Fweaking Conclusions

Some things Lily has said the last couple of days:

Violet kept crying in the car so I was imitating her and Lily said "Mom, you're not a baby.  You're a big girl!  Stop doing that, you're freaking me out!"  Only she says it like "fweaking" and it is adorable!

Yesterday, she was drawing on her white board.  She's been getting better and better, even after only a few days.  She can draw a recognizable person now, still weird looking, but recognizable.  And she loves to draw circles and spirals.  Anyway, she would draw something on her white board and then point to it with the marker and be like "Mom, what conclusions can be make from this?"  or "What do you think about these conclusions, Mom?"  I believe she got that word from Phineas and Ferb and it was hilarious hearing her using it over and over.

Things Lily Says

So while skyping with my sister today, she reminded me that I should really write down what Lily says and does because she is one of a kind!  So much sassiness and smartness rolled into one three year old should not be possible.  I'm going to try to remember some fun things from the past few weeks and then hopefully update more so I can get things written down - even if no one reads them but me later on.  Some might be repeats from Facebook but I want to keep them all together.

Quotes:

Lily telling me about Daddy working in the kitchen:

(With pointer finger pointed) Don't go in there mommy.  Daddy is working!  So we can bother him right now, ok?  I'm in charge.  (then she stomped off).

When I was annoyed with her for doing something (can't remember what): Calm down, mommy.  Just relax (in a soothing voice) it'll be ok.

She likes to say "nice and easy" about things a lot.  Like if she's putting something together she'll say "this'll go together nice and easy."

Walking into my room before our Christmas trip:

Lily: Mom are we taking those socks with us?
Me: What socks?
Lily: The socks, mama.
Me (realizing she means the stockings): Yes, we're taking the socks.
Lily: They're called stockings, mom.  - Totally set me up!

I took her to see her first movie in the theater: Frozen.  She did awesome and one little girl came and sat by her for half of the movie and shared candy with her.  So cute!

She loves to give me hugs and kisses for "being a good girl" because I took her places - like if I've taken her to Romp n Roll or to a store she likes that has toys to play with, etc.

She does a power stance before running which is her feet spread out and one of her arms straight out in a fist with the other one on her hip and then she runs as fast as she can.

She loves to watch the kindle in the dark bathroom with no windows or lights on. Her favorite stuffed animal is my pink bunny that my friend Kate gave me when I was little.  This interchanges with a big bear we bought her at IKEA on Black Friday this year.  But it's mostly bunny and has been for a few months.  She loves to run and makes me run to and from the car when we go to the store.  Loves to be in the spotlight.

That's all I can think of right now.  I'll update as the sassiness continues or as I remember past things she's said.  I'll have to wait until Brady is up from his nap which he is taking with Lily.

Tidbits about Violet:  She is eating everything she can get her hands on.  She takes it as a personal insult if I do not share everything I eat with her.  She sleeps through the night - mostly - loves to play with Lily and Mommy.  Giggles a lot and smiles a ton.  Chews on everything!  Is so close to crawling, she can do a knee or hand at a time.  Has 6 teeth with two more coming in soon!  And about the same amount of hair that she had when she was born!  But we love her perfect, bald little head!

A June Update

Well, Violet will be six weeks old tomorrow!  The time has absolutely flown by and we could not be more happy with our new addition.  She eats great, she sleeps pretty good, especially for a newborn, and is just loving life.  She is starting to be more awake everyday, which Lily is loving.  Lily is always really excited with Violet wakes up and says "Baby sister's awake!!" because she wants to play with her.  We do have to watch Lily closely with her because the few times we left them alone together in a room, Lily has picked Violet up.  She has only dropped her once and from a very low angle but I guess I will need to take one, or both, of the girls to the bathroom from me until Lily is better able to hold her sister (because I doubt she'll just stop trying anytime soon).

Like I mentioned above, Violet will sleep pretty good stretches during the night which means we are not as sleep deprived as we could be!  Lily is probably the hardest to deal with so far.  She still gets a ton of attention from us but because there is someone else sharing the attention she acts up a little more to make sure we aren't forgetting she's there - like that could ever happen.  But some of that is probably due to her age.  Hopefully she can grow out of the toddler attitude soon!  I'm practicing, and reading books about, my good parenting techniques because some days I just don't feel like I can be a good mother to her!  But I love her so we'll keep figuring it out as we go.

