To a T: February 2010

27 February 2010

Ice Castles

We went to see these amazing ice structures while staying at the cabin over the weekend. They were formed in front of a resort in Midway by a man who made an art out of sprinkler pipes, water, and freezing temperatures. He designed a makeshift icicle farm of castles reaching 20 to 40 feet. There's even a path around the castles so people can come in and get an up-close look at the amazing formations.

Some daytime views:

We took the whole family when it was dark out so that we could see the ice castles lit up.

Some nighttime views:

There were tunnels that we could walk through.

Blake was pretty excited when he found his own icicle to taste.

Troy commented on this ice structure; "That's going to impale someone!" Luckily, Blake's Grandpa didn't quite put him close enough for that.

Blake decided to lounge in the snow bank for awhile. However, he didn't really like the aftermath of a wet backside.

Proof that Nash was there, too.

After seeing the ice castles, we got ice cream at the resort's pastry shop and sat in the tea parlor.

Blake was good about sharing what he thought was "his" ice cream.

Mostly, he saved all the ice cream for himself. He has recounted the experience of seeing the ice castles and eating ice cream all day today, so it must have been a memorable experience for him!

25 February 2010

Filling Out

Nash hasn't even hit the 7 pound mark yet, but his little cheeks look so much chubbier to me than when he was born. It's just not fair how fast newborns grow up.

Would you like some tea?

I love some of his expressions.

Have I mentioned his cute hair?

23 February 2010

Brothers

Best friends in the making.

17 February 2010

Nash's Nook

We decided to make our guest room into a shared nursery. We weren't quite ready to give up our guest room completely, but we also didn't think it would work for the boys to share a room yet. The space is a little crowded and Nash's section is literally just a nook of the room, but we made it work. I actually rearranged the furniture and put the crib together the day before Nash was born. Maybe that was what put me into labor! Talk about finishing just in time though. I tried to coordinate the baby items with what we already had in the room so it's nothing too cute or exciting, but I added a few things to make it more nursery-like.

I couldn't find a crib sheet in the color I wanted, so we made our own over the holidays (by "we" I mean I picked out the fabric and my mom did all the sewing).

This mobile turned out to be a nightmare to make, but I love the end result! I thought it would be a simple afternoon project but it ended up taking much longer. The strands got completely tangled while in production, I had to completely disassemble the entire thing and re-glue all of the circles when they kept falling off, and it took two entire movies just to tie the ribbons on. I thought about throwing it away several times. It truly was a labor of love.

We squeezed in the rocking chair and made the dresser into a makeshift changing table.

Voila, Nash's nook! Now if I could only paint the walls...

14 February 2010

Symbols of Marriage

A wedding ring is a daily symbol of commitment and loyalty to the one you love. Troy lost his ring about six months ago. I wasn't at all surprised. In fact, I was amazed that it lasted through more than three years of marriage! He took it off and played with it all the time and constantly spun it on flat surfaces. It's a good thing we're not very sentimental people because it was just a matter of time before it disappeared forever. However, after six months of appearing as if not married, I thought it was time to get him a new ring. We went on a Valentine's date the last weekend of January, which was good since we ended up having our baby a few days later. I thought it would be the perfect time to give Troy a replacement ring. I got him a very simple inexpensive ring knowing that he would probably lose that ring too. He was not very thrilled. He thought I was trying to "claim my territory." I guess that might have been part of it, but I thought that he would genuinely appreciate the thoughtfulness. I think the new ring has spent more time spinning than it has on his ring finger.

That brings me to my next story about wedding rings, or rather the lack thereof. This is a classic "You know you're at Walmart when..." story. The day before Nash was born, I went to Walmart to pick up something that I had shipped to the store. A gangly man in his mid-twenties helped me carry the item out to my car. While en route, he asked me how old Blake was. He then asked me when my baby was due. I answered both of his questions, and then in all seriousness, he asked, "Same dad?" I thought, are you kidding me? I frankly responded, "Yup." Who asks that kind of question? I mean, really? Do I look like the type of person that employs two different dads for my children within two years? He then proceeded to ask me a series of inappropriate questions about my marital status. The only credit I can give him is that I wasn't wearing my wedding ring because it gave me a rash towards the end of my pregnancy. The moral of the story is that wedding rings are apparently very important to avoid awkward conversations from strangers. Hopefully Troy can at least carry that knowledge into his use of wedding ring #2.

Happy Valentine's Day!

12 February 2010

10 Days Old

Love Him.

