Proverbial Dusting Off

There are enough exciting things happening in our lives that I thought it would be a good idea to reboot the blog and possibly try to keep up with it again. 

And so, I'm blowing the figurative dust off of this old blog. 

In the past year, I've started writing this post several times -- each time with a new update on what we were doing (selling our house! buying land and building a house! never mind! not buying land and building a house! moving to South Carolina! never mind! staying here!) 

So, here's a brief recap and timeline on what's been going on with us in the past year. Of course, this list only recounts the things that actually happened; it doesn't even touch all of the things that we talked about and planned to do (and even started putting into motion!) and then didn't do -- perhaps that's another post for another time. 

In February, we found out we were expecting a baby in November. 

In March, we put our house on the market. 

In May, we announced the pregnancy. 

In June, we found out that we would be having a baby girl! (Sweet baby sister)

In July, we sold our house and moved into an apartment. 

In November, we had Savannah Tate (all the heart eyes)!

In December, we bought a house! 

And in January of 2018, we moved into our new house in our new neighborhood and started a new year out in a flurry of transitions and changes. 

Which brings us to where we are now -- settling into our new-to-us home and our life as a family of four (which is a whole new brand of chaos that I had been warned about but didn't comprehend until I experienced -- much like an expanding capacity for love with the birth of another child). 

I fiercely love my people, and I love this crazy life, and perhaps I'll start chronicling things here again -- especially since we have a whole new list of house projects to tackle! 

Our Sweet Savannah Tate

Where to even begin? 

photo credit: Bella Baby Photography

We've had sweet baby sister in our lives for going on three months now, and we are all smitten. She's beautiful and an angel and just such a perfect addition to our family. 

Just like her brother, she arrived on the scene very quickly. In fact, we barely made it to the hospital in time to have her. 

Last time around, we delivered at St. Mary's, and I had gone the route of a low-intervention birth, but all of my prenatal visits had been with an OB practice that is more on the modern-medicine side of things. This time, I opted to go with a midwife practice to have an even less medically invasive birth experience. 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

I decided on the Midwives at St. Francis, and I'm so glad I did. The hospital is eight minutes away (which ended up being an important factor), and I really loved the midwives that I met and had prenatal appointments with. Not to mention, our incredible birth experience. 

Let me just say, our experience last time at St. Mary's was really wonderful, all things considered. But our time at St. Francis this time around was so amazing. It was leaps and bounds better than our last hospital birth experience. 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

From the very beginning, things were different with the midwives. We only had two ultrasounds this time around. My appointments were short and basically consisted of giving me information relevant to my stage in pregnancy, checking baby's heartbeat and my growth, and asking if I had any questions or concerns. It was so refreshing! I felt well taken care of, but not alarmed or overwhelmed with things I should/shouldn't be doing. And some of that may be just that this was my second pregnancy. 

So this time, I wasn't faced with a looming induction date. I was seen at 39 weeks 6 days, and I made an appointment for the following week, 40 weeks and 5 days. That appointment would have included an ultrasound to check on baby Savannah and then we would have set an induction date. But, praise Jesus! We didn't make it to that appointment. 

On Friday November 3rd, Savannah's due date, around 4:00 pm, I started having some stronger-than-normal Braxton-Hicks contractions and started trying to track them. They were getting to be marginally more intense, but nothing close to consistent. 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

I texted Colleen (our doula) to let her know that I thought it would maybe be sometime in the middle of the night. I called my mom to make sure that we were all good for having my parents come to the apartment to watch Bear since he was already asleep. Richard put the infant car seat in his truck instead of my car so my parents could have a car with Bear's car seat in case of an emergency. And he put our hospital bag in the truck, too. 

Colleen called and I talked to her about what I was feeling. She said that it wasn't labor yet since I was able to laugh (ha!). I took a bath and ate some dinner. I ended up going into Bear's room and reading him a book since he was having trouble settling down for bedtime. 

photo credit: Bella Baby Photography 

photo credit: Bella Baby Photography

Throughout all of that I had contractions here and there. They were strong, but they were still timed out inconsistently -- four minutes apart, then eight minutes, then ten, then six, etc. 

