Announcing........

Did you guess?..... YES!!!Our family has been blessed one more time and we are so excited to announce that we are expecting our fourth kid and third little boy Daniel Steven Smith by the middle of August.

After going through a C-section with Andrew my doctor performed some surgery on me. Chances of getting pregnant were slim and we were just told to wait and see if the miracle repeated itself.

I went through the process of getting rid of my thyroid through ablation which is the intake of a small dose of radioactive iodine on December of 2010. I was told that I needed to wait at least 1 year to try to get pregnant again and with Andrew just months old at the time that didn’t seem too hard to do.

11 months rolled around and I remember specifically blowing my candles on my birthday and wishing for this baby to happen. I knew it was time for this baby to come even though having three kids had definitely proven to be more of a challenge for me.

I guess birthday wishes do come true. I was so excited to find out I was expecting just a couple of days before Christmas. This was the best Christmas present you could wish for.

Spencer and I decided to keep the baby a secret for the longest time and there were a couple of reasons why.

I needed to make sure we were safely past the first trimester; if anything happened to the baby I knew I would have been on tears every time I talked about it.

Our second reason was Julia. This girl had been wishing for a baby girl for the longest time and we didn’t want her to get her hopes up just to be disappointed at the end.

The day came on March 9th when we went to the doctor to find out what we were expecting. All my boys were in the room with me.

When my doctor started the ultrasound Josh’s first comment was: “That’s in your belly mommy?” I asked what he had seen and his reply was “a kitty”.

After just a couple of minutes the Doctor told Spencer the gender of the baby because I was too nervous to find out. Spencer went to the store and bought something for the baby and wrapped it up for me. I loved pulling the cute little blue outfit that Spencer had bought his new son.

We were both overwhelmed with emotions. The realization that Andrew was finally getting the little brother he was intended to get 2 years ago was sweet. It felt so right for our family.

We waited until Julia came home from school to tell all the kids the good news.

The kids were very excited about getting a new baby for our family until that is we told Julia to pull out the baby’s cloth out of the gift bag. The second she recognized the blue on them her smile turned upside down and she started crying for 30 minutes.

It took a lot of convincing and explaining to get her to calm down. I felt so bad that tears broke out of my eyes too. I was sad to see my girl so heartbroken.

Over the next couple of days I was overcome with emotion too. I knew from the time that Spencer and I started dating the name of all my kids. I knew Julia would be first and Josh would be next. Even though Spencer didn’t feel too good about the name Andrew I just knew his name had to be Andrew Dale.

So being pregnant this time and having no premonition or good feeling what so ever about my baby’s name made me really uncomfortable and sad. I was feeling like a bad mom for not knowing my kid’s name already.

Spencer and I spent the next night trying to figure out names. We knew his middle name was going to be Steven we just weren’t sure about a good solid name for the kid.

I loved the names: Adam, Alex and Benjamin but his initials would have gotten him in big trouble. The only other names that I liked all started with the letter J: Jeremy and Jason but I think Joshua and Jacob are enough trouble already for Grandma Smith to be adding another J name to the grandkids list.

We narrowed it down to three names: Shawn, Daniel and Michael. After thinking it over and asking the kids what they though we finally agreed on Daniel. It was surprising to hear both Julia and Josh pick the name Daniel and it sounded oh so cute when they called their little brother that.

Now we are in the process of getting his nursery ready. He will be sleeping in Julia’s old room which has pink butterfly wallpaper and a pink butterfly ceiling fan so there’s lots of work to be done.

Here is one of the first pictures we got of Daniel. Maybe you can see it but in case you don’t let me explain the picture to you; His footprint is noticeable on one side of his tiny body.

Julia as a 6 year old

What can I say about my precious girl? She is becoming more and more like a young woman. Her personality is fully developing and we are in love with what we are seeing.

She has her own taste on music and gets excited when her song plays on the radio. She also has a like for Michael Jackson songs (yes!).

She cried for the first time during a movie a week after her birthday. She was watching Puss in Boots and they got to the part where Humpty Dumpty falls and breaks and she couldn’t keep her tears back. This was so touching I was so proud of her for showing her true and honest emotions. I am going to love going to the movies with her. Instead of having Spencer laughing at me for crying I am going to have someone to cry with. Pride and Prejudice has gotta be one of our first

She is a sensitive and a simple little girl. I am pretty sure she gets that from her daddy. She never asks for much and I am glad that she gets to appreciate all that we can get her. When we asked her what she wanted for her birthday her reply was whatever you would like to get me. Of course that just made us want to give her the whole world.

She is becoming less shy around people and has been able to make a special friendship already with a friend from school (I don’t think I had a truly best friend until I was 8 or 9). On the days that I volunteer at her school I’ve been most amazed on how much she respects her friend’s opinion. She is not bossy or pushy or the other way around and is a follower. These two girls treat each other equally and they love using their imagination.

She is doing fantastic in school. She is an overachiever in reading, she loves to read. Sometimes instead of watching a show she would ask me if I would listen to her read.

They had a challenge in school where if the kids read so many hours they could earn a bracelet. We read more than what we were supposed to. A couple of days after the challenge ended she was so proud to show us her new bracelet and a special diploma they had given her for reading so many hours.

