Jackson, David, and Fitz showing off their "booty".... Finally got a smile on camera

Happy 4th of July!

Low Key 4th of July

We had about as low key of a 4th as possible...no beach, no pool, never really left the house and it was perfect. Fitz was spear fishing with friends from dawn till dusk (well not all that time, but pretty much). My folks were hanging out with us for most of the day, and we did cap the night with fire works.

Updates: MJ is three months old, and is very smiley when in a good mood. He is not sleeping through the night, but we are working on it. He looks more and more like Lilly each day, but I still have to take photos because she was always in pink!

Lilly swims like a fish, know what she wants, when she wants it, but is not always clear in her communication of her desires. She will help clean up with much encouragement, and is starting to use the potty.

We are reading a book on "making the terrible two's, terrific" and first thing we had done is to eliminated nearly half of the toys and most of the ones that make alot of noise (thank goodness). Hopefully, we can make our two year old more terrific then terrible!

One of the only photos of me, fitz, and MJ
Lilly, Hudson, and Dane having fun with the hose and bucket at the BBQ

My little gymnast!

MJ enjoying the shade at the beach

March, march, march!

For Memorial Day weekend, we did all the classic things....beach, bbq, pool, and rest. We had a great time, and Lilly is a water baby to the extreme. We are still working on MJ, but I have faith that he will love the water soon! We managed for no one to get sunburned, and always remain in good moods!

And we've nicknamed him "scency" for sensitive!
Lilly is learning the art of the Thank You note!

MJ enjoying the beach in his own way

And Lilly enjoying the beach her way!

Me, Meg....and our five children....YIKES!

As Bill Cosby said your not really a parent until you have two...because then you never know who did it! Well, we still know who did it, but not for long. Time is short, and sleep is few and far between, but we are enjoying life with two little ones, and find that we are in a state of juggling at all time. MJ seems to be more of a sensitive child, and much more so then Lilly was. He loves to he held, and seems to cry at a pin drop. But on the flip side, he loves to cuddle.

We have managed to keep our normal schedule with gymnastics every Tuesday, and I managed to go all alone today. Keeping with our adventures we made a trip down to Topsail, NC to visit my good buddy Megan and her family who happen to be vacationing there for a few days. It was very nice to seem Meg, and her kids are great! Little Molly was a mear 3 weeks old and doing great! We are looking forward to our trip to Raleigh in a few weeks to see everyone and let them meet MJ!

We can't wait for all of our summer fun begin, including all of the visitors who have booked rooms at Casa Da Fitzula (or Hoover-depending on who they are related to). Can't wait for that warm weather and sunshine!

Don't feed the wild animals
Gardening with Dada!

Sleeping MJ

Look at all those curls

Kiddos having a chat

Kisses for MJ

Big Blue Eyes

Strawberry picking at Garner's farm with Hudson and Macy

Lilly, Hudson, and Jen at the farm

For Lilly's first Christmas my folks got her a set of roller blades. My dad had this vision her Lilly being a roller derby girl, and coming up with a cool name for her. His dreams were dashed when he realized she needed to be walking first. Well, her feet have grown and now we is ready to try. With the addition of baby MJ, we are trying to keep Lilly busy so we are trying new activities. Here is a video of her first skating adventure. We were not sure if she would like the skates so we did not put a helmet on her. Now she is required to wear a helmet.

Vaginal C-section

For anyone who does not want the details, go ahead and stop reading now....I will post the cute baby photos later, but if you are interested as to how MJ entered the world here you go...

On Friday April 2nd, I taught cycling at 5:30am at our local gym. I did more calling and just riding the bike then actual "teaching" but I was there none the less. At home after my shower, I began to have "un-mistakable" contractions about 10 minutes apart. On this particular day we spent the morning with a friend and her daughter whose car was getting new tires. She commented that I was looking alittle rough and walking funny. I, of course, knew that, but I did not think it was anything too out of the ordinary. Throughout the day, my contractions stayed fairly steady, but never increased so I ended Good Friday by taking Lilly to the doctors only to find that she still had an ear infection (after 10 days on antibiotics) and had a fever of 103.7....yikes! It was recommended that she begin a course of 3 injections of antibiotics to really force her ears clean and try to get rid of whatever was causing her so much trouble. On Saturday morning Lilly was still not doing well, and had another appointment for her second round of antibiotics. She was a champ and this time they tested her for strep, but she was negative so we were still at a loss as to what she had contracted. As the day moved forward she was eating less and less and hardly drinking and we thought for sure that we would be in the hospital with her. All the while I was still having contractions about 10 to 15 minutes apart. Since Sunday was Lilly's actual birthday we had planning to have my folks over for brunch and then take Lilly to pick out a gift for herself and eat some cupcakes....but someone else had a different plan.....

