On Tuesday, Eisley was standing by the back of the couch and just started screaming. I went over to give her a hug and there was blood on the couch, so I immediately thought she’d bitten her tongue or something, but somehow, she had sliced open her hand. She had gotten a hold of a closed pen (baby-proofing with two other kids has just been a constant battle), but it didn’t seem like anything on there could have cut her. We scoured the entire back of the couch and the floor, but we have no idea how she managed to do that. We even checked under the couch to see if one of the staples had come out of the fabric or something but couldn’t find anything. It was SO weird.

It was a nasty cut, though. Bless her heart. I got the bleeding to stop pretty quickly with pressure and cold water, so everything online said we didn’t need to take her in to our pediatrician. But keeping something clean, dry and bandaged on an almost 14-month-old’s hand is next to impossible.

So we got a little creative.

My poor sweet girl! I took a couple of mittens that she’d gotten for Christmas and just did a running stitch connecting them to the sleeves on her shirt and jammies for a few days. She did so much better handling it than I did. I know she’s my third child, so you’d think I’d be better about the random injuries and such, but goodness. Let’s just say that I am not the parent my kids want around when something happens. I tend to freak out. So, of course, this happened when Jon was at work.

In much happier news, Parker has been so into that dumb video “Peanut Butter Jelly” (thanks Beechems) and on Wednesday, I asked him what he wanted for lunch and he started singing, “Peanut butter jelly with a baseball cap” like the song. So I gave it to him and he thought it was about the funniest thing in the entire world. Ha! Love when they are this easy to entertain. 😉

Off to check the band-aid. Poor baby girl.

Confession time: I am not the best at resting.

Those of you who know me in real life are probably laughing right now because you know this is something that I tend to struggle with. I just don’t sit well. I don’t like to sit, I don’t enjoy lounging around and especially if I can see or am aware of something that needs to be done, I physically cannot just sit there and ignore it.

The day before my birthday, I started my second postpartum cycle and so I spent my birthday in a lot of cramping pain. So, I was taking Motrin pretty much around the clock. Well, the night of my birthday, I got so lightheaded I could barely stand up and it scared me to death. I thought I’d accidentally overdosed on the ibuprofen even though I knew exactly what time I’d been taking it and I was taking a normal dosage.

The next day, I felt okay all morning and then same thing happened the following night, even though I hadn’t been taking ibuprofen. I was so lightheaded that I thought I was going to pass out while I was holding Eisley, which was completely terrifying.

I called my midwife and she had me go get blood drawn, but everything came back normal. When it just kept getting worse each day, I went to urgent care and they did a bunch more tests and everything still came back normal. So they told me if it happened again, I needed to go to the ER because it was just not safe for me to be home by myself with the three kids, climbing up and down the stairs carrying a baby if I was on the verge of passing out.

The next day, Jon took off work and I just went to Mom’s house and laid around (see note earlier) and right after lunch, I got so lightheaded again. So Mom took me to the ER, where we waited for what felt like years, finally got put in a room and then waited for years again. In the meantime, they couldn’t get an IV started in me until they’d blown a vein (my arm seriously looked like there was a baseball stuck in my elbow. SO painful – it took two weeks for the bruise to completely fade) and they’d tried all my other veins several times. I think I did pass out for a couple of seconds when that happened. After a lot of tests, the doctor came in and recommended me to go see a cardiologist because he was worried something weird was happening with my heart rhythms.

They got me in pretty quickly and after looking everything over, the doctor told me it looked okay to her and that she thought I was just in some pretty major fatigue. She told me I needed to sleep, I needed to eat, I needed to rest and I needed to drink water.

