Blink. Blink. Blink.

He fits right in, just the way I knew he would.

When Abby, Caleb and Jacob all pile onto the couch for a round of "Just one more book, please, Mommy," Levi's right there on my lap.

When they're dividing up engines and cabooses to drive on the train track that runs through the living room and into my kitchen, I find that one of my eldest has made a pile for Levi, though he's still much too young to drive them.

Where their newest little brother will one day sit at the table is an ongoing dinner topic.

At just three weeks old, Levi is every bit as much a part of this family as if he had been here all along. Hardly a thought is given to the days and years before his arrival. I am pleasantly surprised, to say the least, at how smoothly the transition has gone, and praying that things continue to go well as my kids (and I!) adjust to our new normal.

Levi is doing his part to help out this week by sleeping for a glorious seven hours between feedings at night. The downside is that when he wakes up at 5 a.m., he's pretty much wide awake with no chance of going back to bed right away. But I'll happily start my day  at 5 in the morning if it means I can go to bed--and stay there--after his 10 p.m. feeding. If this keeps up, he may get to skip Baby Boot Camp. (That's the special training our babies are eligible for once they hit the 10-pound mark. Ten-pound babies, we've been told by a number of pediatricians, can sleep through the night. Sometimes they just need to be reminded that they possess such a skill.)

Caleb is keeping a mental tally of all the things Levi can't do, including: eat cookies, sit up, swim, play with Sharky, use the potty, go down the slide, brush his teeth, catch bugs, eat popsicles and talk. I think I may use this as my new checklist of baby milestones to meet. Caleb's list is much more interesting than the one they gave me at the pediatrician's office.

Rose-colored glasses optional

Remember when I said he had kind of a ruddy complexion?

I wasn't kidding. He's just about the reddest baby I've ever seen.

He's starting to look less like an old man and more and more like a surfer dude everyday.

I love this kid. I've only had him for two and a half weeks, and already I've forgotten what life was like without him.

Book Worm

I was raised under the mantra "If you can read, you can do anything." According to family lore, when I ran out of books to read, my mom handed me our four-inch thick dictionary, and I plopped down on the floor and started reading it.

I was six years old at the time.

Looks like my daughter is a chip off the old block. Although she seems to have set her sights a little higher than reading my New Oxford American Dictionary cover to cover.

"What's that say?" she asked me, pointing to the cover of Where is the Green Sheep that she was about to read to me.

"It says 'By Mem Fox.' That's the author's name," I explained. "She's the one that wrote that book."

I could see the wheels spinning in Abby's head.

"If I write a book, can I put my name on the front?" she asked. I told her she certainly could.

Casting her book aside, she hopped up from the couch and headed to the craft cabinet.

"I'm going to do that," she said.

And for the remainder of the morning, she sat at the table dictating her story to me and illustrating the pages. We're up to nine pages so far, and she has no intention of stopping anytime soon. Truth be told, her tale of the adventures shared by a little frog and a curly-headed blonde girl has the potential to go on forever. So far it's all exposition and rising action. This might be the time for a little language arts lesson on dramatic structure in storytelling.

Hello, cuteness.

Levi celebrated the two week anniversary of his emancipation from the womb by wowing his doctor with his cuteness and his impressive weight gain. My healthy little eater packed on nine ounces since last week! And I was granted permission to drop one of his feedings. (After all the trouble we had with Jacob, I'm hesitant to do anything with Levi's nursing schedule without first doing a weight check.)

It's not easy being a growing baby, and Levi is doing his best to rest up. We are rejoicing in the five-hour stretch of sleep he's giving us between feedings at night and hoping this trend continues.

We're finally getting his days and nights sorted out, and we're enjoying a lot more awake time during the day now. This comes as a great surprise to the big kids, who have grown accustomed to seeing me move around the house with a floppy sleeping baby in my arms. "Levi's awake!" they exclaim each time they see his eyes open. This is becoming a very big deal around here. 

Not willing to let a moment go to waste, I've devoted my middle-of-the-night feeding to crossing some literature off my summer reading list. I've finished four books so far and am hoping to finish up the complete works of C.S. Lewis by the time Levi starts sleeping through the night. Or maybe I'll take the advice of the 11-year-old across the street and read the Harry Potter series. Time will tell.

I will survive

At breakfast, we held a family meeting and laid out some ground rules for the day. I made the kids count, first themselves, and then me. Four kids, one mommy. For almost two weeks, grandparents and friends have been on hand to help us handle life as a family of six. But yesterday, the last of our help left. And when the hubby headed out for work this morning, I was forced to face reality.

