Avery's First Birthday

My little baby girl turned one on December 6th :( She ended up sleeping through a good portion of the party, woke up a little grumpy, and didn't care too much for unwrapping presents, but other than that, it was a successful party. She got lots of stuff, and Lexi and Lilly enjoyed helping!


Waiting to blow out the candle


Lexi and Lilly picked out a Thomas cake for Avery


Avery wasn't happy I woke her up


Everyone helping with the gift unwrapping


Avery has a new cell phone!


Nana and Papaw made Avery a quilt :)

A Quiet House...

Yesterday we made the trek to Marietta to meet Nana and Papaw at Applebee's. We had a nice lunch and then Lexi and Lilly went with them to West Virginia. They will stay down there until Sunday, when we will meet half-way and pick them up. So far they are having a blast, playing in the snow. Lilly tells me Hi on the phone, but Lexi just listens to me and doesn't really talk. I miss them. At least I still have Avery to cuddle and make me feel like a Mom still.

Socks went to West Virginia as well, so she can be an outside cat with Callie. She will have to adjust a bit since there is still so much snow, but I know once she is familiar with her surroundings, she will love being on the prowl outside. Inside a house in the city just doesn't seem to fit her needs, so I'm sure she will be happier down there.

We've been working on the house a bit since they are gone. We are touching up the girls' room, and we have some Dora and star wall clings to decorate with. We are also going to re-paint the living room and paint a bunch of frames and redecorate the walls a bit. Hopefully we can get everything done, since Luke is still light duty with his leg.

Avery's 2 month checkup was today. She is 25 inches long and 14lbs 13oz. She is growing beautifully, and we all agree that she may be starting to teethe already. She is slobbing a bunch and chewing on her hand, even when she's not hungry. That should be a fun time! I don't think I want to go overdue with a pregnancy anymore. It seems like she is just growing so fast since she cooked a bit longer than Lexi and Lilly did.

Luke is doing well with his leg. He is on prednisone for inflammation, and he seems to be able to move his shoulder better than he has in years, and his knees are doing pretty good. The blood thinners have him a bit weak still, but I'm sure he will adjust soon. He has an appointment on March 1st with a rhuemotologist to diagnose his arthritis, and see how we can manage that for him.

He gets his finger pricked tomorrow to check his coumadin levels in his blood. Other than that, not much else is planned except to keep moving forward with the house.

Health Check

Avery’s one month checkup went great. She gained 4 pounds (she is now 12lbs 15.5oz) and gained 2 ¾ inches (up to 23 3/4in). We don’t have to take her back until she is 2 months old.

We are all a bit sickly here. No fevers or anything, but our noses are runny/stuffy, and my head has been hurting. Nothing we can’t handle, just trying to take it easy as much as possible.

In other news, I hate eBay. Luke sold a lens and a camera kit. He agreed to ship out of the country, so the lens was paid for and shipped to China, and now it looks like the guy is trying to take us for a ride saying it wasn’t as described. The part that stinks is that it is cheaper to just give him a partial refund, then to have him ship it back. We know that the problem he is saying doesn’t exist, and we have high resolution pictures of the lens showing the areas he is talking about, and there is nothing there. Luke will probably just give him a partial refund, so his eBay record doesn’t get tarnished, but I hope Karma bites this guy for taking away money from someone else. The camera kit, on the other hand, hasn’t even been paid for yet, and the guy only has 1 day left to do it. Not how I wanted to start paying off debt in the new year. We have a couple more things that would probably sell faster on eBay, so we will continue to use them for now, but their fees, along with paypal’s fees are so ridiculous!

Minor setbacks...

Luke and I have decided to lay down the law and keep me on my butt for a few days. I woke up today feeling like I had been hit by a truck! Dull cramps, increased bleeding, kind of dizzy, and just feeling blah. I guess the lack of sleep is catching up with me, and I have been pushing myself with my normal housewife duties.

On a good note though, Luke finished editing his senior sessions. Now we need to focus on doing some more newborn photos of Avery, and getting announcements ordered. I think we decided to skip Christmas cards and send out wallet photos with the announcements.

We started supplementing Avery with formula at night, hoping that it sticks with her longer so she will sleep a little longer. We have a few sample cans that we received in the mail that we have available to us, and I am pumping at night, so we have a nice little stockpile of breastmilk to fall back on after the cans run out. It's nice to have someone else feed her occasionally. We supplemented with Lexi since I went back to work after 6 weeks, but Lilly was exclusively breastfed and would refuse a bottle of any kind, so I never had a break with her.

