Dagyn Beannacht Mason

 Thanks everyone for the kind words and congrats!!  We are really enjoying our little guy!  On his 1 week birthday last night we all laid hands on him and thanked God for a safe birth, a healthy baby and for future health and happiness for him.

A minute or so after birth

 I have been informed (thanks KM) that I neglected to announce the name we chose for our little one! (bad Kelley, bad Kelley).  At about 2 days old we settled on Dagyn Beannacht.  

With his placenta, a few hours after birth

Dagyn is pronounced Day-gin (like Meagan).  There are many different ways you can spell it and apparently each spelling can also be pronounced differently.  This spelling is often pronounced like da-jin but that was a bit 'Sweedish' for us so we are sticking with pronouncing it our way.  The name is Hebrew for 'grain or wheat' or gaelic for 'dark haired'. Since neither of those applied to our Dagyn we went with the Gaelic word Beannacht, which means "blessing".  It is pronounced like Bannock but with a "t" at the end.

first bath, less than 1 day old

I have really enjoyed my week in bed!  I am pretty sad the week is over, it went by WAY too fast.  I loved just cuddling up with him and nursing and having everyone take care of me and bring me food (and we have SO much great food here . . . which is good because I am always very hungry and everything tastes SO good!!).  I plan to continue to take it easy for as long as possible.

We actually went out for the first time today.  We went by a friends house, the chiropractor, and to JoAnns so I could get some fabric to make him a baby blanket.  I usually love going out with my newborns and showing them off to people.  But I was really anxious to come home and crawl in bed and cuddle again.

1st picture of the family together . . . 1 day after birth

Hopefully this weekend I can get the new blog up and running, get some 'stills' off of the video camera and get the birth story (which is pretty much finished) posted.

It is March 10! Today is my EDD!

(been trying to post this all day, but my internet went out so it is going out a bit late).

I figured I'd still be pregnant today, but instead I have this . . . .

And if I were to still be pregnant, I suppose it would be something like this . . .

Still working on the birth story.  Just because the labor was shorter apparently doesn't mean my story is, LOL! For those of you who have read my birth stories, you know that they are like novels!  I am so long winded but I just want to make sure I get all my thoughts and feelings down so I don't forget them. 

I'll try to post more pictures soon though, assuming my internet doesn't crap out on me again, ugh.

It's a BOY!! and baby/pregnancy pictures

Yes, another boy!  That makes 5 boys (and 1 girl).  

 Born unassisted at home in the water (dad and most of the kids were right there, the little ones and Grammy missed it by less than a minute . . . though granted, after pushing for over 2 hrs I didn't give them much 'heads up' when it was finally time, so only the fastest ones made it in the room LOL!!).

My earliest baby, born at 39 wks exactly.  Weighing 8.4 and 22 1/4" long with a 14 inch head.  I had wanted to go late but thank goodness I didn't!!  He would have been over 9lbs!  No name yet, we'll figure that one out soon.

I should be able to get the birth story out within a week.  I had been planning on splitting up this blog into 2.  One for the opinion/personal stuff and then keeping this one for just the Kozy related stuff where I can put all the updates and new stuff (because we have new stuff I have neglected to post about).  So I am thinking if I can get my act together I can start the new blog with the birth story (I have already duplicated most of my non-kozy posts from here, over there)  We'll see.  But I'll let y'all know.

Anyway I had this whole post planned out with all my pregnancy pictures.  I was going to post it yesterday at 39 wks but . . well, I had a baby instead. LOL.  So I am going to go ahead and post all the pictures since I already had them downloaded and in here ready to post.

So I had a professional photographer come over on Tues (just 2 days before he was born) to take pregnancy pictures.  It was FREE because she wanted more photos for her portfolio . . . score for me!!

 I am 38.5 wks in these . . . little did I know that in 2 days . . . 

Here are pictures of my belly/baby growing.  I was trying to be really good to take pictures consistently this time, with the same clothes and the same pose.  It is so cool being able to go back and see the body changing, AND to compare my body/belly from this last pregnancy to the others.

12 wks

16 wks

20 wks

24 wks

28 wks

32 wks

36 wks

38 wks

Valentines Day 2011

Yes, Yes, I am still here.  I have just been busy sewing panel Kozys in whatever spare time I have (where I have energy to do anything ;0)  SO much I want to blog about and like NO extra time!  There are a million things I want to do and I am almost 38 wks YIKES!!

Anyway, I made a bunch of stuff for Christmas (necklaces for the neices, and silk/velvet purses) but I forgot to get pictures.  I did get pictures of the soap we made, I'll post those soon.  

I did manage to take some pictures of some of our Valentines creations (and we made Valentine lighted Jars, but no pictures).

I was hoping to post these before V-day but, well a week late will have to do.  We had a Valentines gathering with our local families for natural living group so we made cards and treats to share.

