More Baby Pictures and The Miners' visit

As I have been contemplating birth announcement pictures, it dawned on me that almost everyone who I would be sending a birth announcement to already reads my blog, except my grandmothers, so what is the point of posting the picture here if I am going to send it in the mail anyway. Well, I am saving my favorite picture for the birth announcements, but here are a few others. Maybe after I actually send them, I will post it for the people who I will not be sending announcements to.
The outfit she is wearing here, she already grew out of and I just took the picture last week. Emily, if you like it, I'll send it to you. Funny thing was that right after I put it on her she peed in it, but I wanted to take a few pictures before I took it off to wash it, and now I am glad that I did.
Look how fluffy her hair is right after a bath.
The shape of her face looks so much like Nikolay's (and Ariel's, Adriana's, Annika's, and Dallin's) with her eyes closed.
I'm still trying to get a good shot of her cute feet and chubby legs.
She is wearing my favorite dress that I bought her in this picture.
I was trying to take advantage of the sunlight coming through the window here, something that we haven't seen much of since she was born.
Ariel took this one. Don't I look just like Dad?


Ariel took this one too. Still couldn't get Alice to wake up.


These next three pictures are examples of how she looks at me like I am from a different planet.

Like maybe she is not so sure I can be trusted. Maybe you can understand my ping of jealousy when she actually smiled AT Rebekah ( having never smiled at me) when she was holding her, not the typical gassy/half asleep or staring into the universe smile, but actual eye-contact/I am pleased with you smile.
When this occurred, my postpartum/crazed mother bear instincts kicked in as I whisked Alice away from her, citing that I didn't want her to imprint on her.

So, as I mentioned, the Miners came and spent the night Friday. It was a lot of fun, and way too short. We are planning to go visit them in the summer and go to the beach together.


Legomania
The "triplets" watching TV. Thanksgiving 2008, Annika had long hair like Camille, and I kept almost getting them mixed up, now Camille has short hair like Annika, and the same thing.
I don't get too many chances to post a picture of this handsome guy, even if he hasn't shaven (he usually uses that as an excuse for me to not take his picture) or looking at the camera. This was the second time Alice got to wear that outfit, and when I noticed it was getting too small.

I think I was trying so hard to not smiel hard that I ended up looking kinda goofy, and kinda like Dad, again. Rebekah, I hope this isn't the picture you wanted me to delete. You're hair doesn't look frizzy at all, or at least Alice liked it.
The cousins. It was so fun to see Celeste, because she walks and talks now, and is so busy. It was great to see all of the Miner girls.

Dallin is such a sweetie

The are so many times during the day when I have "I should blog about that" moments, but then one of three things happens either I go to blog and can't remember what it was, or there is some huge event (like having a baby) that I feel I should blog about before some little every day kind of things, or I feel like the first priority is posting pictures, and those funny little moments don't get blogged about. I had one today and I will write about it in the next paragraph despite the fact that a big event just happened (the Miners came to visit) and I have lots of pictures to post.
Now that I have one more carseat to worry about when I am getting the kids into the car, Dallin and I have started this game where I say, "See if you can get your arms through the straps before I get to your side to buckle you in." It usually works and he is so happy to beat me in the race, but today by the time I got around to his side, he hadn't even attempted to put his arms through the straps. When I asked him why not he said, "Me want you be winner!" (translation-I wanted you to be the winner.)
What a sweetie.

Baby Alice is Here! (warning... lots of pictures)

Remember how I was afraid of going over my due date and having to give birth to a big baby, well.... Wednesday evening I was in a lot of pain, so we decided to go to the hospital. As soon as we got to the room where they check to see if you are in labor, my contractions slowed down and the monitor didn't pick them up at all. They sent us home, dejected. All night long I had contractions, but was able to sleep through them, and kept praying that hte delivery the next morning would go smoothly.This is a picture we took right before we left for the hospital at 5:30 am Thursday for the scheduled induction.As soon as they got the IV in, but before they actually started the pitocin, my contractions started to be very strong and two minutes apart. They checked me, and I was as a six so they decided that I didn't need any pitocin. Two hours later we had this beautiful baby. For the first time I had a man deliver my baby and it was a totally different experience. Instead of letting gravity work for me and me being in charge of when I was going to push, they had me balance in one of those yoga poses, and try to push the baby up, against gravity when they told me to. Despite all of that I am very grateful that he didn't perform and episiotmy (I didn't even tear, despite the fact that this baby was two pounds bigger than my biggest) and I am also grateful that it did only take two (of the worst imaginable) pushes to get her out. At one point I really didn't believe that I could do it, and for the very first time I actually screamed during labor, like in the movies.
Notice how the scale says 10 pounds and 4.7 oz? That is what a big baby looks like. Do you see how thick she is around the middle like a big kid? And check out those healthy thighs. Don't even try to tell me that in the first belly picture at the beginning of this post that I didn't look big enough to have her inside me, because with all my other babies, they just tucked themselves up under my huge ribcage, so that even at nine months people were still asking me how far along I was. This was the first time that I actually got the basketball under the shirt effect. I didn't used to understand how people would say that they couldn't even bend over at the end of pregnancy until this one, and my bathrooms hadn't been cleaned in at least 3 weeks, until my sweet mother came and did them, because I physically couldn't bend over or kneel down to reach behind the toilet.
Me with all my children.
Adriana holding her new baby sister.
We didn't get a really good shot at the hospital, and even the hosiptal pictures didn't have her eyes open. This was the first day she was home.
BTW, After two snow storms, we have about 2 1/2 feet of snow on the ground.
You can kind of see my new haircut in this picture. We took this as we were waiting at Annika's dance class, before we took Grandma to the airport.
It was so nice to have my mom to take care of the kids. We are really going to miss her (and her good cooking). The kids really had a great time with her, and I enjoyed being pampered.
Annika with Alice. I keep calling Alice, Annika. It is terrible, but she really looks like her.
Ariel with Alice.
Here is a series of pictures that I took today after her bath. I thought maybe she would look better in a color other than pink. Do you think any of them are birth announcement worthy? I had to play with the coloring because the lighting was less than ideal.
This was with natural sunlight shining on her face but it made her close her eyes.
Babies love to turn their head to the side.

I'll keep trying to get one of us together.