"I'm very outnumbered," I pointed out. "And that means I'm going to need your help today if things are going to go well. We are going to be kind to one another. We are going to be patient with one another. You are going to obey right away, all the way, with a happy heart when Mommy tells you to do something."

They nodded. They understood the seriousness of this occasion.

I prayed, early and often, on my first day at home with four kids ages four and under. And our day went very, very well.

We assembled the same nine puzzles about five times each.

We cut, glued and colored construction paper letters to make decorations for Daddy's office.

We built train tracks, block towers and pillow forts.

We ate three good meals (dinner was provided by another kind friend, otherwise our good meal count would probably have dropped to two today).

When we took something out, we put it away. When we made a mess, we cleaned it up.

I did not try to move mountains of laundry, or accomplish anything other than keeping my sanity and my children intact.

When they went down for afternoon naps, I caught up on some chores that have fallen by the wayside over the last two weeks. For two and a half hours (all the time I have between Levi's feedings), all four kids were asleep at the same time. It was a miracle, to say the least.

I might not get much done in the way of general housekeeping over the next few weeks, and that's okay. But today showed me that I can, in fact, handle these kids and this new crazy life of ours. I survived my first day home alone.

Next challenge: a shopping trip to Target. We're running low on milk and bananas around here, and something must be done about that.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Buckle up

The van has reached full capacity.

(Okay, so technically, we could squeeze one more person in the backseat. But they'd need to be less than 18 inches wide, require no leg room, and not need a car seat.)

I'm currently taking suggestions on more efficient ways to organize these kids. Only one can both climb into her seat and buckle herself in. One can climb into his seat but cannot buckle himself in. One can neither climb into his seat unassisted nor buckle himself in. And one has to ride in that horrible infant carrier for almost a year.

A big pat on the back goes to the first person who solves my carseat equation and comes up with a workable van-loading suggestion that doesn't leave one of my kids roaming free in a parking lot while I buckle the others in.

The tradition continues

Parenting is serious business.

And in our family, so is barbecue. 

Which is why we take so seriously our commitment to exposing our kids to smoked brisket and pulled pork at such a young age. 

Abby was seven days old and Caleb a mere four days old when we took them out for their first barbecue experiences. Jacob partook of the family tradition one day shy of being two weeks old. And our little Levi only had to wait ten days to catch his first whiff of barbecue. 

As the youngest of a very wild bunch of siblings, Levi may often get lost in the shuffle as life goes on in these early days. But this was one tradition we made sure he didn't miss out on. 

I'm sure he'll thank us one day.

Uncharted territory

He's been the baby for so long, I somehow missed how very big he was getting.

For 20 months, we've called him our "Yacobaby" and made a clear distinction between Jacob and "the big kids." But then this real baby arrived on the scene, and suddenly our Yacobaby is one of the big kids.

And he's totally digging this new big brother thing.

"Bay-bee!" he exclaims every time he catches sight of his little brother. Sometimes it's more of a question, like when he's eating breakfast and Levi's upstairs asleep. "Bay-bee?" he wonders aloud, looking around for his new little buddy.

The other day he sidled up next to me on the couch. Levi had just finished eating, and was laying across my lap, sound asleep in a milk coma.

"Bay-bee?" Jacob asked, patting his little one-year-old hands on his knees. "Bay-bee!"

"Do you want to hold the baby?" I asked him.

He nodded enthusiastically. "Da! Bay-bee! Peas!" he replied (which translates to "Yes mommy, I'd love to hold that baby, please.").

I gave him the requisite instructions about supporting the baby's head before placing my 9-day-old gently in the arms of my not-quite-2-year-old. Levi slept comfortably in Jacob's arms, totally unfazed by his precarious position. Jacob gently supported his little brother's head in his right hand while patting his belly softly with his left.

Surprised by his mature show of tenderness, I removed my hand to see what Jacob would do. He pulled Levi in a little tighter to his chest. "Bay-bee," he said softly, his eyes locked on Levi's face. He looked up at me and pursed his lips. "Shhhhh," he instructed me, raising a finger to his lips.

After about a minute, I tried to transfer Levi back into my own arms.

"No!" Jacob insisted, shaking his head. I asked if he wanted to keep holding the baby, and he nodded.

For almost 10 minutes I sat there and watched my baby holding my baby, and thought about the fun these two are going to have together.