First my favorite of all . . . . . dipped pretzels

I thank my friend Barbara for these.  She gave us some for Christmas.  I was like eeeh, pretzels are not my favorite . . . that is until I took a bite!!  They have a layer of CARAMEL and then chocolate!  They are like a candy bar . . . SOOOOO good!!  So of course I had to make some.   Yes, I used icky food coloring to make them more festive.  I'll do another post about how to make them (super easy).

Then the kids got to making Valentines for their friends and Piper and Ever wanted to make bags to hold their Valentines.

Piper and Ever love doing crafts the most

We made butterfly valentines, another idea I got from Family Fun.  We made them differently though.  I cut out butterfly shapes from construction paper and the kids decorated them with markers, glitter, stickers, etc.  Then I taped a roll of smarties in the middle.  Fairly easy and quick and they really enjoyed it.

Here are some Valentines with the bags that Piper and Ever made (just took gift bags, covered with construction paper and made faces etc.).  Pipers is of course Pikachu (pokemon for those of you who don't know, but I am sure most of you do ;0)  She did the whole thing herself, and she helped Ever with his heart man.

Hope all of y'all had a wonderful Love Day!!

We have gone jar crazy! Check out our Autumn jars!

I love, love, love these lighted jars.  I love the ambiance they give the room and the house.  They are a perfect accent!  So when I took down our Halloween Jars everything looked blah, and I didn't want to wait till after Thanksgiving to pull out the Christmas Jars (and we need to make more anyway because we gave some as gifts).  So I said . . . hey, lets do autumn jars!! 

I figured we could just do autumn colors and to make things simple, we would just collect leaves from the yard and decoupage them on.  Much easier for me because the kids weren't cutting, making a mess with paper etc. 

I am not going to get into the process again, but if you want to know how to make them check out my 2 previous blog posts HERE and HERE.

Finally I got a picture of all 5of them gluing their leaves on (well Thrace is just watching)

 I had them choose which color or colors they wanted for their jar out of what I had.  I only had orange and rad tissue paper so I improvised and used napkins to get yellow.  I wish I had some brown because I was curious how it would turn out, but alas, none to be found (and I was not going to the store).  They really did most of the work again, with me helping mostly the little ones.  The napkins were a bit tricky so I did do most of the mod podge on those.

Then we went out and each kid collected their own leaves! We live on a mountain in the woods so we have plenty of trees and leaves.  The leaves on the ground were too hard so we picked smaller leaves that were left on trees.  The cool thing is that they could learn about the types of leaves and trees while we were at it (Charlie knows all that stuff, I am clueless.)

 I had them just glue the leaves on with glue (some were tricky and I had to work with them to get them to curve around the jars and stick) and then we did the mod podge once they were stuck well.  I know they will turn brown (though some were brown already) but it doesn't matter, they are for the silhouette against the colored tissue paper when the jar is lit.

 I used the multicolored lights again because I couldn't get to the white lights, but I think ideally white lights would provide the best light . . . though the colored lights are softer.

You could really do anything you want that is autumn theamed, but these were easy for us!  We actually did these start to finish in 1 day (had them lit by evening) which is a record for us (usually I have a table full of scrap paper and partially decorated jars for days before we are finished).

I love these jars so much that I am thinking of how I can have them year round . . . Valentine jars, Easter jars, July 4th or summer themed . . . so many possibilities!!

Now, for an added photo . . . because hey, pumpkins are autumn themed and I didn't want to do a separate blog post with just a picture of me . . . but I did want to show y'all how I dressed up for Halloween . . . . 

21 wks

I did the same thing the only other time I had a belly on Halloween, when I was 29 wks pg with Ever . . . LOTS of fun (and lots of comments from people).

Lighted Halloween Jars . . . and other spooky stuf!!

We made these a few wks ago and I have been trying to get them up here to show y'all but I am still having a hard time finding time to blog.

I got this idea last year when I saw the lighted jars at the Not So Idle Hands blog HERE  SO CUTE!!  But alas, I was too late for Halloween, so instead I made Christmas Jars.  Some of you may remember them, I blogged about them HERE.  They turned out great and the kids had a ball making them.  In fact we are going to have to make more this year because we gave a bunch of them away as gifts last year.

I was very excited though as Halloween came around again so we could do some Halloween jars.  We made them the same way we did the Christmas jars.  They are pretty easy to make, but beware they are a tad time consuming and can be messy.  Though I was doing them with 4 kids so that will take longer.  My oldest two (10 and 8) could do much of it themselves, I helped with cutting and stuff, but the younger 2 needed some help with the Mod Podge. And since you have to do multiple layers it does take some time.  But it is worth it!!

I'll go over the instructions again for those interested.

Materials

• Glass Jars (I save all our peanut butter, pickle, pasta jars etc. so we never have a shortage of these)
• Tissue Paper (I chose white, orange, black, and green for Halloween, but you can also find holiday paper that you can use as well, then yo don't even really have to decorate it, just decoupage it on)
• Mod Podge or some other type of decoupage 'glue'
• A brush to brush the glue on
• Construction Paper or anything else the kids may want to decorate it with (we have used glitter, stamped paper shapes etc.)