Around 9:30 pm or so, I laid down to try and get some sleep. I was still tracking contractions but was able to get some rest in between them. About an hour later, (still having contractions, just totally inconsistent in timing) I had a really strong contraction that both Richard and I recognized as true labor. (Richard knew based on the sounds I was making.) Then I had another one just like it 2.5 minutes later. 

photo credit: Jordan Rodericks

photo credit: Jordan Rodericks

When it ended, I told Richard, "Call everyone!" He called my parents to tell them to come over to the apartment stat. Then he called the midwives line to let them know that we'd be headed to the hospital very soon. I called Colleen to tell her the same while we were frantically gathering the last of the things that we'd need to take with us. I was on the phone with her through a couple of contractions, and she reiterated what we already knew: get to the hospital now! 

Richard flew down the empty highway to the hospital, and we got there sometime around 11:30 pm. I had a couple of serious contractions on the way there and then stayed in the truck for a contraction while Richard ran inside to get me a wheelchair that I very much did not want. 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

I had a contraction outside the hospital and knelt down on the sidewalk with my arms anchored on a cast iron bench. Then I had four more contractions while making our way up to labor and delivery. Colleen had met us in the lobby and helped me through the contractions on our way up to L&D. 

The nurses got me all set up for fetal monitoring and told me I needed to be monitored for twenty minutes and then I'd be free to get up and walk around for labor. Well, I didn't make it to the walking-around part. 

photo credit: Jordan Rodericks

Our Savannah Tate arrived at 12:04 am on November 4th, 2017. She was only four minutes past her due date. She weighed 8 lbs 11.9 oz and measured 19 inches long, and she surprised us with her chubby, kissable cheeks and a full head of hair! And man, do I love babies with hair!

photo credit: Bella Baby Photography

photo credit: Bella Baby Photography

It was intense and fast, and I'm so glad I had some of the best people by my side coaching me through all of it. Richard was amazing and had encouraging things to say like, "You've already done this once! You can do it again!" in response to me yelling, "This is hard!!"

And as I've said before, I plan to always have Colleen by my side when bringing a baby into this world. She was such an important part of Bear's birth, and she was equally helpful and encouraging for Savannah's birth. She helped me through early labor (when I didn't realize that I was laboring at home) and told me what to do for the drive to the hospital and how to handle my contractions until she met us there. 

She took amazing photos throughout my (short) labor and during our treasured golden hour with our brand new baby. 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace 

photo credit: Colleen Wallace

Between Colleen and Kim, our midwife, I had such an amazing birth experience that was so different from my first (also mostly wonderful) birth. They prevented any tearing, coached and encouraged me through all of it, and we got to have delayed cord cutting. Richard even got to cut the cord this time! 

And then we got to hold our sweet girl. We had well over an hour, almost entirely uninterrupted, where we got to snuggle and hold her and just soak her in and stare at her precious cheeks and lips and nose and on and on. 

photo credit: Jordan Rodericks 

photo credit: Jordan Rodericks

Then the wonderful nurses came and weighed and measured her, and we were surprised at her size (almost 8 lb 12oz!). Everything was so relaxed and routine and chill. Whereas with Bear, he had been taken to the NICU and everything felt rushed and frenetic. So, this was a refreshing surprise to us. 

We are so in love with this snuggly, little angel, and life as a family of four is a new adventure for all of us!

photo credit: Jordan Rodericks

Photography: Colleen Wallace, Jordan Rodericks, and Bella Baby Photography

Baby Card Book

After we got married, I took all of our lovely wedding cards and compiled them into one beautiful book of well-wishes. I loved all of the sweet cards and kind  thoughts, and I didn't want to throw them away or stash them somewhere in a box. So I took to Pinterest and found this cute idea. 

And when we got a plethora of cards wishing us congratulations on Baby Bear, I decided to do the same with all of those sweet wishes and adorable cards. 

