Merry Christmas

I'm going to try really hard to get more pictures this Christmas. In years past I just get too caught up in the moment and only snap a few photos, then come "slideshow" time for the kids' birthday, I don't have much to chose from. Plus it's nice to have the memories. So far I've documented a full out session of dress up this morning (including "cowboys and indians" and "Cinderella") and a bit of an awesome battle of Axis and Allies where the opponents were 600 miles apart (they played on skype- that's just about as nerdy as you can get I'm pretty sure)This Christmas is going to be BIG for our kids. I got some extra photo shoots than I normally have this season and so we splurged and bought something for the kids that's one of those things that you always wanted as a kid, but your parents would never get. I told Craig no at first, but then later succumbed when I saw how excited he was getting about it...anyway, Santa is going all out this year. That's all I have to say about that.
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and remember our Savior and his humble birth this Christmas season. The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Christ.

The Highland Lady

Is a new blog. For my crocheting. Check it out! :-)
http://thehighlandlady.blogspot.com/
...and if you want to laugh (or cry, like I felt like doing), read my last blog post about Chloe this evening that will now be shadowed by this one.
Lubs

Duh-RAMA!!!

Christmas time...

A time of joy. A time of laughter. A time for decorating Christmas cookies. Oh wait- that is unless you have a daughter who decided that instead of decorating her cookie nicely at Grandma's house with friends over for dinner she was going to throw a fit at me for not being able to do the sprinkles by herself. Which then turned into a bigger fit when I pulled her off the table to go sit in time out. Which then turned into a monsterous fit when the last fit didn't cease and I decided to bring her to her room at our house so I could talk to her calmly. Which then turned into a mega-ginormous screaming at the top of her lungs and kicking and scratching and hitting fit when I had to pause to get my shoes on and she realized we were leaving the house to go home. I walked out the door with her slung on my hips trying to hold her flailing, slapping hands away from my face as everyone watched in silence since her screaming had stopped all conversation in the room. I then had the joy of cleaning up her icing puke that landed all over her bed when her monsterous screaming induced a monsterous coughing fit and vomit ensued.
So instead of joyfully laughing at Craig who I'm sure right now is trying to hork down one of his world famous ten-inches-of-frosting-on-a-cookie cookie, I'm listening to Chloe scream at the top of her lungs in her pajamas in bed (she's so mad she's clapping her hands as hard as she can. Have't seen a fit like this for a LONG time, I thought we were through with them....) and blogging about it. Chloe, I hope when you have a four year old drama queen yourself that you read back on this and your appreciation for your mother will increase...at least more so than it is now. Love you forever. :-)

Spending

Way too much money. Yeesh.
At least it's sometimes stuff that I've used a coupon for or got at a good deal or got on sale.

Things that I got at a good deal:

• Linus two shirts for $1 a piece from Wal-Mart, one of which I will use in their Christmas photo
• A $10 throw blanket that I will use for newborn shots because of it's color and texture that I would have spent a lot of money on fabric for.
• A $15 dollar crocheting book for $7 with my 50% off coupon that didn't work at Joann's, but then the lady took off the discount anyway.
• A $500 85 mm 1.8 lens that I got for $350 (more than that with shipping, but still)
• A pretty corduroy dress for $3 for Chloe...at Wal-Mart
  

Things that I didn't get a good deal on:

...Um, I'd rather not talk about it. Shame is filling my soul as I look at these non-discounted items that I couldn't pass up.

Some other news: Chloe went to the eye doctor last week to get her eyes checked again to see how her glasses were working. Yes, they are working, but not well enough. I haven't noticed it, but the doctor said that even with her glasses on she's still crossing her eyes just a little, especially the right eye, so he perscribed a patch. She has to wear this band-aid looking patch over her eye, under her glasses still, for two hours a day until January when they check her again. If that doesn't work, they may need to adjust the perscription again, and if that doesn't work, they are going to look at surgery for her eyes. Have no idea what that entails or how it would help, but he warned me when I first brought her in that that might be an option.
Thanksgiving was fun- we stayed at home and ate LOTS of food. I feel so fat all the time now, but I'm not getting on the scale until after Christmas because it will just make me depressed- now begins the "gaining-back-all-my-lost-baby-weight-over-the-holidays" routine. Woot.
Linus is also maturing a little. Just a little, but we'll take what we can get! I took the kids to Wal-Mart this morning and he didn't throw one fit. In fact he even climbed in his seat when I asked him to, he didn't touch anything he wasn't supposed to, and he was pleasant and giggly the whole time! It was like I had normal children or something, weird. We've definitely noticed a change in his behaviour in the last month or so and I think it's just a combination of finally getting used to the baby and getting all his 2 year old molars to break through, but it's like I have a cute little boy to play with instead of a monster again- I love it. He's still two and yells a lot, but at least he's reasoning a little better, demanding a little less, and listening a little more. Yay Linus!
Odell is getting SO big. Her 4 month checkup is in two weeks, I'm anxious to see how much she's grown. She's very ticklish, giggles this funny giggle that sounds sort of like she's irritated at you, but just laughing to be nice, she smiles at everyone, poops through everything (and I mean everything), and is just this little butterball of joy. I love her to itty bitty pieces! Did I just say that? Yes I did, she's adorable and I don't care who knows it. :-)
Sorry no pictures, next time...

Angels are singing right now...

Because I just found an awesome article about how to interact with kids while taking pictures of them by one of my FAVORITE childrens' photographers.
Anyone, moms and photographers alike, should read this article. It's swell. I totally agree that kids interact SO much better when Mom and Dad aren't hanging over your shoulder making sure they behave, but I'm just glad to hear that it's okay to ask them to go away while you take their pictures. I mean, I'm a teacher, I know fairly well how to interact with kids, but it just makes it harder (in most cases) when they've got parents in the background threatening their life if they don't smile, or trying to make them smile successfully and then I get a ton of shots of the kid looking out of the camera at their parent in the background.
I'm doing it. If Amy Wenzel can do it, so can I.
By the way, here's the article if anyone wants to read it!
http://www.amywenzel.com/?p=541

Get it right!

So Chloe got a "Leaptop" for her birthday on Wednesday (another blog for another day, I don't have time to edit and download the pictures right now). You can hook it up to your computer and personalize it, so now whenever Chloe opens it, it will greet her with a "Hi, Chloe!" and any time you start a new activity, it will usually address her as Chloe at some point in the game.
During breakfast this morning, Chloe wasn't done eating and Linus was, so she let Linus play with her computer while she finished. While munching my own bowl of cereal, I hear the following in the next room:

"BAAA HA HA HA HA- I NOT CHLOE, I WINUS!!! HA HA HA!"
*a little chuckle from me and then a few minutes pass*
"I not Chloe, I Winus! Siwwy computer..."
*a few more minutes pass*
"NO, I not Chloe...I WIN-NUS! WIIIIIIN-NNNNNUUUUUSSSSSS"
*a few minutes pass and the frustration rises as I hear him hissing at the computer through gritted teath, putting the screen right up to his face*
"I not Chloe. I Winus."
*then the final betrayal a few minutes later*
"WINUS!!! I!!!! NOT!!!! CHLOE!!!!! I!!!!!!! WINUS!!!!! SIWWY COMPUTER!!!"
*and then the sound of his defeat as he closes the laptop and shoves it aside*

Silly Computer. I want my money back if the derned thing can't even differentiate my kids. Sheesh.

