Welcome baby Benjamin!

So, I finally have few minutes to do a quick blog post. I can't believe that this time last week my labor hadn't even started yet and now Benjamin is almost a week old! Things are really going great with our little family of 6:) my mom stayed with us last week and today has officially been my first day on my own and so far, so good. Of course we have crazy times when all 4 kids need/want me at the same time but for the most part we're just cruising along. I must confess that I am enjoying our sweet Benjamin much more than I was prepared for. As excited as I have been to finally meet this little guy I was also kind of dreading the whole new born phase of crying and no sleep. But so far this sweet boy has been a really good sleeper and for the most part only fusses when he's hungry or really tired. I feel like the Lord is pouring out a triple portion of grace over our house right now because you would think 4 under 4 would just be chaos but it's really manageable right now.
I wish I had more pics to share but that is one thing that kind of gets forgotten about. Life is busy enough with out remembering my camera everywhere. When James was born I think we took about 100 pics just in the labor and delivery room but with this little guy I think we took about 5 and they were all on the iPhone :)

Here's our new family of 6!

The rest of the Allen gang came to meet Benjamin for the first time Sunday afternoon after the boys soccer game. They have all been so sweet with him. James is a great helper and loves to help me with Benjamin. Gracie likes to try and help too but she's not quite as helpful :)
Gracie loves the "baby" and wants to give him lots of kisses every time she sees him :)

Sweet boy snuggling with my mom

While the kids were visiting the nurse came in to take my temp and John-Mark and all the kids wanted to take their temp too :)Ready to go home!LOVE:)

Love, Love, Love a sleeping baby!

Quick birthday story so I don't forget:
Around 8 pm, Friday, Sept 23 I started having mild contractions every 5 minutes or so. They continued to get worse and by 10:15 they were about 3 minutes apart. I decided to try and take a long shower and relax and by the time I got out about 30 minutes later they were coming every 2 minutes or so and were pretty intense. Thankfully they were only lasting about 30 to 45 seconds. In true Allen (financially savvy:) fashion I wanted to wait until after midnight to go to the hospital to save $300 so I continued to work through my contractions at home. Finally around 11:45 we headed to the hospital and by the time we got there and I got out of the car my contractions were on top of each other and I couldn't walk through them. When I got to my room and they checked my I was only 5 cm. I was hoping I was further along and was going to be able to go natural but when they told me I was only 5 I knew I wanted to go ahead and get the epidural because it would take another hour before I actually had it in and had any relief. After I got the epidural they broke my water and I was about 6 1/2 cm then. I was fully dilated in the next 2 hours and ready to push. Benjamin arrived at exactly 4 am on the dot after very little pushing. Over all a pretty quick labor and delivery. So thankful everything went smoothly and Ben and I are both healthy and safe.
On a side note many people have asked if my Dr. (Dr. Ross) delivered me this time. I missed him by an hour! He was on call starting at 5 am! Almost every doctor in my practice has delivered me except my actual Ob/Gyn!

Baby Benjamin is here!

Benjamin Michael Allen was born Saturday morning at 4am. He weighed 7 lb 9 oz and is 20 inches. Praise God I was able to go into labor on my own and no induction was needed! I'll post the birth story soon. Right now we're still in the hospital and I am eating up every second with my new little boy. He is just perfect and we're so thankful he's here and healthy! Pics to come soon :)

