The Lott Family: THREE (a LONG post)

We've been celebrating the number three in the Lott household lately, so here it is: the post dedicated to the third addition to our family and the third birthday of our baby girl! We'll go with the birthday first, so you'll have to wait just a little longer for those newborn pictures! :)

It's so hard to believe our tiny, sweet little baby girl just turned THREE. Three is so far precious and wonderful, but every day I'm reminded it is officially NOT baby anymore! Kate is oh-so-independent, talking like a teenager, and 100% girly-girl. I'll have to dedicate another post (soon!) on everything she and her brothers are doing lately, but for now we'll get on to the birthday...

I think Kate had 3 birthday "parties" this year! We kicked off the celebrating in St. George the week before her birthday as the pre-party to Gramp's 50th birthday surprise party! Her birthday fell on a Sunday and since that's a busy day for Daddy, we celebrated as a family the Saturday before. Uncle Ryan, Nana, and Papa got to join us for this one! Then the following Thursday we headed to Lexington to celebrate with Mema, Gaga, Aunt Margaret, and Uncle Frank. That's a lot of celebrating for a little girl! We are blessed to have such loving family in our lives to care so much about our children!

Saturday morning, Daddy took Graham outside so Mommy could get ready for the party and when Kate came out to play, they had made her a huge birthday sign on the sidewalk!

Kate LOVES princesses and ballerinas right now and I found these little dollar crowns, so we let her wear one for her party hat. A little lop-sided, but she thought it was great! I just LOVE that happy face!!

Listening to us sing "Happy Birthday" to her! She is truly an angel! :)

Had to include this sweet little cupcake face!

This one's for Aunt Whitney. She looks too grown up, though!!

This was on Sunday, on Kate's actual birthday. These two truly love each other!

Uncle Ryan, Nana, and Papa with ALL the children!

Family of FIVE!

Pooped (with her new Cinderella Barbie) after a long day of fun! I remember when that sleeping face was just sooo tiny! Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