He's just got a strong will

I used to think that when people talked about their kids as being "very independent" or "strong willed", I thought that was another way of saying "spoiled brat". Obviously the parents just didn't have enough discipline in the house, children don't just come that way, any child can be behaved with enough discipline at home. I vowed that my child would never be the one that parents roll their eyes over at church or know their name purely because they know they'll need to use it sometime when they see the said child misbehaving.

And then Linus entered our lives.
He was a happy child when he entered this world. Still is, but now it's more of "happy child" in the way Buzz Lightyear innocently meant when referring to the devil child Sid next door. When Chloe was two, she certainly had her moments, but I remember thinking as she got older how excited and relieved I was that now she was old enough to do more things on her own and I didn't have to follow her around the house so much and could let her play without wondering what she was getting into. Linus is rarely out of my sight anymore. Anything paper must be ripped, I have lost count of how many of our books he has ripped (this weeks misfortune was the whale's tail in "The Grouchy Ladybug"), he can't climb on much, so he just destroys everything at arm's length, his favorite activity with Odell now is finding her eyes and getting his fingers in them before I get to him first or lying down on her to give her a "hug". And his fits. Oh his fits. From morning until night he is just mad about everything. He wants to do everything himself, we try to reason that he is not old enough to do everything himself, so he screams until we let him attempt whatever it is we are denying him, he screams when he can't do it, we offer help, he accepts, and then screams when we begin to help him because he wants to do it himself and the cycle repeats itself about 3 or 4 times until he ends up in time out because we can't get him to calm down. Everything we tell him not to do is a game. Getting his attention is impossible. Explaining anything is impossible. And everything he has to say is at level 10 in volume, and there's no volume control or mute button all day long. He hits Chloe the minute he's left alone with her for anything. He deliberately throws things at us, especially when we are holding Odell. Getting him in or out of his carseat is sometimes a 10-15 minute ordeal.
M: Okay Linus, let's get in the car- no, in the garage, over here- no, don't play with the garage door button please, no, don't play with Daddy's tools, please get out of the wagon, don't play with the lawn mower, Linus- stop playing with the tricycle, put it down please- okay fine, I'm going to put you in the carseat myself.
*starts to pick him up to be met with screaming, punching, kicking, and refusal to get in the car*
L: I DO IT MYSELF, NOOOOOO I DO IT MYSELF!!!!!!
M: *frazzled* Okay, do you want to do it yourself?!
L: *calming down* Yes
M: Then you need to stop touching everything and get in your seat please.
L: Okay, Mom, I sorry.*starts to climb in car*
M: There now, thank yo- noooo, in your seat Linus. Linus, don't play with the buttons please- no, don't touch the lights- hey, you may NOT climb in the front seat, bud- *grabs by the back of his pants to pull him out of the front seat to be met with screaming, punching, kicking, and refusal to get in his seat again* ALRIGHT, enough, I'm just going to put you in your seat myself.
L: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I! DO! IT! MYSELF!!!!
*neighbors are starting to look our direction as I'm manually shoving him into his carseat*
M: *struggling to buckle him in as he continues to scream, punch, kick, and arch his back to the point where I can't snap the buckle where it needs to go* *....still struggling, using superhuman motherly strength to hold my temper as he grabs my hair and yanks it, scratches my face, and screams at the top of his lungs* *get him buckled in with releif, shut the door, and breath a minute before I get in the front seat, straighten my hair, wave and flash a friendly smile at the gawking neighbors, put the car in reverse and get the heck out of dodge...*
I won't exaggerate and say this happens every minute of every day, but I'd say at least 80% of the time he is like this. 100% of the time his volume is at 10 and I can honestly say that's the truth. People at church can definitely attest to this. I can hear him through the intercom with I'm in the mother's lounge nursing Odell. I bump in to fellow ward-members at the store and the first thing they say is "I knew you were here, I recognized Linus's voice a few isles down" or "Where's Linus? I didn't hear him" or "Wow- you take him out in public? That's brave..."
Strong willed? Definitely. Independent? No doubt in my mind. I will never look at another mother's misbehaving child and assume anything about the parents ever again.
Despite all that, I still tuck him in at night before I go to bed and tear up a little now and again when I see his sweet sleeping form sprawled out on his bed. I will still cuddle him like he's a little cherub when he wakes up with a nightmare in the middle of the night. Even though I know his hugs and kisses are short lived, I eat them up when I get them. And I laugh outloud everytime I can tickle him and hear his hearty little boy giggle verberate across the house.
And I also pray that his terrible two's will end. Soon. :-)

In other news, Odell started giggling tonight! I was reading a book to Chloe and the Monster while holding a wriggling Odell on my lap with a pacifyer- Craig was finishing folding laundry and came downstairs and took Odell from me so I could finish the kids' book. Two seconds later I hear this sweet little giggle coming from the corner of the room and I see Craig tickling her and making weird faces at her. Had I not been so enchanted with the sound, I would have been irritated that after all the work I put into feeding, diapering, bathing, and putting to sleep while I'm at home she had to go and giggle at her dad the first two seocnds she spends with him. :-) Craig snickered at me later tonight when I was trying to imitate whatever he was doing to get her to laugh again. Guess I don't have the touch yet. :-)
Love this little girl to pieces.

Wanna make a hat?

Since a lot of people ask me, I thought I would get the word out there and let the large mass public know that I will be teaching a class this Thursday night on how to make a baby hat for either a boy or a girl. It will be at my church (the Greeley Stake Center, 501 49th Ave) starting at 6pm, bring whatever colors of yarn you want and your own crochet hook! If you don't have either and are buying some, pick the colors you want, make sure they are the same thickness or close there to if you are doing multiple colors, and on the package for the yarn it will tell you what size hook to get for that yarn. If you don't have either and you want to come anyway, I have lots of yarn and a few extra hooks and I will bringing patterns to share. :-)
If you have any other questions you can email me at chee_mar@yahoo.com. Hope to see some of you there!

Tutorial

For anyone interested who hasn't already looked at this, I made a photography tutorial (hooray!) on how to take pictures of kids in Halloween costumes. If you are interested, here is the link:
http://chelseasattic.blogspot.com/2010/10/tutorial-halloween-pictures-with-kids.html

I'd appreciate any feedback on it if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing. :-) I'd like to make some more, but I don't know if what I posted is like "duh" material or if it's actually helpful or not. I have experience in photography, but that doesn't make me an experienced photographer, know what I mean? Yup.

Pumpkin Fun!

Every time Craig and I have driven together anywhere in the last couple of weeks, the most commonly uttered phrase from my mouth is "Oh my gosh, Craig, look at the colors on that tree!" I must say I have thoroughly enjoyed this years autumn show. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Colorado hasn't seen a decent fall here in a while, and I am enjoying every minute of it. I wish I could get out and take more pictures of it all, but there just aren't hours enough in the day, so I'll just have to make mental memories of it all.
We went to Tigges farm on Friday to go pick out some pumpkins- this was the first time I'd done that with the kids ever. My heart lamented every previous year when I would run out of time and my mother in law would end up taking the kids for me when she went because I had too much to do. This year, thanks to "fall break", I specifically planned an afternoon where we could go and do this and I could get some decent pictures of the kids at the pumpkin patch. We had a lot of fun, my sister in law and her kids came with us for an hour. Getting four kids 5 and under to take a picture together was challenging (yes, even for a photographer, there's no magic button to make them all look the right way at the right time with the right smile!)- this was as good as I could get!
We also got the kids' halloween costumes this year: nothing fancy. Since Halloween is on Sunday and we won't be going trick-or-treating (we believe that Sunday, as the sabboth, is a day of rest, so we won't be going trick or treating in the neighborhood on Sunday night). Look for pictures of that upcoming this week...

