Alexis is 1 month old

I can not believe my baby girl is 1 month old!  Heck, I can't believe my other baby girl is 4 and 1/2 years old and my baby boy is 2 1/2 years old.  Time sure does fly by fast.

Alexis and Kaitlyn had check ups at the doctor this week.  Kaitlyn is 37 lbs and 40 3/4" tall.  She is now in the 50% for both height and weight.  The last few check-ups, she had only been in the 10% for her weight, so I am pleased that she is now back up to 50%.

Alexis weighs 10 lbs 12 oz and is 21" long.  She is in the 90% for both!  All of my kids started out at "chunkers" but Kaitlyn thinned out a little.  Tyler is still a little "solid", but that's o.k., because he is a BOY, and boys are SOLID! :).

WHAT ARE THEY UP TO NOW???

Kaitlyn

• 
  
  is in preschool and learning to write her name. 
• 
  
  she loves to spell out any word she sees on her daddy's t-shirt
• 
  
  loves playing games on MeMaw's I-phone and can figure them all out pretty quickly
• 
  
  has started a little pouchy lip, pouty thing since the new baby has come home
• 
  
  is a picky eater, but is starting to try new foods when I cook dinner
• 
  
  is a very good big sister helper!
• 
  
  really enjoys "girl days" or outings with just her and me and Lexi

Tyler

• is in preschool learning letters and colors and shapes
• is very sensitive
• starting to talk a lot more
• has started to need a little more attention since new baby has come home
• loves spending time with daddy and throwing the football
• says he is going to play football when he gets bigger
• will eat anything you set in front of him
• is starting to potty train
• is very fascinated by his new little sister
• is starting to understand "boy vs. girl" and "sister vs. brother"

Alexis

• is starting to get on a 4 hour schedule for feeding and sleeping
• likes to stay awake for about 2 hours before morning and afternoon nap
• is starting to "coo"
• recognizes mommy's voice and looks for me when she hears me, if I'm not holding her
• gets a "knowing" look on her face when she sees me and sometimes will smile
• loves to be held and to sleep with mommy

It's interesting to see each kid at the stage they are in.  The other two, you can tell, need some attention, but we are trying to make sure we give them all equal attention.  They definately love helping mommy when it comes to the new baby....

Almost 1 month old

I can't believe it....my little girl is almost 1 month old, but she is still SO tiny, but yet growing so fast.  The last few days she has decided that nap time will not happen until after lunch time, which means that she wants to be held for the majority of the time until then.  Whenever she does act like she is falling asleep and I lay her down, she will wake up within minutes.  I have got to break her of that!

We are still getting up every 2-3 hours at night, but I am proud to say that I am still nursing.  Both my other two were on the bottle by now, but I am determined to keep going.  She is a great nurser, and although she has recently started to spit up, it's not anywhere NEAR as bad as Tyler was - which made me stop nursing him.

My days are pretty much spent holding/playing with her, sometimes napping with her, entertaining the occassional visitor(s), running a load of laundry (or 2), putting away laundry, doing dishes, and trying to clean up at least a little bit and organize something.  Today, Salvation Army is coming to get a whole bunch of stuff out of my garage, too bad it's not stuff in my house that will make it look like I did something today.

Tomorrow, I am going to tour another daycare.  I don't even want to think about having to put her in daycare, but I have to find a place.  She won't actually start until May 24th, but I need to find one that I like and start the process before then.  I go back to work 4 weeks from Monday, and my husband will be home with her for 4 weeks.  I then have to go out of town for work, but I am taking her and my mom with me, so she will be just over 3 months when she starts daycare.  Too bad I can't find a friend close by that wants to keep her.

Well, that's it for now.  Sorry if my posts are boring, I don't do much these days - but thankfully Angela came to visit today - with sweet baby Dallas too.  It was a nice visit, and we will have to do it a few more times before I have to go back to work.

Long Posts

I just looked back at my last two posts and realized how long they were.  I don't know how I even found the time to type such long posts with a 2-week old.  Well, I do know how - I wrote them while she was napping, when I should have been napping too. 

I have been bad about not sleeping when she sleeps, then wonder why around 4-5:00pm I can't keep my eyes open.  Alexis is a good baby, but contrary to popular belief that newborns sleep all the time - this is not true of my daughter.  This morning, she got up at 7:30, and was awake until 12:30 pm.  She slept until 3pm, but then was up again until 5pm.  Just about the time that I think I am ready to go to bed (around 10pm), she wakes up and decides she is not going to go back to sleep until midnight.....

