Caden has arrived!

Caden Reed was born on April 2nd at 7:57am. He weighed 7lbs. 8oz. and was 18 inches long, which is funny because I was repeatedly told that he was going to be a 10lb. baby, which I believed because he FELT huge in my belly! I was really happy to quickly learn that my recovery after this c-section would be easier than my last! I felt GREAT after the c-section and was up and moving around 12 hours later, which was wonderful!!! My biggest problem in the hospital was that I started having really bad back pain 2 days after Caden was born. We're still not sure if we should attribute it to the spinal or to my UTI that I had at the time. It has gotten better, though.Emma is still infatuated with Caden and says "baby" every time he makes a sound! She loves to watch him and she tries to help by giving him his paci and blanket, but she generally ends up throwing them at him instead! Chad and I are doing everything we can to make sure that Emma feels as much of a part of our family as she has for the past 2 years, which is hard since she spent 4 days with my parents while we were in the hospital. She came and visited us each day, but she got to the point that she wanted to be with my parents instead of us. She had a lot of fun with her mama and papa, though, and was spoiled the whole time!

Caden is definitely NOT the newborn baby that Emma was! Emma has been relaxed and mellow since she was born. Caden, on the other hand, is mellow most always except for night time! We quickly discovered that he will sleep great as long as we are downstairs in the house. The problem? Our bedroom (where his bassinet is) is upstairs. The result? Mommy and daddy have taken turns each night sleeping on the sofa downstairs so that Caden will sleep. Each of us sleeps downstairs for a few hours each night and then we swap so we each get a little bit of decent sleep. Unfortunately, since I am still recovering I don't sleep very well even when i'm in the bed and Caden's asleep. Sleeping for all of us seems to get a little better each night, so i'm hoping we'll all get the hang of this soon!

More to come as we get more sleep......

Busy 2009!

What a busy year 2009 has been already! Early in the year Chad and I were going to Kidsville Boutique in Powdersville to try to consign some of Emma's old clothes. As soon as we pulled up I noticed a sign on the door that the boutique was for sale due to health problems of the current owner. Anyone who knows me knows that that would be very intriguing to me! I called my mom and told her and got a somewhat "yeah, ok" response, which I expected. To make a very, very long story short, I contacted the owner that day and have been working on purchasing the business with my mom ever since. It has been a very long process, and it actually seems like it's been about 6 months since it all started, but it looks like we're going to be closing on the business next Friday! I am super excited about the whole thing and am ready for tons of work to get the business to where mom and I want it to be!

The boutique is half children's consignment and half handmade children's clothing that is absolutely beautiful! The handmade clothes are "Kidsville" brand and made only for our boutique! It's definitely not a good time economy-wise for something like this, but it jumped out at me and I figured there's no time like the present! It is going to take a lot of work, but failure is not an option with an almost two year old and baby #2 a month from arriving!

I don't have any pictures to post right now, but hope to have some soon. We are closing the store for a week after the purchase closing and doing lots of remodeling. We will have our "Grand Re-Opening" in mid March and I would love to have as many people there as possible! If you would like an invitation please provide me with your mailing address and email address!

Wish us luck!

Marissa