2013 Recap

So I noticed a few days ago that I apparently didn't write a single blog post in 2013.  I decided that the best way to rectify that is to do a NYE recap of 2013 to just go right ahead and get as caught up as I am gonna get and then make some resolutions for the new year including keeping up with blogging at least a few times each month.  So here we go...

2013 started off in much the same way that 2012 ended and that is with a LOT of sickness in our family. On January 15th, AJ gets the stomach virus. Two days later it has moved through our entire family including an incident in which I threw up on my sleeping child. It was not our finest hour.

February 2nd - AJ starts crawling

February 5th - AJ is diagnosed with RSV.  Just after midnight I head to the ER with AJ.  A few hours later he is admitted due to complications from RSV.  After a long night in the hospital, Andrew comes to relieve me in the morning after dropping Caleb at daycare. I get home, showered, and into bed and the phone rings. Caleb is sick and needs to be picked up from daycare. Because I am breastfeeding AJ, Andrew and I switch places again. AJ and I are released from the hospital around 5pm that same night about 17 hours after we arrived.

February 16th - I posted this on Facebook, "It has been a big week for AJ. Recovered from RSV, stopped "lazy" crawling and started really crawling to get what he wants, and then today he repeatedly effortlessly pulled himself up to standing, started cruising around his activity table and walking behind his walker toy. Still 8 days shy of 8 months old and growing up way too quickly!”

Late February/Early March – AJ gets his first two bottom teeth.

March 9th to March 15th – Vacation in San Diego to visit Andrew's family. We also made a special trip with Caleb to Disneyland, but unfortunately, my phone died so no pics :(

March 21st – I posted this on Facebook, “At the pediatrician with this guy again. I had them count, we have been here just for AJ 13 times since November and will be here again on Saturday...all sick visits. That doesn't include a trip to urgent care, a hospital admittance, and a bout with the stomach virus.”

Late March (Easter Weekend) – We had a visit from Andrew's sister's family. It was so nice to have all the cousins on that side of the family together for the first time ever.

April 4th – I posted this on facebook, “9 month well visit turned sick visit. Found out our little chunk is 21lbs, 12oz and 28.25" tall and has double ear infection #6. Tubes are in our very near future.”

April 13th – We celebrated by 32nd Birthday celebrated with a Star Wars cake...Caleb's choice of course.

April 17th – AJ's consultation with the ENT. Two days later he had surgery to put in tubes. He's only had one ear infection since then, so they seem to be working!

May 11th – Celebrated the 10 year anniversary of my graduation from college. According to Facebook I was doing this, “Today I spent the day in jeans and a t shirt running AJ to the doctor then a quick trip into work (cuz you know there are no weekends in lab work) and then taking Caleb to see Mt. Lebanon HS perform Seussical (those kids are amazing!). Now I am snuggling with AJ as he naps while we await pizza delivery for dinner. I think I am exactly where I had hoped I would be as I listened to President LJ Lemons speak on that beautiful day in 2003.”

May 14th – Caleb’s first soccer game

May 27th – Celebrated our 7th Wedding Anniversary

June 6th – Had a Eureka moment in the lab!

June 23rd – AJ starts walking June 24th – AJ turns 1! “One year ago, we welcomed a tiny, calm, wide eyed baby boy into our family. Andrew and I even commented about how calm he was and how he was going to be our "laid back child." Over the past year he has shown us that he is anything but laid back. He has experienced challenge after challenge and health problem after health problem. But he has come through all of that with a smile on his face and a fighting personality. He's still a wide-eyed child and loves to experience new surroundings and meet new people. I am excited to see how his personality continues to develop and shape who he becomes. Happy 1st Birthday to my spunky, cuddly, perfect little man! I love you AJ!”

AJ’s party was nearly cancelled due to yet another illness in our family. Caleb and AJ both came down with Hand, Food, and Mouth. But everyone was healthy enough by June 29th when we celebrated with just a small group of family. We had a picnic in our front yard and it was absolutely the perfect way to celebrate the first year of our littlest man’s life.

