Reagan's New Ride

Check out Reagan's inaugural ride on his new motorcycle. We definitely need to invest in a helmet...

I have a feeling our next video post will be Libby doing a little four legged motoring of her own...she's almost on the move!

MOT

It finally sunk in for me that I'm a mother-of-two when I mastered the double kiddo trip to the grocery store. Check this out...they're still smiling at check out. I thought I had officially arrived!

This was before my grocery trip last week...bringing in my last load of groceries with a screaming baby, my car alarm going off (with my keys in the house), only to find Reagan in the kitchen with a rotisserie chicken in his lap. Nice! I wish I had a picture of that.

So, I haven't officially mastered being a "MOT," but the kiddos are a joy and we've been making some great memories. Below are the highlights of our last six months...

Outerbanks Trip with Family

Cute Cousins - Riley and Reagan

Beach Babies - Libby and Isaac

Awww - Paul with his sisters

Summer Fun

Chillin with Uncle Rick and Friends

Field Trip to the Pumpkin Patch Speaking of pumpkins....

Halloween

Reagan and his buddy, Carter

I-pa and our little ladybug

Thanksgiving

Four Generations

Annual Black Friday Ladies Brunch

Hey, hey, hey

Christmas

Father of the Bride (someday), Part 1

We are officially two months into our new life with a new life ... and, oh yeah, have a two year-old, and what perhaps once seemed to be on the fringe of impossible now feels very much like, well, life. There are moments of chaos, quickly followed by reminders of how blessed we are to have the family we do, just as immediately followed by more chaos. This is the circle of life as we know it, and after 60 days I can speak for all parties involved in saying that we wouldn't have it any other way. Well, Bentley is rather non-committal on the issue, and frankly I don't blame him at this point, as little Libby hasn't done a whole lot to exhibit much value in his eyes. Reagan greatly adds to the dietary supplements of one Bentley at virtually every meal, while Libby's all-liquid, all the time, diet is yet to yield such rewards for our pup. In due time dear Bentley, however, I fear you will have more second-hand projective scraps than you will be able to retrieve.

To be sure, there are some notable differences between boys and girls, or rather having boys and girls I should say. There are the obvious aesthetic differences, such as our house now looks as though it was the target of bombing run by a squadron of B-52s armed with pink bunker-busters. That is a major change and it takes some getting used to. Then of course there are the less obvious and far less visible differences in having a baby girl. When Reagan was born my immediate thoughts were that of planning for college, outfitting him with sports equipment and waiting breathlessly for the opportunity to do something that required a lot of mud and potentially some destruction too ... just for the fun of it. That, after all, is the right of passage for boys ... destroying stuff and somehow making a mess of yourself in the process, and knowing that someone else (read: mommy) will clean it all up in due time. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it is, and frankly our "sprinkler sessions" this summer have lived up to anything I ever dared hope for. But girls are different, having a girl, is different. I don't want her to get dirty, I don't even want her to get dusty. Libby was born two months ago and I haven't spent one second thinking about saving for college, who has time for that when you are saving up for a real, live, unicorn after all? They are just different.

This is an exciting time for our family and to be honest it took a work trip to the west coast for me to really make the time to sit back and reflect upon how material this change in our life has been and how truly blessed Chrissy and I are to have the responsibility we now have. Yes, it is chaos, sure it is. But after my first night of being away from my family of five, my over-riding emotion is that it's my chaos and I already miss it very much.

Shortly after Libby was born we had our friend and photographer, Andrea Shirey, come out to do a family shoot for us. If you are ever in the market for something of the kind we have nothing but wonderful things to say about her and you can see some of her other work at www.andreashirey.com. We've bought the rights to the photos so I don't think I'm bending any laws in posting some of the proofs here. If I'm wrong on that, well, this will likely be my last blog posting and I hope someone will feed the fish and clean the pool while I'm serving my time. Anyway, thanks to everyone for their help over these past two months, for their thoughts long before that, and certainly for their donations to the Libby Needs a Unicorn fund ... they have all been appreciated and noticed by us all. A special thanks to Maga and E'pa for helping to tuck the kids in bed while I am out of town. Love to all, and until next time ...

Welcome Liberty Grace Keeton

Liberty "Libby" Grace Keeton made it into the world today around 5:20 this evening, she is precious and healthy and mommy is too. Everything went as planned (easy for me to say i suppose), though as it turned out my wife my wife stopped to get gas on her way to deliver a baby. She didn't know she would be staying at the hospital at the time, but still its a little funny ... and a lot Chrissy.

Everyone is healthy, Chrissy did great, we are still waiting on the official weigh-in, but here's the first picture.

The Name Game

Quick update on the status of our little lady .... Chrissy is at the doctor's office now on a monitor which is showing that she may be in early labor, but it would be very early labor at best. From what the doctor says, our little one should be out and about at some point in the next 24 hours. Everyone is happy and healthy ... well healthy anyway. You'll have more when we have more, in the meantime we can play the name game. Some of you know the hints we've given, some of you don't. In the interest of a level playing field, here they are.

Baby Keeton Name Game Hints




• Culturally Relevant: When Reagan was on the way we gave the hint of "historically relevant," so this is a bit different. The name is not that of a historical person, at least not one that we know of.

  
  

• Commonly after "Life" and before "Death": Self explanatory, though perhaps not obvious.

  
  

• Lady-like: Know any famous ladies? How about some that aren't so much historically relevant, but rather culturally so?

Enjoy, feel free to post a guess in the comment field, and please keep Chrissy and the baby in your thoughts and prayers.

Paul