact we won ice cream because we "knew" it was a girl and had had a little contest going with the boys who just "knew" it was going to be a boy. --There's no messing with a mama's intuition!

We have started the preparations - Lexy and Nathan moved into the same room and got bunk beds a few weeks ago. They have adjusted well. We are having to sell Lexy's bedroom furniture because we realize that she will probably never use it again since the girls will most likely room together later and we are hoping we can get more for it if we sell it as a set. Until the furniture is gone we can't really set up the baby's room, which is killing me because I have really been hit by the "nesting bug"! I am ready to go through and re-organize my entire house and would do it too if I only had more time and energy :0). I have had so many projects that I wanted to get done over the summer that never were accomplished. We finally just finished one and that was getting our food storage put away. I went to Time Out for Women back in March and purchased a TON of food storage because there was a '20% off and free shipping' deal. It has been stacked against the wall in our entry since then. It has definitely been a conversation piece when people come over and see 25 boxes stacked in our house. Anyway we discovered unused space at the top of our bedroom closet and finally got some extra shelving put up and the food storage is no longer in our entry- Yay! Now I have the itch to go through everything else in the closet and reorganize it so it looks as good as the nicely stacked food storage. :0)

Well, I think it is time for me to try to go back to sleep so I am going to sign off for now -- Good night all.

Way Overdue

I know that this post is WAY OVERDUE, but I am going to give an excuse...Now,whether it is truly valid or not......I don't know, but it is still my excuse. :o) As you can plainly see by the picture below I am pregnant with baby #3. This has been my hardest pregnancy yet. I felt ill from the time I ate breakfast until I went to bed up until about a couple of weeks ago. I still have my moments, but it is definitely getting better. My other issue has been exhaustion. I have been soooo tired. I can get 8 hours at night, a 2 hour nap in the day and still feel like I haven't slept for a month. It has been really hard. I am trying to patiently await the point when I have lots of energy....it hasn't happened yet. I don't know that I am going to be able to catch up on all the posts I haven't done, but hopefully I will at least be able to keep up from here on out.

This is my ultrasound done at 12 weeks. I am 18 weeks today. I will hopefully have another ultrasound in the next few weeks that will give us a little hint as to whether this little "peanut" is a boy or girl. We will keep you posted!

Time Out For Women

I need to do something about my current blog situation. It is getting to the point where I feel I am so far behind it is overwhelming and I am trying to ignore it. That is never a good thing, I know! It is kind of like the pile of papers in the kitchen that will soon be larger than the counter. I just keep thinking that if I ignore it long enough it will go away! I know better than that, but I just haven't pulled myself out of that funk yet. So, I thought I would start with the blog. I know deep down that if I just devoted 10 minutes a day to this (and the pile of papers or whatever other disaster is waiting for me) that I could catch up and all would be good. So here is my attempt at that.


I was blessed this weekend to be able to go to Time Out For Women. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a weekend away from kids and husbands (not that we don't miss them the whole time). It is a weekend of fabulous spiritual enrichment and enjoyment. I came home this weekend just feeling so full -spiritually and mentally. We actually had a group of about 10 go from our ward. I drove a few of us up. We left early Friday morning and went to the Temple before our classes started that night. Then we went all day on Saturday and drove home that evening. I wanted to write a couple of things that I know were meant for me.

Cheiko Okazaki spoke first. She talked about how she taught school for 20-something years. One of the things that she said that really hit me was that after you teach a correct principal to your child you must then let them govern themselves. I know that I spend too much time "helping" my children and not enough time letting them solve their own problems. Sometimes it is because I can "get it done so much faster", or because I want to show them how to "do it right". I am pretty sure that I hated that as a child. So, I have vowed to let my children make their own decisions (within reason) and do things for themselves. One thing we always struggle with is Lexy getting ready for school in the morning. We probably tell her 20 times to get dressed and 20 times to eat faster because she is running out of time. So Monday came and I told her that I know that she is old enough and responsible enough to get all ready for school without me telling her what to do. She did really good except for brushing her hair. It was really hard for me not to tell her to brush her hair. I did suggest that she look in the mirror and see if there is anything else that she needed to do to be ready for school - she got it and brushed her hair (phew). This morning she wanted to iron her shirt. She has ironed a couple of times with my supervision. I know she can do it, but I am just too afraid of what could happen. So this morning I decided to let her do it by herself. I even walked out of the room. I am making progress!

Emily Watts was the next speaker. She had two things that were really good for me to hear. 1. She posed the question, "What if the fruits of my parenting has less to do with how my children turn out than how I become as a parent?" She said when we view it this way, it doesn't matter what mistakes our children make, what matters is how we deal with it. 2. She also said, "The fruit of your life is You - not your children, your job, or your accomplishments. What matters is who we serve and who we become". I hope that I can keep this close to my heart and think about it the next time I am about to lose it with my children.

The following are a few simple statements that I liked by the other speakers...

**Don't be consumed with the Gotta-do's and the Oughta-be's - just focus on Christ.

**When we strive to walk on water by ourselves we will sink, but when we allow the Lord to hold our hand we can walk on water.

**Even when life is hard, God is good to us.

**Ingratitude is like a carnival mirror that distorts our reality.

**Gratitude opens the windows of heaven....it is a saving principle because is saves us from ourselves and our negativity.

I have a new niece!

I have a lot to catch up on, but I couldn't wait to put up some pictures of my brand new niece, Ella Madison Davis. She was born on February 24th, weighing 7 pounds, 10 oz. She and Valerie are both doing fine and hopefully they will get to go home this morning. I wish we weren't so far away so that I could love on her, but I guess I will just have to wait. :o(