10 February 2010

I Only Cried Once

Today was my first day at home alone with our two children. I usually don't like to share such graphic details, but as I look back upon how the day's events unfolded, I am sure that my first day will be a source of humor in days (maybe weeks) to come.

The morning battle began when Blake wanted crackers and cheese for breakfast. His dad gave in and let him have cheese and crackers yesterday, but I didn't want to start a trend. Blake had a major meltdown as he carried the block of cheese that he snuck out of the fridge around the kitchen. After explaining to my two-year-old 50 times that cheese and crackers were only for snacks and lunches, and giving him the options of cereal, yogurt, or bananas, he finally accepted the fruit loops I offered him.

That's when the blow-outs started. Blake has been taking amoxicillin for his ear infection, which leads to the most disastrous, up-the-back, dirty, messy diapers imaginable. He began chanting "wet back" over and over, but wouldn't let me take him out of his booster seat until he was completely satisfied with the amount of fruit loops and peanut-butter toast on his plate.

I cleaned up that disaster and started the first round of laundry and bathing. I thought it was pretty impressive that both Blake and I were bathed and showered by 9am. Our angel baby slept through it all. At 10am Blake started begging for pancakes. I don't just make him pancakes at his beckon call, but there were some leftover pancakes in the fridge that I heated up for him. Thus began blow-out #2, and another round of laundry and bathing.

Still keeping my cool, I then brought out a fun project for Blake. I bought him a little Valentine's mailbox several weeks ago knowing how much he loves to receive mail. My plan was to leave him little Valentine's cards and treats in the box throughout February, but having our baby early slightly altered that plan. I let him decorate the box with stickers and color some Valentine's. I fed the baby while he was busy with the stickers.

The next ten minutes were when things really picked up. Nash projectile spit-up all over me, soaking both his and my clothing. I took him upstairs to take care of that mess. At the exact same time, Blake started in again about wanting cheese and crackers. I heard the fridge open and shut downstairs. I started to worry when I heard Blake dragging the chair across the floor, so I abandoned the wet baby to tend to my whining two-year-old. I found him armed with the block of cheese and a sharp knife that he had retrieved out of the dishwasher. He was sliding the chair to the pantry to obtain the crackers. That was the point when I started to cry. I was also topless because I was half-way through changing my wet clothes. Blake looked at me lovingly, as tears rolled down my cheeks, and said, "Mama, sad." "Mama, tissue." He then got a little worried about my immodesty, and started repeating, "Mama, clothes! Mama, clothes on!"

We endured one more blow-out after I finally got Blake settled with his cheese and crackers. It was such a relief when nap time rolled around. I know it will get easier, but things didn't run quite as smooth as I had hoped on our first day alone. Tonight will be Troy's turn to handle both of our children while I teach yoga. Hopefully things will go better for him.

09 February 2010

First Week

I forgot how much I love having a newborn around! I feel like I didn't anticipate his arrival to the full extent, but now that baby Nash is here, I just can't get enough of him. He is seriously an angel baby. He sleeps and eats like a champ. He is just the most precious thing and I love him so much already. I wish I had more time to cuddle him and let him fall asleep on me because babies grow up way too fast.

It has been an interesting transition for us to have two children. The baby has been the easy part. Blake has been our challenge. He is really good with the baby but has been acting out in other ways to get attention. I'm sure that is to be expected, but I feel like his terrible two's are peaking at the most inconvenient time. He was also diagnosed with an ear infection yesterday after 10 consecutive days of congestion and throwing up. We have dismantled and washed every item from Blake's crib several times, disinfected the carpet, and cleaned up more messes than I thought were possible even from awful-gag-reflux-Blake. Thankfully, Troy has been on paternity leave since we had Nash, but as of tomorrow it's me vs. the two kiddos alone. Wish me luck...

06 February 2010

Nash's Birth

Here is the short version:

I endured only 3 hours of labor. I was dilated to 7cm when we arrived at the hospital, and Nash was born 1 hour later after 3½ minutes of pushing.

For those who are interested, here is the slightly longer version:

I guess you could say it all began on Monday night. Blake had a stomach bug all weekend and right before bed he threw up for what seemed like the hundredth time all over me. After getting him cleaned up and taking my own shower, I started to get really nauseous. I went to bed early but woke up at 11pm and every half-hour thereafter to empty the contents of my stomach. I started to get really shaky and had constant pain in my abdomen. Around 1:30am I called the on-call midwife to see if the nausea and pain were anything I should be worried about since I was 37 weeks pregnant. She asked me how soon I could be at the hospital, and I told her at least an hour. I woke Troy up, called his mom to come over and stay with Blake, and we made our way to the hospital in the middle of the night. I was severely dehydrated and endured a horrible IV experience to replenish the fluids that I had lost. They monitored the baby's heart rate all night but didn't check to see if I was dilated or anything. After 3 medicines for nausea that didn't work and 3 bags of intravenous fluid, they let me go home. I am absolutely horrible with needles and I thought that it was so unfair that I endured a night with an IV and had no baby to show for it! I joked that it would have been really nice if they could have just capped off that IV and had it ready to go for my delivery three weeks later.

