Some of the things I've failed to write about...and of course, Laila

A friend of mine at church asked Will on Sunday what he could tell her about the baby. He said, "We just can't stop staring at her!" It's true. These boys can't wait to find her when they wake up. This morning I fed her and then laid her on my bed while I went to make breakfast. I asked Mike to go check and see if the boys were getting ready for the day. Mike found all three boys laying in the bed with her singing to her. Eli seems to be fascinated by her toes and always has to be touching them.
Things are going well so far. I'm getting about five hours of sleep a night, which is partly due to my fantastic husband. He often takes shifts and will stay up with her while I sleep until she has to eat again. I usually get to sleep around midnight and then she wakes up about every three hours, and is up for about an hour each time she wakes up. We have a history of pretty rotten sleepers in our family so I'm really hoping she will not follow the same pattern of her brothers. Right now we are trying to get her to take a pacifier and I think that will help her.

She really is the cutest little thing ever. It's fun to put little bows in her hair and dress her all up.






Diamond is very interested in Laila. I wondered how he would act when we brought her home. He seems to be protective of her. When she starts to cry he often gets up and goes to her. He is always sniffing her and licking her (which I think is gross). The other day Mike was holding her and Diamond couldn't see her so he started jumping up to see her. He's not a jumper--he only jumps when the boys make him jump for a treat--so it was very interesting to see him jump up to reach her.



I haven't written yet about our visit with Grandma and Grandpa Richards. They came to visit us on April 28th. It was a really nice visit. I had been hoping to have Laila right before they came so that they could meet her. Steve had to leave Monday morning but Carol got to stay until the following Thursday. Aside from the fact that Steve had to leave the morning I had Laila, things worked out really well. We got to spend the entire weekend together and Steve and Carol did some serious work for us. They cleaned our house, helped fix things, took us to dinner, went to the gardens and the farm with us, and went to church with us. We weren't sure who to leave our kids with when I went to have Laila so it worked out perfectly to have Carol here. I never once worried about my kids the entire time I was at the hospital. Carol is amazing and I just feel so lucky to have her as my mom. I walked into the cleanest house ever! I think I could have licked food off of the floor. She cleaned things I didn't even know were dirty. It was so nice to come home to a clean house. I felt bad that she came to visit us and ended up working her tail end off so the day after I got home from the hospital I told her she wasn't allowed to work anymore and that I just wanted her to have fun with us. I'm not sure she liked that idea--she just wanted to make everything easier on me, which I appreciate--but I really wanted to spend her last day with us just spending time together. We packed up the kids and went to Youngs Jersey Dairy. I figured it was a school day and shouldn't been too crowded so it seemed like an ok place to take Laila too even though she was only four days old. We had a really nice time and Grandma paid for our ice cream so it was even better!



Here's Grandpa teaching the boys how to play Angry Birds on his phone. He probably wished he hadn't introduced the boys to the game because they kept bugging him to play it every five seconds.



And now for some random photos. I just thought they were cute pictures so I have to include them. Both boys had such shaggy hair and my good friend Jenny offered to cut their hair for me so it would be one less thing for me to worry about before the baby came. I was amazed at how quickly she cut their hair. It takes me like an hour so it was so nice to have her do it. These photos are before they got their hair cut, thus the shaggy look.



Eli can finally ride his tricycle like a pro. It took him a long time to have any interest in learning how to ride it but now he does and he loves it. It's so fun for me to see them learn new things. This is such a typical Eli face. He's teasing in this picture but it's a face that is very familiar to all of us in this family. He pulls it every day, usually with some silly threat. The other day he was mad at Mike for something and said, "If you don't give me money, I'm not going to be a boy anymore." Ok kiddo. Nice threat. He's such a silly boy.