Welcome Ashley--we feel like we've known you our entire lives

 So its been a little less than a week since we welcomed our little Ashley. Things aren't quite "normal" yet has my Mom  and sisters are still here in town. But they are leaving Wednesday,  Evie is back in Yuma with Brian (but she will be coming back very shortly) and while my in-laws are still here with us, they are making plans to move on before it starts to get too hot here in Arizona. For a long time it felt like Texas got up and moved with us but pretty soon, it's just going to be our little family. 

We are so blessed to have 3 happy and healthy kids, we have so much in this life but to simply have that is more than I ever could have asked for.  Our new little girl is so doted on, held, loved, carried, sung to, kissed--that I actually don't think there's a time when she's awake that someone isn't holding her.  

She is a beautiful little baby and she looks almost exactly like Abby did when she was born. Very blue eyes with the early shock of reddish-blonde hair. Her facial features are nearly identical to Abby's and Bubs family influence is very clear (which doesn't seem exactly fair as I'm the one who did all the work). In fact Abby and Ashely look so much alike, at least for now,  that I think the only way I will be able to tell their baby pictures apart is that the camera quality is so much better. By our unofficial measurements, Ashely has returned to her birth weight, plus a little more and she is a fantastic little eater. We've got her established with a really great pediatrician and all is progressing along just as it should. 

I think the last full blog I did was Sunday, April 13th when I was still so mad at Bubs for his little flying adventure the day before. I woke up that morning with pretty regular contractions and I thought for sure we would be heading to the hospital at any point during the morning. The contractions actually almost completely went away towards mid afternoon so I resolved myself to settle in, watch a show and try to relax. I think it was about 10pm when a really hard contraction hit me and in my heart I had a feeling that this was going to be it. By the time Bubs had gotten his watch set up to time me, a second one hit less than 2 minutes later and third almost two minutes after that. Since this was my third pregnancy, they basically said that five minute contractions that last for about an hour and it was time to go in. Since these were already around two minutes, at the very least we wanted everything to be ready. It took about 45 mins to pack up, prep Evie that we were leaving and get the kids up so I could say goodbye to them and let them know that the next time we saw them they'd almost certainly have a little brother or sister. The contractions never let up so we figured shaving 15 minutes off the "for an hour" requirement was ok. 

The drive to the hospital was very easy and I guess I've never been out in Tucson late at night but it was almost like ghost town it was so quiet. The contractions were very regular so they got me back right away. I remember thinking the room was very cute but I actually don't remember any of the details. I got the epidural in fairly shortly after getting settled in and it was just time to wait.  Just like with my other two kids, the time from the epidural being placed to actually giving birth is really a blur but I think it was about 6am when things really started moving and Ashely was delivered at 6:47. It was as easy a childbirth as one can have I think. Again we are so blessed. 

As I've stated, we had no idea of the gender and if I can make a recommendation to people who want to have more than one kid, do at least one where you can be surprised. I didn't think I'd like it but there was something so natural feeling about fully getting introduced to her only after she was born. It was also amazing to hear it from my husband (instead of very impersonal doctor reviewing an ultrasound) that we had a little girl. Because we didn't know the gender, we actually didn't know what her name was going to be. We had settled on the initials AJM (I'll get into that in just a minute) and I was leaning towards Ashley if she was a girl because I love the name and Ashley is one of my best friends in the entire world. But I could not think of a boys name that I liked that started with A--so had they been a boy, it's very possible we would have had a TJ and and an AJ--with AJ being his actual name. Again, I'm blathering--she's Ashley and it's a perfect name for her. Like I said, I wanted to meet her first before actually deciding if it would be Ashley but as soon as I did skin to skin, the name just fit her so well and I think it's beautiful. And just is cool, I haven't seen the original Ashley for 3 years now--and now that she has a namesake she's already got plane tickets booked to come see us as soon as school lets out for her kids. I can't wait. 

