Luke's Birthday

I can't believe my little Luke is 2! We tried to do things he loves all day - we went on a train ride, and we played games and won some prizes at funtasticks, we went to the park to swing, and Grandma made him an awesome firetruck cake! He tried to grab it when he first saw it, lol, because he thought it was a real truck :)

Luke has a very strong personality, he is stubborn and knows how he wants things to be. He is also super kind and shares well, and loves when people are nice to him. He is a little shy sometimes, but he loved being the center of attention on his birthday - he especially loved being sung to! He loves to have fun and be silly! His two year old stats from his doctor appointment are - 10% for height, 20% for weight, and 70% for head 

He's got a big noggin I guess :)

June's Birth

Here it goes -

So, when I was pregnant with Isaac, I had an appointment with the doctor two days before my due date - she said I wasn't dilated. Mild contractions started on my due date,  and after going through an entire day of painful contractions, we had him two days after his due date. Such a long labor.

Fast forward to Luke - I decided, with the help of Nate and my Doctor, to get induced on my due date. I got to the hospital at 7am, and didn't have Luke until 9pm! Another long labor. And I really did not enjoy being induced.

This time around, I knew I didn't want to be induced again, I wanted things to happen on their own, even if I was late again. My due date was June 15th, and I had an appointment with my doctor a week and a half before my due date, and she told me I was dilated to a 1! I was pretty excited about that, since I really hadn't been dilated much before either of the boys were born. Then I had another appointment three days before my due date - she checked me again and I was dilated to a 4! No wonder I was so uncomfortable :) She asked if I wanted my membranes stripped. I didn't know what she was talking about, but since it might put me into labor, SURE! So I picked up the boys, went to the grocery store and got home the same time as Nate that evening. I had a feeling I should get a few things done around the house, so I mopped and did some other cleaning. Around 7:30pm I got my first painful contraction. I had been having braxton hicks a lot for weeks previous to this, but they were not painful. Five minutes after that first painful contraction, I got another one! I kept getting contractions about five minutes apart, so Nate started writing them down. By 8pm we knew we were in labor, since I'd been having them consistently for half an hour. We called Nate's parents, who live close by, after putting the boys to bed. We were frantically packing a bag for the hospital, so we didn't leave the house till about 9pm. All the way to the hospital, which is a 20 minute drive, I didn't get a contraction! I was starting to think maybe I was crazy, and somehow not in labor. But we got into triage, they checked me and told me I was dilated to a 7! And my contractions were consistent and very strong again. After an hour in triage, they wheeled my bed to the birthing room, around 10:30pm. They asked me if I wanted an epidural, I said YES! But I asked them to check me again to see how much I'd progressed, so they did and I was at 8.5 cm. I loved the nurse I had in triage, and she was still my nurse, so I asked her how fast she thought I would be, and she thought 45 minutes or less if my doctor broke my water. So they asked if they could break my water - I said yes, and then I would get the epidural. Until this point, my pain was pretty manageable. My contractions were very painful, but it wasn't out of control. As soon as my doctor broke my water, which was around 10:40pm, the pain was out of control. I'm embarrassed to say that I actually started screaming in pain. She told me to start pushing to get the rest of the cervix out of the way, so I tried, but I thought I was going. to. die. The contractions were much worse and I only had a 20 second breather in between them! But after about 5 contractions, June was out! No epidural. The cord was wrapped twice around her neck, but luckily it wasn't tight. She was born on June 12th at 10:50pm, 6lbs 13oz, 18 inches long.

It was crazy fast! I was not prepared for a fast baby, but it was the best experience yet, faster is better.


There's more, but here's your warning, it gets gross. Hours later, I kept bleeding and bleeding, so one of the nurses had to come and push hard on my stomach to get all the blood out, and there was a lot. Too much I guess, because I almost passed out and they started putting medicine in my IV and gave me a shot to stop the bleeding. It finally stopped and everything was fine, but I had a postpartum hemorrhage. I guess this happens with about 6% of births. Recovery has been great, I didn't tear at all and so I felt better in a few days time after having June. My milk coming in is a different story - It's what I dread the most after having a baby. But she is a good little nurser and we are done with the rough part.

Anyway, I feel like the adjustment as a family has been a little bit easier this time around. With Isaac, I went from being in school and working, super busy, to being a stay at home mom and I had to adjust a lot to the change. Then when Luke came, I felt super guilty because it was a big change to go from one to two kids, and having to split my attention between the two of them. This time, it really has not been crazy, and we've enjoyed spending time together as a family while Nate was off work. I know the storm is still coming, and she will wake up from her slumber, but I'm trying to just relax and let the little things go. It has made all the difference!

Here she is after they got her stats 

My four favorite people :)

Some gas smiles

My REALLY nice friend took some newborn photos for us, there are more to come!

