5 months old

Grant another month has passed us by.  You are getting bigger and more alert everyday.  You are eating 5 6-oz bottles a day and a bowl of cereal mixed with fruit or veggies.  Apples and peaches are by far your favs - with apples a strong #1.  You will eat others but you get excited and say mmmmmm for the fruit : )  You still sleep through the night and nap whenever/wherever.  You are absolutely the best baby - you never fuss, rarely cry and always happy.  Your new tricks include rolling over to your tummy, but you get really mad b/c you can't flip back over.  You like taking your paci out of your mouth and try to put it back in.  You are reaching for toys when they are in front of you.  You also like the exersaucer and doorway bouncer. 

7

Gracie,
You are now 7 years old and in 1st Grade at Ben Davis Elementary.  You are in Mrs. Burton's class and have been doing so well - you even get to go to advanced classes for extra work to challenge your smart brain!  Your 1st report card was all A+.  You are so sweet and smart.  You are also caring and always so nice to everyone.  You love going to school and seeing your friends.  

You are taking dance 2 days a week and 5 classes - whew!  On Tuesdays you take jazz and acro and on Thursdays you take ballet, tap and competition.  Yep You're doing your 1st dance competitions this spring.  You just finished up cheerleading for the fall and will start softball again in the winter.  You also participate in lots of activities at church - Sunday school, sunday night and Wednesday night children's activities.

Your favorite foods are pizza, meat, sunnyside up eggs and bacon.  You don't love sweets - you do like ice cream and slushies though.  You eat great and always eat lots of veggies or you at least try everything on your plate. Chocolate milk and water is what you drink the most of.  However, you love if we let you have a "brown drink" like a coke or something - very special treat!


You also definitely have your own style.  Your favorite colors are black and white.  You are also starting to love animal print!  Jeans and leggings are your favorite things to wear.  Mommy still picks out most of your clothes from Hannah Kate and Old Navy and Belk.

We are always so proud of you.  You are a great big sister to Mallary and Grant and such a loving, nice daughter.  

4 months Old

Another month has passed us by.  Grant you are just the sweetest, easiest baby there ever was.  You are eating 5 6-oz. bottles a day, sleeping through the night, wearing 6 month clothes, size 2 diapers.  You take the paci okay, but you are fine without it too.  You like to chomp on your hands, but not sure if it's a teething sign or just something for you to do.  You will play in the doorway bouncer now, swing and hang out in your bouncy seat.  You HATE tummy time; however I try to make you play a few minutes each day like that.  Tonight you rolled over to your back when I put you down, but never did it again.  You are starting to laugh quite a bit.  You must think mommy is funny.  You really laugh when I put your feet up to your mouth.  You think that is hilarious.  You are so cute and loving still.  You also like to look at yourself in the mirror.  And b/c we keep it real - you spend a whole lot of time in the carseat.  Taking each sister to school, dance, church, etc.  I feel like I am always loading you up in it.   You also had your 1st illness - a nice round of bronchitis with a yucky cough, but you never acted sick one time - if you didn't cough I would have never known anything was different. You will have shots on the 23rd and your check up so we'll record your stats then. 




He's still the smallest baby of the 3 but all relatively the same size.
Stats:  14lbs. 10oz. 50th percentile
           25 inches 50th percentile

and b/c I like to compare with the siblings (from a previous post)... Mallary weighed 14 lbs and 13 oz. I don't believe her height measurement - 26.5 inches...which is well beyond the 95th percentile. She was a little wiggly and mad when they took that measurement so I don't think it's truly accurate. She doesn't appear that long at all. Gracie was 14.15 and 25 and 5/8's at this age.  

Saturday Outing

I have been tired of sitting in the house and wanted to take a little outing.  We headed over to the Bankhead National Forest to have a picnic, fish and "hike" (it is a paved trail so I could push a stroller).  They have  pretty waterfall and a pretty mountainside to walk along.  Now, I did think it was going to be alot cooler, but it turned out to be closer to 90.  It was great in the shade for our picnic and walk, but pretty hot while we were trying to fish so we didn't fish too long. 

