I think we are due for another update!

As seems to be the case when you have a family of your own, time has been flying by.  Our little buddy boy Bracken is 7 1/2 weeks already.  I already find myself tearing up about how fast he's growing up.  I think part of it is how big he is.  I look at him and I see a baby that looks like a 3 or 4 month old instead of a not quite 2 month old.  But alas time always moves forward and no matter what I do my baby boy will just keep getting bigger!  Needless to say I'm enjoying every moment with Bracken as much as I can because time is fleeting and before I know it all my kids will be teenagers.

So it's been nearly 8 weeks as I previously mentioned and I'm starting to feel like maybe I am getting nearer to being back on top of things...as much as I ever am at least.  We will finally be getting the last of the lumber we need to finish Bracken's nursery so we can get back to working on that and getting it done so Bracken can have his own room to sleep in.  We've been stalled on finishing the furniture for our bedroom because well we just had a baby and now the weather is just too hot to be spray painting.  Unfortunately it doesn't look like this 90-100 degree weather will be relenting any time soon.  And while I am on the subject of bedroom redecorating, Audree and Arya's room was mostly done with the exception of some wall art that I have yet to do but I find myself terribly unmotivated as one project I spent a full evening doing with a 7 month pregnant body that ached like crazy, has been mostly destroyed.  I swear I can't even let my girls be alone in their bedroom without there being frustrating consequences.  Bah!

On the 17th we blessed Bracken.  As far as blessings and hosting afterward goes it was happily low stress.  Bracken slept through the blessing and I must say he looked very dapper in his little white suit.  My family came into town and stayed with us and it was great.  My sister Amanda flew in earlier in the week from DC and it was great.  We all love her and miss her so much.  She was so helpful while she was here and she was awesome enough to babysit while me and Mark went out on a date, just the two of us!  We finally got to see The Avengers which we both enjoyed.  The following night the rest of my family arrived and we were going to see The Hunger Games at the Watergardens but it was pretty packed so we opted to do our grocery shopping instead and grabbed our own pints of ice cream and watched the last episode in the second series of Sherlock(which we absolutely love, by the way.  Benedict Cumberbatch=the best Sherlock ever!).

Audree's birthday is in about 2 weeks and she will be 4!  I seriously can hardly believe I will have a 4 year old.  She starts preschool in September and I am a ball of nerves about it.  There seems to be an even greater level of responsibility that comes with having children in school and I'm not sure I'm prepared for it and I'm feeling certain I will be awful at it.  Luckily there is still the whole summer left for me to pretend that this wont be happening for a long time.

Bracken is such a great baby and I just feel so grateful to have him in our family.  I love his smiles that are becoming much more frequent.  I often find him smiling at nothing and I think that maybe his own thoughts must be funnier than our goofy faces smiling at him.  He still sleeps all the time which feels weird as my girls seemed to never wanna sleep during the day.  It seems like he's forming a schedule.  He has a larger nap in the morning and sleeps off an on til his even larger nap in the afternoon.  On lucky days it's like 4 hours long.  Then he sleeps off and on until about 9 or 10 and then sleeps some more.  I will feed him around midnight before we go to sleep then he'll wake up anytime between 1:30 and 3:30 at which time Mark gives him a bottle.  Then he'll sleep a little bit more, sort of unfitfully, and then he ends up in bed with me where I nurse him, and sleep because I can hardly stay awake.  He'll usually eat once or twice more til we finally get up around 7 or 8 and then it starts over again.  He eats often, he tends to be fussy every night around the same time but it is beginning lessen.

We've also been watching stuff on Netflix.  We just finished watching Lost which I think I will write about in a separate post.  I've tried out a few other shows but a lot of them are striking out in my book.  Anyone else with Netflix have other good suggestions for TV shows to watch?

I've lost 25 lbs. since having Bracken but I still having 20 to go, blah!  I feel like such a fatty some days with my Jell-O belly spilling over my pants in the most glorious of muffin tops.  I hope that I lose a little bit more of this weight while nursing because if I don't I don't feel confident I'll lose it after I'm done.  But I guess I will just have to work really hard, or harder than I do, to get the extra weight off.

And now for some pictures.  I've been bad about taking them with my camera but there are a few from my camera phone