Today I decided to stay home since I have been going non-stop since Monday.  Although, I did not take a nap with her, we still snuggled in bed and relaxed for a while.  I did try to get a few things done when she took her nap(s), and was able to get a little bit done.  Too bad my house does not look like I have accomplished anything - still working on projects. BUT, I did make dinner!!! :)

Tomorrow, we are going to lunch with MeMe and Tiffany, but we will try to get a nap in for mommy at sometime............

2 weeks old....

Today, Alexis is 2 weeks old, and she is already growing SO much.  I just love spending my days with her.  So far, they have consisted of the following:

• Awake around 7-7:30 to eat (that's after waking up several times through the night - but this is when we actually get up). 
• Play for a little bit, then take a nap - sometimes I join her, sometimes I don't. We are also usually watching "Saved by the Bell" and "Fresh Prince" at this time.
• Mommy eat Breakfast - sometime around 9am
• Do some laundry/dishes/or work on a project
• Alexis wakes up and eats and plays some more
• Eat lunch around noon
• Alexis takes another nap - sometimes mommy too :)
• Wake up for a bit - kids come home from school and get baths before getting to play with Alexis
• Dinner with the family - Alexis is usually sleeping again
• Wake up and play until around 10-11pm
• Sleep - she wakes up around 12:30-1ish, depending on when she went to sleep, again at 3ish, and again around 5:30ish.  It all depends on what time we actually go to bed and how well she sleeps that night

I am stilly trying to figure out a night time routine that will 1. help her to sleep longer, and 2. keep her from sleeping with me.  Granted, she is only 2 weeks old, I don't want to start a habit of her sleeping with me (although it's so much more fun!).  We have some good nights and some bad night.  And shen I say "bad" it's not really bad, she just wakes up more often.  I don't really let her cry (at night), so when she starts to make noise and get a little fussy, I go a head and get her up to feed.  My husband is working, and the only way I can keep him from sleeping on the couch is to keep her as quite as possible.  So far, so good.

Saturday I had her take her naps in our room where it was nice and quite.  I need to let her get used to sleeping when there's not a lot of noise, because at night, it's very quite.  The 1st few nights home, my husband did sleep on the couch, so I slept with the TV on, and it's usually on all day long.  The only problem is, I like to keep her close to me while she is sleeping during the day, so that means she is usually in whatever room I am working on, and the TV is on.  This week we are going to continue the naps in our room, but also try to get her to actually sleep in the bassinet.  She has been sleeping in the car seat, so I am going to try to get her to sleep in her bed.  Soon, I will let her sleep on her stomach (please don't gasp, my other 2 were tummy babies, and if you ask your mom - SO WERE YOU).  I don't know that I agree with the whole "on the back reduces the risk of SIDS."  In fact, if you research it, many will tell you that they don't know that it actually does reduce the risk.  My son spit up so much all the time that there was NO WAY I was going to let him sleep on his back and have him choke.  Luckily, she does not spit up much, but as long as she can move her head - which she already can, then I am fine with it.  They actually sleep much better that way too!

Alexis is so alert all the time now, which surprises me that she is only 2 weeks old.  She likes to look around at things (as long as you are holding her).  She is even drawn to the light from the TV and will stare at it. 

She's getting so big already too.  Her cheeks are so fat already.  Did I mention that I LOVE staying home with her????  I still have 6 weeks left to go, and I am soaking up every minute of it.  I do not want to go back to work - it's not even funny.  I get very sad when I think about it, so I try not to.  I wish I could find a work from home job - one that does not require me to sell anything, or go to school for......there has to be something out there!

Here are some pictures of her from this week.....

We have a baby!

O.k. this blog is a little past due, but I am sure my "readers" (which I am pretty sure are only two people), completely understand.

Alexis Grace was born on Feb 21st @ 6:38pm. This is an extra special day, because she now also shares the same birthday as her daddy. Although he was not too thrilled with the idea at 1st, I think he has come to terms with it. It's not like you really get a birthday anymore, once you reach a certain age - and he is WELL past that age :).