Not much has been happening since my parents left a few weeks ago.  Just getting through each day.  Tomorrow we start swim lessons for Lily for two weeks.  That'll be fun, I think!  Although getting into a swim suit 6 weeks after having a baby isn't ideal, it's worth it because I know she'll have a ton of fun.  More updates to come on here later in the summer.  We're going on a few big trips - one to northern VA for a Redfearn Family Reunion and then about a month out to California for my baby sister Wendy's wedding.  I think we'll also be driving out to Utah during that trip so I look forward to walking around BYU again and showing it to Lily (because I'm sure she doesn't remember living there for a year and a half before we moved).  I think I'll have to get both Lily and Violet some BYU gear.  This Hokie stuff just isn't cutting it!

Here's the pictures we did for Brady for Father's Day:

I love my cuties!!

Violet's Birth Story

Well, Grandma (my mother in law) has taken the girls on a walk so I thought I'd write up a quick birth story post.  We woke up on May 6th around 4:45 am (after a super restful night of sleep - NOT) to get ready to go into the hospital.  My friend Holly came to stay at the house until Lily woke up and then took her back with her to her house to play for the day.  We had a lovely drive in the rain and got to the hospital around 6:15 am.  They checked me in and got the antibiotics going as I was positive for group B strep.

That process took a while and they didn't really do much else until the doctor came in  to check me (I was at a 6, 50% and Violet was still way up: -2 station for anyone who knows what that means).  The doc slightly broke my water - meaning it would leak for a while instead of gushing out all at once - to get things going.  (That was fun).  I can't remember when that was but around 8:30 am they started the pitocin to get the contractions I was already having a little closer together and more intense.  I labored for a while and when they started getting really bad I let my nurse know I wanted my epidural.  Well, that took forever for the anesthesiologist to come in and do it and when she did finally do it I think it was more painful than some of the contractions.  It worked for a while - maybe an hour - and then I started to feel all the contractions in my pelvis.  I tried using the button to add more medicine and it worked a little bit but it was still hurting quite a lot.  I told my nurse I was feeling tons of pressure and she thought it just might be a full bladder (I'll skip the next part but it ends with me having a much emptier bladder).

I was still feeling the pressure after that so she checked me and I was at an 8 dilated and still 80% effaced but Violet had come down a lot.  She said the doctor was in the room next to mine so she'd go get him and see what he thought.  20 minutes later (just after 2 pm) they both came in and the nurse checked me and told the doctor that she thought it was time for me to have the baby.  He wasn't sure and was going to go back to his office that is right next to the hospital and have the nurse give him a call when I was really ready.  After some prodding from the nurse, though, she had me push once and see what happened.  Well, in the 20 minutes she was gone to the doc, I apparently dilated the rest of the way and Violet was ready to come out. It all happened so quickly that I can't really remember all of the specifics but it basically happened like that. After some crazy intense pushing  for about 15 minutes(of which I could feel most of it - dang epidural!) Violet was born at 2:32 pm after about 6 hrs of active labor - not too shabby!  They put her right on my chest, all goopy, and she was amazing.  Barely cried at all.  Just hung out on me while the nurse cleared her out and wiped her off with some towels.  They let her stay with me for about an hour and then they came in to weigh and measure her.  She was 8 lbs 1.8 oz and 22 inches long!  That's a pound lighter than Lily was an 1.5 inches longer.  So she is our tall and skinny girl!  The new born clothes we've put on her are short in the arms but super baggy everywhere else.

I felt bad for Brady because once Violet was born, they put her on my chest and I was surrounded by the doctor and nurses so he couldn't really see her for a while after she was born.  He was just off standing in the corner trying to look over at us.  But he got to hold her soon enough and held her a ton in the hospital.  We had to stay a full 48 hours because of the group B strep thing and I was not enjoying it.  They were actually really good about only checking on us when they had to but I just wanted to be home.  When we had Lily, I never wanted to leave the hospital but with Violet, I wanted to get out of there!  Hospitals are super uncomfortable.  Why is that not more known?  My bed and all the seating available in the whole room was awful.  But now we're home and much more comfortable!  Most of my good pictures of the events have been posted on FB already but here's one of our sweet girl:

And one of our girls together for the first time:

So far Lily is doing ok with the new person in our house.  She is acting out a little more than usual and gets pretty jealous especially when I'm feeding the baby.  I'm sure it'll just take some getting used to and it's only been on day of us all being home together so I'm not too worried.  I think the hardest part so far has been making sure I'm giving Lily enough attention.  It's hard to explain to a 2 year old why mommy has to take care of the baby so much.  My parents get here tomorrow and we are very excited for that!  We haven't seen them since Christmas so I'm sure Lily will have a great time.  That's all for now.  We are so glad to be all together at home!

Who wants to have a baby?