We sold Linus to the zoo

Unfortunately, they wouldn't take him. :-)
Whew! Just got back this morning from a two day stay with my mom in Denver with all three of the kids by myself. I'm starting to finally acknowledge that my kids are starting slightly to behave better in public. Well, Chloe's been fine for a while, but Linus is bit by bit gaining eensy-weensy morsels of self-control each time I take him out, which is saying something for him.
We had a nice relaxing stay, though. We left Wednesday after naptime, I got stuck in traffic something fierce, and while trying to avoid I-25, got even more stuck in traffic and it ended up taking me two hours to get to my mom's place when it usually onely takes us one. But we made it there in one piece just in time to eat some dinner and then put the kids to bed! The next morning I took Linus and Chloe to the zoo because it was free zoo day and Grandma watched Odell at home. I was expecting it to be a somewhat stressful experience, but I was just hoping by a glimmer that the kids would enjoy it more than the last time we went. Last time I was with my aunt and her kids and my brother and sister and I was very pregnant, uncomfortable, and cranky, not to mention we put the kids in our wagon to pull them around and they couldn't see anything and got distracted very easily. This time I had the energy of the universe in me, as compared to how I felt 8 months pregnant last time, and I put them in the side by side double stroller (got it last week on craigslist for $35!)this time so I could push them right up to the windows or the bars and they could see everything. It made a world of difference and they were actually content to sit in it the whole time and LOVED seeing the animals. Linus liked the monkeys the most and I think Chloe liked the giant hippo statue the most, but there were a bazillion kids crawling all over it so we couldn't get out and play on it this time. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beautiful day in the backyard and my sister came up from Boulder and we all went out to eat for dinner. We drove home this morning and I'm now blogging about this because we are going to the pumpkin patch this afternoon and wanted to get these pictures up before I had more of getting pumpkins and got behind in my blogging...again. :-) Here are just a few shots of the zoo.

Real Gorilla

Not a real Gorilla

Linus wouldn't go on the carousel, but Chloe had a blast, it was her first time, she was so brave!
Since Chloe got to go on the carousel, we had to take a trip on the train too. Linus loved it.

Singing on the back porch at Grandma's house
Thank you, thank you...

Two Year Old for Sale!

Any takers? I'll throw in a case of diapers to boot.

So here's a funny story. Well, it's funny now, wasn't so funny at the time. The lock on the kid's door faces out. The reason for this was because when Chloe was about 18 months old, she locked herself in the room and couldn't figure out how to unlock it. A couple of hours later we had taken some of the wood off the door frame so we could slide a card in there and unlock it. Chloe had cried herself to sleep by then and I felt like the world's most irresponsible mother. Did it cross my mind that someday I might get locked in the room and not be able to get out? Yes, but it obviously didn't bother me enough to do anything about it. This morning I woke up with the distinct impression that Linus would lock us all in the room that morning. I didn't think much of it, especially when a minute later, Chloe started screaming bloody murder. I got out of bed and went into their room to find that Linus had climbed up on the top bunk, scraped a bunch of texture off of our "popcorn" celing, and taken Chloe's picture of Jesus healing a young girl that Chloe had me cut out and tape next to her bed because she liked it so much and he had ripped it to shreds all over the floor. I did consciously keep Linus away from the door as I cleaned up the mess just because I was thinking about him locking the door, I don't know why. I went downstairs and opened up the blinds and saw my phone on the counter. I had the thought that I should put it in my pocket, but didn't because I didn't think I would need it. I went upstairs and came in their room again and let Linus off of his bed and made him apologize to Chloe. I started getting Chloe dressed and was just finishing putting her pants on when I hear Linus behind me say "Mommy! I wock-a-door!" and then a deafening *SLAM* of the door shut. My heart sank into my stomach and I lunged for the door (too late, obviously) to find it locked, my phone downstairs on the kitchen counter, Odell sleeping in the next room, and me stuck with my two toddlers with no escaping. In my premonitioning earlier, I thought, should I be locked in the room, my best bet would be to open the window and pray that someone next door would hear if I kept yelling long enough. So that's exactly what we did: I sat down on the floor with my kids and we all said a prayer that someone would be able to hear us or come over and find us so that we wouldn't be stuck in the room all morning, and then I put my face to the screen and starting yelping across my backyard. I kept yelling my mother-in-law's name, and eventually Chloe and Linus were up on the bunk bed helping me out, yelling "GRANDMA!!! GRANDMA!!!" After a few fruitless minutes of that, it occurred to me that the kids probably hadn't left for school yet next door. If I was lucky, and kept watch, I might be able to catch Seth as he was biking off to school. That meant that our fate would rest in the hands of a seven year old boy, biking briefly by on the street 500 yards away, and hope that by a miracle he would be able to hear my frantic yelling from the second story window of our house. I didn't keep my eyes off the street as I waited patiently for him to bike by. Suddenly he popped out of nowhere and was going pretty fast, so I started yelling and yelling as he passed by and kept even after he disappeared out of view. Well, God heard our prayer because a fraction of a second later, I saw him bike back around the other direction because he heard me. I got him to stop and just said "SETH!!! IT'S CHELSEA, LINUS LOCKED US IN THEIR ROOM, WILL YOU GO GET MOM FOR ME?!?!", to which he loudly and clearly replied, "OKAY!!" and went back to the house. Mom didn't get the message in its' entirety, Seth told her that Linus was locked in the room and that I needed help, but at least she came over and found us. I could have cried I was so happy to see her and I explained what happened. I wasn't supposed to bring the kids over to her until around 1 in the afternoon, and even if Mom called, she may not have even come over because I wouldn't have answered the phone and I would have had to wait until after 3 when Craig got home from school before I would have been found. All the implications, not having snacks, not having a potty, not being able to get to Odell once she woke up, it would have been a hellish day to say the least.
So now we have a new doorknob on the door that you can unlock from the other side. We are never going through that again!!
And seriously...any takers? My next step will be to sell Linus to the zoo...

8 Weeks

Odell turned 8 weeks old a week ago tomorrow, but her checkup was on Monday. Here are her current stats:
She weighs 11 lbs. 4 oz., in the 60th %. She's 24 inches long, in the 83rd %, and her head circumference is in the 99th %. The nurse even double checked her head just to make sure, but yes, it was the 99th. She and the doctor kept over emphasizing that 99th % is still proportional, like I was going to be concerned about it, until I assured them that my other kids had big heads and that they come from a long line of big headers, so I wasn't surprised. In fact, the hat she is wearing should be for like a 6 month old baby, maybe fitting snugly on a 12 month old. That's okay, though, big heads mean big brains, right? Something like that.
Fun things Odells is doing:

• Being the cutest baby in the world. That goes without saying, though.
  
• Starting to coo when she is happy. One of my most favorite moments of the day is when she's fed and slept and burped and she stops and looks at me really intently and wiggles her arms around ferociously like there's something really really important she wants to tell me but just can't get it out.
  
• She smiles when she's happy too. I also love it when she's either gasing, or just happy to be around us all and she gives us a crooked, gaped mouth, giant grin. You can't not laugh when she does it, it's adorable.
  
