Hermitage... I Think Not!

Are you impressed that I knew the word Hermitage??? I am! :o) Anyway...

I teased yesterday that I was going to turn into a hermit but then I thought I have always been sort of a hermit. I like my alone time, I like just being by myself (with my girls of course).
However I just realized something comical, I have been way more social this week than normal!

Saturday Betsy and I spent the morning chatting while she snuggled my little baby, then she helped me load the babies in the car and I headed to Joe's moms for Fathers Day lunch with George. That afternoon my friend from work came over to snuggle Mia and we chatted for a few hours while Joe worked on George's fathers day present. Sat night his parents came back over to share the dinner that friends brought during the day and later that night Kelly's friends came over to play!
Sunday was Mia's first day at church (she slept through the whole thing) and we celebrated a fun Fathers day with my dad. Joe and I left my parents house around 6:30 and I was EXHAUSTED! I thought that it made sense because I had started my day early and hadn't stopped. But now thinking back my Saturday was crazy as well!

Monday we had the men that Joe coached basketball with, and their wives, over for dinner. We really enjoyed ourselves, Joe had grocery shopped sunday night, helped me clean the house up before they arrived and he grilled, I made some cheese potatoes and everyone brought stuff so I didn't really have anything to do to prepare.

Tuesday the girls and I crashed my parents small group picnic while Joe played softball and we had a lot of fun playing and chatting with friends.

Last night we went to our old small group picnic (we are currently between sg's) and pool party where I sat and passed Mia around while I chatted with the Ladies and Joe and Annie swam for a long time with the men and children! Annie is such a fish and I am so grateful!

Today Laura is coming over with Eva and Claire to play for the day and tomorrow my mom and her friends are coming over bright and early to help me sort through my flower beds (finally!) we are going to weed, thin, and trim! I will let you all know if I have any interesting flower left overs but the worker bees get first dibs on what we thin out!

Saturday we have friends coming over in the morning and afternoon and then we are heading to my parents for another cook out!
This post is making me long for resting on Sunday! But man am I having fun!

On a side note I headed to Old Time Pottery yesterday. It was my first errand-type outing alone with the girls. I was VERY anxious on the way there I just kept thinking of different scenarios that could happen (Annie having a melt down, Mia having a blow out, both having a melt down) I had a hard time enjoying perusing the isles looking for treasures and ended up feeling over heated and shaky causing me to steal a few of Annies cookies and we headed home after getting three packs of scrapbook-type gift tags, a decorative tin for my Living room shelves with two blocks of the styrofoam stuff and two bunches of ivy totaling me a whopping $3!

I will leave you with this adorable picture of my girls

Annie has finally landed on a name for her new sister... Mahnnie. I guess since she calls herself Ahnnie her sister must be Mahnnie!

Oh Decorating How You Vex Me More Than I Realized

I have been feeling quite emotional lately, I know its all the hormones trying to even into the new me and so I have been trying to take it in stride. I have been wanting to cry at everything and anything at all. Mostly sentimental stuff but still way out of the blue. A few nights ago Joe was getting Annie out of the bath, I went up and sat on the bathroom floor as he wrapped her in a towel and dried her off. He told her what a big kid she was becoming, I told her that I remember when she was Mia's size and then I almost lost it! I am fighting back the tears right now just recalling the moment!
Lastnight Joe and I unpacked a few of the remaining boxes that were in the Dining room waiting on the repair of the hutch that got broken in the move. As I was trying to make things look nice in the hutch and on top of the buffet I was frustrated because I couldn't make it look nice. Nothing was flowing. I tried to find pictures of what it looked like at the old house but I couldn't find any. So everything just got placed with the hope that it didn't look completely awful.
Joe had opinions about where everything should go and it was frustrating me that he cared! Then he hung one of my favorite decorations in the kitchen. Its a painted sign that says "Life is hard, but God is good". He hung it about 6 inches too high and I almost started crying! I really fought off the tears and tried to let it not matter but it did! I was SO concerned that every time I looked at it I would be frustrated with him and I didn't want such a lovely sign to make me think negatively towards my husband!! He noticed that it was too high and asked me if it was. I told him I thought it was but I didn't want him to move it. I will admit to you that today I didn't even notice what I thought would be an obvious eye sore! What made me go to bed in an emotionally huffy mood wasn't even an issue today!
While Joe was showering before bed I decided to go back on my blog to a year ago and read what I was up to and what I was thinking about. Simply hoping to have a sentimental moment... what do you think I found? A post with picture of my Dining room hutch and sideboard complaining that I don't like the way I have them decorated and asking for advice on how to arrange the items that I have scattered about!!!! How ironic is that??

