...And Then There Were Three

As I reached the end of my pregnancy with #3, I started to have the same issues and symptoms that come with every pregnancy. The back pain and leg numbness becomes more of an problem with each pregnancy, as I have more kids to chase and things to do. I chose to induce Carter at 39 weeks, and had a great experience (and still a 7.5 lb baby!), so we did the same this time. 

I was scheduled to be at the hospital at 9 PM on Thursday, November 13th to start antibiotics for an induction early on the 14th. Early on Thursday, it started snowing lightly, and as the day went on Alex and I both kept getting severe weather warnings on our phones. By mid afternoon we had an inch of snow and promises of up to 6 more throughout the night. I enjoyed my last meal (see below), but was getting a little anxious.

Our original plan was for me to check in at the hospital by myself so Alex could stay with the kids for one more night, then for him to come early in the morning. We were so grateful to have Amber and fam living so close, because the kids were so excited to go play with their cousins that they didn't care at all to be away from us for a couple days. About dinner time (with 2+ inches of snow and falling hard) we decided not to risk bad roads, so Alex came with me for the night before as well. That meant an additional night of 6 kids at Amber's house...thank you SO much!

After getting the kids settled, we headed - very slowly - to the hospital. I had to stop for a smoothie and some fries on the way, and Alex was impressed enough at the snowfall to take a picture. It doesn't do justice to the amount of snow falling, it was actually hard to drive.

Spending a night in the hospital when actually not in labor was weird. There was lots of nurses, doing various checks and changing IV bags, each one telling me to relax, that tomorrow would be a big day :). I knew this, but sleep was not going to happen. I was just excited to meet our little girl! About 4 in the morning we officially started the induction with Pitosin, and got ready for an eventful day. We took these pictures of our view; the nurses all said that we made the right choice, it was a bad day to be driving. We were also the only people on the labor floor for most of the day, I think all the other babies were waiting for better weather.

Note: This is the 'birth part'...not graphic but if you don't want to read it, skip ahead :).

Labor started VERY slowly...contractions would happen every 2 minutes, then skip ten minutes, just very irregular. I knew that as soon as the doctor broke my water it would be super fast, but she wanted to wait until my contractions were regular and hard before breaking my water. So we waited...and waited. About 10:30 we had the max amount of Pitosin flowing, and contractions were getting harder. So I called for the epidural just before the doctor was coming back. Placing the epidural seemed fine, but it never started working. After half an hour of harder contractions than I have ever felt before - I have epidurals each time - I called the nurse to get the anesthesiologist to come back. After discussing options (trying the epidural again, a spinal tap), I sat up so he could look at the injection site. As soon as I sat up, one of my legs went numb, and I was sure that it was starting to work. It was the end of the time period to change anything for pain management, but I was hopefuly so I decided to stick with the epidural and just try to switch sides more to get it flowing better. I decided wrong. Besides one very numb leg, the epidural did nothing for me. I had as close to a natural birth as I ever want :). It does make me respect mommies who do birth naturally, but I love epidurals, and being able to enjoy the birth process.

At 2:09 PM, Makenzie Brooke Casqueiro was born. She was totally silent, and the slimiest of our children. I was really concerned as the nurses took her over to get cleaned up. Alex remembers me asking over and over if she was alright as she was squirming and wiggling in the warmer but not making any noise. The nurses were rubbing on her and suctioning her out, but she was just a quiet baby. They brought her over very quickly, and everything was perfect. 10 tiny fingers, 10 tiny toes, and a sweet, very expressive face. For the first hour or so, she had some majorly grumpy faces, but that didn't last long. It seems every hour they change as they get used to this new life.

She was 8 lb, 1 oz, and 20 inches long. Our biggest baby by 1 ounce :). I love the above picture of Alex, such a proud Daddy. Her pictures show her 'healthy' sized mouth which seems prominent on each of our children. Immediately I could see a stark resemblance to Olivia. We will see how alike they look as children, but their baby pictures couldn't be closer to identical.

I promised to share the next picture...Alex took the crazy cross eyed picture ...I promise she has never made that face since! She is such a beautiful baby that we laugh about these crazy pictures; every baby needs a few!

After the wonderful wide-awake stage was over, and I got all feeling back, we moved upstairs to our room in the mother-baby unit. I was feeling very good, and quickly realized that we could have the kids come meet their new sister. I new Olivia at least was anxiously awaiting the arrival of this real-life baby doll for her to play with.

Amber brought Olivia and Carter to the hospital around dinner time, they were so cute with their little sister. As per their personalities, Carter was much more interested with all the buttons on the bed and wall and Olivia just wanted to be as close to Makenzie as we would allow. They checked out all her parts, Carter was NOT impressed with her belly button. His attachment to his own has grown into a sort of obsession, and he just said 'no no no' as he pointed at hers. Hopefully when the rest of her cord falls off she can gain his belly button approval :).