OK. So here it is! The story of the arrival of Hollis Michael Lott on July 13, 2010!! The delivery story actually starts about mid-June when we were at the beach with Kevin's side of the family and I started having random contractions. We came home, Kevin headed to camp with the youth group, and my parents came to stay with us for the week. I had a doctor's appointment during that time and found out I was 2 centimeters dilated and 25% effaced! This was new for me (I'd never been more than 1 centimeter dilated when I was induced.), so we didn't know how quickly Hollis was going to make his arrival. Mom and I stressed all week that I was going to have this baby before Kevin made it home from NC, so we rushed around getting everything PERFECT for Hollis's arrival! I kept having more and more contractions and each night they'd get closer and closer together and more regular. One night they started at about 20 minutes apart and got down to about 10 minutes apart over about 6 hours! I almost had Kevin come home, then they just stopped. Soon I realized that was just gonna be the pattern. Kevin did make it home, my parents made it back to Hilton Head, and we started WAITING. It wasn't that I was late, it was just so many "close calls" and regular contractions that every second felt like the second I'd go into labor. (Plus, my perfectly "baby-ready" house was less and less "baby-ready" with every passing day and that frustrated me!) At my next doctor's appointment I was 3 centimeters and still 25% effaced. We decided to schedule to be induced on Thursday, July 15 if I didn't go into labor before then. (My due date was the 16th, but Kevin had a big youth event coming up and I was afraid he'd miss out on Hollis's first few days if I went a week overdue.) A couple days after that appointment, I had regular contracts ranging from 5-20 minutes apart for 12 hours. I called my parents to tell them that this might be it. By the time they got packed, the contractions had stopped completely! Ugh!!! Then Monday morning before my appointment on Tuesday, I called my Mom to see if she wanted to come down to keep Kate and Graham and be here for the scheduled induction on Thursday. Come to find out, she was already packing her bags with the same idea in mind! So she came up Monday night, we got the house clean again, some people from church brought us a wonderful dinner, and we had a fun time hanging out! Mom kept the children on Tuesday so Kevin could drive me to my appointment. When we got there I was 5 centimeters!!! Dr. Risinger said, "Wanna have a baby tonight?!" YESSSS!! Absolutely! It was so fun to have Kevin with me at that moment to share that excitement! We talked about it and decided I had time to go home, get my bags, and come back to the hospital. Some precious friends from church, Miss Elaine and Willy T, were willing to come keep Kate and Graham at the drop of a hat, so we got home, got everything settled and made it back to the hospital at around 5:30. By then I could feel the contractions every 5-6 minutes and they were starting to really hurt. We checked in and got into a room immediately. All of our family made it in by 6:30ish, which was HUGE. We were so afraid they'd miss everything because the doctor said they'd just break my water when I got there, but it was 7:00 or 7:30 by the time we saw the doctor. I was getting pretty uncomfortable, but the contractions were getting closer together, then farther apart, then closer together again...I guess it was around 8/8:30 when I got my epidural. (This was the only thing I was unimpressed with about this hospital - it took the doctor 2 tries to get it in and he had to "wiggle" it around for what seemed like FOREVER to get it in the right place - and I had to ask the nurse to help hold my shoulders since they told Kevin to sit down!) Anyway, by the time they finally checked, I was only 6 centimeters and I hadn't dropped very much, so they didn't want to break my water yet. I let them convince me to have some pitocin about 9:30, maybe 10:30 - my timeline was so fuzzy that whole night. I was concerned about family that had to drive home after Hollis was born, so I took the pitocin. I kinda wish I hadn't b/c I in no way wanted that whole experience to be over! Hollis Michael Lott arrived at 11:23 p.m. on Tuesday, July 13!!! You never think your heart can melt like that THREE times, but oh how it does! Hollis immediately captured everyone's heart! He was (and still is) such a little butterball in comparison to Kate and Graham! He was 8 pounds, 0.7 ounces and 20 inches long! He definitely weighed the most of the 3 and was the shortest of the 3! We all immediately noticed his hands - they are so big - long fingers like Kate and Graham, but I was convinced that at birth he could probably palm a basketball! :) Of course, the next hours FLEW by. It was hard getting used to the way they do things at a different hospital. They wanted me to be able to walk on my own to the restroom before they moved me to my recovery room, so at 1:00 a.m. I'm trying to get up and walk to the restroom. My epidural was REALLY good, and I just couldn't feel my legs yet. I was SO tired and the nurses just kept coming back to get me to try again. Finally when I almost got sick all over the place, they let Kevin help me get up. The other different thing is that this hospital didn't give Hollis his bath and all right there in the delivery room. They had to take him back to the nursery. Kevin was allowed to go and videotape, but it was sad for me to have him whisked away for so long and to miss that whole part. Everything took them SO long that night. We didn't get to our recovery room until 4:30 a.m. and Hollis didn't get there 'til about an hour after that. I was one impatient, tired Mommy. I just wanted my baby!! We decided after that just to keep Hollis in the room with us during the night. He wasn't at all interested in nursing, so we all got sleep! :) We had to leave the hospital on Thursday, which just seemed TOO short since he was born so late in the day on Tuesday, but we were ready to see Kate and Graham! They had come up to visit us at the hospital on Wednesday and their reactions to Hollis were...varied. Graham loved him right away, but was too intrigued by the hospital room to pay him a lot of attention. Kate was really shy around him at first, but gradually fell in love with his TINY TOES! She kept wanting to hold him and unwrap his swaddle to see his little toes and his "belly cord." Then she'd be done. Then she'd want to hold him again! Graham kept wanting to "point out" his eyes. We had tons of fun introducing them to their littlest brother! It's so hard to believe we're a family of FIVE!! Praise the Lord for a house FULL of beautiful, healthy little ones!

Meeting my little Ollie Bear!