Baby brother arrives!

The long awaited event finally occurred. Baby brother decided to grace us with his presence. It’s funny though, I forgot how uncomfortable labor and delivery actually are until I was right back in the thick of it.

We spent Thursday running errands and then we met up with Deidra and Jeannette and families to hang out. We ended up going to Chuck E. Cheese’s that evening to eat and play.

Sydney loved it – until she noticed the talking Chuck E. Cheese robot. Then she started screaming and shaking. She kept asking Donnie to take her home. She finally calmed down when she saw the picture sketching machine. She liked to have her picture taken and even after we ran out of coins she continued to go back and sit by the machine.

After our little outing, Donnie went fishing with Dustin. By this point I was feeling really tired and a little uncomfortable, but Donnie really wanted to go fishing. I think it is hard for guys to understand because they have never (and will never) experienced it.

We finally returned home a little after 11 p.m. and I crashed. I had a hard time sleeping because I couldn’t get comfortable. Finally around 2:30 a.m. I woke up with a contraction. Then I had another one. After the third contraction I decided I should time them.

So I tried to find my cell phone, but I didn’t want to wake Donnie and Sydney so I was stumbling around in the dark – breathing heavily through my contractions and grabbing on to whatever I could – trying to find the diaper bag so that I could fish out my cell phone.

Finally, at about 3:30 a.m., I called the doctor, but Donnie had to talk because I could barely stand so putting together a coherent sentence was out of the question. We arrived at the hospital at 4:15 and everything moved pretty quickly from there.

At 6:30 I received an epidural, only to find out afterwards that I was already dialted to an 8 and 90 % effaced. I almost made it all the way without an epidural – but I thought I was going to die! The epidural only worked on my left side, so I feel like I kind of experienced a natural birth too :-).

Potty Training

We are slowly making progress with Sydney’s potty training – very slowly. She tells us when she needs to use the bathroom, but she still doesn’t want to sit on the potty every time. She has been doing better lately, but she is still in diapers/pull ups.

We tried the big girl panties for one day, but after cleaning up what had to have been a gallon of pee and a broken jar of fig preserves (don’t ask), we decided she just wasn’t ready for big girl panties!

When she does agree to sit on her “big girl potty” we have to bribe her with candy

And whatever else she finds around the floor to keep her interest.

A long time coming...

It has been a long time since the last post, so I will try to catch you up to speed now. In other words, this will be a long post!

After Donnie’s graduation we started packing for our move across the country. We had a little less than three weeks to get it all done, and we barely made it! In fact, if it wasn’t for the extra help we had from my mom and about a dozen neighbors, we would not have been able to take care of everything.

We ended up giving away our kitchen table and chairs, and throwing away a lot of other things just to get everything to fit into the U-Haul. Ohhh I hate moving! At least we will be here for the next 5 or 6 years before we have to do this again. Sort of. We are not entirely settled. Most of our things are in a storage unit and we are staying with my grandmother while we look for a place to live.

We haven’t really devoted any time to house hunting though because we have been preparing for baby brother and Donnie has been working so we can save up some money – or at least survive until school starts!

Sydney has enjoyed her time at Grandma’s house. She loves to lie on my Grandmother’s bed and read books. In fact, reading is probably Sydney’s most favorite pastime activity. When we do find a new home, we would like to set up a special reading spot for her. She can have a special chair and a little bookshelf, maybe a few over-sized pillows…who knows? She definitely needs something a little better than this:
















Sydney also has enjoyed cooking with Grandma. Sydney really likes cupcakes – she calls them Princess Cupcakes – and Grandma let her help make some. However, when you cook at Grandma’s, you have to wear a hair net. Sydney though that was pretty funny.

















Sydney has had a lot of time to play with her cousins too. Every day she asks if we can go play with cousins, and most days we do. It is nice to have so many around now!

Quack! Quack!

Although we really should devote every minute of time we have to packing (since we have less than one week left and are only about 40 percent done), we have taken a few days off for Sydney.