• She fits into Chloe's old clothes finally! Hooray! Her wardrobe has now tripled in volume at least.
  
• She sleeps 7-10 hours a night. We are the luckiest parents in the world- all of our kids were sleeping through the night by the time they were 8 weeks old, Odell has been doing it for about 3-4 weeks now. We're so proud.
  

She had her blessing at church on Sunday. We had a few family members there and it was just sweet and simple and it was a good day. This girl has great things in store for her and we are happy to be a part of it.

A whole new world

Chloe got her new glasses on Friday. For about the last 6-12 months (my memory is not so good on it, but it's been a while), Chloe had been going cross-eyed. At first it was sort of funny and cute. Then it got to be to the point where she was doing it all the time, and then it wasn't really so funny anymore. Does she have a lazy eye? Will she have to wear a patch? Sure it's funny now, but it won't be so funny if she's in high school/college and can't make direct eye contact with anyone. Anyway, long story short, she got an appointment with an eye doctor and he confirmed that yes, her eyes do cross (thank you doctor) and that she would either need surgery or glasses. He dialated her eyes first- she was a trooper with the eye drops. She didn't like them, but she didn't scream like I was afraid she was going to. The doctor looked at her eyes for a while and then determined that she was extremely far sighted (how he can know that from looking at a girl who couldn't even tell that the picture she was looking at was a birthday cake, I don't know, but I guess that's why he's the doctor...) and that your brain, as a reflex, will make your eyes cross when you are far-sighted when you try to focus your eyes. So he gave me a perscription and set up another appointment for a few months from now and then she'll need to see a doctor again about the time she gets into Kindergarten to see how the glasses are working.
Anyway, we picked out some frames and just got them in on Friday! The eye-glasses case that they gave her was a pink little purse that said "princess" on it- we call it her glasses' "bed", where they sleep at night. Since then, a whole new world has opened up to Chloe and it's been funny watching her discover things all over again:

• When we walked out of the doctor's office into the foyer and to the door right after putting her glasses on, she stopped in front of the door and looked taken aback, then said "Whoa...look at that....". "Look at what?" I asked, and after a pause and more staring "...nuffing...".
• When we got in the car and I was putting her in her car seat, she kept looking at me and touching my face like I got a complete makeover. "What?" I finally asked her, laughing a little- she quickly retracted her hands and apologized, then two seconds later did it again like she couldn't help it. It was a little flattering, actually...
• While staring at her hands at the dinner table yesterday: "Mom, I got something on my hands". Showing me clean hands, I replied, "I don't see anything, hun, just keep eating your dinner." "No, Mom, there's something on my hands!" I pulled her hands closer to get a better look. "Chloe, there's nothing on your hands, I don't see anything." "NO! These!" she insisted, pointing to the crease in one of the lines on her hands. "You mean the lines on your hand?" "Yes!!" "Honey, everyone has those," I said, showing her the lines on my hands. She looked at the lines on my hands and on Daddy's hands, then confusedly accepted that there wasn't anything wrong with her hands.
  
• "Big head, little head, big head, little head, big head..." Chloe says while sitting at the table. I look up to see her staring at me, flipping her glasses up and down off her nose by pushing on the back of her frames behind her ears up and down with her fingers. Nice.
  

She looks about 20 years older with her glasses on. We have to keep reminding her to be careful with them and she seems quite pleased to keep them away from her brother, because it's something she has that he doesn't (which suits us just fine, anything in Linus's hands could mean imminent destruction if not supervised carefully). But generally she seems to like them and seems to be getting used to them just fine.
In other news, I'm back at work, this will be my second full week tomorrow. Once I'm at school, I'm fine, but it's the few minutes while I'm getting the kids ready to go to Grandma's house that my heart starts to sink a bit, especially when Chloe wraps her arms around my neck and clings to me like her life depends on it some days, pleading with me not to go. As a mother, you have to be just a little bit inhuman not to let that affect you. I've been doing pretty good, for the most part though. The other day, though, Linus was sick in the morning- he woke up and threw up all over his bed. After we cleaned everything up, he seemed to be doing okay, but I just gave him a couple of canned pears, a little applejuice and a couple of crackers to eat to play it safe. He didn't have any problems and seemed to be acting normally- they were supposed to go to a friend's house for a little while before I left for workbecause Grandma was in Denver until lunch time, but Dave, my father in law, came home to work from home so that I wouldn't have to take a sick kid to a friend's house. I got the kids ready and walked across the lawn. I was just in the process of explaining to Dave that Linus seemed to be doing better when he walked through the door and puked all over the floor. We brought him quickly into the kitchen, while he puked the whole way into the kitchen and all over the kitchen floor. Dave turned me around and told me to go to work and that he would take care of it, and I couldn't help but burst into tears as I helplessly tried to verbally console my crying, sick two year old boy and explain to him that I had to leave him while he was feeling icky, while at the same time blubbering out apology after apology to Dave as I walked out the door. That's been the only time I've cried over it, though, so I think that extenuating circumstance can be excused for mommy-back-to-work tears in that case. :-)
Linus is still a little sick and I'm wondering if I should take him in. I think he may have eaten something that was not supposed to be edible because after three days, he keeps most of his food down, but he doesn't eat a whole lot, has had horribley messy watery diapers, and only ate a few bites of dinner tonight and threw it up again. He doesn't have a fever at all, he runs around the house like nothing is wrong, he's not really lethargic, but oh my two-year-old tantrums, he has been cranky, and he's constantly asking for drinks- I've been giving him a lot of gatorade in hopes that will help him a little, and he just drinks and drinks and drinks. Yesterday morning while watching General Conference, he cried and screamed over everything the entire time and didn't stop until we got a few bites of lunch down him and put him down for a nap. He cried because he wanted things done a certain way, then cried when we did them the way he wanted them done, he cried when we looked at him wrong, he cried when he was just sitting there, he was just a complete mess. I keep asking him if his tummy hurts or if his teeth hurt or what is wrong, but he doesn't seem to really know anything conclusively. We'll see how he does tomorrow. I'm tempted to have my mother in law check his blood sugar levels tomorrow just to see (with so many diabetics in the family, I will forever be paranoid that my kids will have it, and that's just the way it will be with our kids, I can't help it). He hasn't had horribley wet diapers in the morning, so that's a good sign I guess, but I just want to make sure he's not too dihidrated after all his stomach issues.
Odell is doing well too- she is growing just fine, but isn't nearly as big as my other kids were at the same age. I was looking at a picture of Chloe when she was about a month old, and Odell is still not fitting into the outfit that Chloe was in in that picture and she'll be two months old on Wednesday. Chloe and Linus were unusually large for their age, though, so I'm not worried that Odell is too small- her cheecks are filling out and her thighs are getting chunkier- it's cute. She's smiled a few times and has cooed a grand total of once the other night. She's awake for a lot longer during the day and has been sleeping through the night for a couple of weeks now (totally a blessing, we need that sleep...). She's been just the sweetest little baby in the world. In fact, I'm going to sign off here and go goggle at my husband while he dances her to sleep in his arms. One of my favorite parts of the day. :-)

Button, button, who's got the button?