Playing Kanga to my Roo

If you are FB friends with me you may have seen a portion of this poem on my status. I love this little rhyme because when we were little my mom had a needlepoint of it hanging on her wall. All of us kids (well I guess maybe not the boy) know this verse by heart from reading it for many years.
I saw it on someone else's FB status this morning and I fell in love with it all over again. I did a google search of it and found that what I have memorized is only a portion of the poem and the rest of it is just as adorable as the end.

Babies Don’t Keep
By Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,
Lullabye, rockaby, lullabye loo.
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo,
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo,
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs;
Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Although I function better when my house appears clean I don't have any problem with it being "dirty" for a while. If the toys are put away a few times a day and the counter is cleaned off then I dont need things to be swept and mopped or scrubbed with bleach. Therefore leaving some things undone I have been successfully working in snuggle time with my baby and it makes me very happy. Annie has been wanting to hold her longer also and plants adorable little kisses on her head as she does. I told her Mamas rule is that I get a kiss for every one she gives Mia. Yesterday mom was helping her hold Mia and she kissed her, she automatically stretched her neck out to kiss me and then turned and planted one on Grammy as well! I love my sweet little girl.

I have been loving the excuse to be inside during this extreme heat because if I was going to be outside I would want to be swimming. I LOVE swimming, I didn't think about what it would mean to have a baby in the summer time. I cant WAIT until I can go swimming again. I only got one opportunity to go about a week before I delivered. A decent enough alternative is to take my little girl outside to play in her kiddie pool while I sit with my feet in.
So this morning I set Mia in her swing in front of the Kitchen french doors and we played just outside on the deck for about 45 min. I could watch my baby girl swing in the sunshine and air conditioning and at the same time sit in the sun and play in the cool water with my big girl. As I sat watching them I hoped that I would always take the time during my day to enjoy them at the stage that they are in and soak in their sweetness because I never want to forget this time in our lives.
I also am excited about all of the activity in my flower beds! These Butterfly bushes are blooming nicely and the bush is no less than 8 feet tall! Joe and I have big plans on trimming it back a little I just have to figure out what time of year I should go about doing that.

I just love the Victorian lace look of these Hydrangeas on my Hydrangea vine! Jealous? You should be its AMAZING!

Survivors Have Been Found!

I just wanted to report in and say that we have all survived our first day home just us girls. Someday soon I will not rely on the TV as much for Annie distraction but as for now it is keeping me sane. I managed to get Annie and I showered and dressed by 10. I did 4 loads of laundry and kept the house picked up with the help of putting a bunch of Annies toys in her room so that she would have to go in there to play with them as opposed to carrying them all over the downstairs.
Annie did fall off my bed but I caught her halfway down. I sent her downstairs as I was finishing up in my room and she started screaming, I found her on the stairs and I am pretty sure she electrocuted herself on the light switch that is still lacking a cover...oops! She seemed fine the rest of the day :o) When I told her she had to wait to watch her movie she managed to shove 3 dvd's into the player while I was in the basement doing laundry! I have to say that one saving grace is friends and family who love us enough to bring us dinner. It is really nice to feel like you have it together when there is a warm meal on the table at dinner time.

Annie having a little personal devotion time after she was excused from the dinner table :o)

The Heart

Have you ever felt such strong love towards your little baby laying on your chest that it feels like your heart is literally laying there on top of you for all the world to see? Being distracted by things that need to be done and other precious little rears that need to be wiped (or tanned :o) I don't get the sit and snuggle time with Mia that I did with Annie. I literally spent weeks in bed staring at Annie when she was born. Only getting up to do what was absolutely necessary. But its different with Mia, I am glad she is a content baby so that I can tuck her in somewhere and know she is safe from her older sister wanting to share everything with her! As soon as the "girls" don't hurt so bad I fully intend to get out my sling or wrap and wear her around for a while during the day, just so that I can feel her tinyness close to me a little more. However adding another layer of anything on my top sounds like pure torture so that time will have to wait another day or two.

