Introducing Miss Maggie

Well, here's the story....I had my 39 week doctor appt. on Nov. 6. Dr. Matthews was worried that Maggie was breach so sent me for an ultrasound. Sure enough she was breach. Dr. Matthews explained my options. She said that I could have a c-section or try for what they call an external version where they attempt to turn the baby. I opted to give that a try first. Dr. Matthews then asked if I could be at the hospital the next morning! If they flipped Maggie they would induce. I immediately started making phone calls to get things arranged. Grant's parents were able to head down Thurs night to be there for Ellie in the morning and then my mom would leave early Fri. morning. Grant and I had no idea what would happen come the morning.

We checked in to the hospital Fri. morning, Nov. 7th and Dr. Lane came in to see if he could flip Maggie. After 5 min. we had success! I was given a pill to start the induction and then we began the long wait. The hours passed and there was very slow progress. I finally had to have the epidural at around 6:30 pm. It didn't work. All it did was make my right leg go completely numb. The dr. came back to try and correct it and it worked for like 2 hrs and I was able to get some sleep. However, I woke up to severe contractions and a numb right leg! Maggie was still up high and it was going to be awhile, but no relief in sight! Nov. 7 turned into Nov. 8 and I was exhausted! The mid-wife, Sally finally came in at around 1am to try to get me to push the baby down some. Little did I know that she was just going to go ahead and have me deliver all at the same time. I was still in hopes of some kind of pain relief! Anyway, as painful as it was (and people in Charlotte probably heard me screaming) at 1:34 am Margaret Thompson Shanks came into the world. She is perfect and beautiful and in the end that is what matters! She weighed in at 7 lb. 3 oz. and 21 inches long. She looked so teeny especially compared to Ellie, who was the same length, but weighed 8 lbs. 5 oz!

Ellie came to visit the next morning and meet baby sister. She was so excited and just kept saying, "baby" and wanting to hold Maggie. She has adjusted fairly well. She has had a few fits since we came home, but gets so excited when she sees Maggie. We are so blessed to have our two girls and are looking forward to all that is to come!

Halloween Week

We had a busy Halloween week! The Sun. before our church, Long's Chapel, had a trunk-or-treat fall fest. Ellie started to get the hang of trick-or-treating. We then were surprised with an inch of snow during the week! My first October snow! Ellie wanted to play in it so Grant brought some in for her to play with, but she could not understand where it went when it melted. She kept saying, "more". On Halloween her daycare trick-or-treated all the stores down Main St. Ellie would break in front of all the kids and walk up to the person with candy and hold her bag open until they put candy in it. Then she would look in her bag to make sure they gave her something! It was so funny. They had a party that afternoon and Ellie wanted all the balloons to play with. Halloween night we had a get together with some friends to eat and take the kids trick-or-treating. We live by a neighborhood that closes off its' streets for Halloween and the fire dept and police dept even come out and hand out candy. There are around 1000 kids out there and houses decorate, etc. Ellie's friends Nelson, Henry, and Will went with us. It was a very fun and busy week for us all!

Now we are just trying to get everything ready for Maggie's arrival! We will know tomorrow if we are going to induce next week. I will update when I know.

Our Little Monkey

My mom came to visit last weekend and got Ellie jumping on the couch to "Five Little Monkeys". She has a big time! You can also hear her say "Crockett" and "Daddy". Notice that Grant is eating and of course watching Jeopardy in the background!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Fall is here!

Just wanted to pass along some pics from our weekend. Ellie was sick for the first part, but we were able to get out on Sunday and go for a hike to Frying Pan Tower. We decided against climbing to the top of the fire tower. We went a little ways up, though. The leaves are really starting to change here and it is so pretty up on The Blueridge Parkway.

Yesterday, we went up to the Pumpkin Patch to pick out some pumpkins. Ellie had fun with the little pumpkins thinking they were balls. She would pick them up and throw them! We had to explain they were not balls!

Ellie is really starting to talk and say words we can understand! Her vocab consists of, "Crockett" (her favorite word), "hot", "toot toot", "ma ma", "kitty", "duck", "apple", "daddy", "ball", "baby", "boo", "yucky", and she is now saying "tee tee" when she wets in her diaper. Now if she would just go use the potty! We think that she has an interesting set of words in her vocabulary, but it is so cute when she gets close to the oven and waves her hands and whispers, "hot!". She does the same with "yucky" when she is getting her diaper changed or getting close to something dirty. She is a handful for sure and full of energy, but we wouldn't have her be any other way! Hopefully she will get out of her hitting stage before Maggie arrives!!!!

Football!

Fall is for football! At the end of Sept. we made the trip to Oxford to watch Ole Miss play Vandy. Grant got to join us on the trip! On the way there we stopped in Crossville to see Ellie's buddy, Kayne. Kayne is a month older than Ellie. On the way home we stopped back in Crossville to see Sean and Jessica Stephens and meet their little boy, Grove. We had a good time in Oxford seeing Grandaddy Ellis and my family. Ellie also got see my cousin, Rebecca, and finally meet second cousin Tiley.

Last weekend we went to Charlotte to watch the Chiefs play the Panthers. My good friend, Turk, plays for the Chiefs and got us tickets and passes to the player area afterwards. The Chiefs lost, but we got to see alot of Turk on the field and then see him afterwards. Ellie and Turk finally got to meet! It was so great seeing him and we had a wonderful day. I don't think we'll be going to anymore games this year since we are now counting down the days until Maggie arrives. We have less than a month now! Ellie is patting my stomach and saying "Baby", but we don't think she really knows what that means - especially since she will have to share daddy with another little girl!

Toy Box built by GrandRon

About three weekends ago, Grant's parents brought up the toy box that GrandRon built for Ellie and Maggie. It is absolutely beautiful! I wanted to share some pictures of it. We are so grateful to him for putting in so much time working on this for the girls. We were in desperate need of something to put all Ellie's toys in and this is more than we expected. So we say a BIG THANK YOU to GrandRon for all of his hard work on this and it will be something that will be treasured for years and years to come.

Trip to the Nature Center in Asheville

On labor day we took Ellie to the Nature Center in Asheville. She loves animals and loved it here. They have lots of animals that are native to Western North Carolina such as wolves, black bears, and river otters. They also had lots of snakes and turtles. Ellie really liked the turtles and even got to pet one. They also had a petting area and we could not get Ellie to leave! One goat did decide to ram her a little and scared her, but she was fine. Her favorite was this one sheep that just let her stand there and pet it. She also stuck her finger in the turkey cage and a turkey pecked it. She screamed and then was fine. She just loves the animals and wants to touch and play with them all. It was a good time and wore her out! Next we will have to go to a zoo!