Christmas

I am inspired by some of the blogs I read posting their Christmas (eve) day activities already. So here I go....

Christmas Eve we went to the Christmas Eve service at church, which is always really good. We were able to go to the early service because Russ was able to get off early. I was really happy about it because the later service would have made it difficult to have dinner but get Penelope to bed at a good time. The church service, surprisingly, was standing room only! Isn't that amazing! Russ and I still had pretty good seats in the back on the floor. We decided to then have dinner with Russ' family at CPK (California Pizza Kitchen) and then we went home to prepare for Christmas morning. When we got home we watched The Nativity Story (the movie). It was the first time Russ or I had ever seen it and it was amazing. I highly recommend it. I think I'm going to buy it and make it a tradition every year to watch.

Christmas morning I had all my family coming over to celebrate Christmas with a Christmas brunch and opening presents. I wanted to get as much done the night before as possible so I stayed up pretty late. But I was able to relax and enjoy Christmas morning. My mom brought over a huge hunny baked ham and cranberry sauce. My sister brought an apple pastery and apple cider and sparkling apple cider. Then I had an egg and sausage casserole, an egg/ tomato/ basil quiche, cinnamon rolls, strawberry chesse pastery, donuts, muffins, white chocolate peppermint bark, fresh fruit, and biscotti. And then we also had coffee, tropical fruit ice tea, mimosa, poinsettias, juice, and baileys. In any case we had a FEAST for 7 adults and 1 toddler and an infant. LOL. It was really nice and relaxing.





After brunch we were due at Russ' parents at 3 pm. It turned out that Penelope hadn't settled down enough with all the Christmas excitement to take a nap so when we showed up at their house both kids had crashed out. We showed up just in time for another Christmas feast. There was prime rib, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, Watergate salad and for desert Lindsey's version of Jesus' birthday cake (a white cake with green/ red gelatin and cool whip frosting with sprinkles). After dinner Penelope woke up and we did another set of presents. I felt so sorry for Penelope after each present she opened she kept asking to play with the toy. But we kept keeping her going to open other presents. I have heard of families that get together and let the kids open and play with one gift at a time. And that sounds so much better then the rush that usually happens. I just don't think it is doable within the time restraints of visiting multiple placing on Christmas.

Here are the pictures of the kids crashed out at Russ' parents.




We are still trying to recuperate around here. Our living room is finally looking back to normal. We also ended up getting some money for the holidays and combined that with a bonus Russ got at work for being a top seller, we bought a Wii with the Wii fit plus so that we can loose weight. I defiantly have to work on losing this baby weight now that the holidays are over. And with some other money that we got for the kids we got Austyn his own piggy bank (Penelope has several so we had to make sure Austyn has one too). And Penelope her own Camelbak water bottle, she absolutely loves using the adult ones when they are around. Overall we were abundantly blessed this holiday season.

favorites

As I've gotten older I have grown to have favorites. If you know me I don't have "favorites". I don't identify with a favorite color, food, ceral. And I've always explained that my husband makes it up for me. He has a favorite EVERYTHING. He has a favorite sugar ceral, favorite non-sugar ceral. You name it and he'll give you the category and where it lines up in his book. But as I have gotten older I have begun to like people. For instance,

If I would have lunch with anyone in the world and just pick their brain it would be Beth Moore, hands down. I love her. I love the bible studies. Her desire to have more and more of Jesus. To dive head first, no, maybe belly dive or cannon ball into the scripture.

If I could have anyone make me a meal it would be Paula Deen. Her food looks sooo good. And she just has one of those lovable personalities, I would love to sit and eat with her.

If I could meet a famous actress it would be Jennifer Aniston. And maybe some of her adorableness would rub off on me.

When I get to heaven and get to sit at Jesus feet I think I would ask to see a how He made the universe. Man, would that be a sight to see. Just play it back on a video. And I think I would be blown away.

If I got to meet anyone from the bible I think it would be Apostle Peter. I love that guy. I love every story about him in the bible and find him so relate-able to my own mistakes and pitfalls.

What about you? What are your favorites?

all what's new...