So I'm 38 weeks and 2 days today and I had my weekly doctor's appointment.  Because of my GD, the doctor said he didn't want me going past my due date simply because GD means bigger babies which means higher chance of c-section.  So today we talked about when we might induce and his options were Monday May 6th or Thursday May 9th.  I originally said the 9th, since Brady doesn't have class on Thursdays but, after talking with Brady, we decided that we would do it Monday.  Next week is Virginia Tech's last week of class and finals start on Saturday.  So Brady has some review classes he has to go to Wednesday and then his two finals are on Saturday, the 11th (my due date).  We figured it might be better to have her on Monday so that we're home and he can get some studying done for his finals by Saturday.  So, in a week's time we will have a baby!

It still has not hit me at all.  She'll be early but only by about 5 days and it still seems so far away.  And for those of you interested, and know what these numbers mean, I was checked today and I was 3cm dilated, 50% effaced but my cervix is still high - meaning baby hasn't "dropped" yet.  So things are already looking better than they were for Lily's induction (I was barely 2cm a week overdue with her).  I think I'm going to try and be a lot more active and moving around to see if I can get her to come on her own but, if not, we'll still have a baby in a week!  Here's a new picture.  I don't look much different from the one two weeks ago.
 

Oh, and in case you're curious, we have decided on Violet Jane as her name.  We can't wait to bring her home!

33 Weeks and Potty Training

So I'm 33 weeks and 1 day, about.  Here's what I'm looking like these days:

Lily wanted to show her belly off too.

As you can imagine, I am having trouble moving around and am having some braxton hicks contractions, I think.  I've never had them before so I'm not sure what they feel like but I've been having lots of belly pain.  I am HUGE as you can tell.  I look 9 months pregnant already.  But, enough about me.

We have been trying to tackle the infamous potty training.  I'm not sure why this is such a hard thing and yet every kid must learn how to do it eventually.  Lily did great for a few hours, she went on the potty the two times I took her early on, both 1 and 2, but then when I would take her later she wouldn't go 1 and then 20 minutes later she would go in her pants.  We'll just have to keep at it.  I think she's ready, she just has to decide she is.  She likes wearing big girl underwear so hopefully that'll motivate her.  She did go number 2 twice in the toilet so I didn't have to change a poopy diaper today!  Yay!  That might be worth cleaning up a few number 1 accidents during the day.  I'm trying to do this before the baby comes - we'll see if that happens.  I'm just not too keen on having to change two children's diapers at once.  If anyone has any suggestions for potty training a kid when nothing usual works (sticker charts, treats, shopping for underwear, etc.) I'm up for hearing it!

32 Weeks 4 Days

I'm almost to the 33 week point in this pregnancy.  I feel like she is getting huge and kicking the heck out of me all the time. I'm also starting to get stretching pains (that I got with Lily) and other pains (that I did NOT have with Lily) so I'm pretty uncomfortable all the time.  I kind of want her to come but also want her to wait so we don't have any problems with her health.  I know it'll be easier to just be uncomfortable than to have a new baby but I still wish she was here already or that the time would go more quickly!  Granted, the next two months will certainly FLY by but it only appears that way from some future point in time so for now, I'll wish it was May!  I do have my birthday coming up in a little over a week.  That'll be fun - it's also Easter so Lily will love that.  I got her some great things for her Easter basket.

As for my Master's Degree - I have a capstone class, which is what I'm doing instead of a thesis, that ends on April 15th.  So that'll be over soon and a big weight off of my if I can get my advisor to pass off everything.  I still have two classes to finish before that but those won't be hard and I'll be ready to have the baby!  Plus, the final assignments in each class revolve around research papers which will not be hard to do so if I can finish early and have my assignments ready to turn in on their due dates I'll be all set and stress-free.  Minus the stress of adding another little baby to our family.  Still unsure of names - I think we'll wait until we see her to decide.  My gestational diabetes is well in hand - my numbers are way below the limit of what they can be (which makes me wonder if I have it at all) - and my belly is measuring a little bit big but not big enough that they are worrying yet.  We'll see what my doc says the closer we get!  I seriously think we need to invent a way to see into the future and give pregnant women a date that actually means something.  Due dates are so arbitrary.  I'd love to know the date I'm ACTUALLY going to have her.  Whether it's late or early, I don't care.  I just want to know!  Just one more thing a pregnant woman has to worry about.  Because even when you try not to worry about it and realize she'll come when she's ready, you still worry about it.  Not much else going on.  Just trying to make days fun for Lily when all I do is feel like sleeping - and, in reality, she won't even remember this time in her life but she remembers it now, at least for a little bit, and I don't want her remembering her mommy in a ton of pain from little sister.  The most recent pregger pic:

I think I was just under 31 weeks.  I thought I was huge but when I look back at Lily pregnancy pics I look about the same, except carrying way lower, which I already knew because of the pain.  Current pregnancy is the blue shirt.