Quick Updates

No pics with this post, just some quick updates with each of the kiddos -
First, I am 40 weeks pregnant with baby Benjamin today and honestly can't believe I am still pregnant. You would think with 4 pregnancies in 4 years they would come a little earlier - not this boy! I really thought exercising my whole pregnancy would help him along but I think he loves it - I went to a cycle and step aerobic class a few days ago and nothing! I must confess that I had a bit of a bad attitude about the whole thing the last couple of weeks because I had this expectation of going in to labor early - which I so know better than to do, but the Lord and I had a talk and I confessed all this to Him and gave it all over to Him. He knows this little guys birthday and will bring on his arrival in His perfect timing. I went to the dr today and I am progressing some but if he doesn't come on his own they want to induce me no later than 41 weeks. Once again, having to trust the Lord. I really don't want to be induced - I'm really excited to see what this little boy's birthday story is going to be!
My Gracie girl is growing up so fast! She seems like such a big girl more and more every day. She is talking up a storm and her favorite things to say are "I do it myself", "hug and kiss", "back pack please (she loves to wear her back pack), "outside" and "swing". This girl has no fear and I think she may be even more adventurous than my boys - which is saying a lot! She loves to jump on the trampoline with the boys and let them bounce her as high as they can and she loves to let them push her in the swing and boy do they push her! They didn't realize I was watching but I saw her fall out of the swing twice one day and bounce right back up and dust off her hands and say "I ok" - in that respect she really is much tougher than the boys :)
I think we have finally made some strides in potty training with John-Mark. He's been going potty on his own without being nagged all day long and he even went poop on the potty this morning! To which there was much celebration and even an 8 30 am treat of making cookies for the big boy! I am praying this wasn't a one time occurrence and we are on our way in to underwear full time - perfect timing with Benjamin due around the corner - maybe I won't have 3 in diapers after all.
James has proven to be quite the soccer star! Last week he got 5 goals! While the coaches love him I doubt the other parents do. He's so much faster than the other kids and some of the kids aren't very aggressive about trying to get the ball so before you know it James has gotten to the ball and off he goes down the field. They try to sit him out some but he's always ready to play and there are always other kids on the team that want to sit out and relax :) we'll see how it goes next week.
Also, we've started a little homeschool co-op program with him once a week which I will do a whole other post on some day. But we are loving it and he is learning so much! It's truly amazing what their little minds can take it. I'll try to post some video soon of all he's doing.
Since I still don't have a newborn I decided to take advantage of Jeremy's day off and have a little double date with my boys today. I took them to see The Lion King in 3D. They had never seen it. We had a great time and ate our weight in popcorn! Oh how I adore these boys (and to be fair daddy and Gracie had a little date as well:)
Well, that's all for now. Just wanted to do some quick updates before things get too crazy around here. Hopefully next time I post it will be with pictures of our newest little boy!

Soccer Time!

Yesterday the boys started their first team sport, soccer. Although neither Jeremy or I are big soccer fans this is really the only thing they can do at their age and it is a great way for them to burn off energy!!! James was soooo excited! As soon as we pulled up to the field and he saw all the kids he said "soccer, soccer, soccer, I am SO EXCITED - are you excited John-Mark?"
Since the boys both have early August birthdays it makes the whole sports thing interesting. Of course, as soon as we found out I was pregnant with James almost one of the first things that Jeremy said was, "I hope he's born early August and not late July - that is the best time to be born for baseball because the age cut off is July 31st and if he's born in July he'll be the youngest on the team and August will make him the oldest, therefor the stronger, faster, etc." (already knowing he was going to have a boy:) I was clueless to this world of boy sports and age cut offs but he was right. Even for soccer they have to be 3 by July 31st in order to play on the 3 year old team. So, last year James missed the cut off by 11 days! This year we found a league that would let John-Mark play even though his birthday is 14 days after the cut-off. So what we have is both boys on the same team with James being the oldest and John-Mark the youngest (although, of course you would never know John-Mark is the youngest because of course he thinks he's 4!) You can really tell a difference with James though because he is definitely the tallest, fastest kid on the team because he's 4 and all the others are still 3. (This is the competitive advantage Jeremy is excited about once he gets in to baseball :) ha!)
The way this league works is we meet 30 minutes before the game for "practice" and then start the game. They played about 40 minutes yesterday, until all the kids started kind of wandering off :) I love how laid back it is this year. Both my boys loved it and James actually made two goals, never mind that one was for the other team :) John-Mark was really in to it during practice and the first 15/20 minutes of the game but then he was kind of over it and he briefly went missing until we found him on the side lines stacking cones :) It really is a truly comical thing to watch all these little ones trying to figure out what is going on. They have no concept of team work - they just all want to kick the ball at any cost, no matter who they are taking it from. I think John-Mark got a little confused and thought we were at home playing football because twice as James was breaking away with the ball he grabbed on to his back and tackled him to the ground - I seriously almost pee'd in my pants laughing so hard (which isn't a long stretch for a 38 1/2 week preggo mamma :) Once these boys figure out that working together will get them farther than tackling each other they may be unstoppable - or the beginning of "Allen domination" as Jeremy called it - ha, just kidding, it's all just good fun :) I think our team lost (with the help of James giving the other team a goal) but no score was ever given. We have 5 more games and I can't wait to see how we "improve" throughout the season :)
Here are a couple pics. I didn't get any action shots - it's hard to try and be the photographer, videographer, and cheering mommy all at the same time!