July and August - We soaked up as much as we could of the rest of the summer with only a few illnesses here and there. We spent the 4th of July with our good friends Stacey, Tom, and Caleb’s girlfriend Layla. And we took advantage of some great 4th of July sales and purchased some much needed new appliances for our kitchen.

We celebrated Andrew’s 33rd Birthday.

September - September started a new chapter in my career as I became a postdoc. I’m still working in the same lab doing the same research, but taking on some additional responsibilities and taking advantage of some new training opportunities. Four months later and I am thrilled with the decision that I made to take on this new challenge and I feel so blessed that the opportunity presented itself at just the right time in my life.

We also celebrated Caleb’s 5th birthday this month! I’m still shocked every time I say that I have a five year old! Caleb has grown up so much this past year, and I am so proud of the little boy that he has become.

In October, my sister completed her first 5K when we participated in the Pittsburgh Color Run. We had a blast, and I was so proud of her.

October also brought another bout of the stomach flu in our house including a trip to the ER for AJ. Hopefully we can just call 2013 the year of the norovirus and leave it in our past for 2014.

And of course, we celebrated Halloween Star Wars style!

In November, D and I ran two more 5K races besting our times at each successive event.  We had a great time raising money in the "Do it for Dina" race and then in the Turkey Trot in our hometown on Thanksgiving morning.  It was FREEZING, but so much fun!  Caleb even ran the kids 1/2 mile fun run.

We rounded out the year with a relatively relaxing December.  Caleb wrote his first real letter to Santa, we learned that AJ is terrified of Santa, and of course we had to have a Star Wars Christmas.  2013 was also the year of Star Wars in our house.

 
Whew!  I made it!  Ready to put 2013 behind us and say hello to 2014!  Happy New Year from our little family!

Gotta Start Somewhere

 

Two nights ago we got HUGE belly laughs out of AJ while we were cleaning up dinner and getting ready to head up for bath and bed.  Caleb started running at me and I put out my hand to stop him.  AJ thought it was HILARIOUS!  Most of the noise that you hear in the video is AJ, not Caleb.  He was hysterical.  

 

Then last night  at 5 months, 1 week, and 4 days (thank you ticker in the upper right corner), AJ rolled over back to belly for the first time.  He rolled belly to back between week 4 and 5, I just never posted about it.  

I swear one day I will get caught up with this blog.

Pictures

So, like I said, we took all three kids to Portrait Innovations to have pictures taken for a Groupon that I had bought for $4.00. Well, you know how it goes. They captured some great pictures of my boys together and of the two little ones together, and we just couldn't resist. My sister and I justified the purchase by calling "Christmas presents for everyone!" For less than $200, in addition to all the prints we got (A TON) we also got a CD of all the images taken that day, three hard cover photo books, and four collage prints. Seems crazy considering my brother-in-law is a photographer, but I think we saved his sanity by letting someone else figure out how to get all three of them looking at the camera and being happy at the same time. And let me tell you, the four year old was the hardest one!

Here's a collage of some of my favorites.  My absolute two favorite pictures from the session are the one in the bottom right corner with Gab and AJ and the one in the middle on the left hand side where Caleb is giving AJ a kiss.  That picture was impromptu when Caleb heard AJ start fussing, he came over to give him kisses.  

And a few outtakes from the session in case anyone mistakenly thinks that the kids were happy the whole time. 

Gab is like, "What the heck is this thing doing in my ear?"  Aren't I pretty enough without that giant accessory?"

And my favorite outtake...Looks like Caleb is getting them all fired up for something.  Gab is ready to go fight for the cause.  AJ seems to be a little more cautious and skeptical of big brother.  Funny because those are exactly their personalities.

Is Anyone Out there?