All very easy things to do when you consider the three kids part. 😉 Eisley was in another non-sleeping, wanting to nurse 12 times a night phase, I had just finished up a deadline and even with everything going on with me, there was still school with Nathan and normal life stuff that needed to happen. I’d probably been averaging around 3-4 hours of good sleep a night and trying to write, which I know takes more out of me, even though I can often convince myself that my work time is rest time because I’m sitting down (such a lie). I had been getting up at 5 (occasionally earlier) to work on deadlines even after not sleeping all night and just with everything, I just got completely, 100 percent run down. I think that all of the stress and events of the summer and fall finally caught up with me and I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

So, we went into recovery mode. Mom and Dad were so helpful and they came over several times to help out while I tried to nap. Jon took over the nights with Eisley and she started sleeping close to 10-12 hours at a time within three nights. I started making sure I was eating breakfast AND lunch and wasn’t just existing on two cups of coffee until 2pm every day. And I put myself on vacation, slept until the kids woke me up at 7:30 and forced myself to sit and read or lay down while the kids were napping during the days.

Within the week, I was doing much better and now, three weeks later, I’m pretty much back to normal. I can tell when I’m pushing myself too hard and I still get a little lightheaded if I don’t take the time to make sure I’m drinking enough water and eating enough protein, but I learned some valuable lessons. One, I’m not in college anymore and I can’t exist on coffee and carbs for days on end like I could before. Two, I have a lot of little people (and one big one) who do not function well when I’m not doing well, so it’s very important for me to make sure I’m taking care of myself as much as I’m taking care of them. And three, the biggest thing that Jesus whispered to my heart through all of this – even God rested.

So important for me to know. It’s OKAY to rest. It’s GOOD to rest. It’s even commanded in the Bible to rest. God knows we can’t do everything all the time and keep up with everything all the time, so He has us rest. I know as moms we tend to look at everything going on in the world and on Instagram and Pinterest and think we need to have it all together, but even those people don’t have it all together. We can let things slide. We can have a dirty kitchen, the kids can still be in their jammies at 3pm and honestly, kids love it when dinner is frozen corn dogs and microwavable veggies.

I’m learning to give myself a break. If this is something that you’re struggling with, I hope you’ll give yourself the permission to take a break as well. Because God has already given it to us, we just need to let ourselves do it. A hard, long, kind of scary lesson for me to learn. One I hope I don’t forget.

Oh this one. People are always seeing her in the grocery store and places and telling me things like, “13 months! That’s the best age!” Mm-hmm… The best age to have Mom NEVER sit EVER. Notice she has started climbing the stairs and then posing. With great mobility, comes great responsibility…for the mom.

About 2am, the night of Groundhog Day, we had this city-wide blackout which lasted for like two hours and of course, everyone woke up because all their sound machines turned off. The next morning, we found out our internet was still down and so we had to wait to watch the delayed broadcast of Punxsutawney Phil telling us if we were going to have six more weeks of winter or not. But then, our internet FINALLY worked and we could FINALLY WATCH IT MOM. Nathan was SO excited for it, Parker was so confused and thought it was a party for Phil and then, so we could experience every possible emotion before 10:30am, Nathan was SO crushed that we are supposed to have six more weeks of winter. While Nathan bemoaned our fate, Parker flipped around the house singing, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR HEDGEHOG” at the top of his lungs.

Also, I accidentally dressed them all the same that day. So there was Groundhog Day. #happybirthdayphil

“Look Mom! We’re a football team!”

One of Pops’ friends got a new TV and gave us their other (gigantic) one. The boys were so excited and wrote them the most adorable thank you notes and Nathan drew a picture of the Wild Kratts on the new TV to go with it. So cute. 🙂

We ended up being kind of busy the end of this month! I keep waiting for things to settle down, but maybe we are just in that stage of life where they just don’t. 😉

Parker has discovered how to open up the front facing camera on my phone. So, I regularly have about 93 pictures that just randomly show up just like this in my camera roll. Ha!

We started online guitar lessons with Nathan, so all day long, all I hear is him plucking away. He LIVES with this guitar on. It’s so cute.