James during practice - he had just kicked his ball in to the goal

John-Mark during practice - loving it!

Daddy with his boys! We have a soccer coach but pretty much all the dad's stand around and help out. It's basically liked herding cats :)

Of course, this is still his first love - BASEBALL and his Copperhead bat - This pic is for you Aunt Debby. He LOVES all his Florida gear and has now converted to the dark side and told me to start calling him "Gator" to which I told him I would not be able to do :) Thanks for all the fun clothes!
Lastly, this pic is just pure sweetness. James loves to sit in Gracie's princess chair so I often find them sitting together watching their favorite show - Word World. How sweet are they. Can you tell she adores her "bubba"!

Baby Girl

She's still our baby - at least for a couple more weeks - and she'll always be our baby girl but I wanted to do a little post just about her before this blog goes new baby crazy for a bit :)
She is almost 22 months and over the last 6 months or so her personality has really "blossomed". Often when people find out I'm having another boy I'll hear comments like, "oh, Gracie will have to be tough with all those brothers" which makes me laugh. She is tough and determined without any help from her brothers and if anything these boys are going to make great husbands because they are learning at a young age how to take orders from a female in their lives - ha! She is the one in charge around here. For example, we all know she LOVES her bunny that she sleeps with. She's not allowed to carry it around - it must stay in her crib or she'll walk around sucking her thumb all day. I usually put bunny in the very corner of the crib so she can't reach it. But she is has figured out how to work around mamma's silly rules. She will pester her brothers like crazy, whining "bubba, bunny, bubba, bunny" and try to lead them to her room. She literally will not stop until they finally get so tired of hearing her they just get up from what they are doing and go get it for her! John-Mark seems to be the biggest push over for her. I see a wonderful partnership in crime developing :) These boys will do anything for her! Even when she's little miss bossy to them. It's not uncommon to see her pushing them around and telling them, "no ma'am, no ma'am" (wonder if she hears that a lot:) But for all her sass she can also be the sweetest. She loves to hug and kiss her brothers and I will often see her walking up to them, arms open wide asking, "hug? hug?"
Potty training - so, I'm hitting the potty training hard again with John-Mark. We've been doing this off an on for the last year but I think it's time to get really serious about it. He's 3 now and he can't move up to the new room at church until he's potty trained. He's doing pretty good. Still goes pretty much just at my prompting but he's not having a lot of accidents so we're making progress. The one that is shocking me is Gracie. She is obsessed with going to the potty. Anytime I take John-Mark she wants to go too. I finally broke down and bought her some panties to wear around the house just because taking her diaper on and off all day is a pain. She's by no means potty trained but she sure loves to sit on the potty, get toilet paper, flush, and wash her hands. Could I be so lucky as to get them both potty trained around the same time and only have sweet Benjamin in diapers? I'm trying not to get my hopes up.
Gracie and Daddy - honestly, until she was about 6 or 8 months old she was pretty indifferent to her daddy but she's not that way anymore. She LOVES her daddy or "dadden" as likes to call him. When he comes home from work she is the first one to run to him and give a big hug and kiss. Sweetest. ever. She always gives him a little pat on the back when she hugs him - just like he does her. She also loves to touch his smooth face when he has just shaved. How sweet is this -
see, she totally has all the men in this house wrapped around her little finger :)
I know things in her little world are about to change with a new baby in the house but I hope her transition isn't too difficult because even though she won't be The baby she will always be our baby girl :)
How cute is she with her towel on her head - such a little woman!