Grace Michelle Dodds

Grace Michelle Dodds was born at 9:57 AM central time today. She weighs 8 lbs 2 ounces and has brownish hair. Her hair is 1/2" long on top. We named her Grace because Stacey and I love the name, and because of the Grace of God. Her middle name Michelle is after her aunt Brionna Michelle.

Stacey has been having contractions for months. They have been worse for the last week. Tuesday night she was up a lot with contractions, and at 4 AM she started active labor. She was craving biscuits with tuna gravy so I made it. That was a mistake, since she threw it up later. We went to the hospital at 6 AM and Stacey was dilated to 7 cm. After 3 hours Stacey got an epidural, and she's very glad she did. Once she got it she took a 30 minute nap, and when she woke up the baby was ready to be born. Three pushes and she was done.

Stacey's friend Christy came to help with the labor and delivery. She also doubled as our photographer and got a lot more pictures than I could have. Thanks Christy!




Stacey taking a nap through transition. Her advice: "Get the epidural!"







One of the best parts of the epidural was that Stacey was able to enjoy the delivery. With Evelyn she was in so much pain she wasn't very happy with the stinkerbug, and it took a while to get attached. We loved Grace instantly.


Here's a video of Evelyn and Grace meeting for the first time.




Evelyn figuring out that a baby is a person. She's laying it on pretty thick in this video, probably because she heard me say that we're only keeping the cuter of the two kids. It's gonna be a tough decision.





This is one of my favorites because Evelyn is smiling at Grace, and Grace is making a face that I'll consider to be a smile back at Evelyn.

Dodds family reunion

Last month we went to Utah for the Dodds family reunion. Here are a few pictures.

Love Song meets Viva la diva

Best song ever. Here's the link

I just noticed that Stacey wrote "Viva la Diva" instead of "Viva la Vida". I like her title better, I'm keeping it. -ND

and life goes on...

It's been a long time since we have posted a blog! Wow. Things have been quite busy. Evelyn is getting so big! She loves listening to music at night. Recently, she has been listening to Primary songs. One night, she had been in bed for about 30 minutes and Nathaniel and I had supposed she was asleep but heard this high-pitched, abrupt noise coming from her room about every 10 seconds. We put our ear to the door to hear what was going on and heard "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" playing in the background. Evelyn was singing to it! It was so cute! She loves to say "happy apple" (I don't know why but it's adorable how she says it) and loves to close doors. She also has been reading words like daddy, mommy, hi, clap, cat and dog on flashcards. (thanks to Dianne and Rich who bought Dr. Titzer's "Your Baby Can Read" series. It really does work!

So we recently went to visit the Dodds and had lots of fun. Evelyn and Hunter (15 months old) were so cute together! We would ask Evelyn to hug and kiss Hunter to which Hunter was very hesitant about however Evelyn was persistent enough to a point that she would grab his face with both hands and give him a big whopper.

I am 29 weeks along now with our next addition to our family. I have been feeling great. It's been fun feeling the fluttering movements in my abdomen become more prominent. Our little girl is growing fast. I gained 11 pounds from my previous visit which was 2 months ago! Woohoo!
I think a lot of that weight gain was from the Dodd's reunion. :) We went to some Brazilian buffet in Utah. Sooo good.

It's been so humid and hot though. My jeans stick to my legs, ughh! I am so a dry-heat kind of girl. I have been wearing skirts even though I feel like I am going against my Gurr upbringing but it is so much cooler!

We have pictures but they are on Nathaniel's laptop and he's in California right now for another testing trip. He's coming back tomorrow. Yeah!

Reading new material

Side note: Recognizing Moroni was a fluke. I tried this later and she pointed to Alma. However, she does recognize pictures of Christ. Also, it took lots of tape and patience to teach her how to be "soft" to the scriptures so I wouldn't recommend just handing your favorite set of scriptures to a 1 year old... in case you were thinking about it.

Having fun outside

So I have a confession to make, I do not like the rain in Nashville especially with Evelyn. She loves to be outside! For her, the day cannot be over if she hasn't gone outside yet to pick the flowers (weeds) or play in the mud.

Here's a cute video of what Evelyn does when it's raining outside



Playing with Daddy in the yard is sooo much fun.

Nathaniel's humor

So after Evelyn disintegrated a banana all over herself, Nathaniel picked her up out of her high chair and said,

"I have an idea. Let's blend up all your food and have you roll in it so your skin can absorb all of its nutrients from now on. Then we can bypass these pesky mealtimes."

Only in Nathaniel's world