Hello world! I gave birth to a baby three months ago and then dropped off the face of the earth. I've been wanting to blog and meaning to blog for about the last two months, but I feel so far behind that I didn't know where to start. I finally decided I need to just post to get myself over the hump and then get back into blogging regularly again.

So, what's been going on these last three months? Let me just go ahead and list all the topics that I want to write about. More detailed posts on each one coming soon.

1) AJ was born, turned one month old and had a well visit, turned two months old and had a well visit with vaccinations, developed a hernia that requires surgery, and started daycare just this week.

2) Caleb started summer camp and ended summer camp, started a new school year in a new classroom with new teachers, has been learning and growing as a big brother, and turned four years old! OMG, I have a 4 year old! How the heck did that happen?

3) Seeing my husband as a father of two boys melts.my.heart.

4) We had pictures taken of the boys and my niece. A $4 Groupon for a quick shot of the three of them turned into "OMG I can't choose just one picture I love them all here's my credit card."

Can't wait to share those. So that's pretty much the last three months in a nutshell. I swear I am going to provide details soon!

Coming Soon...

Photo Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Pictures taken by my awesome brother-in-law, Matthew O'Haren.

Anthony's Birth Story

This post should be subtitled "Sometimes you just need your mom"

So, all last week I had non-painful, semi-regular contractions from about 5pm to 8pm each night. My appointment on Wednesday came, and even though I had planned not to have an internal exam, I caved since I'd been having the contractions. I found out that I was 3cm dilated, 50% effaced, -2 station, and soft.

Thursday night I started having contractions every 5 minutes lasting 1 minute. They stayed consistent like that for about an hour and a half. They started spacing out a bit, and so I decided to go to bed. I woke up Friday morning still pregnant.

On Friday, I woke up with a headache. I hadn't had any headaches all pregnancy, so I was wondering if maybe my blood pressure was starting to go up again like it had with Caleb. Still, I got up and went to work. By halfway through the day I had wrapped things up at work, and I just didn't feel well. Since I work right across the street from the hospital where I go for my appointments, I decided to just head over for a blood pressure check. The bp check showed that everything was normal, but since I still wasn't feeling well I headed home for the afternoon to get some rest. Some rest that never happened because Caleb's daycare called and I ended up in the ER with him getting 9 stitches.

Now, all week long I had been on the phone with my mom trying to figure out when she was going to come out to stay with us so she could take care of Caleb when I went into labor. We'd changed things up a bunch of times. Originally she was coming Friday, then it was Sunday, then it was "sometime next week." She didn't want to be annoying staying with us for a long time since it could have been weeks before the baby came, and I didn't want her to have to be here all alone all day while we worked and Caleb went to daycare. After the incident with Caleb, she just called and said I'm coming tomorrow. Saturday morning, my mom went to the train station and bought a ticket to come out. The train was scheduled to arrive at 8pm Saturday night.

Saturday morning, Andrew, Caleb, and I got up and took Caleb to the zoo like we had promised. The weather was supposed to be gorgeous and I figured that little walking could be just what I needed to get things going. After the zoo, we came home and I was exhausted! I pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch.

Caleb was already in bed, so I decided to head to the train station to pick up my mom while Andrew stayed home with Caleb. On the way there, I started having cramping. I called my sister and Andrew to tell them about it. But by the time I picked up mom, I convinced myself it was just gas. We stopped at Wendy's on the way home and picked up some delicious Frosty's.

::Here's where the actual birth part starts::

Around 10pm, we all headed to bed, except I never went to bed.

Per Saturday night tradition the last few months, Caleb was sleeping in our bed with Andrew, and I was sleeping in Caleb's bed. This worked out well because as soon as I laid down I started having contractions that felt different. They were only on the bottom half of my belly, but I could also feel a lot of pain in my upper legs. I started timing them and they were about 8.5-9.5 minutes apart. I decided to let Andrew sleep, but told my mom what was going on. At 11:15pm, I called to the midwife on call at the hospital. Tina called back at 11:30pm and suggested that I take a shower and drink some water and call back in an hour. I hopped in the shower, and even though I didn't have my handy dandy contraction timer on my phone available while I was in there, I could tell that they were getting closer together.