Decorating

First you want to cut your tissue paper in strips, then cover your jar with a layer of Mod Podge.   We usually cover just a small section at a time, applying the Mod Podge then the tissue paper till the whole jar is covered.
To make the pumpkins more 'pumpkin like' we did the strips vertically but in the past we have done them horizontally too.  For some of the other jars, I just let the kids put the strips on however they wanted.

 Piper, Arah and Ever adding tissue paper to their pumpkin jars

(notice the dummy hanging from the rafters of the porch in the window behind Piper . . . 

Charlie made this with the kids just a few days before . . . he is creepy!!)

 Once you have the whole jar covered with the paper (and have trimmed off the excess on top and bottom) do another generous layer of Mod Podge over the whole thing, making sure to cover all the tissue paper with a protective layer.  It is delicate so take care (and tell your kids to be extra gentle).

Once you have done that, then decorate as you wish.  Each of the kids designed their own pumpkin face, then they got to do another jar however they  liked.

Piper and Ever putting tissue paper on their 2nd jars.

Piper (8) drew and colored some black cats (one she colored very dark black, the other she drew on black construction paper and cut out) and we put them on top of her purple jar (with black construction paper stripes on top and bottom) for a silhouette.  Xian (10) did a green Frankenstein.  He used black construction paper for the face and hair.  Arah (6) drew a lot of ghosts and things that he thought were 'scary' out of plain white paper, and then cut them out and put them on his purple/black striped jar.  And Ever (3) made a purple jar too, but he added squares of other colors of tissue paper over that along with a few cut outs.  I made the white ghost.
Make sure you do a coat of mod podge over any additions to your jars.

You can use anything to light them.  Being glass, candles will work.  You can also use battery operated tea lights (I have heard that you can get them at the dollar store 2 in a pack).  I have them all lined up so using a string of lights is easiest.  Usually I will use white but apparently those were like in the bottom of the Christmas box and not so easy for Charlie to get, so we used multicolored instead and they worked fine.

For some reason my pictures of these jars didn't turn out as good as the ones I took of the Christmas jars last year, but you get the general idea.

We had a Halloween party with our local natural families group (love those guys!!).  The kids always have a ball!  We had pinatas, crafts, games, lots of goodies (we made halloween shaped sugar cookies).  Thank goodness we have friends with large houses and generous hearts who are willing to host our bi-weekly gatherings and potlucks (which can sometimes get VERY large).

 Xian (monster) Arah (ninja) Ever (lake monster) Piper (witch) and Thrace (giraffe) 

and our homemade skeleton man (made with PVC pipes, we got info from the Family Fun website)

Hope YOU have a great Fall season!!

Why I have been MIA most of the summer!

Aug 29,2010

12 1/2 wks with baby #6

With the 24/7 icky feeling (though thankfully a bit better than with the others) and the fact that most of my blogging and computer stuff is done after the kids are asleep, and the past 2 mo and that I have NOT been able to stay awake much past them (either that or I felt too sick to do work) the blog and many e-mails have been neglected!!

I am 13 wks though and starting to feel better and get some energy back so hopefully I can make up for it now!  My 'due date' is March 10th so I figure . . . sometime in March.  My edd's have been based on conception, and so far my babies have been 10, 6, 4, 3, days "late" and only 1 was 3 days "early" (not in that order).  Funny thing is they have all ranged from 7.12 to 8.4 lb (within 1/2 lb or so of each other) and have been from 21-22 3/4".  So not a huge amount of variation in when they decide to come or what size they are, LOL!! 

We don't use doppler or ultrasound unless I feel it is medically warranted, so I haven't heard the heartbeat, which was also the case with my last 3 kids. So it is hard for me to feel totally comfortable telling others till I feel regular movement or can pick up the heartbeat with a fetoscope (usually between 16-20 wks).  So I just have to trust that all is well and do what I can to keep track of how things are progressing.  I know my uterus has been growing just fine, which is a great sign.  I could feel it above my pubic bone by 6 wks this time and now it is at my belly button!!  This is MANY weeks higher than normal, but that is what happens when your uterus has been stretched out so many times! It was similar with my last 3 too (with #5 I could feel it above my pubic bone by 8 wks, so with each one it seems to be a bit sooner).  Just knowing it is growing at a regular rate is reassuring.  So that, and the fact that by 12 wks I could feel some movement at times when I poke around on my uterus (which I also noticed with the last 3) makes me hope that all is well.

Planning another homebirth of course, probably UC, but I like to play it by ear and decide during labor if I feel God leading me to call my midwife friend or not (so far the last 3 times I haven't felt like I needed her).  It is just SO nice to have that option and a blessing to have supportive friends.

Sooo, hopefully things can get back to normal a bit more around here since I am starting to feel a bit more normal too. There are so many things I want to blog about, I am just so long winded that it takes me forever do to a post, LOL!!  I have also considered breaking off and splitting the blog into 2.  Having just the Kozy part for Kozy related stuff and then another blog for all my other stuff.  If/when I do that though I'll let y'all know and make it easy to transition.