The weather here is so unpredictable - it was in the 70s for two days last week and then it snowed the following two days - that when you have a nice day you really have to take advantage of it. Monday the temperature reached the high 70s and so we decided to take a break from packing/cleaning to take Sydney to feed the ducks on campus.

She loved throwing the bread and when she saw a duck out of water she would chase after it. Luckily for them, she is no where near as fast as they are! We tried to take her picture a lot, but most of the time she was pretending to cry. She didn't want to sit still for a picture, so she wouldn't smile. That's our little girl - stubborn. At least she's still cute when she pouts.

Our graceful baby...

Actually, she's not very graceful at all.

We live really close to our church and so, weather permitting, we walk there every Sunday. Two weeks ago we were leaving church and Sydney ran smack into a parked van. She fell to the ground pretty hard. She stood up and said, "I okay." and continued walking. She had a little bump and some bruising, but she was okay. I tried really hard not to laugh at her, but it was a really funny scene. Who runs into a parked car at full speed?

Then today, as we left church, Sydney fell face first to the ground. She scraped her knees pretty badly. She cried this time and Donnie held her, but then she wanted to walk again. She chose to walk in the grass the rest of the way home. I guess she figured it was safer than the sidewalk.

When ever Sydney gets hurt she asks me to kiss it better, but something about kissing a bloody knee kind of grossed me out. I could only kiss close to it. We came home and Donnie cleaned her up and put a bandaid on her knee. She seemed more upset by the bandaid than the actual injury.

We are going to spend the next few weeks teaching her how to walk - or either crafting a bubble wrap suit for her outside adventures.

Easter pics

About a month ago we took Sydney to have her picture taken for Easter. It was a complete disaster! We begged and pleaded with her for almost an hour to sit on the stand and smile. She wanted to sit on the floor and cry. We did everything we could think of to get a decent picture - we had given up hope for a good one since her eyes were all puffy and red.

Finally, we decided to reschedule and just go home. The next time we went to the portrait studio, we went earlier in the day, hoping she would be in better spirits. Well, she didn't cry, but she would only sit on the stand if she could have a bunch of random toys/props with her. We were so tired of trying to convince her that we gave in.

I don't know why she was so opposed to having her picture taken, after all, we take a million pictures a day of her!Plus, we take her to the same studio about every 3 - 6 months. We thought she would be comfortable with the whole thing, but now we are rethinking the whole studio experience. We might just wait until she starts school before we have any more "professional" photos taken :-).

A new bed...for baby brother

We have been trying to figure out what we wanted to do as far as bedding goes for baby brother. We will eventually put him in Sydney's crib, but since that is now in toddler bed form and currently being used, we have to have a back up.

We plan on buying Sydney a new bed once we get settled at our new school, but we will need something for a few months for baby brother. We have looked around, but nothing really jumped out at us. Plus, Donnie thought most of the ones I liked were way too expensive.

Last week all problems were solved when someone called and asked me if we could use a bassinet. They had a son in November, but are now preparing to move to Cambodia for a medical internship and no longer need the bed.

We gladly accepted the gift and now have one less thing to worry about. Although I am going to buy new sheets and bedding for it. White eyelet lace just doesn't seem "manly" enough.




Now that I am really into this whole nesting thing I convinced Donnie that we needed to buy the baby some clothes. We only bought a few things, but that helped me feel better. Since he is due in the summer and it will be extremely hot where we are going, we bought everything in short sleeves. Now he has a carseat, a bed and four outfits. I guess he can share his sister's pink blankets :-).

Sydney loves to sing. She also loves to turn in circles. Thus, she walks around our house all day spinning and singing. Today her favorite song is the theme song from "Elmo's World."

The words are:

La la la la
La la la la
Elmo's World
La la la la
La la la la
Elmo's World
I like my goldfish
My crayons too
That's Elmo's world!

It's easier to tell what she is saying when you know the words. It is really cute how she sings with such...passion. Donnie usually likes it too - except when it's midnight and she is jumping on our bed and serenading him :-0.