And then we become outnumbered

Hi.

So even though we have 2 hands, 2 eyes, 2 parents, it seems perfectly normal to go ahead and have more than 2 kids.

I don't know. I feel like I should have thought about the reality of 3 kids, but babies are so cute. and then they start moving before they have a real place to sleep and somehow it's been a whole 7 weeks and I have NO IDEA HOW IT BECAME MAY.

I mean, really it should still be March.

So we move the big kids (yeah, that's right. growing up Amy and I were always collectively referred to as "the girls" and yet it seems completely weird that Mitchell and Ali have a collective name that pretty much happened and stuck overnight. I guess 2 syllables is better than 5? haha. It feels easier)....
anyway they're together in one room and one bunk bed. We might as well just put one bed in there, since they end up sleeping together anyway. Truthfully, I'm not sure why that even happens. They're always fighting at bedtime so it seems so strange to me that somehow they end up in Ali's fort or Mitchell's high top together.

This left a completely empty room for the babe. And when I say completely empty, I mean except for the pen smears and other exciting artwork enhancing the walls at the bottom 2.5 feet.

"Mike," I say, "We really need to paint this."

"Meagan," he says, "We really need to buy a crib"

"Yeah, yeah. All I'm saying is that we need to paint it first before we get the crib set up STOP NESTING"

"Fine, fiiiinnnee. We can paint it first"

"Great. And instead of *just* painting *haha!* Let's put some wainscoting in, because we should do that to the whole house! AND WE MIGHT AS WELL"

"yeah, I really don't care."

So I google how to do this, and that's just not happening. So I start googling on who to hire to do something like this. Google doesn't know. I don't know how to use google.

I'm telling my mom and she thinks my uncle would know someone so I text him and he's super nice and is all "I can do it. I can do it in one day"

wonderful.

So my uncle, 2 cousins, and mike whip out wainscoting in a matter of hours. While I did my laundry. Which is also done in a matter of hours, and not minutes. Because it happens like once a month.

And then mike has to go out of town and completely ditch me. Which seemed fine at the time until I went to the doctor the day before and was dilated. Which actually hasn't ever happened before so I freaked out. And when I say freak out I mean I actually freaked out and went into sheer panic mode because I was just so sure I was going to have the baby when mike was gone and nothing was ready at all. When I say nothing ready I mean I didn't even have a going home outfit for the baby.

I'm panicking and mike is like "you don't have babies early, calm down" and I wanted to smack him.

So I decide to panic enough for the both of us. I call up a friend who had offered to help me paint (haha, sucker) and she takes pity on me and comes and paints the entire room. As it turns out, I can't even go to Lowes and buy the paint rollers in the same size as the rollers. So really, she just came over and did the whole thing while I watched and tried not to have a baby with my husband out of town.  This included painting half the room the wrong color of white, going back to the store and getting the right color, and repainting.  This was like a 3 day project including one up-till-5am-just-spend-the-night day (she was painting, I was eating popcorn) Truly it was that pathetic. And I was having real contractions every time I walked up the stairs. And I have a lot of stairs. Mike was so sure I was fine and I was so sure I was not.

So the room gets painted, and I buy a lot of ridiculous things at target (coming home outfit, baby nail clippers, baby tylenol, 5 boxes of muffin mix, all the things to make amazing sandwiches except the meat, etc etc)

Still no baby. Mike gets home and is all "I told you so" and I'm like "I'M ABOUT TO HAVE THIS BABY IN SECONDS"

but that doesn't happen either. Full on real contractions every night, just nothing ever regular. And so instead of panicking I just started watching Grey's Anatomy. I figured the baby would come before I could watch all 10 seasons, and that gave me real comfort haha.

After a week of having real contractions at random times, I stopped trying to make them happen (i.e. walking up and down the stairs, eating pineapple, the whole list of old wives tales) and just tried to go to sleep. Because you can't be in labor while you're sleeping. That is sound logic.

The day before her due date I'm having real contractions (and I'm going to keep saying real contractions, because they were most definitely not braxton hicks and I felt like I was going into labor EVERY NIGHT), so anyway,  I try to go to sleep. They wake me up but that's nothing new. It's not until I realize I've been waking up every 5 mins that I realize this baby is actually going to come. finally. So I get up and tell mike. Who says, "great. call your mom" but then I wanted to take a shower and finish up some things. So yeah, it's 5am and I'm so very clearly in labor and mike is going to kill me because apparently he didn't think a shower and blow drying my hair was necessary. But it totally was! I already knew I wasn't going to want to get out of bed for days.

So mom comes and gets Mitchell and Ali who are just beyond excited, and I make mike stop at mcdonalds for breakfast, so we get to the hospital around 7:30. I'm dilated to a 7.  Awesome.

I get an epidural and then it starts to wear off on one side.  So they push the button for another dose or whatever and then the other side starts wearing off too.  So they push it again and clearly it's not working. This is starting to sound like Mitchell's birth which ended in a c section so I start freaking out. They call the anesthesiologist in and he sits me straight up which makes my legs start slowly going numb. Of course by this time it's like actual pushing get the baby out time so I was completely delirious and just trying to stay calm but it felt like such an out of body experience.  To be honest, I have no idea what was happening, at some point I was on oxygen and then the baby's heart rate dropped to 50 and then it was like the panic was tangible, so after forceps and a whole lot of people yelling, little Audrey was born perfectly healthy and super chunky.

9 lbs 5 oz. 20" long and one tooth.

It's like I birthed a small toddler.

She's the most cuddle-y sweet thing I've ever met. I could snuggle her up for days and she has such a calming little presence that, to my surprise, fits in perfectly with my not-so-calming/totally destructive other children.  She's super loud, though. But easy to calm down and loves dad's songs and Mitchell and Ali's cuddles. It's like a piece of a missing puzzle was found and we didn't even know it was missing.

We <3 her.="" p="">

She's rolled stomach to back 3 times and started smiling and those little dimples just kill me. Already I want her to stop growing.

Also, I'm reallllly not ready for a toddler. Not even a little bit.

Actually, I'm not ready for a baby either, since the crib *still* hasn't been bought. It's just a issue of being lazy and busy all at the same time.

Also, I'm not going *alone* to *ikea* with 3 kids. that just sounds like a funny joke.

And then Mitchell's in school and poor Ali is probably thinking "what the devil happened to my life?" and we've been combatting boredom with my little pony on netflix via my phone.

And then I fall asleep and a parade of Ali selfies happen:

If this isn't talent, I do not know what is.

Easter came, I barely *barely* pulled off the kids easter baskets. And put all the good chocolate in Audrey's basket because we all know who *really* eats all that.

 And little baby kate is just the cutest thing ever. BFF's for life.

And then we blessed the little darling yesterday. She looked just like an angel and I was over moon excited about having her wear the same dress Ali did. My grandma made her a new pair of shoes because Ali's little ones didn't fit her.

So so fun. Welcome to the family baby!