Parker loves to talk all. the. time. but he ESPECIALLY loves to talk in the car. The whole time. It doesn’t matter if we are driving five minutes away or forty-five minutes away, he will talk the entire trip. I hear people talk about how when the kids are napping or away how they’ll turn on the TV or listen to music or something, but for me, I turn everything off and just listen to the quiet. 😉

LOVE this. Shannon was asking me about jaundice and I sent her a picture of Parker sunbathing as a tiny newborn (side note: HOW was he EVER that SMALL??!) and she sent back one of little James! SO fun! Love having another mama friend to share life with! This stage of small kids is so worth it and wonderful but can also be so lonely and draining. It’s so important to have each other.

Told ya. 😉 Also, I did NOT give that child permission to look that old. He is killing me. I swear he is six going on fifteen.

Jon was holding an open house and the boys were doing rest time and Eisley woke up like less than an hour into her nap. So, I pulled her out of bed and we just napped on the couch together. Such a sweet time. I have to remind myself that it goes so quickly. She won’t be a baby for too much longer. 🙁

Aunt Nicole’s birthday is the week after mine and it’s just so much fun. Mom made homemade pasta and it was amazing! Love celebrating my sweet sister-in-law!

The next day, Nathan was the “Star of the Week” at school, something he had been DYING to be since August. Ha! He was SO excited to make his poster and do his presentation. He got to take in his favorite buddy MeMo (yes! He still sleeps with Mickey Mouse every night – it’s the only thing that reassures me that he’s not completely grown up yet) and he brought in owl-shaped marble squares for the class. He was so happy this day. 🙂

Baby girl loves herself some pizza! It is hands down her favorite meal. So funny!

We had a relatively warmer day and the boys spent about four hours out there building a “fort” out of some of the random sticks in our junk pile that we have piled up on the side of the yard. Somedays, I walk about there and just get tired looking at all the work we have to do. It’s good to see the yard through the boys’ perspective and realize that they love it just how it is. 🙂

32 started off calm enough but then turned into kind of a crazy day.

I’ve been getting up super, super early every morning so I can get at least a little bit of time with Jesus and a cup of coffee in before I need to start working. I work for a while and then the kids get up. On this day, I read my all time favorite Psalm (Psalm 121) like I do every year and it was just a sweet time.

We had my party with my family the weekend before and Mom decorated the party with pictures of me. We were all just amazed at this one – little Eisley is apparently a lot like her mama. 🙂

The day was totally one of those “another day in Paradise” days like the song goes. Lost credit card, teething baby, car issues, toddler tantrums… Birthdays are just a different animal when you’re a parent. But we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner, the kids behaved very well and the day ended on a good note. 🙂

Our church started a new Women’s Bible Study this week and I have been building up “Bible Study School” to Parker for weeks. He was SO excited to start his own school, just like Nathan. He marched straight into his class and was so excited to tell me about everything when I picked him up. Eisley was a different story. She pretty much just screamed through the entire thing. Poor baby is in a very attached to mama stage.

The Wild Kratts were hard at work plotting out where they were going next. So cute. I love seeing their imaginations!

And then – such a happy day!! My precious friend Shannon’s baby boy was born! James is beautiful and perfect and I was just so overjoyed to hold him. There is just something so sweet about holding a lifelong friend’s baby.

Adorable little mister! Shannon is a ROCK STAR. She was induced thanks to some blood pressure issues and delivered this kid withOUT an epidural. I pretty much walked in to that hospital room bowing at the waist. 😉 So SO fun to see her and Eric become parents. Little James is so blessed to have them!

Honestly, I’m not going to lie. Aside from my birthday, I really can’t stand the months of January and February. It’s usually very cold, so we don’t get to play outside very much, or when we do, everyone freezes and spends the rest of the day sniffling, which means we are all just cooped up inside. I hate having to bring coats and hats and everything with us anytime we need to go anywhere and the boys are both in this Allergic to Coats phase, so that just means we spend a good part of every day arguing about the level of warmth they need to have on in order to go outside, freeze and come back in sniffling.

