2 months old!

Duncan is now 2 months old. All of you with kids know that that means SHOTS. We had the dreaded first shot appointment today. Duncan weighs in at a healthy 12 pounds, 12 ounces (88th%) and is 23 1/4 inches (75th%). Now I'm pretty sure his length is wrong because 2 weeks ago when we measured him at home he was just shy of 24 inches. Plus everyone always comments on how long he is. I said something to the "nurse" and she said last time they measured him at just over 21 inches. I didn't feel like arguing but that was his birth length and I know when we were there at 1 month he was over 22 inches according to their measurement. SIGH

Doctor said he has the head control of a 4 month old. YAY Duncan. She also continues to be impressed by my use of cloth diapers. She also said she thought it would be ok if I tried him on a regular formula again. We'll attempt that upon return from California.

After getting his clean bill of health it was time for the shots... 3 of them and a liquid one. Duncan started screaming while we waited for the nurse to come in for the shots. He was MAD. It was like he knew what was coming. He must have really been disturbing the staff because the doctor peaked her head in and asked (in a very annoyed almost accusing me of some sort of abuse tone of voice) if he was ok or if I needed some formula. You can definitely tell she doesn't have any children

He did pretty well with the shots. They let me stay in the room afterward to nurse him. I think they just wanted him to be quiet. Seriously, you'd think they thought I enjoyed hearing him scream like that.

Now our little Doodle sleeps. I'm hoping he sleeps well tonight too. Mama's tired!

Preschool woes.

Madeline loves, LOVES school. Me? Not so much. It's not because I have a hard time with her being away for 3 hours. I enjoy my away from M time. I can get things done. It comes down to control. I do not like not having a say in what she's doing/learning. It bother me that I don't know what goes on there during the day. I don't like our after school conversations that go something like this:

Me, "what did you do in school today?"
M, " i don't know"
Me, "did you do any math?"
M, "no, I had a snack''
Me, " did you do anything else?"
M, " I painted a picture of [random object, submarine castle ect. as she hand me a picture of lines. my daughter is not gifted in art lol]
Me, "what are your friends names?"
M, "I don't know and I didn't do any numbers or letters today either".
Me, pulls my hair out and wonders why we spent all that money to send her.

We're giving it another week before we talk to her teacher about what she's doing during the day.

My giant baby's birth.

Before I begin with Duncans birth story lets rewind and review Madelines. I had gestational diabetes with Madeline. I was told they'd let me go to me due date but not past. At 36 weeks we thought she was still breach. They sent me for an ultra sound to check and they wanted to check her weight also since I was measuring big. Madeline was not breach and she was an average size but I had a lot of fluid. I was making steady progress with dilation. At 38 weeks I was fully effaced and 2 cm dilated. That night right as Lost started my water broke. We headed to the hospital. Not much happened all night so I was induced in the morning. Madeline was born at 5:15 pm. She was 7lbs 6oz (this is important).

Duncans story: At 31 weeks I had a bleeding scare at church. We rushed to the hospital. He was fine. His head was really low already though and he was measuring 33 weeks. I was not dilated or anything yet. At 36 weeks I was not dilated at all yet. This was a huge bummer cause with Madeline I was already dilated. I had thought for sure Duncan would be born by 37 weeks because of how early Madeline was. I should have known. I felt so much worse with Duncan then with Madeline. He just felt so big and everything hurt. If I only knew then what I know now I would have known the reason.

37 weeks came and I had started to efface. At 38 weeks I was 3cm and almost completely effaced. 39 weeks came and there was no change. I should have asked the doctor if I was measuring big but I though nah he'd send me for an u/s if he thought baby was big. At my 39 week appointment doc asked if I wanted to be induced. He didn't have to ask me twice. I could barely wait for him to get the words out of his mouth before I took him up on his offer.

So at 7am Monday morning, the 19th of July we were to arrive at the hospital. It took a while to get things started. I was finally all hooked up to the meds at around 9am. I arrived already having regular contractions. The nurse was very surprised that they weren't bothering me. Over the next couple of hours the contractions got stronger and stronger. They were about 1.5 -2 minutes apart lasting about a minute. They weren't really bothering me though. Finally at around noon the nurse decided to check me. I think I was about 4 or 5cm with a bulging bag of water. She then suggested I get an epidural because if my water broke it would be instant pain.

Even though I was feeling ok I took her up on her offer. The anesthesiologist came and got me hooked up. It took a while. While he was trying to insert it my OB came in but left because it was taking so long. I was really bummed cause I figured that if he would have just broken my water then the baby would arrive quickly.

I labored all afternoon...feeling no pain. I snoozed a little bit but not much. We ended up watching the Family Feud marathon, Cash Cap, and then Dirty Jobs. We joked around with the nurse (now the 2nd one of the day). Finally 5pm arrived and the doc came in (office hours were over) and broke my water. I was about 5cm I think at this point.. maybe 6. So he left. Around 7pm the nurse called him back (maybe it was a bit earlier it's all a blur). I was making steady progress at that point. At one point the doc and 2 nurses were all in the room with us watching Dirty Jobs as we waited for the little man.

Finally at about 8:15 it was time to push. I started pushing and he came down right away. I was pushing really hard and wondering what the heck was taking so long. I figured he'd just fall out since he was my 2nd. I was pulling my legs back while the nurses pushed my feet. My knees were all the way to my ears I think. Luckily I had the epidural cause it didn't really hurt. It was tiring but not really painful. On my last set of pushes I yelled out "he better be 10 pounds". On the next push he was out.

