Happy New Year!

Hello friends! It has been months, well, four and a half months to be exact. Lord knows I never intended to take such a long blogging break, but that's just what felt right after Griffin's birth and for these first months of his life. 

A lot has changed around here. For one thing, when I was last posting I looked like this...

Frank took that picture on one of our long beach walks in the last week of my pregnancy when I was desperately trying to send myself into labor. (I actually ended up giving birth in that pink striped skirt, it was one of the only comfortable things left to wear!)

Fast forward four and a half months and here we are just a few days ago, in almost the same spot on the beach...

Griffin Augustus Evans Sills was born at 12:41AM on Wednesday morning the 29th of August, 2012.

His arrival has grown me in ways that I am still learning and understanding, much of that has been the work that I have been doing in these past months. Retreating within so that I've been able to grow to fit this new role, mother of three beautiful children.

He's a gorgeous, happy boy, and I can't wait to share pictures of him here.

I'll also be sharing his birth story, and bits of the journey that I've been on since then, as it feels right.

As always I like to keep this space about the best parts of our life, which does mean that when I am sad and struggling I tend not to want to post, and these past months have definitely held their struggles. I am feeling healthy and well again, having come out of this time with a positivity and excitement about life and about my inspirations, so I'll be popping in with bits and pieces of the beauty in our lives. 

I have also just been loving Instagram everyday lately, if you are there too please come join me @faithevanssills I've been having so much fun taking pictures there, capturing the wonderful details of having a baby in the house and using it as a creative outlet while I've not have the time or energy to paint.

Since Griffin's birth I did have a show of my paintings, prints and cards (I still don't know how I pulled it off!) at our favorite restaurant here in Charleston. It will be up through February, so if you are in the area swing by Puree and check it out.

I'm looking forward to sharing in this space again. Its good to be back!

xo

Renovation: Baby's room!

More renovation has been happening at our house. After Frank so lovingly completed the Pink Princess room for Carys he began working on creating a room for baby. The space was a room that had to be walked through to get to Jasper's room, you can see his door there on the far wall. So, we figured that the space would be much more usable as its own room, and Frank put up a wall to divide the space...
  

Frank finished the room within one week, and once the electrician had rewired the lights and the walls were closed up and painted, then the fun began! Of course the most fun thing for me has been spending the past week decorating the room, as we wait for baby to arrive.

We had given away all of our baby things before we moved from Brooklyn, which felt discouraging at first when expecting another baby, I just didn't want to have to buy things again. I found that as I went through and sorted our things for the kids, and saw what they are using and have out grown, I was able to come up with so many cute things for baby's room within what we already had.

In the end the only things that we had to buy for baby are the crib and the pack 'n' play. We are starting off with the crib set up next to our bed in our room to make nights easier for the first few months, so the pack 'n' play is standing in his room for changes and play time. I was able to know this time that I've never used things like a changing table, so I kept the room simple and tried to only use things that I can picture him growing with and using for a while.

For the decorations I drew pieces from things that we've had in the kid's rooms over the years, things given to us by dear friends, and things that we have from when Frank and I were children! Notice the hot air balloons? Those are a fun project that the kids and I worked on for baby last week, can't wait to post about making them.

While decorating the room has been satisfying, nothing has been sweeter than preparing baby's clothes. Its is a ritual that I remember from the last days of being pregnant with Jasper and Carys, washing and folding each piece and while touching them picturing his little baby body inhabiting them sometime soon.

We are so excited, but trying to stay balanced with patience. My chiropractor shared a short mantra with me last week when I was expressing my impatience with waiting... she said to remember that whenever baby chooses to come will be the "perfect" time for him to be born. He will chose his perfect timing.

I'm holding onto that, repeating it over and over!

The last days of pregnancy: a place of In-between

My lovely home birth midwife Brandy linked me to an article recently that I resonated with deeply, even thinking back to the end of my other pregnancies I remembered that place of "in-between" with an internal compass. Now, just in the past week I have felt myself crossing the threshold once again into the place of the last days of pregnancy.
 Written by a midwife, the article puts it so well...
"The last days of pregnancy— sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks—are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world.
Shouldn’t there be a word for this state of being, describing the time and place where mothers linger, waiting to be called forward?
Germans have a word, zwischen, which means between. I’ve co-opted that word for my own obstetrical uses. When I sense the discomfort and tension of late pregnancy in my clients, I suggest that they are now in The Time of Zwischen. The time of in between, where the opening begins. Giving it a name gives it dimension, an experience closer to wonder than endurance.
I tell these beautiful, round, swollen, weepy women to go with it and be okay there. Feel it, think it, don’t push it away. Write it down, sing really loudly when no one else is home, go commune with nature, or crawl into your own mama’s lap so she can rub your head until you feel better. I tell their men to let go of their worry; this is an early sign of labor. I encourage them to sequester themselves if they need space, to go out if they need distraction, to enjoy the last hours of this life-as-they-now-know-it. I try to give them permission to follow the instinctual gravitational pulls that are at work within them, just as real and necessary as labor."