And that’s not even touching on how expensive fruit is this time of year or any of the other stuff that comes with it. So, I usually spend January frustrated and googling things like “can people still get scurvy”.

A lot changes with kids. I used to love winter the most of all of the seasons. Now, once Christmas is over, I am just pretty much over it.

All of that to say, I am counting down the days until spring.

It thawed enough one day for the boys to color on the basketball pad in the backyard. Parker was SO proud of this. “I drawed me!” Notice the lack of a coat. Goodness.

He is growing up so fast. Nathan was at school this day and he decided he wanted to build the “TALLEST TOWER I EVER HAVE SEEN”. I think we accomplished it. 😉

This kid is so funny and so stinking old I can’t even stand it. He is seriously the BEST big brother ever. Eisley has him completely wrapped. He will drop anything to go make sure she’s okay. And Parker basically lives for the days when Nathan is home and wants to do everything EXACTLY like Nathan. If Nathan is having cherry yogurt, Parker has to have cherry yogurt. If Nathan is wearing a sweatshirt and not a coat, Parker is only going to wear a sweatshirt. If Nathan decided to high dive into the river, I know two kids who would be right behind him. It’s a lot of pressure to carry and this kid just excels at it.

The kids had Awana one night and we had a couple of meals on a calendar card, so we opted to go to CFA for dinner. Jon gave Eisley her first chicken nugget dipped in the classic sauce.

I’d say she was a fan. 😉

I went in the playroom (which also functions as the first room people see when they walk in our house) after breakfast and the boys were so excited to tell me that they helped me decorate. Ha! Jon and I laughed for a long time about the placement of those guys directly beneath the “My grace is sufficient” sign. Sort of a “just in case it isn’t, here’s the backup”. 😉

Guess who took her first steps this week??!

Eisley’s walking! from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

She’s been trying so hard and getting a step in here and there, but this was definitely the turning point! I’m so proud of her! And so terrified of having another walker in this house full of choking hazards! Ha!

And it just seemed a good time to cut two teeth at the same time too. Bless her heart. It’s hard to be one.

We spent the first couple of days of 2017 just hibernating, basically. 😉 Ha! We played at home with all our new toys, we soaked in the last of Dad and Nathan home from school and tried to do a couple of small home projects. The remodel has been put on the back burner for awhile, so it was nice to get a few things done again. 🙂

The boys taught Eisley how to use her new tea sets from her aunties. It was hilarious, especially since neither of them have any experience with a tea set.

We got my Best of Times wall back up! Such a happy day! It made this house feel so much more like home.

On the first Friday back to regular schedules, we had a snowstorm and they canceled school because there was a layer of ice under the snow. Such a fun thing to have a surprise three day weekend the first weekend back to work! These two were basically up and dressed like this by 7:45.

This was baby girl’s first snow that she was aware of. 😉 She had the best time crawling around out there with the boys! Since we hadn’t had any snow up to this point, I realized that we had basically nothing snow related for the kids, so Nathan was wearing old rain boots and Eisley’s boots were about 4 sizes too big. Parker was the only one who was set. It’s good to have a big brother.

She was so curious about the cold, wet stuff. So adorable!

Tired, freezing cold boy warming up by the fire while his hot chocolate was cooking. Ha! He was exhausted. Naps were done well on this day. 😉

For Christmas, Aunt Nicole and Uncle Caleb gave Nathan a gift card to Chick-fil-A and you would have thought they’d given him the winning ticket to the lottery. He was SO excited to go use it and basically begged every single day after Christmas to go to Chick-fil-A to pay for his VERY OWN MEAL. Ha! We finally went Saturday after the ice melted and I had to sneak a picture of him ordering. He was so proud. Such a big kid gift!

We finished up the year the same way we started it – BUSY.

Seriously, I think 2016 will go on record as one of the busiest years of our entire lives. Jon and I are both praying that 2017 holds a few more slow and boring days. 😉

After our Christmas with the O’Briens and our Christmas just us at home, it was time for the Mangum Family Christmas! We always take a picture like this every year and every year we laugh at how much the family is growing. So fun to see!!

