Advice and Ideas

Okay, I need some advice and ideas if anyone has any. Emily and the baby are going to be sharing a room. We are planning to keep the baby in our room for 3-4 weeks after she's born but then I want to move her into her crib which will be in Emily's room. Does anyone have any advice on room-sharing with a 3 year old and a baby? Emily is actually really excited about sharing her room so that's not really an issue. My concern is just how to deal with the night waking/crying/feeding that a newborn requires. I guess we'll just wing it and hope for the best but I thought I would see if anyone has any tips. :)

The second thing is I am beginning to stock up and prepare some meals to freeze so that we'll have easy meals for after the baby is born. Does anyone have any good recipes that can be made in large quantities and frozen for a few months? Or maybe a website with some good ideas?

Thanks!

Bambina Update

According to my little pregnancy countdown ticker I'm under the "100 days left" mark. It will actually be a little less than that because well, I just know it will be! I can't believe how fast it's going.

I am now over 26 weeks with this little girl. Let me tell you something. Don't have three kids in less than four years. It will kick your butt. At least it is kicking mine. Badly. Between a 3 year old, 20 month old, husband who is never home, laundry, cleaning, church callings, family functions, holidays, friends, etc, etc, etc I am pretty much pooped at all times. But I guess that is to be expected.

I was insanely sick up until about 23 weeks so that was awesome and then beginning at 20 weeks I started having Braxton-Hicks contractions like crazy. At this point my doctor isn't concerned since the baby is doing fine but I still have 3 months to go so I'm not looking forward to them getting even worse. Just in the last six weeks they've gotten a lot worse. Sometimes I have to stop and breathe through them. Good times. As much as I can't wait for her to be here, I would really like her to stay in until she's fully cooked if you know what I mean.

I think we have possibly decided on a name. And that's the only thing we've done to prepare for this baby. I'm a list maker so I naturally made a list of "things to do before the baby comes" and well, two things have been crossed off. And one of them only half way. We did finally get one of these bad boys though and I am in love!

I never in a million years thought I would have need for a double stroller. But we have officially become a Mormon cliche. :) Anyway, we have a TON to do and I'm starting to get a little stressed!

I think this baby is messing with my brain too. I can't remember a dang thing and apparently lack the ability to make logical decisions. I recently agreed to go camping in July. I HATE camping. And I mean HATE. Why I would agree to go at 8 months pregnant I have no idea.

I'm pretty much gigantic already but have luckily only gained a few pounds. People are honestly suprised I still have three months left. I look like I'm due tomorrow. No joke. Here's proof. Probably the one and only belly shot you'll ever see! This picture doesn't even due the belly justice because she was sideways when I took it. It sticks out a lot more when she's the right way. Sad. But I guess that means she's growing. :)

We're all excited to meet this baby girl. I'm really excited but completely terrified at the same time! Here's hoping the next three months go fast! And the weather stays cool!

Easter

I've decided that holidays are 10 times more fun when you have kids and about 100 times more exhausting. We had various Easter festivities non-stop for four days in a row. But we had a great time and the kids loved all of it.

Brady Family Easter Egg Hunt


Chase really didn't care about any egg hunts over the course of the weekend. All he wanted to do was play. He seriously went up and down this little mound for over 30 minutes and threw the worlds biggest tantrum when I finally had to drag him in.




Cottrell Family Easter Egg Hunt



The Easter Bunny came

This was pretty funny. We went to my dads on Easter morning. They always do baskets and have an egg hunt. Chase was helping himself to everyone's basket and then when we went out to find the eggs all but three of them were stolen by birds. It was crazy!



There was a lot more but that's all the pictures I took. So.....the end!

The first of many

A few weeks ago Emily had her first dance recital. She had only been taking dance for 6 weeks so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Oh man. If you want some good quality entertainment-watch a 3 year olds dance recital! It was hilarious.

Emily loved getting to dance on the stage and was quite disappointed when she went back to class the week after and wasn't dancing on the stage again. She was also thrilled to get flowers from grandma after she was done!

We're so proud of you Baby Girl! And thanks to everyone who supported her.

My Little Buddy

Poor Chase has been seriously neglected on the blog. The last post about him was his birthday. 7 months ago. My little brother has a special place in his heart for Chase because my brother, to this day, complains about being the neglected child. But Chase isn't neglected. He's just younger and isn't involved in lots of activities and when we do things Emily is just more into it. Plus it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to get a decent picture of Chase. The kid never holds still. Ever. So anyway, a little about Chase at 19 months.