I'm adjusting to two kids better on some days then others. Personally I do a lot better when Russell doesn't have to work 12 hour days, but there isn't a whole lot either he nor I can do about that. We recently bought a new coffee machine (a Keurig personal brewer! YUM) to replace the old coffee machine we had that carafe broke and didn't have a replacement carafe anywhere. So I foretell it being a lot easier with my coffee so easy to get.

Aussie and Nelly are two different type of babies. Don't get me wrong they are/ were both very good babies. I consider myself very blessed. But I'm surprised about how different they were. Nelly was defiantly a pacifier baby. Man, did she need that. Aussie on the other hand, grimaces and gags on it if you try to put it in his mouth. Nelly we had to rock forever to make sure she was in a deep enough sleep to put her down. Aussie, well, when Russell went back to work I gave him 10 minutes. But he doesn't really seem to need that. Aussie sleeps so much more then Nelly ever did. Nelly dropped a feeding as a newborn, like in the hospital in the middle of the night she didn't wake up to nurse and I would get yelled at from the nurses for it. I didn't expect to take an alarm clock with me. But during the day she was awake a lot! She would nurse and then be awake for a while then only sleep for 30 minutes and then be awake to nurse again (3 hours later). Aussie only has about 2, sometimes 3, wake times during the day. Otherwise he is either sleeping or nursing. Nelly was a very lazy nurser and Aussie (a true Stade boy) nurses like a pro. Aussie loves laying down. In fact he sometimes gets fussy if you have been holding him too long. Where Nelly always wanted to be held. LOL. Such different babies.

Aussie has brown hair with possible blond highlights. His eyes look hazel right now (which my dad has hazel eyes, so maybe they'll stay). Sometimes they look more brown or blue but I believe they are hazel right now.

Here are some recent pictures of him:



Aussie in my Alma mater Letterman's jacket.


Aussie at thanksgiving


Nelly at thanksgiving


We went to visit Aunt Jodi and got to see Russ' cousin Justin and his wife, Norma, and their family including the new baby, Jake. Jake was born October 7th, about a month before Aussie. Here are a couple of pictures of the two of them together in their matching outfits, bought by Aunt Jodi. Look how cute!





We got some newborn and family portraits done but I only have some of them back. So I'm waiting until I get them all to post my favorites.

Here is the Christmas tree for this year.



And of course the kids in front. Ohh how cute!

Austyn's birth story

As most of you all know I was experiencing a lot of false labor contractions at the tail end of this pregnancy. It started about 35 weeks, but only when I was overexerting myself. But as the pregnancy continued it happened more and more frequently to the point where I would wake up at 2 a.m. with contractions for 45 minutes or in the middle of a daytime nap. It was aggravating to say the least. So I was not wanting or expecting to go past my due date. Nelly was a week early. As days ticked by past my due date I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to take the extra time to relax or try to naturally induce labor. I ended up going on that one last date, and I took a couple extra days doing nothing. And then I had it, I wanted this baby out. I tried all sorts of stuff including walking, raspberry tea, and spicy food. I ended up going walking with my friend, Hattie, on Monday (5 days past due) around Wilson Park. We loaded up our kids, played with them at the park and walked about 4 miles. At the end I was tired but not really feeling any contractions. I was feeling a tightening in my pelvic muscles, but I figure that was more of all the walking and the strain of the baby being so low. We went and had some Mexican food (hopefully spicy enough). And then I went home. By that afternoon I started having contractions every 5 minutes for about 2 hours. But as soon as Russell got ready they stopped. Russell and I were so disappointed. In the middle of the night I woke up a couple of times with contractions but they would stop so Russ and I would go back to sleep. Then about 3: 30 am I woke up to contractions every 3 minutes and they were really hard. I kept going back in forth whether or not I was in labor, having so many false starts. But the nervousness of every 3 minutes made me not wait around to go to the hospital.