All I heard was "that's a BIG baby". I asked if he was indeed a he and they said yes. They took him right over to the warmer. I didn't get to see him so I had to ask Eric if he was ok. (I was terribly worried he'd be born with Down Syndrome for some reason... probably because we never got to see his face on the ultrasound). He was fine and HUGE!

He weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 13 ounces. Although after being weighed I think he peed 2 of those ounces out all over the nurse. haha!

His official stats were born at 8:41pm, 9lbs 13 ounces and 21 inches.

After they were all done with his assessments they brought him over to me to nurse. He hasn't stopped eating since.

At 7 weeks old he is now about 25 inches tall and 12+ pounds (I'm thinking close to 13 now).

Back to blogging?

I just realized it's been almost exactly a year since I've posted anything on here. Boy have things changed!

Lets back track to October of 2009. I was very content with having our one beautiful, smart, energetic 2 year old. We had accepted that she would be our one and only. For some reason this month I prayed one last time for a 2nd child. Fast forward to early November and I was feeling like I might be pregnant. I thought no way! I'd prayed that prayer so so many times. It couldn't be that easy could it? When I was brave enough I trudged out to the store and bought a pregnancy test. I remember I had to take Madeline to her library class that morning. So I took the test and left the house. I couldn't even look at it. haha Got home and yep positive. I think I took one more just to make sure.

A few days later I called the doctor and made an appointment for around 6 weeks. It was a very nerve wracking couple of weeks waiting for that appointment. The last time we had gotten pregnant without help it didn't turn out so well. I requested Eric's presence for the appointment this time. I couldn't handle not seeing a heartbeat alone again. By the grace of God I saw that little flicker immediately. I just knew everything was going to be ok this time.

I can't say that I wasn't nervous the entire pregnancy or that it was easy, but our precious miracle, Duncan Luke is now here with us. We are so so grateful for him.

Now that he is here our family is complete.

Some other things have changed since last I posted too. We pulled our house off the market in January because I just couldn't keep up with the cleaning being pregnant and having a 2 year old. It was way too stressful for me. We've decided to just stay put, at least for the foreseeable future. We also decided to put Madeline in preschool this year. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to teach her the things we felt she needed to learn while having a newborn. We enrolled her in Montessori school for the year. I think we'll take her out next year and homeschool her though. we shall see.

Kid stats: Madeline 3 years old, about 40 inches and 35 pounds
Duncan Luke 7 weeks old, 25 inches and 12ish pounds

Can't wait to see what this next year brings! I think I'll post Duncan's birth story on my next entry.

Anyone want....

a house? We're putting our house back on the market next week. The Realtor just left and I feel sick. There are so many houses on the market right now it's CRAZY! Of course where we want to move there isn't much inventory. Can't do this one on our own.

"Jesus Take the Wheel"

Time Heals

Contentment is a hard thing to achieve I think. At last I feel content, even happy, to have an only child. Over the last couple of months I've realized that instead of hoping that I'm pregnant "this month" I find myself hoping that I'm not or at least thinking "it would be really inconvenient to be pregnant this month". I can't even believe I just typed that out. Me of all people hoping that I'm NOT pregnant. Who IS this person! I can only attribute this new emotional state to God's loving care. There is no way this would have happened without God's healing power.

I was sitting in Madeline's music class yesterday (for ages 0-5) and there was a cute 8 month old next to us. Instead of thinking "I should have one about that age" like I used to, I just thought "what a cute little girl". I appreciate all of the wonderful things my child can do now. She does her business on the potty, she can tell me what's wrong, what she wants to do and how she's feeling in general. Madeline can help me around the house and is constantly learning new things. The best thing of all is we're all finally sleeping well.

So there it is in case anyone was wondering. ;)

The homeschooling adventure.

A couple of weeks ago we got a jump on the school year and started our "school". We hung in there with the chosen curriculum for a week. Then I threw it out because it was just a little too advanced for Madeline. (It was for a 4 year old after all). On Monday we received our new, more age appropriate, material. It is almost too easy for Madeline but I'm going to make it work. Today we did the first 3 days of curriculum.

Our bible verse for the week is Acts 5:29 Obey God. Actually, I believe it's our memory verse for the entire month. Our bible story for the week is Jonah. We got to paint a whale to go along with the story. We also learned that squares have 4 sides and they come in many different sizes. She also did fairly well with tracing lines today. I hope her fine motor skills are improving.

Tomorrow we are going to trace our bodies and then cut out the parts to make a puzzle. Madeline will also practice her cutting skills and trace some more.

I also discovered a really neat site for phonics. Starfall.com. She is learning how to sound out words. She already knows the alphabet (capital and little) and the sounds they make. The 2 year curriculum doesn't even go in to that stuff so I'll be adding all of that in. We learned A words with the other curriculum so we're doing B this week and next and one letter each week after that.

Next year we will use the curriculum we started this year. Madeline is easily on track to start kindergarten at 4 years old. We aren't pushing her at all. She picks things up so easily and wants to learn.

To supplement our schoolwork we are taking a mommy and me ballet class, going to story time at the library, music class at the library, and she'll take an imagination class with Eric on Saturdays (starting in November). If she likes ballet we'll continue that in January. If she doesn't we'll try out gymnastics.

We are very excited to have so many fun things to do this year! Lest we forget we are also going to Disney World in October and again in February!