3 months old

Sweet Boy, you continue to be just the best little baby.  You have moved up to 6 oz. of formula per feeding and getting oh so close to sleeping through the night.  You will consistently sleep until about 4am, but we've had a few 2 am and 6am wake-ups.  I truly don't mind getting up with you and anything after 5 am I usually stay up for the day anyways.  We are still mixing sensitive and soy so that your tummy doesn't hurt.  It works great.  You are more alert and smile all the time.  You are "talking" all the time and you get so excited and worked up trying to get your sounds.  We are in the stage where we just move you from different device for your entertainment.  I'll be glad when you can play in the exersaucer and doorway bouncer.  You are in 3-6 month sized clothes and Size 2 diapers.  You are loving your bath more all the time - just not the hood from your hooded towels. 

"Last" 1st day of Preschool

Mallary is in the 4 year old class this year so it was officially her last 1st day of preschool today.  Sniffle!  She picked our her rainbow dress and new gold glitter shoes from meme for her special outfit.  She was all smiles when I dropped her off and I'm not even sure if she told me Bye.   She has lots of friends in her class and knew her teachers from lunch bunch.  She was so ready to start back

It's Football Time!

Another football season is upon us in our divided house and time to break out our game day gear.  Grant has some cute Auburn onesies (and a bubble being monogrammed for Bama!) and the girls had their outfits on.  Gracie still is Alan's Auburn fan and Mallary is my Alabama girl.  Here's to a great season and ROLLLLL TIDE! 

ADPi Girls...

had a long overdue sit around and catch up, laugh, gossip, play with babies afternoon at Andi's.  Amy, Niccole, Heather and I met over there to have lunch and visit.  Heather was a surprise-in from DC and I got to meet sweet Ellis for the 1st time.  I took Grant so the girls could meet him too.  It was the best afternoon and ended way too soon!

Andi and Ellis, Amy, Me and Grant, Niccole with Brother and Sally, & Heather

Bowling Party

Andrew is turning 4 and had a bowling party to celebrate.  The girls loved bowling and did pretty good.  Mallary rolled a few that were so S.L.O.W. that I wondered if they would ever touch a pin.  Andrew loved his cake.  We also got to see our sweet friends the Hills and meet sweet baby Caroline. 

1st day of 1st Grade

Gracie - you started 1st Grade today at Ben Davis.  You have been counting down the days for the past 2 weeks.  You were so excited for this day! You never seemed nervous about going to a new school with lots of new friends and for that I am thankful!  Your teacher this year is Mrs. Burton and all your 1st Baptist Kindergarten friends that are at Ben Davis are in your class.  Mommy, Daddy, Mallary and Grant went with you to drop you off for school.  We took a few quick pictures and away we went.  You had a little scared look when I left, but I knew you would be ok and you were!  2:35 was a long time away, but you were all smiles when I picked you up - you loved playing on the playground, having a school scavenger hunt to find all the special places in school, eating lunch in the cafeteria (we'll brave the lunch line tomorrow - ha!) and just have fun. 

Wrapping up summer vacation

After camps were finished for Gracie (dance and tennis) we knew we need some outings to help pass the days.  We found all kinds of fun stuff to do to wrap up our summer vacation.

We went to Bridgestreet and shopped, had ice cream, rode the carousel and walked around.

We went to the ArtWalk in Downtown Decatur. 


We played at the splash pad with friends and did the nature walk.


We had a breakfast picnic and played at a different playground.  

Sky VBS

Gracie and Mallary both got to go to VBS with Faith and Briley this week.  Mrs. Nancy does such a good job at PMPBC as children's director and they are so sweet to invite us to share in their VBS.  The girls had the best time - they loved the songs - especially "I'll fly away" and learning about the special mission project they were working on - buying nets for the children of Mali to protect them from Malaria. On the last night they got to showcase their songs for the parents and have the contest results presented.

