a few favoite photos of the last few weeks!

three weeks old...and totally edible!!!

seriously... i could just eat him up!!! Mr Landon is three weeks old today. It is seriously going way to fast. I can tell that he is getting so much bigger..... I am so madly in love!!

where does the heart find room.....

OK. So all the fears that ran through my brain while I was pregnant about the hearts capacity to just keep loving each new child with the same amazing love I feel for my first two kiddos have been put to rest. I had an even bigger fear that if I had a boy I would feel "differently". Not that I would not love the kid to death just that it would be different. I know what girls are all about. I grew up with them...lots of them. I have brought two of them into the world. I know what to expect when you open a girl diaper... not so much with a boy. I know NOTHING about boys. So I had a fear that I would not know how to care for one if the Lord so chose to give me one!

BOY oh BOY (no pun intended!) was I wrong. I hate to put this in writing as I am sure that one day one of my kids will use it against me.... BUT I fell in love, ....mad crazy love with this boy the second Dr. Martin handed him to me! It felt so right. It was instant and I knew that my life would never be the same. Now let me clarify... I LOVED my girls to death. After Madison and Olivia were born I kissed them, held them for a few minutes and then passed them around to all the family waiting to see them. Maybe it was the fact that I had been in labor for 2 days and I was starving and exhausted... maybe it was the dramatic pregnancies and stressful last months. With Landon the pregnancy was great. The birth was only one day and not as exhausting. After he was born the doctor and nurse let us have him for 20 minutes before they even touched him. A luxury that I did no have with two previous high risk births. Because of the H1N1 there are no visitors allowed at the hospital under 13 so Jed and I were not scurrying to bring siblings in to do introductions. It was just the proud papa, a momma that felt really great, a nurse that we adored and even took pictures for us and a doctor that is indeed our doctor but more importantly a dear friend. Just the 4 of us and this precious new and perfect little man. It was amazing.

So for all of you that do not know...we had a little boy. Landon Jedediah Smith born on January 14th at 9:51 PM. He weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 19 inches long. He has a beautiful head of dark hair and the most beautiful complexion! ( I think it is because I drank diet coke with this pregnancy! He is good and preserved!)

The girls adore him. I can not tell you how blessed I am. I still pinch myself when in the morning the girls run in and get on my bed and talk and coo and love on their baby brother. I have three beautiful healthy kids. Two days after he was born they met him for the first time... they were so excited! It was great to watch them. They want to do everything for him. Within in the first 5 hours of being home I knew that if I did not set some ground work for how we decided whose "turn" it was to hold, feed, smoother him I would go crazy! At about 8 o'clock that first night home they were arguing about who had him first last time.... I let them know that we were not always going to be able to remember and that we needed to just relax and know that we all get lots of turns. They both chimed in with the famous "but mom, Maddie..." I told them that they had three minutes to figure out who was going o hold him first and that when I came back if they had not agreed on something no one would be holding him. I walked out of the living room and stood in the kitchen where I could see their reflections in the window. I was curious how the deliberation would go. After about a minute of going back and forth with no resolve I heard Madison say... "then were gonna have to do paper, rock, scissors!". And so the new routine of picking who goes first was put in place!

We are adjusting well to the new routine or lack of one! I am loving having an infant in the house. My favorite stage of babies is the new, newborn stage. I know a lot of people do not like this stage but I absolutely would push a pause button if there was one and just live in this moment for a few months. In the moment where they are tiny, their legs still pull into their chest when you pick them up. The stage when they began to open their eyes and just gaze around trying to take in all that is so new. The stage when they smell so good....when their neck beg to be kissed and they sleep all swaddled up making those precious newborn sounds. The stage when their fingers find one of yours and they hold on for dear life! The stage when they fit so perfectly on your shoulder. Every day as Landon get visibly bigger I get a little sad. When he goes from barely getting 1 ounce down at a feeding to just two weeks later guzzling 3 ounces down I feel a twinge of sadness because this time goes way to fast. Too fast for my liking. I think that this time around it is even harder because I wonder if this will be the last time I have "this". Will there be another baby in our future! I think yes.... maybe by thinking that it allows me to enjoy Landon more because if I KNEW that this was it for me and newborns I would be to sad that I miss out on just loving on him.

I had an epiphany the other night. I was looking down at a ring that my sister bought me three years ago when I received the promotion to Regional Vice President with Arbonne and got my Mercedes. It is a beautiful Sapphire and diamond ring. I wear it all he time. However, the other night I looked down and had an "ah ha moment"! The ring has SIX beautiful Sapphire's! You get where I am going right..... is i a coincidence? I think NOT! I think that it means that we should be a family of six. I shared this moment with Jed and he told me he would be happy to take the ring to the jewelers and have a stone removed,.... heartless, I know. So we will just enjoy this moment...while it IS here!

But for now life could not be any sweeter. I would not trade anything....

My darling dotting girls that adore their brother and are so helpful (that by the way I bonded with them in the same way I did with Landon it just took a few hours! And once I ate some teddy grahams and took a nap I was much more open to the whole being a mom thing!)

My husband who is giddy with excitement over his "buddy". He is so helpful and is just the perfect balance to my somewhat neurotic ways!

My precious little boy who proved that no matter your experience or comfort level when you are given a blessing so great as a child the heart just simply finds room to love in a way that you never thought or dreamed possible...even though I am still slightly startled every time I change his diaper!

Thank you Lord for this crazy blessed life that you have given me!

emotional rollercoaster....

Ok.... almost 39 weeks pregnant... something I have never been before! I never thought that I would make it this far. How thankful we are that this pregnancy has been NORMAL! The odds were against us but God had different plans! I am so emotionally unsure of what I want....stay pregnant, deliver TODAY? I am feeling pretty good physically. I have the normal aches and pains... sore legs, heartburn, pressure but nothing unbearable. I am not nearly as uncomfortable as I thought I would be this far along. So I am not miserable enough for labor to be appealing...yet! Since this is the third bambino I am also all to aware of what comes AFTER the baby is born.... sleepless nights, rolls of blubber where there once was a cute rounded attractive belly, hormones galore.... so I am stuck somewhere between being so ready to meet his sweet precious baby that has been growing in my belly for the last 39 weeks and being content to just sit here pregnant!

Having had planned deliveries with Madison and Olivia the anxiety is a little higher this time around. I have never "gone into labor" on my own so every new twinge or cramp... I start to panic! It will be interesting to see how it all goes this time around. I would LOVE to go into labor on my own. My Dr has said that this labor will be fast! The baby is super LOW and I am ready to go....said that labor start to finish will probably be 4-6 hours total. Alot more appealing then the last two that were 24-48 hours... We had hoped to go to Chicago this weekend if I had not delivered yet to visit some friends. I thought that I should call Keith just to make sure that it was ok and that if I would go into labor that I would make it home the 2 hours... he called back and said that it was a "horrible idea unless I was hoping my kid has a Dupage County birth certificate"! Bummed that I can not go to Chicago but thrilled that he really does think this will be fast!

So day by day..... today I will reclean the already clean house.... reorganize the clothes in the closet, look for things to do so that I feel "ready"! Stay tuned we are days away!!!

most of these pictures were taken by a good friend Liz Foley who is just starting her photography business.... she is very taented!!! Glad to have this pregnancy documented as it could be the last....