Summer Lovin'

I love summer. I love BBQ's, hanging out with friends and family, swimming, camping, running races, etc. This summer; however, has been a little different with a newborn and I haven't done as much as I would normally have liked. But we still have been having fun and now I think I am finally getting the hang of having 2 - not that we get out of the house on time or before 10AM - but we are getting there ;)


Ross has found a new love of cooking shows, specifically BBQ University and Mexico: One Plate at a Time. I have found a new love for them too because this is what the last few Sundays have looked like at our house thanks to Ross:

Spicy BBQ chicken, rice and chili garlic green beans

Tandori


with grilled naan.

Evan is now a month old and I can't believe it! He is getting so big and gaining weight like a mad man. He is still so easy going - Heavenly Father definitely blessed me :) He also blessed me with awesome family, friends, and neighbors. Thank you so much to everyone who brought dinners to our family, for all the gifts, the phone calls, and offers for help. Anna has has just as much fun getting to play with her friends and cousins - not to mention all the gifts she got out of having a brother too - lucky girl!

I mentioned before that Annabelle and Evan looked a lot alike (minus the hair color). I haven't been as good taking pictures of Evan (so it happens with subsequent children I am told) so I don't know if these pictures do it justice. Here is Anna around one month old.


And Evan at one month chillin with his Daddy.

The beginnings of a smile - they are hard to capture on camera I tell you. But no one can get him to smile like his Daddy and his sister. What's with the no love for moms?

And just to make this post a little longer...this is a video of the camping trip Ross and Anna took a while back that I mentioned. Love this girl.

Randoms

Even though there are moments when Anna makes me want to pull my hair out (gotta love the terrible two's), I love my quirky little girl. She is always making us laugh - whether it is with the funny things she says (she loves to use the words like 'terrible' and 'ridiculous' all the time). I love how dramatic and animated she is when she talks or just the funny things she does. Right now Annabelle loves to organize things by shape or color (the pillows on our couch, bottles of lotion, etc), play with her blocks to make 'houses' for her kitty and bird,


and to build towers with EVERYTHING....the stuff on my end table, the stuff in the grocery cart while we are shopping, salad dressing bottles - she did this completely by herself.


Finding new uses for my measuring cups that I still have yet to use because she claims they are hers.

I love this picture because I have SO many pictures of me when I was little with buckets and baskets on my head - I have no idea what the obsession was, but apparently its genetic ;)



I recently purchased a new diaper bag, since my last one was pink and brown and very girly..it was also very trashed. I found this bag and I loved it - it has so many cool features, lots of pockets and tons of room . Plus, I thoroughly enjoy the print.

An added bonus? The company claims to be an 'eco-friendly' company. The outside fabric was made using plastic bottles and things like that.

So why they sent the diaper bag to my house in the most ginormous box possible filled with a lot of friggin paper is so humerous to me. I mean, it's a diaper bag... does it really need to have all that packaging and filler stuff. I don't think it is going to break. Love it.

2 Weeks & A Daddy's Girl

Evan had his two week appointment today. The doctor asked how he has been and I didn't want to jinx myself - he has been such a good baby. I don't know if Annabelle just ate and cried a lot, if that is all that I remember of her, or if that is yet to come with Evan. Until then, I will just enjoy how good he is. He goes long stretches (for a breastfed newborn) between eating and I was worried about that until he was weighed today:

Weight: 9lbs 6oz. (68th percentile)
Height: 21.25 inches (71th percentile)
Head: 14.75 inches (58th percentile)

The doctor said not worry at all ;)

Annabelle still loves being an older sister and kisses her brother about 50 times a day. She loves to help me change his diaper and put the binky in his mouth if he is crying. Sometimes she wants to help out a little too much.

Last week I put Evan on the couch for a minute while I went into the kitchen to wash a couple of dishes that were in the sink. About 5 seconds later Anna runs in the kitchen so excited and yells, 'He likes it! He really likes it!' Oh crap. 'He likes what Anna?' To which she replied, 'My gold fishy!' I run into the living room to see my son sucking his little heart on something and after sticking my finger in his mouth - sure enough - it was a gold fish cracker. I am so grateful he did not choke or anything! Needless to say we had a long talk about what babies eat and why.

As many of you know, half your day is spent feeding a new born - so Evan and I have spent a lot of time together. Ross wants to help out, but until men can start breast feeding (and oh boy do I wish they could) the way he helps me out best is to play with Anna when he gets home from work. They go outside and ride her bike, work in the yard, they went camping in the back yard last week, they work in the garden or run errands. She obviously has grown very fond of her daddy because now he has to be the one to do everything with her. She has become quite the daddy's girl. And who can blame her - he is pretty swell guy. Look at the flowers he brought home for me. I am not much of a flower girl, but these are right up my alley :)

Evan's Story

I have survived the first week :) And I figure I will continue to take it just one day at a time. I have to keep telling myself - I have done this before and I didn't die, I can do it again. LOL. Ah sleep deprivation.

Back track to June 24 - I had been having contractions throughout the day - none of them hurt, so I figured they must be braxton hicks. I went for a walk that night and did squats and what not while watching 'So You Think You Can Dance' - anything to keep them coming. Ross was convinced I would go into labor the next day - he even had a whole scenario of how it would happen - but I didn't want to get my hopes up. The contractions continued through the night, but I was able to sleep. They started hurting sometime in the night - I would wake up to a contraction, but fall back asleep right after. Around 4 AM though they were strong enough and frequent enough that I could no longer sleep.