How cute is he?! I cannot get enough of this kid. How could you ever get mad at that face?! Which is why he can pretty much do no wrong in my book. :) For some reason I wasn't really sure we would ever have a boy. I don't know why. But man, I am so grateful we did. He brings me so much joy. He is my little buddy.
-He weighs 24 pounds and I can't remember how tall he is but I remember it was 80th percentile.
-He is super sensitive and a people pleaser. He hates to have anyone upset with him.
-He LOVES to snuggle with mom. I don't hate it. :) It is my favorite thing pretty much ever.
-He's started going to nursery. He's not such a fan. I knew this would be the case so it doesn't really bother me. The problem is we have afternoon church which is his nap time. The two times he has gone to nursery he's fallen asleep. :)
-He eats pretty much anything and everything. Complete opposite of Emily.
-He's very curious and will tinker with things to figure out how they work.
-He is an absolute maniac. He never stops moving and loves to climb. It makes it really difficult to take him anywhere where he can't be confined to a shopping cart. Even strollers don't work. It can be exhausting. And boy is he fast!
-He is talking more and more everyday. My favorite things he says are thank you, you're welcome, and change poop! I think the words he says the most are got stuck. Sounds more like got guck but he says it 100 times a day about everything. He'll stick things on his finger and then come running and say "got guck!" So cute.
-He adores his big sister. They play really well together and it melts my heart. They just laugh and laugh together.
-He loves all things boy. Balls, cars, wrestling, and being outside. Oh my gosh does he love being outside.

I could go on and on about this kid. I just love him so much. He brings so much joy with his sweet personality and I really don't think there's ever been a cuter boy on the face of the earth. :) Maybe I'm biased.

Can you guess?

I guess it's about time I post about this! Last week we found out the gender of baby #3! Can you guess? If you can tell from that picture than you are amazing. I contemplated posting the picture of where you actually can tell but that just seemed weird.

From the moment we told the kids about the baby Emily has been adamant that she was having a baby sister. We explained numerous times about how we don't get to decide, that Heavenly Father decides, etc. She totally understood but continued to say she was going to have a sister. A few days before we found out, we were in the car and Emily was saying that she was going to give her princess shoes to her baby sister because they are too small for her. I told her that we were going to find out in a few days if it was a boy or a girl. Her response was "well, I already decided it's going to be a baby sister." Not a surprising response. Then the day of my appointment I told her she was going to grandmas while I went to find out if she was going to have a brother or a sister. This is where I got nervous! Her response was "I talked to Heavenly Father and I told Him I really want a baby sister." Oh dear. I didn't want her little faith to be shaken if it was a boy! Then I became more nervous than excited because I was worried it might be a boy! Silly I know. But luckily for Emily.....


IT'S A GIRL!

Lately....

I keep thinking I need to blog and then I'll sit down to it and just think ugh, I don't want to. So sorry. But here I am now-before I get too far behind on our exciting lives. Ha!

First of all, a big WTF to waking up to this on April 3rd.


Lately I've been feeling like I've fallen into the mom trap where everything I used to love to do has kind of fallen by the wayside and life becomes all about the kids, house, husband, etc. My New Year's Resolution was to get back to doing those things I've always loved to do. Mainly scrapbooking and crafty and decorating things. My goal was one thing a month. Luckily (most of the time its lucky) I have a little mini-me who loves to make things too. This is when we made Liahonas for FHE. She carried that thing around for DAYS. She would have it tell her which way to go to do all kinds of things (potty, find her puppy, etc). Funny girl.


Every March Robert gets a few days off work. We usually use that time to go on vacation but decided to stay here and do a little staycation. Naturally this was our kitchen counter during that time.

Robert, Emily, and Chase all got sick. Sweet. But luckily they weren't super sick so we were still able to do a lot of the things we wanted to do. The weather was also a little crappy so we had to change plans slightly but we still had fun!

Aquarium
Emily is obsessed with the aquarium. Chase, not so much.

Build-a-Bear
Emily was so excited to go to "the bear store." I seriously thought we would be there FOREVER but she walked in, picked the horse, and while they were filling it with fluff she walked over and picked the Tinkerbell outfit. Done.


Temple Square
One day we went downtown. Emily is obsessed with temples and we've never taken her to temple square. She was pretty excited! It was a little chilly so she just kept wanting to go inside but she loved it.

We went to the visitors centers where Chase was of course a maniac and I was told by a sister missionary that I was weird for only having two kids. Mkay. Anyway, I had seen a poster at our church about the new interactive childrens exhibit at the Church History Museum. Its about the Book of Mormon so we thought that would be perfect since we've been reading the Book of Mormon as a family and thought maybe it would help reinforce what we've read and whatnot. The kids loved it!


Emily was loving dressing up and dancing around until other people started to comment on how cute she was. Then she was embarassed and didn't want to do it anymore. :)

They also have a quilt exhibit right now with an area for kids. I think our kids could have played there for HOURS.



We did some other stuff that I didn't take pictures of and went out to eat a lot. Our kids love going out to eat because we hardly ever do it. :) It was nice to have some time together as a family. We don't get much of that most of the time.

Robert is REALLY excited that baseball season has started. I'm kind of already tired of it and there's still 7 more months but it makes him really happy so that makes me happy. Emily is loving preschool and dance and has her first recital this week. Should be interesting! I've been noticing that there hasn't been much mention of Chase on our blog lately so I'm going to dedicate a post to him soon but he's still the cutest boy on the face of the earth. :) I'm still pregnant and spent the last three months being completely miserable but things are getting better in that regard. Knock on wood.

That's a little update on our lives.