Makenzie had a gift of a camera for each of her siblings, and O was quick to start snapping pictures :). She has gotten quite a few great pictures, but they are all blurry as she is moving to the next picture she wants.

For the first day or so we thought Kenzie's hair was curly, but after she got her first real bath we realized that we were wrong. It is fine and straight, just like our other kids. She does have quite a bit of red in her hair however, I'm curious to see if we will have a little blue eyed, strawberry blond kid.

One of the sweetest moments that day was Carter having his turn holding the new baby. He climbed right up and pulled her toes out to start singing 'This Little Piggy'. Such an awesome moment, I know he will be a great big brother to her.

Late that night, Grandma Terece flew into town. It may have been close to midnight, but we were just hanging out at the hospital, so we were glad to have some visitors. Amber was the best sister ever and brought snow ice cream with her! Snow may be one of the weirder things to sneak into the hospital, but I was grateful to have my favorite snack.

Our first night was good, but after quite a few diaper changes and getting up to get the baby for me to feed, Alex was worn out. We hadn't yet adjusted our sleep schedules to include getting up many times a night...and we stayed up longer each time just to stare at this little beauty. She was a much bigger fan of sleeping than she was of eating, we had to force her awake to eat every time for the first 2 days. 2 months later I can safely say that she has grown out of that newborn sleeping phase.

Saturday was a Beaver Gameday, so when the kids (+ cousins) came to visit again, we had Makenzie all dressed up for the game. This little hat was my silliest purchase for her, I knew she would only wear it once or twice before football season was over and the hat was too small, but it was just too cute not to buy. She may have been the littlest Beaver cheering them on that day.

All of our Idaho cousins were very anxious to meet Makenzie, even down to Teagen, who has always been enamored with babies. His faces the entire time were adorable.

Dan has proven to be a huge baby hog :). He always has to be the last to hold the baby, because he will hold her until she needs to eat or get a diaper change. At that point he is all too willing to pass her to me or Alex. 

Perhaps my favorite baby gift came in the form of this card from Elli, which she brought to the hospital. It's a picture of my face right before Makenzie was born, then right after. I think she probably got it pretty close!

After a while the kids were getting louder and louder, and it was time for them to head home. It's amazing how quiet the hospital is after six kids 10 and under leave! We spent the rest of the day relaxing and just staring at Makenzie. She wasn't a great eater because she just wanted to sleep and sleep. We didn't see her eyes for more than 5 minutes until she was about a week old. I may be biased, but I think she is a beautiful sleeper.

Alex spent the night at home with the bigger kids, and I was very glad to see him the next morning. It's amazing how even from 1 day old, kids know when they only have one parent on call, and it happens to be the very tired, sore one :). We got all ready to go home...then we waited for 2 hours. Checkout takes SO long! We were excited to be together as a family and may have been optimistic about the length of the check out process. Eventually, with a nurse chasing behind us to give us a Super Bowl Dip recipe (don't even ask...) we made it out and on our way home.

 

Disneyland!! Part 1

The last week of April was Disneyland week for our family!! Alex and I had been looking forward to it for months, but we held off telling the kids until the week before. I'm really glad we waited to tell them, because they were able to have a massive amount of excitement for the entire time. We watched youtube clips of kids meeting miscellaneous characters and different rides, hoping to prepare them for the experience so they wouldn't be overwhelmed into terror. Then, we flew to Oregon a few days early to see family. As it happened, my side of the family was all elsewhere, so we had lots of C time. Here are the kids getting a horsey ride from Auntie Ashley...have I mentioned that my kids have the best aunts and uncles? They do. Always willing to go with whatever plan Olivia comes up with, and the kids adore them. 

The other fun part about our short trip to Oregon is that we got to spread the news about baby #3! We bought personalized M&Ms to share the news, and Olivia gave them to everyone individually as we saw them. It was harder than I thought to share the news this way, because everyone wanted to tell everyone else, and talk about it, but I wanted to get use out of the M&Ms :). Here is Aunt Kathy's reaction, which was actually the most surprised that we got. Most everyone else just said it was about time ... which really surprised me, as it will give me 3 kids in 4 years! This feels like a lot to me, but apparently Alex's family knows me better than I know myself.

 We lucked out that the Oregon Ag Fest was the weekend that we were in town. The Ag fest is like the agricultural section of the State fair times 4. There are lots of opportunities to play in dried corn kernels, plant different kinds of seeds, meet animals, and learn all about the things that we grow and eat. Olivia's favorite part was riding a pony, but as you can tell, Carter was more on the fence about it. Actually he would have preferred to stay on the fence and skip riding the horse. But he did it, and didn't cry at all :).