 I'm entering my 38th week, and baby feels so big inside of my belly sometimes as he moves and rolls his limbs against my skin, it blows my mind that he still has room, that he is still comfy in there. At the end of my other pregnancies I felt myself fighting it more even starting to feel claustrophobic within my own body in these last weeks, but right now what I feel most often is grateful. Just so grateful for the miracle of this baby inside of me getting ready to be born, I feel myself honoring the grace that my body is able to participate in this miracle. Really, I see miracles all around me...looking at my children I see them for the miracles that they are in my life, I see it so clearly right now. What a gift this time is for me as it clears out all of the cobwebs and daily veils that I get distracted by, leaving behind a rich clarity through which the beauty that surrounds me shines magnified.

"I believe that this is more than biological. It is spiritual. To give birth, whether at home in a birth tub with candles and family or in a surgical suite with machines and a neonatal team, a woman must go to the place between this world and the next, to that thin membrane between here and there. To the place where life comes from, to the mystery, in order to reach over to bring forth the child that is hers. The heroic tales of Odysseus are with us, each ordinary day. This round woman is not going into battle, but she is going to the edge of her being where every resource she has will be called on to assist in this journey.
We need time and space to prepare for that journey. And somewhere, deep inside us, at a primal level, our cells and hormones and mind and soul know this, and begin the work with or without our awareness."

That is where I am dwelling right now.

I am also feeling intense "nesting" urges, which is resulting in things like me convincing Frank to hang prayer flags that I've been wanting to hang for ages..

and also we are in the middle of a construction project in our house, Frank is building two rooms, basically reconfiguring the space of our upstairs where our bedrooms are. We decided that it just makes more sense to build the new rooms. We've lived in this house a year and it took us a while to figure out the best use of the space, and we are laughing as baby is almost here and NOW we are doing the construction! Reminding us, on a much smaller scale, of renovating our house in Brooklyn when I was pregnant with Jasper.

I've got some before and after pictures of post about the rooms that we are building, and I also wanted to post about my choice to birth at home. I'm looking forward to getting those posted in the next week or so as I begin to wrap things up before the baby comes.

I'll also be closing my Etsy shop for a few weeks starting on August 1st, so if there is anything that you've had your eye on now is the time to jump!

Evening on the beach, 37th week

This past week one of my oldest and dearest friends, Larissa, was visiting us. We couldn't remember the last time we had a whole week to spend time together, it was a treat especially as I am so close to having this baby and there are so many things on my mind that were good to talk through with an old friend.

We had to take things slowly since I'm still recovering from my Pneumonia, but we were able to spend some spectacular evenings on the beach, and she took some great pictures of us...and we worked on the most dreamy sand castle!

Our Babymoon at the Raleigh

Frank and I have never taken a "baby moon", a trip just the two of us while we've been expecting either of our children, but I've loved the baby moon idea...so with this third baby we decided early on in the pregnancy that a baby moon trip was definitely something that we wanted to fit in.
During our trip to Florida Frank's parents were able to keep our kids at their house for a few while Frank and I went to Miami. On the recommendation of a few friends we stayed at The Raleigh, a gorgeous small Art Deco hotel on Miami Beach. The atmosphere at The Raleigh was like traveling back in time to the 1920's, with so many beautiful details. We loved it!  

We spent our time there enjoying the hotel and grounds, I stayed by the pool and their amazing beach while Frank ventured out once to visit a local art museum. We ate our meals at the hotel's yummy restaurant poolside, and loved the lantern lined walkways in the evenings.

It was so special to be able to have time just the two of us, where our biggest decision of the day was if we wanted to have a latte or go to the beach first! Really wonderful. We'll remember our babymoon for years to come.

Highlights from our trip to Florida

Our road trip through Florida in June was full of the kind of beautiful moments that summer is made of for me. We spent so much time outdoors, enjoying the sunshine and swimming almost every day in pools and the ocean, exploring as a family, watching sunsets and dreaming together of what it will be like when the baby is born in August.

One of the most special spots that we visited during our trip were the islands of Captiva and Sanibel, on the west coast of Florida. I was able to find a great last minute deal for a condo at South Seas Island Resort, and we spent a few days at this amazingly family friendly resort with lovely beaches, oh the turquoise sea!

Carys and I spent fun hours looking for pretty shells,

Another fun part of our trip was taking a few days at Disney in Orlando. The kids and I do enjoy a good Disney visit, and Frank is nice to humor us by coming along. I love how artfully done the details at the Disney parks are, especially at Disney's Animal Kingdom park where you feel like you've taken a quick trip to Asia.

The most fun for me about Disney is watching how much fun Jasper and Carys have when we are there!

What a great time we had, I'm so glad that we were able to share this memorable trip before the baby arrives, it was so nice to have it be just the four of us while also looking ahead together to the changes that will happen in our family so soon, we are all so excited.