Linus does. I now wish I would have taken a picture of my stupidity, but instead the story will have to suffice. For some strange reason, after I bought a small box full of craft buttons at Joann's I thought it would be a good idea to open it up, show the kids all the colorful, bright buttons, run my fingers through them with them in full view, and then put it on the counter in reachable distance while instructing the children to stay in their seats and finish their lunch while I went upstairs to feed Odell for a minute.
The next sound I heard was something like the sound a rain stick makes when you tip it over, only not so pleasant, then Chloe screaming "WI-NUS DID IT! HE'S NOT EATING HIS LUNCH, MOM, I BEING A GOOD GIRL!"
Unfortunately I haven't swept the floor as often as I should have this week, so I couldn't just sweep the fallen buttons up without getting the week's worth of kitchen-floor gummies along with it. I had to pick them up one by one. The floor vent was conveniently located right where most of them spilled, so I got to go vent diving as well- on the plus side, the cobwebs are all cleaned out of there now.

Labor Day

Hi folks!
Been busy mommy-ing, in the feeding, diapering, and sleeping way these days. Odell seems to be getting bigger- everytime I look at her she's looks like her arms and legs and neck are chunking out just a little more. She's still smaller than Linus and Chloe were, but I have to admit it, she's quite cute. Linus and Chloe are settling into everything and I've been making a better effort to really spend time with them and do what they want to do during the day. Today for an hour we went out on the trampoline and played every trampoline game they could think of and I laughed with them and tickled them till they couldn't breathe and just tried to have fun with them. The tantrums and the extreme stubborness have subsided over the last week and we seem to be re-establising a normal relationship with them again (hooray!). Chloe even has gone potty by herself again the last few days when she's feeling particularly helpful. Linus has calmed down on the hitting and screaming. It makes me enjoy my days much more! Odell has been sleeping off and on pretty well, and that has been helpful. We are also nursing much better now that I'm getting off of the breast-sheild- it's helped my supply and now I can feed her once on each side and she's done rather than an hour of switching back and forth to get her full enough to fall back asleep. :-) Still hurts a bit, but I'm ready to bite the bullet and get over the nursing "hump" so that it can be less of a hassle.
Last weekend my Dad and brother and sister came up on Labor Day to hang out for the afternoon. My Dad and Addison finally got to meet Odell- it was a fun evening. We ate lots of grilled meat (we pretty much grilled everything we had in our freezer for a big schmorgeshborg) and then we played an intense game of croquet in the backyard. My dad won. Got some cute pictures of the "men" with the baby.


In other news, it was Craig's birthday yesterday! The old man has turned a whopping 27 years old. Still acts like a teenager sometimes, so maybe that evens him out a little? I love this man, though, and am glad he was born so I could marry him and have cute kids. :-) We are doing cake and ice cream tomorrow because he was gone at work all day and then had activities with the youth in our ward in the evening. But Chloe and Linus and Odell and I went to the store and got him some cupcakes (I usually make them, but I know he likes those really disgusting ones that have ten inches of frosting on them you get in the bakery section). We surprised him and brought them to work- I let Chloe carry them inside and she was doing great until we got to the back door of the store and she tripped on the tiny ledge leading into the store. The cupcakes went flying- luckily there was a lid on them, but that ten inches of frosting smeared all over the place, so we kind of had to just use our fingers and dip it out back onto the cupcakes. She was pretty distraught, the poor thing, she was trying so hard to be helpful. But they still tasted the same, so that's all that matters. :-) I'm excited to actually take Craig on a "date" this weekend for his birthday- we don't go out to eat all that often, so it'll be nice to spend some time with him kid-free for an evening. Hooray!
In other other news- Boulder is burning down!!! Well, if this wind keeps up tonight it will. My brother and sister live in south Boulder on the east side of Broadway, so it sounds like they are relatively safe, but they may be evacuating everyone west of Broadway and north of Spruce tonight if things get worse. Our old house we lived in when I was in high school is in that area. Pretty scary. Praying for those who lost their homes. Although I read an article about people sneaking up to their houses even though the police have a perimeter, and one guy was irritated they wouldn't let him pass. A quote from the said homeowner: "I even gave the cop a Powerbar and he wouldn't let me pass!". Only someone in Boulder wouldn't understand why a Powerbar wouldn't be sufficient temptation to let someone break the rules...
And another picture of my little sweet one. This one is going in the announcement, once I order the prints.

Tired

UGH...oh yeah, this is what having a newborn is like!
Wonderful, beautiful, peaceful moments when the baby is sleeping on your chest and you feel like the world is complete, and then maniac crazy moments with all three kids are crying at you at once and you are so tired you can barely keep your eyes open.
Things that are going well:

• Some nights Odell sleeps up to 7.5 hours at a time. Every parent I talk to says "let the baby sleep!" and every doctor gets silent and then cautiously reminds me to not let the baby sleep for more than 4 hours at a time without feeding. On Wednesday I need to go in to get a weight on Odell, so I'm going ask what exactly it is that I'm risking by not feeding her, especially if she is growing well. Not that I'm lazy and don't want to get up with her (well...let's be honest, not that I'm lying in bed each night just waiting for her to wake up, sleep is definitely something I value highly these days...), but a tired momma= a stressed momma most days and I feel it's just as important to be rested so I can spend time with my other kids as well...any opinions/ideas to share on the matter?
• She is growing well- she was almost caught up to her birthweight at her first appointment, so I assume she'll be beyond that on Wednesday.
  
• Breastfeeding is smooth, but mostly because I cheated and have been using the breastsheild. More on that in the "what's not going well" section."
• Nursing has lost it's curiosity with my kids and they no longer look for everything they can get away with while I'm nursing and just move on with their toy playing/imagining together daily routine.
  
• I've lost 30 lbs already without thinking about it (which is about 10lbs more than I gained in the whole pregnancy- my body with all three pregnancies just let's everything fall off as soon as I'm done being pregnant, so it's like my spring-board to getting to my ideal weight each time...until I stop nursing and gain it all back...). I think that's about where I'm going to plateau, it looks like, until I can get a good exercise routine going on. I'm going to wait until I'm done bleeding though.
  
• I'm almost done bleeding, I think, which surprises me. Not getting my hopes up quite yet, as I know for me anyway, it comes and goes, but with my other kids it seemed like I was bleeding for like 5 weeks before it let up. I'm sort of sick of bleeding, and I hope it finishes soon. I've had enough of it this whole pregnancy and I wouldn't complain if I never had another period in my life!
  
• I can hug Craig and not feel miles away from him. I never take that for granted anymore.
  Snuggling while watching Hogan's Heroes is something we now look forward to almost every night (except now he's started school, so probably not so much anymore)

Things that aren't going so well:

• The nights Odell doesn't sleep 7.5 hours she stays awake for 7.5 hours! She's not crying when I'm holding her, feeding her (which she gets a frenzy about during that time), or even just sitting next to her, but the second I try to wrap her up and turn the lights out she starts crying. Some nights I've resorted to just pulling up a pillow next to her bouncer (or making Craig do it so I can sleep in the bed) and taking a snooze with the lights on on the floor. The days following those nights are rough, I'm not gonna lie. But manageable.
  
