Christmas Morning

We had such a wonderful Christmas! Calin and Capri enjoyed it so much this year! And it was fun having my mom here celebrating with us.

On Christmas Eve the kids opened up some pajamas. I love how excited they are for such simple things! They also opened up a Christmas book from Dom and Jenna that we read to them that night when they went to bed.

We skyped with Alan and Stephanie and their boys while my mom read "The Night Before Christmas" to all her grandkids. We read the story of Jesus' birth and sang Christmas songs while my mom playing the guitar. We ate lots of cookies and drank hot chocolate. And once the kids were in bed we watched Elf while finishing up all the wrapping.

Calin's preschool teacher made them a bag of "Magic Reigndeer Food" to sprinkle on the lawn Christmas Eve. So we made sure to do that too, and left out some milk and cookies for Santa.

We had lots of presents under the tree this year. Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles enjoy spoiling my kids at Christmas! I did lots of homemade stuff for the kids and wrapped lots of things I normally would have given them earlier (like clothes. My kids hardly had any clothes that fit them since I was saving them all as gifts for Christmas). Turned out we had way too many presents. Capri was half way through when she decided it was time for a break and took her stuff to the toy room to play with while we made breakfast. We pretty much had to force her to open the rest of the presents later that day. I'm sure Calin could have opened 50 more though. He was having a ball!

This is their excited faces Christmas morning

 Calin had been asking for a "red-light green-light toy" for months. I had no idea what he was talking about so I made him one hoping it would work. He was thrilled and loves it!

Capri's big gifts this year were a princess castle and a small play kitchen. She also got lots of dolls, and some blocks that she loves and a few movies.

 My mom is so funny while opening presents! If everyone has 20+ gifts each to open, and she only has two, she will still be the VERY last person to finish opening her gifts. She will sit there and talk about how pretty the wrapping paper is, and then the ribbon/bow, probably even inspect and comment on what a wonderful tape job the giver did . . . . and so on. Then when she finally gets to the gift she is always SO excited about it. Even when it's just a little key shaped like a guitar. She will spend 30 minutes looking at it and talking about how amazing it is before moving on to the next gift. Filling a stocking for this lady is a bad idea. She will take 3+ hours opening all the little stocking stuffers!
Mom, we love you, you make us laugh, and we love that we can always count on you to make opening presents on Christmas as long as possible!

 This is how Calin responded to each gift he opened. I loved seeing so much joy and excitement from him and Capri! Calin's favorite toys were a new scooter, a green rocket, jake the pirate remote control car, and a Darth Vader toy (somehow he got REALLY into Darth Vader a few days before Christmas so my mom found him some fun star wars toys. I don't even know how he knows who Darth Vader is)

 We got Calin a new bat and a baseball glove. Jordan has taken him to the park quite a bit since Christmas, and wow this kid can sure hit that ball! Jordan does well teaching his the basics, and Calin LOVES to learn and have people teach him how to do things, so Dad (my dad) when we visit, make sure you spend lots of time sharing your baseball knowledge with Calin. He'd love you as a coach! And you wouldn't even have to trick him into hitting left handed since he already does :)

 Everything Capri opened was her "special _________" Here she is after saying "Aww! It's my special princess helmet!" We loved it!

 My kids are definitely my favorite Christmas presents.

Oh, and proof our little Taylor was around for the fun too. I don't know why I didn't get a better picture of him. On Christmas he was 12 days old.

Jordan's dad came over in the morning and joined us for the second round of opening presents. The rest of the day we relaxed, skyped with family, went on a nice walk and let the kids ride their bikes around the park. My mom and I made Christmas dinner while everyone else took naps. We sang some Christmas songs, and tried to have lots of moments where we took a step back from all the fun gift giving/receiving and focused on Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. 

Pre-Christmas Fun

I had lots of things I wanted to do to celebrate the Christmas season. And I was really counting on my recovery to be similar to Capri's - a total breeze! Since that wasn't the case and I was forced to take things easy I tried to forget my to-do list and tried to just roll with it. What we did end up doing was very last minute, not well put together, but fun all the same.

I think Taylor was a week old when we went to see the lights at the Mesa temple (mine and his first outing since he was born). It was beautiful! Way too much walking for me, even after a week, but I'm so glad we were able to go as a family!