We came home around 7am and absolutely crashed since we had gotten no sleep throughout the night. I was so drugged up by that point that I was completely oblivious to anything going on with my child at home. I woke up around 1pm and Blake was not in the house. I called my mom-in-law to locate him and found that he was happily playing (although still throwing up) at her house. We decided to let him nap there for the afternoon and pick him up later. I made a few other phone calls to share the saga of the night's events. I said, "Well, I spent the night in Labor & Delivery, but not to have a baby." After chatting on the phone for awhile, at 2:30pm I started to feel what could only be described as contractions. I thought that was weird since my water hadn't broken, but the pains I felt were unmistakeably contractions. They were pretty strong, so I decided to wake Troy up. He looked at me with a groggy "Are you kidding me?" expression when I told him I thought I was having contractions. He timed them and we realized that they were only 3 minutes apart. We didn't know if we were going to have a baby that day or if they would try to stop the labor since it was 3 weeks before my due date.

At that point, we prepared to make our way back to the hospital. Troy called the midwife who told us to wait about two hours and then call her again with an update. Troy convinced her to let us wait one hour instead of two since my contractions were strong, decently close together, and my first delivery wasn't that long. That gave us some time to throw some bags together for the hospital. I showered and packed in between contractions but I was in so much pain that I was already on my hands and knees to endure each one. After an hour, my contractions were 1½ minutes apart, so the midwife gave us the clear to check back into Labor & Delivery. We live a half-hour away from the hospital and that car ride was torture. My original plan was to have the epidural in place much earlier in labor, and way before we even left our house. All I could think about besides wanting to pass out was the sweet numb relief that the epidural would give. I had no choice but to breathe through the contractions, to which the yogic breathing that I've learned immensely helped with. Troy kept asking me what I needed and I'm pretty sure that I snapped "Don't ask me questions!" back at him. I get pretty indecisive when I'm in labor.

We checked back into the exact same triage we had spent the night in, and discovered that I was already dilated to 7cm. I wasn't really surprised because my contractions definitely felt strong enough to be at a 7. I was still bound and determined to get that epidural. So, they rushed me to delivery, I was given another IV, and the epidural took effect just as I became fully dilated. My midwife broke my water and that's when things started to get really scary. The baby's heart rate drastically dropped and doctors and nurses started flooding into the room. Tables with vacuums and forceps were brought in, preparations were made for an emergency c-section, and I had about 6 people standing around my bed telling me that I needed to push really hard and get that baby OUT. Thankfully, I was able to push the baby out in 3½ minutes and he was immediately taken from me. The pediatrician assisted him with his breathing at first and he scored pretty low on his first Apgar test. However, from then on out, his heart rate went back up, his breathing was fine, and he was completely healthy. We were so blessed to have a healthy baby after a few frightening final minutes of delivery.

Some other tender mercies that we experienced with this delivery:

It can't be known for sure, but it is likely that whatever stomach bug I had the night before helped put me into labor. If I hadn't been intravenously rehydrated, the delivery and contractions would have been much worse.
Troy stayed home from work on Tuesday since he had been up all night with me at the hospital. Usually I would have been by myself on a weekday afternoon and there is no way I could have driven myself to the hospital.
Troy's parents got home from a month long trip to South America and Antarctica on Monday. We had no back up plan for where Blake would stay if I went into labor early, and they literally made it home within 24 hours of when we delivered.
Blake was already at the Tanner's house when I went into labor. We didn't have to worry about dropping him off somewhere in the short time span that we were given! He had no clothes with him of course, but that was easily taken care of later.
Even with a quick labor, we made it to the hospital on time, didn't run out of gas on the way although the light was on, and were blessed with so many people who knew what they were doing to help us deliver a healthy baby boy. I can't even imagine the complications we might have faced if we didn't make it to the hospital within an hour of Nash's birth and didn't have the technology to monitor his heart rate and the expertise to assist his breathing.

We just love our little Nash and feel incredibly blessed to have him in our family!