I woke at 2am and decided I needed to take a bath (should have been a sign that something was wrong....I don't take baths), then at 3am I had some stomach cramping followed by diarrhea. This lead me to think I was coming down with the stomach bug that Fitz had earlier in the week. Although, I was not feeling bad, I was concerned about dehydration so at 8am I called the on call doctor and check on what I should be doing. She advised me to keep up my fluids and if I could not then come in to the hospital. At 8am we also called the on call pediatrician to set up Lilly's last injection of antibiotics. Once that was set for 10:30am, we began to get ready to head to make folks house for the change of plans egg hunt and food at their house. As the morning slipped away, I started having contractions about every 6 minutes lasting for about 1 minute. We managed to get to my parents where I was left to make laps of their house, use the bathroom at will, and squat when the contractions got worse. Fitz took Lilly to get her last injection and find out at last that she had "hand, foot, and mouth" virus....a very, very common virus affecting children 6mo to 4 years. It causes a high fever, blisters on the palms of hands and soles of feet, and ulcer like sores in the mouth. Poor baby was SICK!!! And the only treatment is to let it run it's course! When Fitz and Lilly came back, we started the Easter Egg Hunt and my contractions got worse. Finally, Fitz and I made the call for me to head into the hospital at noon-ish and leave Lilly happily playing with her Eenie and Commadore. Fitz had wanted to drive "really fast" like they show on tv, but since we live in such a small town, we were in the car for less than 6 minutes and he was only going 40mph. After checking in and being wheeled up to L&D, getting check into triag, we found out I was 5 cm dilated with contractions 4-6 minutes apart. I was admitted to L&D at 12:45pm ish, and my contractions stayed at 4-6 minutes but began increasing in intensity. At 1:58pm the OB decided to break my water to help things along and boy did it ever. I began pushing very, very soon after that and with the aid of the OB and nurses, Michael Joseph Fitzula IV, aka "baby MJ." was born at 2:20pm. The delivery was very fast and thus caused some tearing on top of him turning upon making his exit causing his posterior shoulder to come out first. He had dark hair and very good apgar scores, I on the other hand was facing a 4 degree tear and 90 minutes worth of stitches with out any type of drugs other then lydocane. Now, I will preface this with the doctor was great, she put me back together in working order, and I am very glad she took her time and did it right....BUT in the moment I wanted to kick her in the face and have her just stop!!! She used as much lydocane as she could and then I just had to hold still. After that I had the chance to nurse baby MJ and he is a champ at that! All told we are doing well, Lilly is quite the doting big sister and is eager to help with everything. I am glad to be home with some pain meds (although not the really good stuff) and be able to sleep in my own bed. We will see how everything pans out over the next few days, but he seems to be a great kid already!

Happy Birthday My Beautiful Baby Girl..

As we approach the time in which my water broke and Miss Lilly came into this world in less than two hours (1:43am on 4/4 to be exact); I feel that I should be so thankful that our biggest problem with her is that she seems to be "too smart" and is like our little parrot so we have to be careful about what we say. I am not organized enough to have photos of her ready to show the progress over the last two years, but I can say it's been one of the greatest adventures of our lives. I find it hard to believe that sometime soon I will have to find room in my heart to love a little boy (we think) when it's been just me and my Lilly for two years. We have our routines down pat....each day is a different activity followed up with our book reading, talking about our day, and 20 "rock-a's" and down she goes more often then not into a perfect sleep. It almost makes me a little teary eyed to think of how much her life is going to be rocked, but she will be such a great big sister. We don't have big plans for her big day tomorrow, but seeing that she is only turning 2 I"m not sure she is expecting too much. I'm sure a cupcake and some extra love from us and my folks will be all that she needs. We might even take her somewhere to pick out a special gift, as long as she is feeling better!

Lilly and her bunny cake....she loves cake!
Commadore helping Lilly to blow out her candles!

Egg hunt in full effect....Lilly is getting help from our neighbor Heather

More egg hunting!

Lilly sporting her party dress from Aunt Stacey, Uncle Pete, and Millie....can't believe they could get the size perfect all the way from Australia!! Love you guys!

I managed to not take any photos of the actual party, I do have everyone singing Happy Birthday, but I need to up load it. These are some photos from one the of guests Grandparents (thanks prissy). Hope to have more up soon!

A fabulous time of year.