The next day was DISNEYLAND DAY!! Can you tell I was excited? I'm a huge fan of Disney in general, and was super excited to share this wonderful place with my kids. I didn't get Gary in the pictures of us on the plane, because he was relegated to the row in front of us.

I don't know who looks more excited the kids in the picture above, or the ones in the picture below. We were all pretty thrilled to finally be on our way. I already can't wait for the next vacation with this family, we just have all sorts of fun. 

Due to some great planning (thanks Gary!!) we arrived in Anaheim in the early afternoon, After settling into our hotel, and a totally unsuccessful naptime - can you blame them? - we were ready to head into Disneyland. Here's Olivia's 'about to board the Monorail' face...I wish now that I had captured everyone elses faces as well.

Most of these are just fun Disneyland pictures, but this next one is extra special to me. Three generations of accidentally matching men...such a special thing.

Pirates was the only ride through the whole trip that frightened O. She was very brave about it, and immediately afterward was talking about how she liked it, but slowly she mentioned (over and over and over) that the bone people were scary and she didn't like them. I didn't write down any specifics of things that she said, but every time we passed the ride on future days (it was actually closed for repair the rest of the week), she made sure to tell us that she didn't want to do that again.

 After our evening of bonus time in DL, we hit the hay and prepared for official Day 1 at California Adventure the next day.

Easter Weekend!

Easter weekend was a busy one for us this year! We wanted to get the kids out for a community egg hunt, because they always have fun running around with the other kids. I didn't really anticipate the sheer number of kids and eggs and craziness, but the kids had a blast. This particular egg hunt was put on by the Ten Mile Church, and was very well done. They had different areas and times for different age groups, which meant Carter got to go first. This was a good lesson for Olivia, who got to cheer on her brother while she patiently waited for the preschooler group. Carter didn't really get it. At all. He kept calling the eggs balls (no surprise there...everything round is ball to this kid), and picking one up before throwing it back down. He refused to put any eggs in his basket, and got quite mad when we tried to help him. Luckily the other 0-2 year olds aren't super fast at gathering eggs either, and we were able to convince Carter to put his 'balls' in Olivia's basket so he could take them home. Problem averted :)

Olivia, on the other hand, was super excited to gather eggs, and very serious about it. I had a hard time getting her to smile before she had a basketful of eggs. She kept the position below throughout her entire hunt. Low to the ground, high reachability...she had a great strategy!

 After we hunted for eggs and grabbed a healthy snack of candy from said eggs, we headed over to Maely's soccer game! I love going out on Saturdays to watch the G kids in their various sports, and soccer was no exception. Maely was so fun to watch, and showed amazing skill, especially because this was her first year, and most of the kids on her team had 3-7 years experience. At half time the organization  put on a huge dance party for a few minutes - Upward Sports always has fun activities, and a totally positive atmosphere. We will definitely use Upward when the kids get into organized sports. - which ad Olivia showing her best moves.

During the second half, baby #3 and I enjoyed our first snow cone of the season! Snow cones are one of my weaknesses, so I love that summer pregnancies give me infinite excuses to partake of them often. We did find out that snow cones turn Carter into a bird! He just got as close as he could with his little bird mouth saying 'Aaaahhhh' until he got a bite. We should have discouraged the behavior, but it was just SO cute that we didn't. And we regretted it later :).

The game made for a fun, and full morning, but we had to hurry home for lunch and naps afterward. During naptime, Alex and I remembered that we hadn't dyed Easter eggs yet! Every year we dye them, and then the Easter Bunny comes and hides fake plastic eggs instead (he is smart about the high broken egg potential in our house), but it's still an important tradition that I would feel horrible skipping. So we busted out the hard boiled eggs and dye, and had it all ready before dinner. I'm not an artistic person - at all - and as many eggs as we gave to Carter ended up on the ground, but we still ended up with a couple dozen successfully colored eggs...you're welcome Dad!

Easter morning was a blast. The kids are at this perfect stage of excitedness and lack of understanding or remembering about what tomorrow brings, so every holiday is something completely new for them. It didn't take long for them to discover that the eggs contained more candy, and Carter could open any of them by throwing them as hard as he could.Thus the chocolaty smile in all of these pictures. I couldn't keep him out of it!

 We had a relaxed morning before we headed to Amber's for Easter dinner. The kids really enjoyed the things that the Easter Bunny brought, an Anna dress for O to use on our upcoming Disney trip, and a bouncy basketball for Carter. He isn't quite big enough to use it per the instructions, but he figured out his own way!

Lastly, a picture of O. I love this face. The picture has funny colors, but her eyes are so beautiful. Happy Easter!