Calin's preschool had a Christmas party and Capri was so sad she couldn't go, so we decided to have a Christmas party at home for Capri. I quickly printed off some Christmas coloring pages, pulled out the crayons and construction paper for them to make reindeer hats, my mom played Christmas songs on her guitar, we ate some Christmas candy and cupcakes, drank some hot chocolate, and played some Christmas themed games. Santa even showed up (Taylor). I don't think Capri understood that this was her party because when it was over she told me she needed to get ready so we could go to her party with all her friends. She got quite upset with me when I told her we just had her party and it was at our house, so I let it go and she forgot about it :)

Capri wore her hat all week. And Calin gave me those flowers when I came home from the hospital :) He LOVES getting flowers for people. These are the first ones I have ever received from him (besides the beautiful ones he picks on his own which I love just as much!!). 

We also made it over to look at Christmas lights around town on the 23rd. I was shocked at how crowed this one little circle was. There are lots of "Christmas Tree Lane" type of streets around Modesto and just as good if not better than this one and they are never this crowded. There were multiple tour buses. Double decker tour buses! (same thing at the temple. WAY too crowded!)

 This house had some sort of projector inside with Santa talking. The kids loved it.

 I think this driveway was the kids' favorite part of the night. They ran and ran for so long before we finally dragged them away.

 And Calin made this cute tile in preschool as a Christmas gift for us. I love it!

December 30, 2013 at 10:44AM

via Instagram http://instagram.com/p/ijfnrXi1Ul/ 2 wk checkup. 98th percentile for height. 81st percentile for weight. How is my baby so big?!

Taylor Jordan

Our beautiful Taylor Jordan was born at 2:30am Friday December 13th. He was BIG! 9lbs 1oz and 22" long. Perfect. Healthy. Sleepy. Adorable.

Here are lots of pictures for everyone to enjoy. The incredibly long L&D story is at the bottom for those who like to read those. 

Labor & Delivery room

He started out a little camera shy 

This was the first time my actual doctor delivered my baby. With Calin and Capri it was just the doctor on call. But Dr. Huish does all of his own deliveries and rarely ever misses one.

His first bath. They waited at least 12 hours before giving him his bath. 

Mother/Baby room

Today I decided it was time to start taking some newborn pictures. He was amazing! I can't wait to take more, but here is a little sneak peak for those of you who have made it this far through this post :)

Taylor's L&D Story

I started getting strong contractions Tuesday night. They went on from about 3am-7am, lasting 60 seconds every 8-10 minutes. Wednesday I hardly had any contractions, and the ones I did have weren't painful like the ones the night before. Then around 8pm that night the contractions started again. This time they started out lasting 60 seconds and about 2-5min apart for the first hour. Then they jumped to 8-10 min apart and continued around 5-12 min apart till about 10am. Then they stopped for most of the day on Thursday. That was night 2 with no sleep. I was dreading Thursday night. I didn't think I could take another night of night labor. I just kept waiting for my water to break like it did with Calin and Capri. But it never did.

That evening (4:50pm Thursday) I had my 40 week doctor appt. He was very surprised I had made it to my due date. I was dilated to a 5 and 80%. He asked if I wanted him to strip my membranes, but I declined. I asked about my contractions and told him about the intensity, but he just said when they start getting 5 min apart for an hour then to go in. He told me not to wait to go to the hospital, especially if my water breaks since I was already dilated so far it was likely that i would go fast after my water breaks. I also asked if I needed to set up an induction date so he said he would have the nurse schedule one for the following week. We scheduled one for Thursday evening, the 19th. That seemed like FOREVER away! I definitely could not make it through another WEEK of night labor! 

I came home a little before 6 and Jordan made dinner for me and the kids. My contractions were starting to come back, but were at least 20 min apart so I didn't pay much attention to them. I was texting a friend and she told me it was all psychological, that I was holding off till my mom got here and if she's wrong and I didn't have him by Friday night she was going to bring me ice-cream. Well, that sounded great to me, so while I ate dinner Jordan went and got me some ice cream and a redbox movie for me to watch that night to try and distract me from my contractions. Then my contractions started getting closer together. I told Jordan we needed to hurry and get the kids to bed because I think we need to head to the hospital. While he was putting the kids to bed my contractions were about 2-5 min apart and very painful. I started getting all the last min things together that we needed for the hospital and called our friends who were going to stay with the kids while they slept. After about 1.5-2 hours of contractions about 2-5 min apart they started spreading out to 5-10 min (with some 2-3 min apart ones too). But I didn't care. I decided I was having this baby that night, and not going all night again with horrible labor contractions like the past two nights.