Around 6AM I decided to get in the shower and that is when I noticed the bloody show (maybe TMI for some - deal with it, it's a birth story) so I was getting excited thinking this is actually it! In the shower the contractions were coming and I was breathing through them - painful, but not bad. I got out of the shower and called my mom to come and get Anna - since it is an hour or so drive, I figured better early than not. My mom arrived around 8AM and I had Anna packed and ready for the day - she could not have been more excited to go to Grandma's house. Then, about a half an hour after my mom left, the contractions stopped. Boo! I wanted to cry.

Ross left for work since they had stopped and I walked on the treadmill in hopes of them starting back up again, but to no avail. Since I had about 4 hours of sleep that night I decided to lie down for a bit and rest. Around 10AM, I thought I would call my doctor - hoping that if I told him I was bleeding he would tell me I should go to the hospital. In fact the nurse DID say I should go, but that I could also come into the office and get checked. I decided to just head to his office since it is depressing to get sent home without a baby from the hospital. I called Ross to tell him and he met me there.

My doctor was not there that day and so I went to the on call doctor in the same office. While waiting to be checked Ross was looking at the doctor's certificates, pictures and what not on the wall when he saw a plaque that had a little spot for every 1,000 babies this doctor had delivered. He had made it up to 6,000 thus far! At least I knew I would have someone experienced on my side if I delivered that day ;) Any who, he came in and checked me - I was at 5cm. He could not admit me since I was not having contractions at the moment and apparently labor and delivery was SUPER busy that day with inductions and other laboring mothers. Since I was positive for Group B Strep this time he told me that if I started to have any contractions at all that I needed to head to hospital so I could get the antibiotics (they like them to be in you for 4 hours before you deliver) and he thought once my contractions started again I would go quickly.

Ross and I went to lunch, came back home and went for a walk. I had some braxton hicks, but that was all. Then at around 2:30 PM I had 3 contractions that were pretty painful back to back. So Ross and I jumped in the car and headed to the hospital. We got checked into the last labor and delivery room the hospital had (I apparently picked the busiest day of the year to go into labor). I got hooked up to the I.V. of antibiotics around 3:50 PM and Ross and I settled in for the labor. Since the contractions started back up I was having them for about 30-45 seconds each with 15-30 seconds of rest in between.

The nurse checked me and I was 5.5 cm dilated - so not much more than this morning, but I will take what I can get. The contractions continued to get stronger and I was very thankful Ross and I had taken this class because the pressure points he was using really helped a lot. I still tried to use the Lamaze breathing I did with Annabelle's birth last time too and seemed to be handling it all well.

At about 5PM I asked the nurse to check me again - I was at a 6, almost a 7. I wanted to get in the tub because I had heard that would help the pain a lot. But she told me that I would want to wait until I was at an 8 and in the transition phase before getting in because that is when I would need the pain relief the most. But the contractions kept coming, sometimes with only a couple of seconds between them. I was getting so tired and I didn't think I could do this. Transition had lasted so long with Annabelle that I got an epidural at a 9.5cm (they still gave it to me that late because she was so high that they wanted me to 'labor down' for an hour after I got to 10 cm before I would start pushing). I kept telling Ross, I know I have a list of reasons for wanting to do this naturally, but I can't remember a single one right now! Evan was moving so much when I would have a contraction and he felt so low that it only made each contraction worse.

I was starting to doubt if I could do this, but Ross kept telling me he knew I could. I really felt like I was in transition - I felt shaky, sick to my stomach and that I just couldn't do it. So when the nurse came back in I wanted her to check me again because I wanted to know if I was in transition or not. So she checked me again (at around 5:40PM) and told me I was at a 7 almost 8. I told her I wanted to either get the epidural or get in the tub cause. I just wanted a break - it felt like there was no break at all between contractions. She said she was going to call the doctor and have him come in and check me.

By the time the doctor came in nothing Ross could do could help me through the contractions. The pressure points hurt now and all I could do was try and relax and breath through the contractions - without hyperventilating. My nurse was so good to remind me to breath slow and would tell me each body part to relax when I was having contractions. The doctor checked me and said I was at a 9 and if he broke my water the baby would be here in about 15 minutes. I did not want my water broken because I had it broken with Annabelle when I was at an 8 and they had told me that it would make the contractions stronger, but it would speed things up. Well it certainly made them stronger, but it didn't speed things up and I was afraid it would be the same this time around.

The doctor told me again - really, the baby is so low that he will be here quickly. I yelled, 'You promise me?!' He promised, so I was game. Sure enough, he broke my water, I had one or two more contractions and then I started pushing. I pushed 2 or 3 three times through each contraction and after about 5 or 6 contractions Evan was born. (Much better than the nearly 2 hours of pushing with Annabelle). Ross was beside me the whole time saying, 'You are doing this, you are seriously doing this' I know he was being encouraging and it really helped me push (so did my very strong desire to get the baby out an quickly) but he kinda sounded surprised too - it was funny. They placed Evan on my belly and the first thing I said was, 'You look exactly like your sister did! Only a lot less swollen and without the cone head.'

The nurses and doctor commented that he looked big and had a big head, but I couldn't tell. When I asked Ross about it later he said he wasn't surprised when I was pushing, that he knew I could do it, but that it happened so quickly. He could actually see him coming, whereas with Anna it just took so long. I had the birth that I wanted and I loved it - and the doctor was right - 15 minutes and he was there - his 6,929th baby he delivered ;)



I had to steal this picture of Evan's little feet from Chelsie's blog - I love it! Thank you!