The resident babies. These two are just too much. It was so fun to see Caleb, Nicole and Hudson!

Poor kid was kind of forced into some Auntie loving. 😉

Gammy made the boys the cutest little “melted snowman” hot chocolates and that’s basically all Parker wanted the rest of our time there. 😉

Making cookies with the aunties.

Gingerbread house contest time! We sent the little kids to bed, let Nathan stay up and had a contest as to who could make the best one. It was slightly unfair considering Gammy and Pops were the judges and their oldest grandson was in the competition. 😉

But he was SO cute and SO proud of his gingerbread house. He felt so big getting to stay up a little later with the adults. 🙂

Purple was the color of the day for this Little Miss. 😉

And then – Nama came in town!!! So we had Cayce, Caleb, Nicole, Hudson AND Nama all visiting at the same time!! My kids were in heaven.

Eisley was more than content to just sit in Hudson’s new toy and let him muscle her all over the living room. We were dying. So cute.

We absolutely LOVED seeing Auntie Cayce this trip!!

Loved it. 😉

This night was so quiet. Everyone else had left back to their homes and it was just us, Gammy and Pops and Nama on her last night. Such a sweet time. I love my grandmother.

We had the best Mangum Christmas!! So thankful for Gammy and Pops feeding us and hosting everyone and letting us all hang out there all day every day and spoiling us with so many gifts!

The next day was New Year’s Eve, so we went over to our dear Beechems’ house for some appetizers. 😉 We played until about 8, did the Netflix kids countdown thing and then the girls decided Eisley needed a girl group hug for the last day of the year. Love it so much! We loaded up three very tired kids, put all of them in bed when we got home and Jon and I both fought to stay awake until midnight. 😉

Happy end of 2016!! On to a new year!

 

Our first Christmas in our new home! It was such a wonderful time!

We spent Christmas Eve doing last minute wrapping, last minute baking and last minute prep for Christmas and by the time the evening came, we had three very hyper, very tired, very excited kids on our hands. 😉 We made our dinner of Christmas Tree French Toast (might end up being a new tradition – everyone loved it) and then they got to open their annual one present on Christmas Eve.

New Christmas jammies!! Oh how I love these little faces!!

Then it was time for our last Advent of the year. The kids (and me!) are always so sad to see it come to an end.

Dad reading the last Advent reading – the Christmas story – while the boys warmed up by the fire. Love this so much.

The boys got their cookies and milk all ready for Santa and we had to be sure to include carrots for the reindeer. And then it was off to bed!

Christmas Eve night is just always one of my most favorite nights – I love the quietness and anticipation of the next day! We moved the cookies because we were worried Kody might steal them from Santa. 😉

The kids were up early and got SO excited. The rest of the morning was a blur of present opening, cinnamon rolls, lots and lots of coffee and hot chocolate and jammied-kid snuggles.

Since Aunt Cayce was in town, we had them over for Christmas lunch and it was just so fun to host it in our own home! We loved seeing them for a couple of hours. They left soon after and it was just us again and we spent the rest of the day playing the new games the kids got for Christmas (Guess Who and Connect 4!), listening to the boys put on concerts for us on their new guitars and watching Christmas movies. And drinking more hot chocolate and coffee and I’m pretty sure we ate more cookies than Santa did. 😉

I know I think this every year, but this year was truly one of the best Christmases ever. Last year was such a blur since we didn’t get home from the hospital after delivering Eisley until Christmas Eve night and I felt like I missed out on so much of her first Christmas since I could barely move after the c-section. 😉 This year was perfect – we all went to bed saying that it had just been the best day ever. We laughed so much. Most of the gifts we gave were things we could do as a family, like the games and a dollhouse for Eisley that we all played with, and it just made the day so fun. The kids acted out the Christmas story with the Little Nativity, which was hilarious, and it was just the best, most relaxing day.

So thankful for such a wonderful day! God is so good to us.