By midnight, I was getting scared that things would progress quickly. Contractions were now 6 minutes apart and getting pretty intense. I had intended to wait to call Tina back, but I ended up just bursting into our room to wake Andrew up. He jumped out of bed and his feet hit the floor before I could finish saying, "we're going to the hospital." By 12:30 we were in the car, and I decided to just call Tina on our way so as not to waste any time.

We got to the hospital and checked in at triage by about 1:15. I was hooked up to monitors...beep, beep, beep...yep, my bp was elevated. Around 1:30 Tina checked me and I was still 3cm just like on Wednesday, but I had thinned to 90%. She thought that this was probably it, but wanted to see some progress before admitting me. The plan was for her to come back in an hour.

Immediately after she checked me, my contractions went to 3 minutes apart. And baby's heart rate started to decel during each contraction. So Tina came back only 30 minutes later and I had dilated to 5/6cm. Andrew called my mom to tell her we were being admitted, and the nurses pushed me down the hall to a L&D room probably 15 minutes later. Unfortunately, because of the blood pressure and the baby's heart rate decels, I had to stay hooked up to the monitors. Not being able to move around was driving me nuts! Tina got me a birthing ball (giant yoga ball) to sit on and that helped a lot.

What seemed like just a few contractions later, I was feeling a lot of pressure in my bum with each contraction. I didn't say anything at first because I figured that this couldn't be it. I didn't want to get checked only to find out that nothing new had happened over the last short period of time. But soon I knew that I had to push. Tina got me back on the bed and I was complete. She tried to break my water, but apparently that had already happened at some point (Looking back, I think probably earlier in the day before I went to pick mom up at the train station).

At that point, Tina said, "Let's just see what your body does on this next contraction." And, my body could not help but to push through the intense pain. I asked if the baby's head was "right there" and the whole room immediately said, "yes!" One more contraction with pushing, and our little guy was here. Kind of amazing how my body knew exactly what to do with those contractions without anyone coaching for counting. I ended up with just a very small tear that didn't even require a stitch. Of course this makes it sound like all was calm in the room during those two little pushes. I was screaming bloody murder saying things like, "I quit," "I can't do this," "I don't want to do this anymore." I feel bad for anyone who was in the hospital at 3:00 that morning. I was freaked out because I never had the urge to push like that with Caleb. It was certainly intense, but absolutely amazing!

So Anthony was born just about 5 hours after I felt my first real contraction, two hours after we arrived at the hospital, and about an hour and a half of active labor. If we have another I'm checking into the hospital at 37 weeks.

We were released from the hospital on Monday afternoon, a little less than 36 hours after his birth.  

Caleb is in LOVE with his baby brother.  We have to keep reminding him not to touch Anthony's head and to be gentle with the hugs and kisses, but he really does love AJ. 

Welcome Anthony

Anthony Jacob 

"AJ"

June 24, 2012
3:06am
5lbs, 14oz
20 inches

We came home from the hospital today, and are doing well as a new family of 4.   Stay tuned for Anthony's lightening fast birth story.

Pregnancy - 39 Weeks

Pregnancy: 39 weeks

Feeling: Extremely tired. 

Health: BP 120/70.  Gained 1lb this week.  Baby's heart rate was up a little into the higher 140s this week, but still well within the normal range.  I caved and got checked this week and found out that I am already 3cm dilated.  I had contractions every night this week, but nothing that lasted or got stronger.  Really hoping that this weekend is the end.   

Belly:  Taken Wednesday at 38 weeks, 4 days.  Please ignore the dumb face I'm making.

Next Appointment: June 29th at 39w, 6d; and I'll be really annoyed if I have to go to that appointment.