I couldn’t ask for a better example at home for the boys. She is always trying to teach them something whether it is something from school or new tricks that she learned at tumbling. Josh can already do a head stand and is almost there with a cart wheel; Andrew can do a perfect summersault and it is all thanks to her.

She loves doing Chores, crazy but oh so helpful. If you ever come on Saturdays to our house you will find that her room is just pitch perfect. Spencer jokes that she has OCD when it comes to cleaning her bedroom but I am glad that she likes having things in order.

She is still liking tumbling and has now managed to do a back hand spring all on her own. She did it just a week before turning 6. She told me that 6 year olds should know how to do that and she tried her hardest until she got it done.

She last lost 2 teeth so far but has 3 other loose teeth that just won’t budge. The new bottom teeth she got are more aligned with her jaw which makes her under bite less of a bother to her. Hopefully we can get her on braces next year and fix that problem.

Josh and Andrew adore their big sister. Andrew loves to sit on her lap and Josh asks for her every second that she is at school, wondering if it is time to go pick her up every 10 minutes.

Julia age 6:

Height: 46 inches

Size shoe: 12 ½

Size clothes: 6x

Favorite color: yellow and pink

Favorite thing to do: color, draw and make up her own stories.

Favorite time of the day: morning before she has to go to school

Favorite food: even though she would eat anything:  Pizza, Corn Dogs and apples are her favorite

When she grows up: she wants to be a doctor so she can help babies when they are little

Favorite toys: she makes sure all of her toys get played with. I think Toy Story had something to do with this

Favorite thing to do: Cart wheels (all the time)

Night time routine: Story from mommy, songs with daddy and cricket sounds from her sound machine

Favorite treat: bubble gum

Musts:

-Must have music when she cleans

-Must have stories, songs, her sound machine going and her princess pillow to get a good night of sleep

-Must read at least twice each day

-Must have a morning hug

-Must have her dinosaur candy (vitamins) every morning

-Must practice her cart wheels every day

-Must tie her own shoes and get dress by herself each day

It has been so much fun to see her grow up and become more mature this year. It’s been a blessing to watch her though her successes and help her gain more confidence on herself. The only thing that I can ask of you at this time is to stop growing so fast. We love you our little princess.

Julia's Pinkalicious 6th birthday

My baby girl just turned 6 on February 26^th. This was the first year that she was really into planning her birthday. We started by deciding what kind of birthday party we wanted to have and after much though she came to the conclusion that she wanted a pinkalicious birthday party.

Here is the invitation I made, very pink  

Pinkalicious is one of her favorite books that Santa brought her over for Christmas. It is about a girl who eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink.

Her birthday landed on a Sunday this year so she really started celebrating it on Friday. I was lucky enough to be volunteering in her school that Friday. She was brought to the front of the class and all of her friends sang Happy Birthday to her in English and Spanish while she wore a birthday crown that was specially made for her. After the songs she got big hugs from her teacher: Mrs. Hansen and Mrs. Jorgez.

I was glad to be able to see her big smile and her eyes sparkle when she was getting all of this special attention.

We decided to have her birthday party on Saturday. She was so excited to wake up that morning to see all the decorations that I had put up the night before.  There was pink everywhere.

She had lunch at McDonalds that day, she wanted subway but the lack of playground to keep her brothers entertain made us choose the other place instead.

I made some cupcakes that looked like the cupcakes from the story for the kids to eat, then I made a smaller cake for the adults with the garden flowers from the story as well and a big cupcake shaped cake just for Julia.

For party favors I made white chocolate covered popcorn and I die the chocolate green.  Because you know the only way to get rid of the pink is by eating a steady diet of green food. I was amazed that I had enough for the party considering Andrew and Spencer kept eating it while I was prepping it.

She also requested a Goldie piñata. Goldie is Pinkaclicious pet unicorn so I started building that a week before hand and let’s just say I might be done building piñatas from now on.

 I had some games set up for the kids besides the piñata. We played pin the cherry on the cupcake, cupcake toss where the kids had to throw paper cupcakes attached to clothes pin into a basket and if they threw enough in they could turn pin… Just kidding! Finally we read Pinkalicious and every time they heard the word pink they were supposed to twirl around. I think the girls were dizzy by the end of the game, I didn’t realize how many times the word pink is mentioned in the book.

After all that fun there was time to open presents of course.  When I asked Julia what she wanted for her birthday she said very sweetly whatever you would like to give me mommy.  That answer melted my heart. She has been dying to get a Rapunzel’s dress ever since we saw the movie but all the dresses at the department stores were way too little for her. So after researching on the internet for weeks I was able to find her a dress made perfectly for her.  It was more than what I wanted to pay for a dress up dress but oh she is so worth it and she looks so beautiful in it. 

I loved the picture were Andrew is giving her an empty candy wrapper, so thoughtful 

After presents it was time to blow up the candles. Here are some pictures of that

 She was so thankful for all the presents she got and for all the sweet people who called her and came over to celebrate her birthday with her. We invited two of her favorite friends from school.
Here she is with Brooklyn, Emmie and her cousin Keldrie