So how did we arrive at the initials AJM...well that's actually inspired by you guys. I think Bubs was messing with me and kept coming up with these "cute" names that he claims were genuine but I think he was just trying to annoy me. Names like Gaylord, Ajax, Midas, Goose, etc.  One of you all gave me the really good idea of having the new baby's initials also be signifgant. Mister hilarious was actually very moved by this and decided to let me have the first and middle names as long as the initials matched one of his very best military friends with the initials AJM. He was a pararescue man on Bub's last deployment as well as having known him for about 10 years. This guy apparently did something utterly heroic to save a civilian's life and that's always moved Bubs (I actually don't know what it was, I don't know if can know and I probably don't want to know because it scares me so bad). The J was easy because I knew if she was a girl her middle name was going to be Jennica (combination of Jennifer and Jessica) and if he was a boy his middle name was going to be Jessup who is my Dad's cousin and best friend. So the search as on for A names. Like i said I had no idea as an A name for boys and Bub's friend's name is Aaron, which is an amazing name that will forever be attached to the Key and Peele sketch and as teacher, even I unconsciously call my students A-Aron. I wasn't settled on Ashley because I wanted to be certain--but like I said, the second I had baby Ashely set on my chest for skin to skin, I knew the name fit. 

Thank god we had Evie around because she was able to get the kids back to bed and then get the over to the hospital first thing in the morning to meet their new little sister. I knew for a fact TJ would be so into it because he's been like my little man servant for the past few weeks and would talk non-stop about how he can't wait to be an excellent big brother. He was so excited to meet his new little sister and had a whole little speech prepared welcoming her into the family. It was very cute. He loves holding her and actually chooses holding his sister over homework (no surprise there) but also playing Fortnite with his cousins back in Texas. 

For the entire pregnancy Abby was, well, Abby. She just wanted to make sure the changes around the house wouldn't affect her school and wrestling practice. When Abby was 2 and TJ came along she screamed her hear head off for the first 10 minutes and communicated in her limited vocabulary that we needed to send "that thing" back.  So I was actually so moved when Abby first got to hold Ashley and actually started tearing up and told me "she's so beautiful mom." I actually openly wept at that because it may be the sweetest thing Abby has ever said to me. I have my two little girls and I could not be more happy. I know the excitement of having a new baby around will probably turn more routine but at least for the time being Abby is completely involved and even wanted to miss wrestling practice  one night because she was holding Ashley and didn't want to wake her up (that shocked me). 

It was also a joy to see my sisters and mom. I saw my sisters back in February but I was so happy to see my mom. They started driving out on Tuesday, stayed overnight somewhere in Texas and then arrived on Wednesday. Ashley is my moms 8th grandchild and she is such a pro. She's always been so calm (I think sometimes I was switched at birth) and even though Ashley is mere days old, she is already so calm when my mom walks around with her. Of all the things that made me a little sad this week is that I won't have my mom just around the corner and Ashley won't have the daily interactions like Abby and TJ were able to. Although, my in-laws gave her a pretty serious sales pitch on the RV life and my mom has been looking for ways to start travelling more--so possibly she and my dad may be here fairly often. Fingers crossed. 

We actually got to see Brian too--his whirlwind trip through South America with his PhD advisor came to an end and he flew back into Tucson and stayed for a couple of days before he went back to Yuma with Evie. We realized that the four siblings don't get so see each other nearly as often as we liked and we promised that we will make more of an effort to see each other now that two of us have actually moved away.

 Of course that was before Jessica and Brian almost came to blows when the friendly banter about the infamous "pizza incident" turned not so friendly and they almost relived the whole thing over again. I actually loved it because it means we will never change. It made me so happy that Abby, TJ and now Ashley will someday be sitting around one of their kitchen reliving old memories--thankful that their mom didn't kill their dad for taking them flying--and thankful that their mom didn't let their dad name one of them "Ajax."