We got to the hospital around 8:30. By the time I checked into triage and they started monitoring my contractions they had slowed down to about every 10 minutes. Ugh! The dr on call said I needed to walk around to try to get things moving, if nothing changes they would have to send me home. I just wanted the epidural right then and there! But I got up and walked. My contractions were every 2-3 minutes while walking around, but some would be 30 seconds long, and some 90 seconds. It was strange. And every once in a while they would jump to 4 or 6 min apart. After 45 minutes of walking I was DONE and determined I was in real labor and having my baby that night. She checked me again and said I had made enough progress to admit me (though I was still at a 5 almost 6). She said since my water hasn't broken yet it was preventing Taylor from dropping far enough to progress my labor. 

I moved into the labor and delivery room around 11pm. The anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural minutes after getting in there. They said my blood work wasn't back yet, but with my consent they could give it to me before. YES please! After I got my epidural Jordan decided to run home and grab the stuff we forgot. The nurse was pretty nervous he wouldn't make it back, but we live really close to the hospital. She checked me and I was only at 6.5cm. He made it back with plenty of time to spare. 

The nurse said my contraction pattern was really strange. The duration and frequency varied so much. This labor was so different than my other two! This is the contraction log from when I was walking around:

A little before 2am I told Jordan I feel like we will be there all night. The nurse was having me lay on my side because that was where Taylor was happiest (strongest heartbeat) and I was pretty flat. Jordan said I needed to sit up a little bit, so I pushed the button on my bed to raise it a tad. I only pushed it one time when we heard "Pop" and my water broke. So the nurse checked me and I was at a 10. She had me do one practice push and told me I was ready and she would call the dr. I was kind of shocked and asked her in disbelief "I'm ready to start pushing already?" since last she checked I was at 6.5 and I only did one practice push. But she said yes. My dr showed up around 2:15, set everything up and I started pushing around 2:25. I can't believe I pushed this big guy out in 5 minutes or less! His shoulders got stuck so I tore a bit and ended up with stitches. When they told me he weighed 9lbs 1oz, I think I three times for clarification. I just could not believe I just gave birth to a 9 pounder! (those of you who are wondering, Calin was 7lbs 15oz, and Capri was 6lbs 14oz).

As soon as he was out they handed him over to me to hold and get in some good skin to skin contact while they cleaned him off. They let me hold him for so long. When I asked when they take him to be weighed and do all the tests they said "whenever you're ready." I loved that. Eventually I handed him back over, but they gave him right back soon after. His Apgar scores were 9 and 9. He nursed about an hour later for a good 20 minutes. And we moved into the mother baby recovery room a little after 5am. We were all exhausted and tried to get some sleep. 

Our hospital stay was much better at this hospital than at others. They really stress the importance of mother/baby bonding and like to keep baby in your room the entire time. I always prefer having my baby with me so I was happy with that. And they only woke me up once while I was sleeping and only because it had been 6 hours since Taylor had eaten. They were really good about when they came in to take vitals and other things.

On Friday Jordan went and picked up my mom from the airport and brought her and the kids to see me and Taylor. Jordan's dad also came by to visit. Later that night our friends Jamie and Kyle stopped by. Jamie had a baby right before Thanksgiving at 28 weeks. Right now he's 3lbs 6oz so holding Taylor was quite different. Also, a friend of ours had her baby two days before and was there while we were so we visited with them a couple times. Her husband is in Jordan's PT class. Their little girl was so cute and tiny! She was just a little over 5lbs. Taylor looked SO huge compared to her! 

We came home Saturday afternoon and have been adjusting to our new life as a family of 5. The kids adore Taylor! But my recovery hasn't been too easy this time around. I'm still way too sore to do much of anything so things have been a bit challenging. I'm sure once I heal more it will get easier. I have really come to appreciate all the girls that were with me in Arkansas when I had Capri even more than I did before. They were so wonderful and helpful with so many things! They made having a baby that summer away from home easy. They were there with anything I needed, brought meals for over a week, stopped by daily to take Calin to the pool or to play with their kids. It's definitely harder here. Someone did bring us dinner Monday night and will bring one tonight, but that's all for dinners I guess (no one contacted us about dinners, so I didn't even think we were going to get a single one). And I've been having such a rough recovery that my mom is busy all day trying to take care of Calin and Capri and Jordan is busy trying to catch up on school that he missed that we can't even find time to go to the grocery store. It's not bad, just different and more difficult. I'll heal soon and things will be much easier I'm sure! I'm so grateful to have my healthy baby Taylor home with me and spend so much one on one time with him as I heal and he gets used to this crazy fun family of ours :)