The last month of pregnancy was a little rough. I was very uncomfortable, and was having contractions off and on. We actually went to the hospital twice thinking we were in labor, only to find that I was just having contractions but not any more progressed than I had been. This was very frustrating to me, because I had a previous C-section, and we wanted to try for a "regular" delivery this time. The only way to actually do that would be if I was in "progressive" labor on my own. There was nothing they could do to help put me in labor, because it could cause serious problems.

Each week I went back to the doctor, and there was no change, not to mention the pain of her having to check, because Alexis' head was in the way, and my cervix was "post terior." Not a good combination.

Sunday, Feb 21st, I started having contractions, in fact, I had some during the night that were strong enough to wake me up. For those of you that don't know me very well, I could sleep through just about anything, so the fact that they were waking me up meant they were stronger than normal.

Around 12:00, they were about 3-4 minutes apart. We watched them for the next couple of hours, and my husband even attempted to take a nap. The pain was harder than labor pain was with my daughter, but we also didn't want to go to the hospital and be sent home again. We had a C-section scheduled for 2 days later, if we did not have her already. About an hour later, they started getting closer. There was a constant "pressure", but strong pains around 2-3 minutes apart. I decided to call my doctor.

My doctor was not on call that day, but the girls in the office had told me to leave her a message and she would call me back. The message sounded something like this...."I have been having contractions for the past few hours 3-4 min apart, and now they are more 2-3 min apart. I don't really know what to do, I don't want to go to the hospital and be sent home. Can you please call me back?" (with tears in my voice too). Thirty minutes later, no call - so I called the doctor on call.

The answering service answered the phone, and I started to tell her about my contractions; she proceeded to put me on hold. I was SO UPSET. I just really felt like no one cared at that point. Not to mention that my husband had called his mom around 12ish to see if she wanted to come spend the day with us and have dinner for his birthday, and be there just in case we needed to go to the hospital. By this point, it was around 3pm and she was still not there.

The doctor on call called me back and talked to me a bit about what was going on. He also informed me that he does not usually do VBAC deliveries, or even offer them to his patients because of the risks. I told him that at this point I didn't care how we had to get her out, I was just in a lot of pain and was ready to get her out. He told me to go a head and go to the hospital.

3:30 rolls around and Brian's mom is just down the street. We went a head and got in the car and were ready to back out of the driveway as soon as she pulled in. At this point, I was beyond frustrated. We get to the hospital - I sign in. The girl at the front desk asked if I had been there before because I knew what to do....UHHHH Just a few times!

They sent me to triage and the nurse came in to start doing her thing. She hooked me up to the monitors and started monitoring contractions. After a few minutes she came back in and started updating my chart...asking me all kinds of questions that they never asked me the other two times I had been there. She made me VERY happy when she said she was "banking on me staying." Whatever she told the doctor, it worked. He said we could go a head and plan to have the c-section in an hour - should have been around 5:30 pm......

One little problem..... I was sick earlier that week and we were not sure if it was the flu or what. I still had 2 days of the medicine she gave me, so he wanted to do a "quick" swine flu test. SERIOUSLY.....I was FINE. I was really only down for one day, no way I had the swine flu. This quick test took 30 minutes.

6:15 pm, we were ready to go. I was in the O.R., had my spinal block and was ready to begin. At this point I was VERY nervous. I don't know why, I was just anxious to hear my little baby cry. Not that I like it when babies cry, but if you have had a child, you understand that that is the most blessed noise you can hear when they 1st come out. I could feel all the tugging and pulling and then they asked my husband if he wanted to see - they had her head out. He looked over the curtain, but I still could not hear any cried. I asked the anesthesiologist if she was going to cry, and he informed me that they were sucking all the stuff out so she could. Few seconds later - there it was. One more big push on their end and they pulled her out - 6:38 pm

They took her over to get her cleaned up, cut her cord, get her stats and footprints while they finished up with me. That time seemed to take FOREVER, I just wanted to see her. They finally brought her over to me, and she was absolutely beautiful. I was so glad she was FINALLY here!!!!

Here are some pictures of my beautiful baby girl........

We came home from the hospital on Wednesday, and I have been enjoying spending time with her ever since.  My recoupe time has been MUCH better than my 1st C-section.  I have not really been in nearly as much pain as I was with Tyler.  This is our 2nd week of Maternity leave (I am taking 8 weeks), and we are just enjoying our time together while slowing doing little projects around the house.  I love being a mommy!