Both girls got to do Art Camp this week (by far the best art camp!).  Mrs. Kelly does such a wonderful job with all the children and the art is so cute.  They also learn about artists and get to use all different mediums- paints, clay, chalk, pastels, pencils, collage, canvases - you get the picture.  They are exposed to all lots!

Week in Camps Review

This week was our 1st week of attempting somewhat of a normal routine...Gracie was at Upward Cheer Camp and Mallary at Princess Ballerina Camp.  We had to be up, dressed and out the door by 8:45am.  Woo - we made it!  Still not sure what we'll do when school starts in August as we're not the fastest morning people : )

Anyways on Friday, both girls had a performance.  Mallary had a a dance recital and Gracie did some cheers and stunts for us!

Lake Day

The girls and Alan went to PaPa's lake house to celebrate his 70th Birthday.  They all had fun playing with cousins, swimming and going down the giant slide.  The other favorite thing was taking golf cart rides!

Grant Alan McRee - birth story

On Tuesday, June 20th I was getting ready for bed.  I was reading and watching TV.  I noticed after midnight (and I never stay up that late) that I was having some mild contractions around every 3-5 minutes.  I had some at the Dr. office the previous Friday, but I ate some lunch and drank some water and they went away.  I drank tons of water and laid down, but they just didn't stop.  Around 1:45 I decided to wake up Alan and tell him we probably needed to go over to Huntsville just to see what was going on.  He was so sure they were going to just send us home.  We called our neighbor Michelle over to sleep so we didn't have to wake the girls and headed out.  We arrived at Huntsville around 2:30am and they went ahead and got me in a room and hooked up to the monitors.  I was contracting very regularly and they justified my trip to the hospital (yay for me - I was so afraid they were just going to say false labor and go home!)  At this point I was only 36 weeks and 3 days - not quite full term.  I was only 60% effaced and 1 cm dilated.  The on-call Dr. ordered meds to stop the contractions.  I got shots of brethine and they would stop them for about an hour and then gradually start back up.  My new Dr. (Dr. McCain) came on call at 6:00.  He ordered another round of the brethine shots just to see.  The same thing happened so around 10:30 He checked me again and I was more thinned out so they ordered the c-section!  We were having our baby today!!  They moved pretty quick to get me ready and we were in the OR by 11:30ish.  At 11:53 I heard my sweet baby crying and he was absolutely perfect.  He was 6lbs. and 14oz. 20 inches long.  We had gotten the NICU spill about preterm white boys, but they immediately said no need for that!  They let me see him and then he and Alan were off.  My surgery was finished and then I was sent to recovery for over an hour. Afterwards we were moved to our room and around 2:30 I finally got my sweet baby!!  He had lots of dark hair and looked so much like Mallary did when she was born.  He definitely has his daddy's lips.

VBS and Point Mallard

Operation Overboard is over and a huge success!  The girls had so much fun at VBS this week and topped off the week with our usual church potluck picnic and Point Mallard night.  This was Mallary's 1st year of VBS and she loved it.

 Performing at the picnic

 Time to swim

 Mallary and Daddy going down the slide

I had told Debbie I would help with registration or something else easy this year.  This was my last thing to make it through before I said Grant could arrive so anytime now....

A Sweet Shower

My friends, Faith and Ashley, hosted a "Sweet Shower" for Baby Grant.  Yes, I think we've also officially confirmed his name too!  The girls had yummy key lime cupcakes, chocolate treats, ice cream sandwiches for us to celebrate.  We got lots of little last minute boy things we needed and tons of diapers to say that we are finally ready for him to arrive!

Dance Recital Time

It's time for another dance recital - Gracie's 4th year and Mallary's 2nd.  This year's theme was "Let's go to the Movies".  Gracie had 3 dances and Mallary had 1 and then they both danced in the finale.  Gracie got to add jazz this year and loved it.  Both girls danced so well and had a big crowd of Mommy, Daddy, Meme, Papa and Nanny and Nana and Aunt Pat there to cheer them on.  Afterwards they got some flowers and trophies for doing so well.  (Mommy's goal was to remain pregnant through the dance recital and goal was acheived!)