"Can you say 'Levi'?" I asked Jacob.

"Wuh-vee!" came his enthusiastic reply.

I tried again: "Say 'Lee-vi.'"

"Wuh-vee!" he shouted this time.

Wuhvee it is then. Something tells me this nickname's going to stick.

Time flies when you're having babies

I have no idea where the week went.

It passed us by in a haze of interrupted night time sleep, seemingly endless diaper changes and a parade of meals dropped off by some wonderful friends. We've been well fed, well cared for, and generally well rested, all things considered.

The bigger kids are adjusting well to having their new little brother in the mix. Having grandparents to play with is a helpful distraction.

We've changed well over a hundred diapers since coming home from the hospital, and for that I am thankful. I've dealt with a lazy eater, an over-efficient eater, and a non-eater. I can count on one hand the number of times Levi has spit up since he was born. This stands in stark contrast to the horrible reflux we endured with our last newborn. Having a child who eats on a regular schedule, takes a good feeding each time and poops and pees like a champ to show us he's eating enough is a welcome change.

Levi is already into a great routine that only interrupts my sleep once a night now. Perhaps it's because he's my fourth, or perhaps it's because I just don't have time to care too much with all these other little munchkins running around demanding my attention, but whatever the reason, things are going much more smoothly than I had anticipated. Our new little guy is fitting right in to our family's routines, and seems pretty easy going so far. He really doesn't have much choice, when you think about it.

He's healthy and growing strong, and is already back up to his birth weight. Except for the incident where he peed on his umbilical stump and needed some medical intervention to make the putrid smell go away, he's done great since coming home from the hospital. He's apparently hot-natured, just like his big brother Jacob, and for our little July baby, this means he's worn nothing but lightweight onesies in his seven days of life. No socks for this guy. He breaks out in an awful heat rash anytime I take him outside in this sweltering summer or during especially vigorous feedings. (But not having to make matches of tiny newborn socks does make the laundry go by a little faster.)

Our first instinct was that he looked just like his older sister, and as a puffy newborn, he certainly did. But he's beginning to take on his own look now, and it's an interesting blend of our other kids. He has Jacob's smile (though it's still only a reflex right now) and his same big saucer eyes. That cute little button nose is the same one all my kids share, but there's something just slightly different about Levi's that I can't quite put my finger on. He has Caleb's blond hair, though not nearly as coarse. He has the same light complexion as his dad and his two oldest siblings, but redder, especially when he's mad. The hair atop his head likes to stand straight up and curl over just slightly on his forehead. This, combined with his ruddy face, make me think of the Lollipop Guild kids from The Wizard of Oz. Only my kid's cuter. Much, much cuter.

In summary, he's adorable, he's healthy, and he's a perfect fit for our crazy little family.

If only I could convince him to stay little.

Finding her niche

Once faced with Levi's cuteness, Abby found it increasingly difficult to go on being sad about his not being a sister.

She has, in fact, embraced this big-sister-to-three-brothers thing with gusto, even going so far as to point out that when her little brothers get married one day, she'll have three brand new sisters.

She has decided that once room-sharing becomes a reality, Caleb and Jacob can have their own room, and she'll be bunking with little Levi. There are two reasons for this set-up, according to my 4-year-old: "Because he's so cute" and "Because he's so little and he needs a big sister to take care of him." I think she might change her mind when she realizes she's getting the room with the big closet all to herself.

She wants to hold her newest little brother every chance she gets. She is quick to jump in between Levi and a rambunctious older brother that might threaten his safety. She's never really been the nurturing type, but suddenly we're seeing a softer side of her. She wants to be a mommy one day and have a cute little baby like little Levi, she tells me. She'll make a wonderful mommy, I assure her.

When the baby cries, she gets upset, and desperately wants to know what she can do to make him better. Typically, he's hungry or tired, and there's not much she can do about that, I've told her. But sometimes, he just wants a little company. He loves it when we talk to him, because he's been hearing our voices inside my belly for a long time, I remind her. I suggested she tell him a story. She raced out of the room and returned moments later with her favorite Frog and Toad book.

"I'll read to him," she announced. "That will settle him down."

And read she did, pausing only occasionally for help with a tricky word. And a few pages into the book, Levi nodded right off. She finished the story and grinned that satisfied little grin she reserves for a job well done.

This big sister thing seems to suit her well.

Biggest brother

Caleb is my observant, inquisitive one. So it came as no surprise that he was less interested in the new baby than he was in the logistics surrounding his arrival.