• Chloe and especially Linus are having a hard time transitioning to getting less attention and I feel completely helpless as to know how to help them sometimes. I always make sure to spend some time reading books, playing games, singing songs with them when I can, but their behavior just keeps getting worse. Chloe has resorted back to needing help every time she goes potty and if she doesn't get it, she'll sit there and wet her pants in the bathroom, and she won't eat her food at any meal anymore. We've tried setting timers, taking away desserts, and even putting her to bed, but she refuses to finish any meal. Linus either screams and cries over everything or he deliberately ignores both Craig and I whenever we give him any type of instruction, or doing exactly what we ask him not to do on purpose. He also hits Chloe way more frequently than he used to and will hit, throw toys at, poke, and kick Odell whenever he can- I monitor him around her all the time, but the second I try to pull him away from her for her protection, he throws a ginormous tantrum and I have to just put him on his bed and shut the door until he calms down. The worst is when the both of them get in a silly fit and anything we say or do has no effect on them whatsoever. This usually happens at bed time, which results in the two of them running around their room after we put them down, running out of their room and not staying in bed, getting on Chloe's bunk bed and scraping the popcorn ceiling with their fingers, or throwing everything off of Chloe's bed- we decided over the summer that we needed to read scriptures with them every night and pray as a family before they went to bed, and this makes it very difficult for either of those things to happen. On the nights when Odell is up all night and the days following when the kids go nuts, it makes for a very stressful household and a very stressed mommy sometimes. Just praying that it will get better soon! I know it's just a phase, but I don't breathe most days until the kids are either napping (which, thank goodness, they still do every day) or asleep in bed. Also, thank goodness Odell sleeps so much or I think I would go nuts!! I'm very nervous as to how they are going to adjust even further when their schedule changes again and I'm back at work...hopefully we'll have more of a routine by then. *disclaimer: they really aren't like that all the time, I just have had one of "those" mornings, so I had to vent about it a little*
  
• Breastfeeding: while it's super easy to feed with the breastsheild now, I think it is making my supply go down, which causes for more "up all night feeding" nights. I started using it because I was bleeding so much from cracking with every feeding (she had a hard time latching on deep enough to begin with, which caused the cracking and bleeding from the very start- and I mean very start, the first time she latched on right after she was born, I was already bleeding- I think I just have sensitive skin overall- and then it's just taken a while to heal because even when she was latched on right, it still made me open up and bleed again)- and after she started spitting up bloody milk, I needed some respite. But now when I try to get her to latch on, she can't get as much out and just gets hungry and frustrated with me until I put the sheild back on. I'm going to call the Wee Steps program and sign up for a time with a lactation consultant to see if we can work on this. The same thing happened with Linus, but after having someone help me a couple of times, he got off of the sheild quickly and we didn't have any problems after that. PS- am I looking forward to pumping when I go back to work? Absolutely not. It's worth it, but it's just so time consuming...
• ...

Yep, that's about all I had to complain about. Overall though I think the transition has been fairly smooth and like I said, I just LOVE Odell. She's very easy to fall in love with, and has been a very good baby so far.

Dillema

First of all, Candie, this is for you- Chloe loves her matching clip and I will get some pictures of the both of them in it sometime, she's already looking forward to it.


Second of all, I need some advice. There is a family who moved in across the street a few years ago that we lovingly call "The Texans". Why? Because they are from Texas. They are an interesting bunch. We are never quite sure who is living there and who is not. We've identified an older couple who we think are the "parents", and then some adult siblings who are kids of theirs (???), maybe 4 or 5 of them who also live there, one of whom is a mother to a little boy, who I'll call "C", and at least one or two teenagers, but it's unclear who actually lives there and who is just visiting. C is maybe 5 or 6 but he's small for his age and he looks a lot younger. The mom has various boyfriends, we think, who come and go and we see C with a different person outside all the time. I've had maybe two short conversations with C's mother, and from what I understand, they moved out here for financial reasons and C's father passed away before they moved here. However, C calls his grandfather "Dad", I suppose as a substitute, and also calls various said boyfriends "Dad" occasionally as well. There are ALWAYS people coming and going from their house, there is frequent screaming fits to be heard around the neighborhood that they display on their driveway, and C is very unruly, is frequently the source of the screaming or being screamed at, and runs away a lot. C comes over to visit us a lot when I and the kids are out playing or when Seth and Kyle next door are out playing. He can be nice, he can be nasty, he has stolen things from his "gaurdians" and placed them in various spots around the cul-de-sac (and we lock up all the toys when they aren't being used instead of leaving them out anymore...), sometimes he swears, sometimes he asks politely, he was snitching my strawberries without asking for a while until another neighbor caught him and brought him over to make him confess and make sure he asks next time, and he rarely listens to instructions from anyone older than him.
That's the background in a nutshell. Here's what concerns me. He comes over to play with everone a lot, and Chloe is old enough now that she can interact with him a bit more. I came home from Odell's doctor appointment yesterday and Chloe, who was running around outside with all of the kids, ran up to me and excitedly proclaimed "Mom! C kissed me!" Okay...how do I react to this? If it were a boy from church or from a family friend, I probably would laugh it off and tell her that boys had cooties and not to kiss them or something like that and not think about it too much unless it became a frequent occurance. Did he kiss her because one of the other kids told him to? Was it on the cheeck? Was it on the mouth? I thought about it for a minute, and then briefly told her not to kiss C or let him kiss her, and then decided I'd discuss it with Craig later. We both agreed when I talked to him about it that we don't know what C sees as appropriate relationship behavior in his home and we certainly didn't want Chloe thinking that kissing boys at her age was okay, so we talked to her about it before she went to bed and told her that she was not to kiss C and if he tried to kiss her again, that she needed to tell us and tell him not to kiss her. This began to make me a bit sick with worry about letting her play outside unless I am watching her every minute, especially when C is around. There is also another family that seems to have moved in with the Texans recently and they have a boy who is maybe 11 or 12, I don't know his name, who was running around the yard and in the front with Kyle and Seth and another neighborhood girl. So today I decided to take a walk with the kids to a nearby park since I hadn't done that with them since I got pregnant and left Odell next door so I could play with them on the playground. Well we got there and the only other people at the park were C and his Dad-Grandpa person and maybe an uncle? One of the other adults that lives in the home. I didn't think about it much until the kids started playing and immediately I noticed that C and Chloe were holding hands around the playground. Holding hands...harmless enough, I guess, I'll just keep my eye on them...until I got a phone call from another woman at church who needed to talk to me about some preschool group stuff for Chloe this fall. Linus was making a mess out of something in my purse, so I got momentarily distracted- when I hung up the phone, C and Chloe were at the top portion of the playground where there is a little bench holding hands, he was playing with her hair gently, and then he gave her a big bear hug. Usually that type of thing might look a little heartwarming, but my gut just sank and I told Chloe it was time to go home (which it was anyway, I had to be back before Amber went to work to get Odell). I started putting her in the wagon and decided that I had to confront C and his "gaurdians" present about the situation and my concerns on the matter, especially when Chloe told me that he kissed her again as she was getting in the wagon, this time with a look of anxiousness on her face because she knew we had told her not to do that (whether that actually happened again at the park is debatable because sometimes Chloe remembers things that didn't really happen, typical of a 3 year old, and all the while I was harping myself for not paying closer attention to the situation while I was right there watching it). So I approached the two men and C as they were sitting at a picnic table and asked if I could talk to them about something. I said that Chloe had told me that C had kissed her recently, to which C immediately denied. I ignored him for a moment and said that I thought Chloe was a little too young for that kind of thing, which the adults both heartily agreed to while sternly looking at C, and C piped up again and insisted that he didn't. I looked at C and in a voice often heard from me at school with my students, told him that if that was true, than we just needed to keep it that way and that if Chloe ever tried to kiss him, he should not let her. Both the men again agreed, and thanked me for talking to them about it. But I still feel a bit sick about it when I think about it, considering all that could happen or could have happened and just being a motherly worry-wart about it. Even for a minute, I resolved, I will not let her go anywhere between the two yards (grandma's and our lawn is connected without any fences and the kids are good about staying out of the street and playing between the two yards) when any of the Texans are around unless I am there watching her. Which means if I can't do that for whatever reason, then we don't go outside. Maybe I'm being paranoid, and I'm usually the first one to stick up for kids in troubled situations and point out that they need good influences in their lives, but I guess it's just a different story when it comes to your own kids. I'm not going to go out and tell the Texans not to let C come over anymore or anything drastic to that level, but I'm not going to let Chloe go romping around the yard with C or the other older boy by any means and will squelch any more signs of hand holding, hair stroking, bear hugs, and especially kisses. If anyone has any advice for a worry-wart mother such as myself or has dealt with anything similar to this, I would appreciate the help...
If this is how I feel now, I think I'm going to be in trouble when Chloe gets to be a teenager!