Stitches

What a day, and not really in a good way. I woke up this morning with a headache, and by noon it was really only getting worse. Since I developed high blood pressure at the end of my pregnancy with Caleb, I decided to leave work early to have my bp checked (it is fine) and then to head home to relax for an hour or two before picking up Caleb from daycare.

I wasn't home more than a few minutes when I got a call from daycare that Caleb had jumped into the pool during swim time. Mid-jump, he turned around to grab onto the side of the pool and caught it with his chin instead. I picked him up and they already had it bandaged and there was no blood seeping through the bandaids, so I thought it wasn't that bad. But the person who bandaged it said she thought it might need stitches. So off to the hospital we went. And we had an absolutely AMAZING experience at the community hospital that is right around the corner from our house. Kind of makes me wish I was delivering there instead of at the hospital 1/2 hour away.

Anyway, we walked right up to the front desk in the ER, the woman at the desk had me fill out a quick 1/2 sheet of paper (I don't even think you could call it a "form") with names and birth dates. She made a quick call that we were heading to triage and then she herself walked us straight back to a room in triage. Before we even got there, there were two or three nurses in the room waiting for us. They got Caleb all set up with a hospital bracelet...

 

Note the awesome tie dyed camp shirt that he'll be sporting every Friday this summer.  Yeah, it has blood on the collar as a reminder for us every week!

...checked his pulse and blood pressure...

 

 ...They had me take off the bandaids so they could take a look at his chin, and I knew immediately that it needed stitches.  Flesh was hanging out, but he didn't seem to notice anything other than the ripping and pulling from the sticky bandaids.  Next, they got him set up with some numbing ointment on his chin to take away some of the sting when they injected the real numbing stuff...

 

 ...then we waited for about 30 minutes for the numbing ointment to take effect.  And Caleb passed out thanks to a week of no naps at camp...

 

 ...the nurses came back, strapped him down to something called a "hug board" which is basically a giant swaddle blanket, and started the injection of the lidocaine.  That part was the hardest for Caleb.  After one stitch he calmed down and went into "the zone."  He just laid there with his eyes closed tightly and didn't budge or whimper the whole time he was being stitched.  He ended up needing 9 stitches, but they actually did 10 stitches because the first had to be removed and replaced once the others were in place.  This queasy momma watched the entire thing and didn't even once feel like passing out.  I'm so, so, so proud of my little man and his toughness and bravery today. 

 

Of course, the first thing we did when we left the hospital was to head straight out for milkshakes.  Tonight he was dancing around after his bath just like every other night.  So, I think we're well on our way to healing!

Summer Camp is Tiring

The summer camp version of daycare started on Monday and runs for 10 weeks.  The kids spend the whole day from 9-3 outside except for three 30 minute periods when they are inside doing rest time or swimming (2x/day).  Rest time has nothing to do with sleep.  So my excellent little napper has been exhausted every night this week, but has managed to make it to bedtime without being too cranky.  That is until tonight.  A few minutes after we got home, he sat down on the couch next to me and was PASSED OUT.  Hopefully he adjusts a bit better next week, and HOPEFULLY he takes some great naps this weekend.

Caleb Loves Gab

He's obsessed! He loves to hold her and just look at her. And I love when he walks up unprompted and says, "I love you Gab." Melts.My.Heart! I can't wait to see how he loves his brother or sister.

Pregnancy - 38 Weeks

Pregnancy: 38 weeks, 1 day

Feeling: Tired, ginormous, ready to be D-O-N-E. 

Health: BP 120/70.  Weight gain is good, baby's heart rate is slowly going down as he/she gets bigger.  It is now in the low 140s each appointment. 

Movement: Head down and ready to go.  Movements have slowed a lot as there's less and less space in there, but baby still has some active periods each day.   

Belly:  Taken last Wednesday at 37 weeks, 4 days just before I had my spa appointment. 

Next Appointment: June 20th at 38w, 4d.