Mia had her Cardiologist consult yesterday at Childrens. After seeing our pediatrician and confirming that she thought it was a VSD she referred us to Childrens the next day. Everyone who told us about it told us not to worry, and that was the summary of the cardio appointment as well. They did 02 sats, blood pressures, an EKG and a specialist and fellow both listened to her heart. They said based on the tests and the high pitched sound that it was a very small VSD and that it could close up in a month, probably by a year, 95% close up by 5 years and 5% live with it for life and never have any problems with it at all.
They want to see her back in a month to make sure she is growing and it is indeed not causing her any problems. The pedi will also keep an eye on her and other than that Joe and I just refer to the visit as one expensive free pacifier and arm wax because they gave her a paci to calm her during the EKG in which the sticky leads took some dark peach fuzz off of her arms :o)

Sisters

Sisters meeting for the first time

Annie's response to Mia's arrival has been interesting and pretty cute to say the least. I am not surprised about how much she likes looking at her and holding her. She has been loving babies lately and she really likes having her own here in the house.
When she saw her in the hospital she wanted to hold her immediately and when she did she poked her in the eye and stuck her finger in here ears and ended up scratching her forehead in a moment of uncontrollable excitement!
Although she has said Mia a few times it was always prompted. For the most part she points and says "Nick Nick". I didn't really think that she though it was Nicholas just that is what little babies are all called. However after a while I wondered if she did indeed think it was Nicholas :o) When we ask her where Mia is she will point her out but she has yet to say her name. She actually attempts to say Amelia but it comes out in a jumble of a's and l's and its really funny sounding!
For the most part what I hear a million times a days is "Ina oldit" which I finally translated into I want to hold it! It took me a while. I thought she was constantly asking for yogurt (which just shows you how jumbled up her word for yogurt is :o) I felt bad constantly telling her that she had to wait to hold her because she was eating and she would get mad because I wasn't sharing. So I decided to incorporate what we say when you want to take turns. I tell her Mommy is holding her now and she can ask to hold her next. So now she comes up and says NEXT!

She went through a box of hand me downs with Kelly and I so now every time I fold laundry or get an outfit out she says "Awwww" or "cuuute" :o)

Although we have been dealing with more than regular melt downs and little tantrums it has not been too bad. Its just exhausting to have to teach her a lesson and pick her up off the floor every time you tell her to do something. She has definitely been Daddy's girl which is nice because he is the one who should be picking her up and carting her around right now anyway. I don't think that she has any sort of problems with us bringing Mia home I think it was just a rough few days of us being gone and then a bunch of new "no" rules that came along with a little baby in the house. It hasn't even been a week and she is already showing signs of being her sweet little self again!

Labor Story :o)

As I lay here in bed (on my belly!) with my oh so beautifully dark complected baby snoozing beside me in the bassinet I will recall the story that started out, amusingly enough, with my last post.

I guess any girl can be fooled into thinking that she has 4 more weeks of being pregnant when she feels like she can conquer the world... look out! Gods little blessing of adrenaline preparing you for when you don't get any sleep for the next 24 hours ;o)

I remember when I was a young girl my friends mom having a baby (her 5th delivery at home). I went to their house with my mom just minuets after delivery to find that she had yet to deliver the placenta. I remember standing in her bedroom and the mid-wife showing my friend and I the "tree of life" in the placental blood vessels. I remember her mother commenting to my mom that she knew it was the day because she had so much energy and felt so good... I guess these are the things that you know when its your 5th baby :o) I suppose you also don't care about the neighborhood kids being in your bedroom either :o)

You see what I forgot to mention in Wednesdays post was that I was having a contraction with every positional change. I just wrote it off to being 36 weeks and having friends like Katie N who contract regularly for 3 weeks before they deliver! It may also have something to do with the fact that I worked triage a few days before and sent multiple women home who were all complaining of pre-labor symptoms and I wanted to tell them to scoot over and we would just sit in the triage bed and share sob stories. Then I would tell them that they needed to stop wasting their time and money, go home, and don't come back until you are actually in labor!

Wednesday night was a nice evening and I schemingly suggested we take a walk to the park which is only maybe 1/4 mile away so I wasn't going for anything labor inducing. Just aiding curiosity mostly.
After bathing Annie and putting her to bed I was still noticing the occasional tightening of the abdomen but no pain at all and nothing more than 3 an hour.
I was still wired! In a time that I usually fall asleep during a tv show or movie at 8:30 its now 11:00 and I am reading a book in bed while my husband works on the laptop. Lights out followed shortly after and the next thing I know it is 1:00am and although I must have been in and out of sleep, I am simply not comfortable, not able to sleep and restless but not contracting that I know of.
By 2:30 I decided that I was too uncomfortable to sleep and tossing and turning is just unkind to the man sleeping beside me who has to work the next day. So I get up and go downstairs to find that I am contracting every 3 minuets and wait... they hurt! How was I sleeping through this?
By 3:00 I have yet to take my eyes off the stopwatch because I felt I needed justification for what I was feeling... I know I'm weird, whatever :o)
These contractions that I now couldn't really sit still through were every 2-3 min apart and I decided to call work just to find out what doc was on and whether my friend Allie was working because she is on call to do my delivery (L&D perks) I told the charge nurse that I might see her later and hung up.