Pre-Summer Craziness

At the end of March, I really started to feel like the craziness of summer was going to be quite overwhelming. We had many trips, outings, and family activities planned, and I was at the sick point of pregnancy with baby #3! My way of coping with this, and most problems in my life, was to organize.  The first thing I did was make lists, calendars, and spreadsheets with all the events going on. I figured out that we did not have a two week span that would work for swimming lessons, so we were going to skip that this year. I noted some things that I needed to buy for the kids (most notably, smaller summer clothes for Carter, who is just a little guy. After I had exhausted the computer organization, I moved on to our house. I started with the legos. Yes, this is a pointless and ridiculous project, but it's quite relaxing for my neurotic brain. Here is the end result, which brings me pride even now as I look at the picture :).

One of my favorite activities since moving to Meridian has been teaching piano. I have 2 students, who happen to be my niece and nephew, but I really love teaching and have missed it since I had children. The arrangement Amber and I have includes an afternoon of babysitting every week as an exchange to teaching her kids. This is a deal that couldn't have worked out better for me. I have 3 hours of kid-free time every week before picking up her kids to teach them. It also solves the problem that I have always had with teaching; the kids are just too loud to have effective lessons. Anyway, As soon as the Frozen sheet music was released, I spent quite a few hours arranging music for the kids to play at their spring recital. I love arranging music, and was quite happy to use a few evenings playing and arranging these songs.

This is just a picture of my garden plan. I went with Square Foot Gardening, which meant Alex had quite a project in front of him getting my garden beds put together.Here is my plan for the boxes and what plants would go into them. This paper version is the first draft, which later was transcribed into Excel of course :) my happy place.

The kids got to try some painting with household objects while daddy made the garden boxes one day. The favorite thing to paint with by far was the Qtip, and the toothbrush was the most interesting. Carter is just not old enough to understand that he is supposed to paint with, and not brush his teeth with, the toothbrush...At least it's non-toxic! Next time I will use edible paint for this project :)

Some fun ballet hair one morning. I love that a cartoon or the iPad allows me unlimited time to mess around with Olivia's hair. I am not ashamed to admit that I use screen time as a bribe and a reward, whatever works in the situation :)

As I mentioned, baby #3 is on his/her way! my announcement to family was hurried by the fact that the second week in April we had some company, and I was quite sick. So we took the kids outside and took this picture. I wasn't planning on telling the kids yet, 7 months is a long time for a 3 year old to wait, and a long time for the parents to dodge questions about when the baby will get here :). Luckily for me, Olivia can't read, so I figured we could just take the picture and go on with our lives. Not so. As soon as I put the baby sandals on the chair, she asked: 'Mom, what are those shoes for? What does this sign say? Are we having a baby?' Unprepared for such direct questions, I just answered honestly. Yes we are. As soon as those words were out of my mouth, it was no longer a secret. She told everyone we saw, including the neighbors and whoever happened to run by the house while she was outside. The grocery store clerk, her dance teacher, etc. Surprises are a little beyond this girl!

The next day we had some visitors! Kylie and Justin came (along with my mom) for a few days while their mom was recovering from surgery. It's hard to tell from this picture, but my kids didn't know they were coming, so they are totally thrilled and surprised. Four kids under four is an adventure, but we always have lots of fun...and noise :).

I'm a little embarrassed to remember this, but apparently the night that the kids got here, I left them all with Alex and my mom and went out with Amber and Chrissy! These two ladies are very special to me, and every once in a while we try to get out by ourselves for a ladies night. We should do it more often. This particular evening we went to The Village, a new outdoor mall just a couple blocks from my house. We had dinner at a permanent food truck place (super yummy Sicilian food), then walked around the mall, stopping to take this picture in the most dangerous place there - sitting on the fire pit. It was a little chilly, so the fire pit was the perfect place to sit and talk, but the fire was unpredictable, and had a tendency to grow at inopportune moments. We all made it out with our hair, and I would risk it anytime for another evening out!

We wanted to do some sort of get-out-of-the-house activity while Kylie and Justin were in town, so one evening Amber's family met us at the park. It's so fun to let all eight grandkids play together, but the park was a little crazy with this crowd. 5 kids under 4, and three others who were great cousins and played with the youngers, but also love to do their own thing. I think Amber and I spend the whole time just counting kids, trying to keep track of everyone. We did have some super jumping fun, and when we started to leave we let the kids roll down a fairly steep grass hill, which led to such fun that we stayed another half hour :). Needless to say, the rolling antics of Olivia and Teagen had us all laughing, and I was glad to have the new baby as an excuse not to try at least once. If I remember correctly, Olivia may have gotten her rolling skills from her mom ...

On the 17th we had a fun surprise for the kids. We let them open a gift to tell them a clue about where our next trip would be. In one week - yes we waited a LONG time to tell them - we were headed to Disneyland! Olivia was so excited, we spent the next week watching video after video of little girls meeting characters, various rides, and other Disney fun. We wanted to be prepared!