Projects

I have had some projects that I wanted to get done around the house, and June 15th being my deadline, I have been pretty productive. I could easily come up with more, but I prioritized and got done what I really wanted to get done before the baby arrives. These last two weeks are going to be spent doing fun stuff like swim lessons, movies, and fun stuff with my boys! But here are some projects we've worked on forever and are finally done with:

We built bunk beds for the boys using the Side Street Bunk Beds Plan off Ana White's website. They were so much work, but it was really fun to work with Nate on a project. And don't worry, Isaac is not sleeping on top yet, we will wait another year and a half or so before he moves up to the top! I love the color we picked to paint the bunk beds, but it makes me want to paint their room a light gray - but that is not going to happen soon, so we'll settle for blue. We just picked up some orange pillows from Ikea for the bed too, the bed turned out better than we thought it would considering we've never built anything before!

Of course I could not get him to sit still for one second for a picture. 

I have also wanted to make the boys quiet books for a while, so I finally got to work on them this spring before the baby arrives! These were more work than any other project I've done, but they are done and the boys play with and like them - so that's good! I made two identical books, so this one is Luke's. And there are 8 pages total, but I'm only putting a few on here:

These last few are two of their favorites:

We also needed a dresser for the baby, so we found this one at a garage sale, I don't have a before picture - but it was a terrible paint job, and red! So we painted it white, I bought some hardware at Ikea that we still need to put on, but our baby girl's clothes are finally organized so I was glad to finish this project.

Lastly, Luke's quilt! I bought the pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew, and using a pattern was so nice - and I love this one! It looks so boy to me. 

I cant help but post a few of the boys too:

Camp Out and Catch Up

One of the things on our bucket list before the baby arrives was to go camping. I haven't been camping since before Isaac was born - so I have never been camping with kids, and they. get. dirty! We went for one night and camped next to a river, which was really nice - I cannot camp without either shade or water, one of the two is necessary :) I can't believe how big the boys are getting, I feel like Luke is still my baby, but he tries to keep up with Isaac, and pretty soon he'll be right in the middle :) Anyway Isaac was super awesome at camping, and he was soo excited. He slept well and wanted to try everything, he was very easy. Luke was better than we thought he would be, he was nervous in a new place so he wanted to be held a lot, and he woke up in the best mood ever (serious, not sarcastic) in the middle of the night for an hour and a half. He was also obsessed with throwing rocks in the river, I think he would have done it for hours.

This tree was right on our camp site growing out over the river, and of course Isaac and Nate wanted to climb out on it - it was more scary for me than it was for them I think.

We told Isaac to set up his chair by the fire, and this is where he put it :)

You can see our tiny tent in the background - its time for an upgrade :) It's a 2-3 man tent but it actually wasn't bad, just a bit squishy and I didn't want to move on the air mattress at all because I was afraid of waking up the boys.

My favorite part of the whole trip was watching the boys wake up in the morning (is that weird that we woke up before them?) because as soon as they realized that we were still in the tent they were so excited.

It just started getting a lot warmer around here, so we busted out the slip n slide.

Here is a picture from when I was 30 weeks or so - I am currently almost 34 weeks, and that shirt does not fit me anymore! This pregnancy, I've felt a ton more braxton hicks contractions than I ever did with the other two (and for a while now)- I'm hoping that is a sign she will be here a tiny bit early, but I don't want to get my hopes up.

It was also my birthday this month - And my birthday present was a treadmill! I am so so excited to use it (I haven't been able to yet) but I won't be able to until like August! I don't necessarily love running, but I love how I feel afterwards.

Life Since January

The first weekend in March, we were able to head up to my dad's cabin for a weekend. There was the perfect amount of snow, as in no shoveling snow and it was not too cold to play, no ice, etc. But still enough to build stuff and have snowball fights ;) We don't get any cell phone service up there, so it really is a weekend away from everything. I do start to go stir crazy after two days up there with two kids to entertain, but it is still relaxing. 

Isaac loved playing in the snow again, and Luke did not like playing in the snow again :) 

We went on lots of walks, because it was beautiful outside.

Every spring, so far, Nate has traveled to Phoenix for work for a few weeks, and we usually come with him since our kids are not in school yet, and we get to visit with friends and family. These next few pictures are from a Suns game that we went to with our friends the Wests' - Isaac ate too much cotton candy (So did I) and kept saying "Go Wildcats!" We've got him trained well.

Nate's new ride!! Just kidding. But it was fun to look at. (It was parked outside the Suns game)

The boys were actually sick for a lot of the time in Phoenix, so we spent a lot of time in the hotel room. We didn't get to visit everyone that we wanted to because they kept getting sick! But when Isaac would wake up from his nap and Luke was still sleeping, since the hotel room was one big room, I would turn on a show for Isaac, and I just love this picture of him hanging out watching a show with headphones. 

I love this picture of them at the zoo - it looks like they are up to something. Our zoo pass is about to expire and I don't think we'll be getting another one since we're having a baby in a couple months! Once the baby arrives, I'm not sure if I will be crazy at home and want to get out to the zoo, or just want to stay at home for a while and get a zoo pass later, we'll see. 

And lastly, Happy Easter!! We had fun doing egg hunts and eating way too much candy today.