I woke Joe to tell him that I was contracting and was going to get in the bath to see if they go away. He is proud of himself for asking me if my water had broken because that was how it went down with Annie :o)
The bath did nothing so I decided to make myself delivery beautiful :o) Who needs all those pictures of yourself looking like you rolled out of bed when you had a perfectly good 3 minutes between contractions to apply a little eye liner :o)

Around 4 I finally decided to call the OB hoping that she would sympathize with me and confirm that I should come in and get checked out. My call woke her up and she didn't even know who I was which I have to admit ticked me off! She told me that it was normal to have 6-7 contractions an hour at 36 weeks and its a good thing they are not painful that I should drink a lot of water. She said that if I feel I must come to triage that it was on the 9th floor of Good Samaritan hospital in Clifton! Ahhhhh I was so mad! This is one of the docs that I dont care for in my group because she doesn't slow down enough to listen to you! Who said they weren't Painful?? How about 6-7 in 10 minutes??? Crazy Doctor!
I decided at that point I had justified a call to my nurse friend Allie so that she could sympathize with me and tell me to go to triage... however she didn't answer. :o(

By 5 I was mentally exhausted from over thinking this and needed Joe to talk out loud to. I went to wake him up and realized that I couldn't be quiet through them anymore either. He quickly jumped up and we were packed and ready to go about 30 min later.
Leaving Annie at the house with Good Old Aunt Kelly we headed to the hospital in the beautiful early morning sunrise.
My contractions still were the same and I was very wiggly through them. Joe exceeded the speed limit however we did not get pulled over this time :o)
In triage my colleagues hooked me up to the monitor and their eyes widened when they found that I was contracting like crazy and was already 6-7 cm with a "bulging bag"!!

I was SHOCKED! I couldn't believe that it was time! I was happy that I was so far along and surprised at how it still didn't hurt like I thought it should.
I was SO glad that I stayed home as long as I did. I knew they wouldn't keep me or break my water at 36 weeks if I wasn't far along.
I marched myself to my labor room remembering the awful feeling of having to sit in a wheelchair through contractions with Annie. After getting my IV started I decided to wait a while for the epidural which I hated the process of getting and also the feeling of being numb the last time.
Allie arrived and after chatting with her and a few other of my friends for a while I hand picked my anesthetist and summed up the courage for the epi process. Dont get me wrong, I wanted the epi more than I wanted the labor pain, I just really really wasn't looking forward to the creepy feeling it gives me! The process went MUCH better than last time and mid way through I got really excited about the rest of my labor process being pain free and happy fun time could begin!

My epi was perfect, I could feel my legs and some strong contractions, I could move my legs and even my body all by myself without the pain! Now THAT is what an epi should be!
The Doctor that took over at 8am is one of my very favorite people in the world. Picture an Oriental Jayne Barnett as your doc and there you have her!
She checked me and wanted to break my water however her head was still not engaged in my pelvis, to which I was not surprised because I knew I had not felt it down there yet!
So she left me to progress a little farther and I hung out in the room with Mom, Kara, Joe, Gerri, and Kelly even brought Annie up to visit for a while. Although she was not impressed by us all sitting in a room staring at me in bed and she took her to take a nap at Aunt Char's house. After Dr Choi attempted do a circumcision on post partum and getting called to another delivery she came back 2 hours later to break my water. I was 8 cm and when she left I started feeling my contractions very strongly and I could feel her dropping into my pelvis! We immediately called her back into the room and 10 min later Amelia had arrived!
I only pushed 3 times and it hurt! I admitted to Joe that if I were to ever go natural I would be a yeller because it was really hard to be quiet!
She was tiny and pink and I felt all the emotions that I was weirded out that I didnt feel last time. I was crying and excited and in love!

She had to spend some time under the warmer to keep her temperature up and she was grunting and retracting which is typical of 36week babies however a big red flag for lung problems so the NICU came to assess her. After spending some time doing "kangaroo care" she quieted down and everything was good!
She weighed 5lb 6oz and was 18.5 inches long. She has my dimple in her left cheek (her face cheek that is :o) We think she looks like Annie trough the eyes and nose however the dark hair throws everything off!

We wanted to go home after 24 hours however the pediatrician wanted to keep her for 48 hours just because of being early. She also detected a heart murmur and diagnosed her with a VSD. We are going to follow up with a cardiologist tomorrow so I will update you all more on what that is after that. Basically though its a hole in her ventricle that they are guessing is very small and typically either closes up in the first few years or just stays so small it never causes any problems.

This post is stinking long enough so I will tell all the adorable Annie reaction stories in another post soon!