Baby Toes!

Is there anything in the world sweeter than baby toes and fingers?

As Caroline was waking up from a nice long nap yesterday, I grabbed the camera for some sweet pictures.

Although it's much easier to put her down in the swing, I'm trying to make sure Caroline gets one or two naps a day in her crib so she can get used to it. Our bassinet, though very sweet (it's the one my dad & all his sisters slept in as babies, then my brother and I and some of our cousins slept in it, and my aunt let us borrow it for Sam and now for Caroline) - anyway, though it is very special, the bassinet is small, so she is almost outgrowing it already! She'll be moving to the crib for nighttime sleep soon, so I want her to start getting comfy in there!

We love this sweet face!

Mother's Day Weekend

Clay, Sam, Caroline, and Annie made it a very special Mothers' Day Weekend at our house. I had a great weekend surrounded by the people I love most in the world.

Saturday was pretty HOT, so Caroline enjoyed some playtime inside while Sam cooled off in his pool outside.

On Sunday, we had a Mothers Day breakfast picnic at the "boat park." The weather was cool and breezy, and we had the park to ourselves for a while. It was a perfect way to celebrate with my two munchkins!
Sam giving big hugs and kisses to his little sister...

Sam peeking out of the tunnel to say hi!

Miss Caroline turned two weeks old this weekend, and she is growing so fast! She had her first growth spurt late last week, and she is getting so strong already! When I hold her, she picks her head up off my shoulder to look up at me, and she really likes tummy time. Here she is having tummy time fun on Sunday afternoon...

And I love a good sleeping baby picture! Here she is enjoying a catnap in her swing.
It's only been two & a half weeks, but it feels like little Miss Caroline has been part of our family forever. Sam continues to be such a sweet big brother, and we continue to be thankful for how smoothly everything is going.

More pictures to come soon!

Caroline Comes Home!

Here she is!

Miss Caroline is 12 days old today, and it has taken her mom, dad, and big brother Sam a while to string together enough spare moments to upload all her pictures and do a blog post. Her adoring fans will have to accept our apologies. Hopefully a post full of pictures of this sweet face will make up for it!

Caroline came home from the hospital on Easter morning. Chip and Phy brought big brother Sam to the hospital so that the four of us could ride home together as a family. I must admit it was a very sweet ride home :) Here's Caroline saying goodbye to the hospital and wearing the adorable "Easter bonnet" that one of the very thoughtful nurses at Baptist South made for all the Easter babies.
First moments at home...

Sam has been SO GOOD with her. He gives her lots of hugs and tries to share his toys, rocks, and food with her, and is learning that he has to do so VERY GENTLY. :) He already loves her and wants to help take care of her. What a relief! We couldn't be any prouder of this little man and how well he seems to weather every transition...especially this life-altering one!

Since we came home on Easter morning, one of our first orders of business was to check out Sam and Caroline's Easter baskets! Sam got lots of things for playing outside...a bug net, his very own watering can (he loves to water the flowers), some seeds to plant, bubbles, sidewalk chalk...and LOTS of Play Doh! Caroline got a Sleep Sheep, some pacifiers, and a baby book :)

We had one day at home just the four of us, and then Nana and Papa came to meet Caroline and provide some much needed help! Caroline started her first full day at home with a long, long nap...

Then she and Sam spent some time snuggling with Papa.

The whole family took a trip to the park, where Caroline and I chilled in the shade while Sam played on the slides and showed Papa the sailboats. I am feeling about a million times better than I did at this point after my last delivery, and it is SO NICE to be able to get outside and play with both kiddos so soon.

Just a couple more sweet photos from Caroline's first week at home...

We celebrated Caroline's one-week birthday by having CamiCakes with Nana, Phy, and Aunt Meredith. Guess who liked this birthday celebration most?...here's a hint :)

Sam had never had a whole real cupcake before, and after the way he reacted to this one we may not let him have another one for another few years! He was CRAZY! He had a blast playing, though, and we all enjoyed celebrating one wonderful week with Caroline.

Nana left late Monday night, but not before she got a few last snuggles with both grandkids!

And now it's just the four of us. We're doing pretty well so far...just very tired! We feel so tremendously blessed to have such a sweet little family, and we just can't wait to watch these two grow up together. There are so many adventures in our future, and we just couldn't be more grateful.

Caroline is Here!

Caroline Ray Tousey made her entrance last night, April 22 (Good Friday!) at 8:05 p.m. At birth, she was 7 lbs, 3 oz, and 20.3 inches long. She is beautiful and sweet and sleepy, and loves to snuggle as much as her brother Sam does. Mom's labor and delivery went much more smoothly this time with no complications, and both mom and baby are doing very well and getting some rest today. We can't tell you what a relief this is to us!

The whole family was together this morning, and there is nothing sweeter in the world to these two parents than seeing our two kids meeting each other for the first time.

At first, Sam didn't seem to know what to make of her. In recent weeks, he's known that he's going to have a baby sister, that her name is Caroline, that she was in Mamma's belly, and that when mom & dad went to the hospital, she would come out of Mamma's belly and come to live at our house (and that when all this happens, he and Annie get to go stay at the beach!). Despite this knowledge, though, I don't think he really knew what to picture, so it was very sweet just watching him trying to figure out who she was and where she came from!

Caroline gave Sam a present when he came to the hospital - a book about being a big brother, a Big Brothers Rule t-shirt, and Lightning McQueen PJs. Sam proudly put on his Big Brother t-shirt, and Caroline rocked her Little Sister onesie. Here they are posing in their gear (which, of course, you can't see in the pictures!).

After a few minutes, Sam seemed to fully adjust to the idea and couldn't get enough of looking at Caroline...