We managed to celebrate Lilly's second birthday with with 15 of her closest friends. Well, at least 15 kids of similar age and that she could name them all :)! We decided to have an egg hunt to celebrate the big day and it was a huge hit...kids just love to be outside even though it was not one of the warmest of days (like in the 50's with a brisk wind). The kiddos loved it and the swing set but the parents were itching to get back inside to the warmth of the house. Lilly loved her party and is still not quite aware of the present concept. She opened them and then would just toss them aside, and move on to the next one. After we finally got her calmed back down from her sugar high and in her crib for a nap. We did a bit of cleaning and crashed ourselves; I think the party was harder on us then the kids. After nap time it was full into presents, and playing with everything. She loved all of her gifts, and we loved that my folks let us come over for dinner since we were still pooped and I was not able to plan for dinner.

Lilly's actual second birthday is Sunday (Easter), so we are going to have a very small celebration with my folks and some cupcakes! Little MJ is still holding on strong in my belly so we will see if he decides to come on Lilly's actual birthday; I have a check up tomorrow so we will see what they tell me. But I think all of the docs are happy that I am nearly 37 weeks along and basically full term. I just keep joking that this child will come out talking with all of the extra time he has spent in utero. My folks and friends are all on edge when I call them....in case it's "the call" luckily I have some great people surrounding me and ready to help out however they can. And since my parents don't sleep much anyhow, I am not worried about needing them to watch Lilly in the middle of the night. Here's to this baby boy making his debut soon so I can stop learning where each potty in carteret county is!!

Little Miss Independent

Our Lilly has taken to be very independent little gal...wants to pick out her clothes, shoes, accessories, put them all and take them off. She loves to wear my high heels and "clomp" around the house. Some of her favorite phrases are....."no momma, I do it," "by self" and of course "no dada, back up." Lilly also enjoys singing, a few of her regular songs now are: ABC's, itsy bitsy (sp)-pider, and skidamarinc-e-dink. I will work on getting new videos of her singing soon. We are in full swing of planning her 2nd birthday, it's going to be an easter egg hunt with chick-fil-a nuggets (one of her favorites). So far I have stuffed nearly 200 eggs, and hopefully that will be enough. As long as the little baby in my belly stays for a while, we should be able to get all things done for her big day!!

Track...

So a few local friends have asked for my help in creating some track workouts for them to get them ready for 5K season. I have always loved yelling at people, so I thought why not. Plus it will be good when I am trying to get back into shape to have a schedule already established. Last night, we made the track workout a family affair, well a Hoover family affair (Fitz was slammed at work so he stayed back). Off we went to call times, let my Dad run some repeats and try to tucker out little miss lilly. Little did I realize how much she would love it....she kicked off her flip flops (and informed us she was running like Ms. Amy-who occasionally runs bare-footed), and off she went running all over the place. Then she preceded to pick up on what I was saying and cheering on Ms. Amy, Ms Heidi, and Commadore. Too Cute!! After that she decided to cheer on the other people (some students, and a lady walking) with sayings like...."good job lady" and "good job boy. " Needless to say, I have lost my position as head cheerleader as no one and I mean no one can resist smiling and running a bit harder when a little bare-footed blonde-headed, blue-eyed baby girl cheers you on!

Laughs from Miss Lilly

So I have been very slack in keeping a journal for Lilly, but I wanted to share two funny Lilly-isms from today. While in hawaii over the holidays, we were trying to teach Lilly that we could not cross the street until the walk came up. We made the mistake of calling it "the white man" because well, you have to wait for the little white man to come up before you can cross. We thought that Lilly got it, but in recent weeks she has been saying "white man" at times when there is no cross walk around...so yesterday at the St. Pattie's Fest; Lilly ran up to a fire hydrant and said "white man." Cracking us up......we never realized that each time we had told Lilly to look for the "white man" she only saw a fire hydrant! Then this morning at the park, Lilly started doing laps of sorts out of the park and to a street lamp (like 25 feet away from the park entrance and no where near the road) and touch the lamp, then run back. So on the second lap we asked Lilly what she was doing and she said "I see the light." Again, we were in stitches. Kids say the darn-dest things! I hope to be able to post more as they happen as to have some record of our beautifully smart caring crazy gal, Lilly!

My Baby Girl is Turning TWO!!

Our good friend Missy took some beautiful photos of Lilly for me to use as her two year photos; we are still three weeks from her actual birthday, BUT with me being past my 34 week mark; I could deliver any day now so better to get them done while we have time and a beautiful day! Enjoy!

Group shot!
Lilly looking out at the water; at least this time we kept her out of it!

She loves to climb!

Lilly and Dada!

Lilly with donut on her face and in her hands!

Beach Day fully equipt with sunshine!

We got to us our beach pass over the weekend and with the sunshine, it was great! We first stopped for donuts to fuel up for the adventure! We got to go for a walk down the beach, and enjoy the swing set at the circle! Lilly had a great time and I know will be much happier when it is really warm outside! Here's to warmer weather on the way and finally getting to feel the sun on my face!