Starting all over again...

Call me inexperienced, but even after two previous newborns, I'm still at a loss as to how to get this newborn on a schedule! I'm sure that will happen every time, but so far she kind of has just been throwing us for a loop everyday. One night she ate every four hours on the dot and I only had to get up twice. I woke up the next morning after a good 6-8 hours of sleep pieced together and I thought I had it made. Then last night, I fed her at around 10 as we were going to bed, and she got on a "eat, fall asleep while eating, poop my pants, wake up while getting changed and burped and want to eat again" cycle until quarter to five the next morning. I got like maybe 20 minutes of sleep all together? We'll see what tonight brings. She's squirming somewhat contentedly on a blanket right now and I'm just going to leave her as long as I can in hopes that it will help her sleep when I do feed her. One nice thing is she squawks a lot, but doesn't scream and scream (at least not yet), and stays rather pleasant while she's awake for the most part. That is until you try to leave her in the crib and turn the lights off or anything silly like that.
Couple of things I have learned so far about her:

• She doesn't like the pacifier much, sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't, but hasn't taken to it a whole lot. Just as long as she doesn't find her fingers like Linus did, I'm okay with that (still haven't broken that habit with Linus yet!)
• She definitely likes to be swaddled when she's tired.
• She doesn't fit into any 0-3 month sized clothes like her sister did yet, so I have hardly any newborn sized stuff that she can wear. I'm hesitant to get much, though, because she's going to grow out of it quickly I'm sure, but she swims in just about everything she wears.
  
• I make way too much milk. I think it's helped with engorgement that she doesn't eat that much, so my body stops producing quite so much, but she doesn't eat like her brother and sister did.
  
• She likes to be held on her back with hands supporting her head. She totally chills out whenever placed in this position
• She gets the hiccups a lot, just like when she was still in my tummy!
• She poops in every diaper. Good for getting rid of her jaundice, but we are going through way too many diapers!
• She is really quite pretty, in my unbiased opinion. I can't wait to get some quality newborn shots of her, when I can clean up her room a bit (it's a mess) and not be a feeding machine long enough to get some creative shots. I have a lot of ideas, who knows if I'll get to all of them, but I'm excited to have another model to play with at home!
• She brings a very sweet, unexplainable spirit into our home that I am grateful for. I am completely smitten with her. :-)
  

Whew

Before I begin, if you're looking for pictures, they'll be in the following posts. I haven't had time to really take many besides the ones we got at the hospital and I'm really bad at taking pictures when people come to visit because I just want to talk and not be up in people's faces with my camera. So I will try to condense the "birth story" and current conditions into one medium sized post. :-)
Tuesday, August 10th at around 7:00 in the evening I started with some contractions that felt different then braxton-hicks ones. They were low and crampy and getting increasingly more painful. I wasn't breathing through them yet, so we continued on with our evening as usual. They weren't really getting that much closer together as the night went on, but they were certainly getting more painful. We went to bed at around 10 p.m. and I tried to sleep unsuccessfully. That was the first clue to me that we'd be heading to the hospital before too long because I couldn't sleep through the contractions. They were more uncomfortable when I was lying down, so around I think about 1 in the morning I went and sat in my rocking chair to time them for an hour. When I was sitting and/or standing, they started coming about 4-7 minutes apart. By then I was getting very tired, so I went to lie down again. Still no sleep, and the contractions would slow down when I was lying down to about 8-12 minutes apart, but they were stronger when they did come. I decided to just wait it out as long as I could (at this point I was definitely breathing through almost every contraction) and around 6:30 I was ready to head to the hospital. We showed up at MCR and the nurse there (who also happened to be a parent of some of the kids I teach at school) measured me at a whopping "stretchy" 4cm (which means that it's really about 3 cm, but when stretched became 4), 80% effaced. My heart sunk, I was fully expecting to be much further along than that and the thought of going back home with how uncomfortable and painful my contractions were getting was disheartening, to say the least. However, for some strange reason the doctor on call there (unfortunately Wednesdays are my doctor's day off and so she wasn't able to deliver this time) admitted me anyway and was confident that my contractions were dilating my cervix. But I still was apprehensive because I knew I had a long ways to go. Once we were in a room and I was changed, I labored in bed for a while- the contractions didn't seem to be coming on very quickly nor were they getting closer together. So we were instructed to walk around some. As soon as I started walking, they jumped right back up to 3-5 minutes apart. I took a cup of ice with me as we would walk and munch on it and actually walking helped me work through the contractions a little better, if I breathed through each one and just kept walking. After about 40 minutes, they hooked me up again and within a short while they were back down to 8-10 minutes apart. So we went walking again, same results, back in bed, same results. At around noon, they measured me again and I had progressed to 5 cm, which was good news because the nurse had mentioned the possibility of getting sent home still. So we made a plan to speed things up. Dr. S (the doctor on call) was confident that if he broke my waters that it would kick start me into stronger labor, so I decided to get an epidural and then as soon as it was administered, he came in and broke my water. Craig was just chillin' the whole time- we tried to watch a movie for a while, but the little remote they have at the hospital was the only source of sound coming from the TV, so it was virtually inpossible for the two of us to hear it at the same time. So two hours passed by while Craig watched Inkheart (apparently it wasn't very good) and thankfully the epidural was doing it's job because I konked out between contractions for a while. But they still weren't coming on very fast and after measuring me again, I was still at 5 cm. The next step was starting pitocin in my IV (so glad I had the epidural by then). Again, just a little bit because surely my body would take to it quickly. Half an hour later they had to up the dose again, I guess my uterus just wasn't getting the clue. After they upped the pitocin, though, suddenly my body got the picture and I was contracting about every 2-3 minutes. By this time it was about quarter to four and after that short hour and 15 minutes, I went from 5 cm to 9.5 cm (again, SO glad I had the epidural!). The warming tray was brought out and Dr. S was on his way over to see if we were ready. He checked me and asked if I wanted to try pushing, so I did once the next contraction came- he stopped me abruptly and said that we were ready and he needed to go get his gloves on. On a side note, the clot was continuing it's passage the entire time- and there was a LOT still left in there. At one point the nurse said I passed a good 6cm sized chunk of it, and that wasn't even the half of what came out. It must have been huge when it happened back at 14 weeks for it to be that much. After the doctor was ready, I pushed and bore down and the head came out, pushed again and the rest of her was out. Quite simple, quite painless, and she was a good healthy baby when she came out! She had some meconium *yuck* stuck in her lungs a bit that they had to suck out of there and then she just cried and cried and cried. They put her on my chest and wanted as much skin to skin contact as we could get- she was pretty ucked up in her breathing so they didn't want me nursing quite yet, but apparently the skin to skin contact really helps them work everything out when they're all gunked up. After a few minutes, I was able to nurse and after about an hour, we were moved to our postpartum room. Aside from it being rather long, it was probably my easiest delivery so far. So the clot passed with the delivery and for some strange reason, they couldn't find the cyst on the placenta/cord afterwards. He said the placenta looked healthy and there was an area that might have been where it was, but he didn't see anything that looked like a giant cyst. Huh. But he sent it in for my doctor to look at and I'll have to ask Dr. B at my six week visit what she concluded. So all that stress and worry and more stress and more worry and more stress and more worry for a healthy, beautiful girl in the end. Was it worth it? OF COURSE.
Odell has brought a very, very sweet spirit in our home so far. She's a pretty good baby, she hasn't been a screamer much and she loves to be held and cuddled. Her bellyruben (sp???) levels were high at the hospital, so she's had a few more blood draws since then. She looks yellow, but not any more than my other kids were and the more she feeds and the more she poops the better she looks. :-) Nursing is going...well, it's going. I had to resort to the breast-shield finally and am a bit more healed than I was, so I'm stating to try to take it off for a few feeds a day. She's eating really well, though. She eats about every 3-5 hours generally if she's sleepy, and will have a good cluster feed for an hour or two in an 18-24 hour span. So far they've usually happened at night, so from about 1-6 in the morning I don't get a lot of restful sleep. But she sleeps a lot during the day, which has helped in transitioning my other young ones to having a baby around and helped me keep my sanity a little more. I have definitely, unfortunately, sunk into some baby blues the last couple of days. I did with Chloe for about two weeks after she was born, didn't have a problem with Linus in that regard at all, but for some reason it's back with avengence this time around. It's pretty manageable during the day when the sun is out and I am occupied with the kids. But once night comes around, it feels like my heart kind of sets with the sun and I just start crying over everything. Craig has been very helpful this time around and just tries to be cheerful and help wherever he can with the baby and the other kids so I can recover how I need to. I'm not even sure what I'm crying about half the time, I just feel bad and depressed for no reason at all. Sometimes it's like someone put a magnifying glass on my faults, especially as a mother, and then turned up my water works full blast. Other times I just have to think about anything that involves emotion at all (which is basically everything) and the tears just squirt out. A couple things that I know have and will help me if I continue to do them:

• Read my scriptures or listen to conference talks or do something spiritual as frequently as I can
• Spend quality time with Craig when I'm around him
• Sleep when I can- the fatigue brings it on a lot quicker
• Eat good food and not junk all the time...and chocolate doesn't help anything, despite what my stomach is trying to tell me
• Spend time with my older two: the more quality time I can spend with them, the less misbehaving they do, and the happier we all become

Garrr...Odell had her blood checked on Saturday and the Youth Clinic called me back just now to tell me her levels were still high and that she should have gone in yesterday to get checked again, but to make sure she gets in touch with her doctor now as soon as possible. Thanks for telling me now! So that's all I have to report now, I'll try to find some time to get some decent newborn pictures and actually make an announcement to send out this time! Thanks for all the congrats and warm wishes. :-)

Odell Ann Ellingson

Born August 11th, 2010 at 4:03 p.m. Weighed 7lbs 13 oz (our smallest baby yet!), 21 inches long, and 14.5 inch head circumference. After a two night stay in the hospital and a couple of visitors, we are home now and happy and healthy! I won't post the labor story here yet, but I will post a couple of pictures. Expect more. Lots more.

38 weeks shouldn't feel like "overdue"...

...but unfortunately it does. I guess I can't say that because I've never actually made it all the way to 40 weeks, and I'm not really qualified to know what "overdue" feels like, however, I know what "I'm DONE being pregnant feels like!". It's amazing how quickly you can go from spending so much energy worrying about the baby coming early to spending so much energy wishing it would happen, like, now. I think my anticipation may have something to do with the fact that I finally am getting the last minute baby things done, so I feel like now that my checklist is getting accomplished that it's the baby's turn to checkout.
One thing is "checking out", though- that stupid clot! I thought I was passing the mucus plug...which I may have passed as well, this last weekend, but I have also been saying goodbye and good riddance to one of the unwelcome and long overstayed guests in my baby's home these last 6 1/2 months (the cyst being the other unwelcome visitor, but that one won't be out until the baby is). My doctor said that once I start dilating I would probably finish passing the clot, but that as long as it was dark (just like last time) than it would be okay. I really have no idea how much of it is left, but I guess it will just keep passing it until the baby comes. I'm hoping that means I'm past 2 cm dilated, though. My doctor's schedule has been really busy, so even though tomorrow is a week since my last appointment, Friday is my next scheduled visit, so if I haven't gone by then, I'll find out how much I've progressed at that point.
Anyway. Enjoy my fat 9 month picture! I won't show you the other ones Craig took of me from an ant's view- I'm like preg-zilla in those. I've never been very good at getting good "growing" pictures during pregnancy, but we always manage to get one when I'm huge at the very end! Because that's what I want to remember, right? :-) Also, I'm sworn to secrecy upon my immediate death if I break trust, but Craig and I sat down and narrowed down a few names that we like finally last night, boy and girl. Is it weird that I always feel like someone is asking me a really personal question when they ask if we have any names picked out? Especially when I don't know them well. I know I am one of the few who feels this way, but both Craig and I felt like with all of our pregnancies that a lot of people sort of give it all away before the baby is even born, and then all you're really finding out at the end is how much they weighed and how long they were when they came out. But I can also see, I guess, how knowing the gender and name and everything would help you connect more to the baby during pregnancy. Maybe we just like surprises. In any case, if you ask me, I'll give you a vague, non-definite answer, but there are names that we like, you'll just have to find out what we decided once the baby comes (and honestly, we don't really decide until it comes, we found that we think one thing beforehand and then think something completely different afterwards...). My contractions have been getting stronger...well, more like my strong contractions are coming more frequently, but I get so busy sometimes that I don't keep very careful track. Which to me just reminds me that I'm not ready yet, otherwise those contractions would be strong enough to prevent me from being busy. I've gone nesting crazy, but my energy level is also zapping away quickly, so my projects around the house are getting smaller as I go along. I've been using the bathroom about every hour-hour and a half, and it's getting tiring feeling like I'm about ready to wet myself urgently, and then I rush to the bathroom to just tinkle out a little tiny bit. This baby must be squishing the heck out of my bladder. All the furniture is up in the baby room (sorry, still haven't got good pictures yet...), I just need to go buy some darkening material and hem the curtains that I have for the window and it will be done in there. I was going to go out this morning with the kids to pick up the material and maybe a few small canvasses for painting some cute things to hang up in the room, but I started passing the clot a little more heavily and I had a sudden image flash through my head of my waters breaking with both of the kids with me in the isle at Jo-Annes...so I decided to play it low today and just let Craig help me with that later. We also packed my bag and cleaned out the baby carseat yesterday. We're not sure where to put it though- anyone out there with a Honda Pilot and three kids in carseats have any good advice on where to put the kids? No matter where we put them, it's going to be inconvenient for getting at least one of them in on a regular basis. Oh well, we'll figure it out I'm sure.
If I'm lucky, my next post will be loaded with akward mommy-in-a-hospital-robe-completely-exhausted-and/or-drugged-with-naked-pink-baby photos! ....but I probably just jinxed myself by saying that, so don't count on it...