I've been sitting on my butt most of the evening, and my sweet hubby is making peanut butter cookies with hershey kisses right now :)

Nana and Papaw are coming up tomorrow, so the big girls will have a bunch of fun tomorrow evening and on Saturday. I've felt bad since they haven't had nearly as much attention since Avery came home, but they seem to be doing just fine.

TGIF

We've lasted the week! Although today has only begun... Avery went to the pediatrician on Wednesday, and checked out just fine, weighing in at 8lbs 10oz, so she gained 2 oz from her discharge weight. She has figured out the latching on thing, but we've still been supplementing with a little formula and pumped breastmilk. I don't want a baby that won't take a bottle when I need a break, and we ran into that with Lilly, so I don't want to repeat that again. She's been doing fairly well at night, she has a 5-6 hour stretch, and then 3 hour stretches after the big one.

We tried out some quick newborn shots yesterday, so we can get birth announcements done. We may try to do Christmas pictures this weekend, so we can get everything ordered all at once.

It is my goal to sit on my butt most of the day today, because I have been much too active the past 2 days with household stuff, and it is physically showing, so I need to take it easy.

Luke has tons of work to do, not only for AMPS (the company he works for), but also editing our newborn and future Christmas pictures, plus 2 senior sessions, plus fixing a friend's computer, plus numerous other things. I really don't want to depend on him too much, because he is already getting little sleep from staying up late to edit, and then he helps with the baby at night.

It's proving to be tough right now with two toddlers and a newborn, but I think once Luke's workload lessens and the holidays are over with, along with some healing time for me, that things will work out a lot better.

Welcome Home

We were discharged from the hospital about 4PM yesterday (Monday), and made our way home. The girls were super excited to meet "The New Baby", and we caught their reactions on video, which Luke will have to upload a bit later. Lexi read her stories and shared Mo with her, and they both would "pet" her very gently and wanted to give her toys to play with. We just hung out for a bit before getting the big girls in the tub, and then they helped give Avery a bath. We had Avery in her little papasan chair in their bedroom during storytime, and as Luke picked up the chair to bring her out so we could shut their light off, Lilly lost it, screaming "No, my baby!" Apparently, she thought Avery was going to sleep in that chair on her floor all night, so we had to explain to her yet again that Avery sleeps in our room for now. They did just fine though.

Avery, on the other hand, doesn't seem to want to do things my way. She still isn't latching hardly at all, no matter what we try, so she has been eating formula, and any milk that I have been able to pump. She has also been doing some cluster feedings, so right now I am just working on a game plan to keep my milk stimulated, while still keeping Avery content.

Avery's discharge weight was 8lbs 8 ozs, and we go to see the pediatrician on Wednesday afternoon. I am good to go and have my checkup on the 21st of January.

Thank you to everyone for you congrats and well wishes!

So Much for a Play by Play...

Darn wireless internet, we couldn't figure out how to get it to work until now. Now for the birth story...

We arrived right on time at 8PM, and got put on an IV drip and the monitors, just to see what baby was up to. At 9PM pitocin was started on the lowest dose, and Dr. Laing came in to break my water. I was measuring at 3cm and about 70%. We got hooked up to the wireless gadgets so we could walk around, and made it a total of 3-4 laps before I needed to be in the room. Emotionally I was not ready whatsoever to go on with the induction. I decided I should do a nubain shot at 11PM, and I was check and at a 5 and about 80% effaced. I sat in bed because I felt loopy in between contractions, but it didn't do very much for the pain. By this time, I was seriously contemplating an epidural, and had asked the nurse tons of questions about it. I could have up to 4 nubain shots before they would suggest an epidural for pain, and would you believe it takes that guy a half hour to get here after you call for one? That's crazy! I decided I should try one more nubain shot, because a needle to the back terrifies me, so at midnight I had my second shot, and I was at a 7-8 and 90%. About 10 minutes til 1AM I started feeling like I needed to push with each contraction. I was an 8-9 and fully effaced, and the crash carts were set up and the bed was moved around. I had been shaking uncontrollably for awhile, and by the time the doctor sat on the bed, I was pushing out a baby while the other nurse was calling for an assistant nurse. I had 2 big sets of pushes and out came Avery at 1:11AM. She weighed a whopping 8lbs 15 1/2 ounces, and is 21 inches long. She had a little bit of a purple face, from bruising, and I needed 2 stitches (which I received without a pain medication shot) and so far we are doing well.

I had a little more bleeding than they would like, and so far she is not nursing at all, but eating well from the little bottles of similac they have here. Right now we are just hanging out, waiting for visitors and taking naps. Here are a few pics that Luke also has up on facebook...