"There's no more baby in your belly?" he asked at my bedside as I showed off his 12-hour-old baby brother in the hospital. Nope, I assured him, gesturing to the baby lying on my chest.

"How did the doctors get him out of there?" he inquired. I paused, apparently just long enough to make Caleb think that I wasn't quite sure.

"Did they use special tools?" he offered. I nodded. If that answer satisfies him, it's good enough for me.

He poked at my postpartum belly, apparently enjoying the gelatin-like state it was in.

"If there's no more baby in there, why is there still a bump?" he asked, in the adorable, innocent way that allows 3-year-olds to get away with saying stuff like that.

Once we got past our game of twenty questions, we assured him we'd be home soon, and reminded him that he'll have to be very gentle with Levi when he comes home.

"I'll take good care of little Levi," he promised. "I'll only give him soft toys." (Apparently his big sister has been giving him the same lecture we gave her when we brought Jacob home from the hospital.)

And true to his word, that's just what he did. Shortly after breakfast, the parade of stuffed animals began. Within 10 minutes, I'm fairly certain Caleb had found every soft toy in our house and piled them high atop his brother in my lap.

He even offered up his own blankie and his beloved Sharky.

I think he's going to handle this biggest brother thing just fine.

There's no place like home

Hospitals are boring. So for fun, whenever we find ourselves stuck in one with a newborn, we like to play a little game of Let's Get Outta Here. Turns out fourth time's a charm for us. We beat our personal best by 9 hours with little Levi, and managed to get ourselves discharged from the hospital when he was only 26 hours old.

So what if it was 10:30 at night in the middle of a torrential downpour? If we're going to not be getting any sleep, at least now we'll be home and not-sleeping in our own bed.

After much deliberation (and after thoroughly discarding Caleb's suggestion that we name his new brother Sharky) we chose the name Levi Dixon for our little boy. Levi comes from a Hebrew word meaning "joined" and it is our prayer that our son will indeed be joined to the Lord by grace through faith and that he will grow into a man who loves and serves his God with gladness. Of the priestly tribe of Levi, the Bible tells us "...the Lord God of Israel is their inheritance, just as he promised them" (Joshua 13:33). We pray confidently that our heavenly Father will indeed be the inheritance our Levi will enjoy as he grows in wisdom and stature. Dixon is a middle name that Levi will share with Justin's grandfather, in keeping with our tradition of passing down a family member's name to our little ones.

We're loving life with our third son and are looking forward to watching his personality emerge as we enjoy being home and getting back into the swing of things. He's a popular little fellow, particularly with his Granddaddy, with whom our Levi has the honor of sharing a birthday. (I worked for nine months on this birthday present...I'm glad he turned out so well.)

He has a flock of blonde hair that likes to stick straight up on top, and a ruddy complexion that gets redder when he's angry or well fed. He's sleeping like a baby, which is to say he's sleeping all the time, and eating about every 2.5 hours. When Levi's awake, he has the same steel blue eyes that my first two have, and when he's asleep he makes some of the most hysterical faces I've ever seen. He's still all scrunched up and has yet to fully unfold from all his time in the womb. And only time will tell, but so far we're all in agreement that he is the spitting image of the newborn version of his older sister, right down to his adorable little button nose.

To say I'm smitten wouldn't begin to describe it. After four babies, I'm still amazed each time at how my heart swells to love another so much, and so immediately. I praise God for each little life He's entrusted to our care, and am looking forward to caring for this new little one He's brought into our family.

Welcome home, little Levi!

Happy Birthday Levi

Welcome to the world baby Levi!

Levi Dixon Fisher

July 10, 2012

8:17 p.m.

7 pounds, 15 oz.

19.5 inches

Bombs bursting in air

After last year's debacle where the fireworks were cancelled (twice!) due to inclement weather, we were more than happy to keep the kids up way past their bedtimes to enjoy the July 4th festivities this year. While the excitement of the exploding fireworks failed to jump start my labor, it did manage to entertain two-thirds of the kiddos outside the womb. Since last year was a bust, this was Jacob's first Fourth of July. His enthusiasm did not disappoint.

Abby, who has been counting down to Independence Day for 365 days, lost interest in the fireworks only briefly, when a family nearby offered to let her partake in their sparkler festivities. Holding fire now seems to rank right up there with petting frogs and riding ferris wheels.

And my sleepy little Caleb was more than happy to sit in the car with his hands over his ears and repeatedly remind us that it was dark outside and he was supposed to be in bed.