It really is as easy as it looks. 

Just get all of your cards together, hole punch in the same place in each corner, and clip them together on a giant binder ring. 

The best way to make sure that you have the cards evenly lined up is to punch a hole in one card, line it up over the second card so that the edges are flush, then use the first hole as a guide and punch the hole in the second card. 

For the book of wedding cards, I made a thick, cardboard cover, too. But the baby cards were cute, so I just picked the cutest one and made that one the front one. 

Oh, and I tied a ribbon on there just to make it look extra festive. 

Insulating the attic

A while back we had an energy specialist come check out the house because we were thinking that our not-quite-new windows were causing us to be energy-inefficient and waste money on that lost energy. Turns out our windows are pretty okay, and the real problem was in our attic followed closely by our crawl space. 

The estimated cost for getting all of that into better shape was astronomical (at least to us). So we ended up getting the crawl space taken care of because it seemed more pressing due to a minor amount of mold that we wanted to avoid turning into a major amount of mold. 

That left our heat-and-AC-leaking attic to contend with. Good thing we have a Richard around here who knows all about the best ways of adding insulation to an attic. 

He rented an insulation blower (this one) and bought twelve packs of the corresponding insulation (this stuff). Actually, the rental for the insulation blower ended up being free because he bought enough of the insulation. 

Our attic pre-insulation: 

And after our hard work: 

So, I actually didn't get that many "after" pictures. But it basically all looks like that one "after" picture. Just add pink, fluffy stuff to all of your mental images of our attic. 

This is one of those jobs that Richard would normally just tackle on his own -- as in, it falls into the category of him knowing all about it and me knowing nothing about it, so he would just do whatever he needed to get it done. 

But this time he got a helper: me! He needed to get the job done in a certain amount of time in order to get the rental returned. And he accepted my help when I offered. 

The hardest part (for me, at least) was getting all of the stuff up the front steps, into the house, up the stairs to the second floor, and then up the attic stairs. The insulation is pretty heavy even though it just looks like tightly-packed cotton candy. And the machine was really heavy. And cumbersome. 

What toilet?

I got nominated for (and accepted) the job of cutting the giant bales of insulation in half, removing the plastic and shoving them into the insulation-block-shaped hole that separated it and fed it through the tube to be blown out wherever Richard deemed appropriate. 


It was much harder than I anticipated, but, man, I was going to work my butt off to be the best assistant-attic-insulator ever!

 While I was assisting (maybe it was before and not during since those blocks of insulation look to be fully intact), I found a large, bathroom mirror that we're storing in the attic (?). I think this must have been back before the national championship when I felt compelled to show that we were number 1 (as in, actually, truly, factually number one). Anyway, go tigers!

Emerald Isle Spring 2016 -- Part III

Since it rained a couple of the days we were there, we did a puzzle!

Cherryl and I found this tiny, baby sand crab while we were sea-shell searching.

We got a four-generations photo! I'm so glad Bear has such a wonderful grandmother (Nonna) and great grandmother (Gumbie)! It was nice to be with them and get to celebrate Mother's Day a little bit early.

My sweet roommate for the week. 

From our afternoon in Swansboro

Our last morning at the beach -- enjoying some breakfast and ocean air on the deck.

Emerald Isle Spring 2016 -- Part II

Just a few more pictures of my favorite place...

This beautiful Great Egret just flew up and landed on our deck one morning. He hung around for about 30 minutes and was just as nice as could be. 

Cherryl stayed out on the deck with our new friend the whole time -- the rest of us were a little too nervous for that. 

While we were there, our Bear turned 10 months old. This was the best picture I could get of this wiggly, crawling, sweet boy!

This is more indicative of the attempt at photos. He's on the move, y'all!

Auntie Cherryl did a great job of keeping Bear entertained and happy. Larry was pretty much done with our day of shopping in Beaufort. 

This is my favorite store in Swansboro -- Poor Man's Hole. It's like a real-life version of I Spy.