I tested positive for a strep bacteria that is normal for any women to have but if the baby catches it can be harmful. To treat this they usually give you two doses of antibiotics while your in labor. Otherwise you have to stay in the hospital for 48 hours with the baby to be monitored. I admit it, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't end up getting the antibiotics but I didn't want to stay that long and I really didn't want to worry for the small percentage of a chance something did go wrong. First they weren't letting any children in the hospital, and so Nelly wouldn't be able to come and visit. And I didn't even stay that long in the hospital when I had Nelly. I really wanted to be in and out with this one. Plus when I had Nelly she ended up getting an infection secondary to a very common hospital procedure. She was the 1% chance that it would happen and I just don't like playing with odds anymore. And I had Nelly in about 6 to 7 hours so they wanted me to get to the hospital quickly. So antibiotics NEEDED to get in before I birthed this child. Needless to say every 3 minutes wasn't exactly giving me a lot of time before this child was going to arrive.

I ended up text messaging Nicky, my sister-in-law, about 4 a.m. "If this isn't labor I think I'm going to lose my mind". She got the point and called me back to see about watching Nelly. Since she lives next door she was able to keep an eye on her the easiest at that ungodly hour. We ended up leaving the house about 4:30 and getting to the hospital about 5 in the morning. They took me into the triage and monitored me where they verified that I in fact was in labor. A nice relief to me, I had been nervous about giving anyone any false alarms. When they checked me in the hospital I was 4-5 cm dilated and 100% effaced and Austyn was at -1. The contractions were still coming every 3 minutes and I was having some light bleeding which is normal from my cervix dilating. It felt like it took a while for them to triage me, I guess I was only in there for about an hour. But with Nelly I didn't get triage at all since my water broke with meconium. My mom came to the hospital rather quickly and everyone on the "I"m going into labor" list was called by the time I settled into my room.

Shortly after I settled into the room I started feeling nauseated but the pain was getting worse and worse so I decided to ask for a epidural and was hoping that the nausea was caused by the pain. I felt better after the epidural but shortly after I settled down the nausea came back. And wasn't able to hold it back. The throwing up lead to my water breaking. When they checked me right after I was a 6-7 cm dilated (a little before 7 a.m.). I ended up feeling a lot better after that but asked when the nausea came slightly back for an anti-emetic medication. Then I started getting the shakes, a normal body reaction to either the labor or the epidural. and then I started itching all over. Right about this time my mother-in-law walked in and Grandmother. They didn't really get to stay too long, sorry. But the shakes subsided after about an hour and then I felt soo good. Man, I love that epidural! It was decided about 8 a.m., since I was doing so well just sitting there, that I would wait till after the last antibiotic at 10 a.m. to push. So I just sat around and chatted with the visitors. LOL. It was great!

We started pushing about 10:45 side-lying for a little bit and then the doctor was called. As soon as I started pushing he was already crowning. I think I was sitting at a 10 for a while. When he came out he had a big cone head but he also had a little pouch (looked like a hematoma) on top of his head where he was crowning for a while. In total I only pushed through about 7 contractions and out he came. I think it was quicker then Penelope but I didn't keep track with her. Austyn Thomas was born face up and the doctor was so good she helped me not tear at all!

He was born at 11:33 a.m. 8 lbs 20 1/2 inches long. His apgar score was 9, 9. I was able to bring him right to my belly after birth, which was a dream. Sitting there with him I almost didn't know what to do. It was so sweet, just as nature intended. We started our first latch with breastfeeding about 10 minutes later. At his two week appointment on the 27th he weighed in at 9 lbs 7 ozs and 23 1/2 inches long!

We ended up not being so good about telling people after he was born. So I hope none of you guys who got left out were upset. I never wrote a list of everyone who needed to be called afterward. And I had lost track of who was called because everyone in the hospital was on the phone right after he was born. I figured it was covered. I tried to send out a mass text message to my friends. We ended up forgetting to tell a set of my grandparents and our homegroup that he was even born. My sister-in-law didn't get the stats after he was born. And one of Russell's close cousins didn't find out anything until a week later. Ugh. Again I'm sorry, please don't take it personal. We just aren't any good at figuring it all out in the end.

In the end it was a wonderful birthing experience and my little boy is thriving just fine!