And giving her hugs and kisses!

We'll get to go home tomorrow, so we will be able to celebrate Easter as a family. We can't wait!

We feel so blessed and overwhelmed with love for these two little ones. Our family feels complete, and we are just so, so grateful. We wish all of you a very happy Easter and thank you all for all your prayers and thoughts and well-wishes. We love you all!

Clay, Tracy, Sam, Caroline, and Annie

Just Waiting...

Just five days to go until our due date, and still no signs that Caroline's ready to arrive. We had another great weekend, though! We're so glad that we got all our house projects done early in the year (during the cold months!), because it's given us lots of time to just have fun with Sam here at the end of the pregnancy while the weather is fantastic.

Here's a very sweet picture of Sam and Dadda enjoying some reading time...

And here's Miss Caroline at 39 weeks and 1 day. Quite a belly, eh?

I keep hearing that second babies usually come earlier than first babies, but Caroline only has 2 1/2 more days to make good on that promise! I'm getting SO anxious to meet her...I'm not doing a very good job of being a patient Mama this go-round :) No way of knowing whether she'll decide to arrive early, but we found out today that we're on the schedule to be induced next Monday if she hasn't arrived by then...so, one week from now we'll have a new snuggler no matter what!

We'll keep you all posted. Lots of love to all!

Everything's About to Change!

We're now 10 days away from my due date, and while I'm getting VERY antsy to meet this little girl, we're also enjoying some sweet time with just Sam. He is too cute for words. My two favorite developments of the last week or so:

(1) He likes to "read" his favorite books by himself. This consists of flipping the pages and roughly repeating the story he's heard us read before. It's amazing how good his memory is - he remembers chunks of the stories almost word for word - but it's hilarious to hear him emphasizing all his favorite parts and mixing things up in cute little ways.

(2) He now likes to report to us when he's exerting his mental and physical energies. He'll be sitting there (working SO HARD) putting together some huge Lego contraption, or trying to carry 12 rocks at the same time, and he'll look up and say "Sam - work hard!" Where did he get that???

Here are some sweet recent pictures of him at his favorite "boat park." Pointing out the boats...

Caroline at 37 weeks (somehow I'm already a LOT bigger a week and a half later)
Here's sweet Sam playing in his kiddie pool. He likes to swim, but he likes getting splashed even more!
I love this Snuggleman!

A fun little weekend

I promised some cute pics, and here they are! For starters, look how much this little man has grown in a year! We took this first picture about 11 months ago when we first planted this dogwood in our yard. Here's Sam at about 10 months...And here he is at almost 21 months! I think Sam is definitely growing faster than the tree...

As we head into the final couple of weeks before Caroline arrives, we're trying to spend plenty of time just having fun with Sam. He's starting to understand the whole baby sister concept. He knows his baby sister is in Mamma's belly and he knows her name is Caroline ("Caa-line"). He knows that pretty soon Mamma and Dadda will go to the hospital (hilariously cute word to hear him say...something like "op-it-el") and he will go stay with Chip and Phy at the beach. Today, I explained to him that Annie would go with him to the beach to see Chip and Phy, and he asked a very sweet question: "Sister come beach too, pleeease?" Hard to explain why she has to stay at the hospital instead!

Anyway, Sam had a great weekend. On Saturday, he had a playdate with his sweet friend Liza. They had a grand ole time playing in Sam's new big boy room with all the toys, the basketball hoop, and the golf set. On Sunday, he got all dressed up for church and even modeled willingly for the camera!

After church, we took Annie and Sam to the park for a couple hours, then came home and washed our cars. Sam was a huge help!

And then he decided it was time for "Sam. Bath. Bubbles. Bucket!"

So fun! And last but not least, here's a sweet pic of Sam and his favorite friend, Annie. Poor Annie...she's put up with a lot of pulled hair, yanked ears, and food being dropped on her head in the last 21 months, but at least she's now getting lots of love and attention in return!

Happy Monday to all, and have a great week!

Thankful

We have some new pictures to post, but those will have to wait. For now, we've just finished reading through our friends' recent posts from the last week or so, and are just struck by how blessed we all are and how much we - and so many of our dearest friends - have all grown since becoming parents.

Sweet Henry Hathaway made it through heart surgery like a little champion this week, and while we know it's such a blessing his condition was discovered early, we just can't imagine how hard the last couple of weeks have been on his mom and dad. It takes becoming a parent to know just how scary that kind of news must be and how scarring that kind of experience must feel. We breathed a huge sigh of relief this week, and now we are celebrating along with Katie and David and Henry and Cohen as Henry recovers like a trooper!

For other friends, the last few weeks have been exciting and life-altering in other ways...Brady is walking now, and the Brennans are moving back to Charlotte to start another chapter in their life with little Evan. And Frazier is cute as ever, pulling up and making sweet faces for the camera, and enjoying more time with her dad, who no longer has to commute 2 1/2 hours everyday! And so many other friends' families are growing and charting new paths everyday.

And life has been exciting and full of change for us, too. We've had a little bit of a false alarm/ scare with Caroline the last couple of weeks...the docs have been worried that she's not gaining weight, but we now know she's A-OK and should arrive healthy and happy sometime in the next four weeks! Sam is in the sweetest, happiest phase, and our hearts melt over and over again every time he does something new or especially sweet or especially surprising. It's literally like falling in love for the first time over and over again, several times a day.

I can't imagine anything more incredible, or more challenging, or scarier, or more perfect than being a parent. And today I'm feeling especially grateful for all these healthy, happy, kiddos, for amazing families and loved ones who provide support and love and prayers, and all these incredible friends to go through this amazing stage of life with.