Who knew?

Who knew...

That after my OB visit last Thursday where the midwife reported no more progress than since the last week (half a centimeter and still long) that my water would break the next day!

Before

After

Who knew this little girl would be so cute!?

Baby Sierra

Lily was 10 long days (of on and off contractions and little sleep) late. I finally had to get pitocin to get her here, and I fully expected Miss Sierra to be overdue too, but sometimes nature has other plans. Sierra was born 1 day early - and I am so glad! For many reasons, but mostly that now instead of worrying what is going on inside my belly - I can just look at her to see that she is ok...and that I can just look at her! She is so beautiful! There is something about a tiny newborn.

So I guess Miss Sierra's early arrival was partly due to a full moon. The hospital was packed with women having babies! Extra nurses were called in, and they were even running low on stuff. But we lucked out and got to labor and stay in the same big private room with a view of lovely pine branches the whole time. Good timing, Sierra! I did get a low dose of pitocin to make the contractions work harder, but my water breaking was helping a lot with that and they eventually had to turn it off altogether. I also opted for the epidural. Best decision ever! I was so nervous about it, and after I got it I was shaking and couldn't stop for a while, but when that wore off I was good. I had to be monitored in bed anyway being on pitocin, and this time I was able to think, and know what I was doing when I was pushing, and enjoy my baby after she was born! It still hurt to push the baby out, but it was so much better! Last time I ended up getting a little bit of IV drugs to help me sleep - which was when I finally dilated enough for Lily to come out. I felt so out of it when I woke up and it was time to push right then - it was the most painful experience of my life, and I guess Lily was sunny-side up too. So I am a fan of the epidural. Thank heaven for modern medicine! The drugs don't pass to the baby either like the IV drugs probably do - so in a way it was a more natural delivery than last time. So grateful to my sister and sister in law and my mom and Mike of course for being there for me while I labored! I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family!!!

And here is the newest addition - pictures do not do justice to her sweetness. We are in love with this tiny little person!

Baby Burrito in the hospital bed

Lily sees her sister for the first time!

Such a sweet chill baby girl!

So tiny and precious!

I Love Spring!

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I wanted to do some kind of a little update before my life gets even crazier. Springtime is one of my favorite times of year! I'm so glad this baby will be born in the Spring like I was :) The weather has been beautiful and been calling us out of doors. Mostly to the backyard - thank goodness for the backyard! I just want to garden when I get out there, but I can hardly do that at the moment. Just doing a little extra housecleaning ends up being too much for me these days - so I'm trying to take it easy and save my back, but it's hard! I would be cleaning and organizing this house from top to bottom if I could right now. One more month before little Sierra makes her entrance to the world! Mike has been pretty busy with work, but he has been helping me out more with dinner and laundry and taking care of Lily. He's such a good dad! He plays so well with Lily and reads her a ton of stories when he puts her to bed. They are so cute together. Here are some photos of us over the last week or so.

Lily and I enjoying the beautiful flowers in the backyard:

Love that face!

Lily in an outfit she picked out that morning with her Dad.

Another flower for you, Mommy!

Showing off her style - patterns galore,down to the hello kitty socks! 

I actually thought it was a pretty cute combo - we went to my Dr. appointment like this.
Good job Lily, and Dad!

Me

...and my belly.

Fluffy white clouds and a super blue sky getting us all out to play this weekend:

Such a beautiful day in my favorite corner of the backyard

All the flowers we planted by the studio are exploding in bloom

These two are so cute together!

Daddy-Daughter Love

Dad's little helper clearing out our garden boxes.

Lily is super excited for Easter to come. She asks about it every morning and night. She just can't wait for the Easter bunny, and to wear her Easter dress, and to have her cousins over for dinner. She has big plans for an egg race, but the hunt is what she's looking forward to the most! Here are some photos of her making some pretty cool Easter decorations earlier this week. She wanted to make an Easter art project while I was trying to get some organizing done, so I cut out a bunch of eggs and a few other shapes and gave her the glue stick and some colored pencils and crayons and she went to town! I helped a bit when she got tired of being all gluey, but she mostly put them together, and she came up with the idea to stick the bunny and chick faces in 'the egg cracks' as she called them. I love her little penciled in faces and all her extra touches. We need to hang these up around the house before this weekend!

Not wanting me to take her picture!

Much more cooperative with the smiles :)

The completed pictures

Check out her little hand drawn faces. So cute!

Another one of my favorite things about Spring is listening to General Conference. Lily was so awesome about it this year! All I had to do was print out a bunch of Easter themed coloring pages for her. I even heard her repeating back some of the things from the talks. She was actually listening! It probably helped that I haven't been letting her watch much TV lately. I love this little almost 4 year old!

We ate homemade cinnamon rolls and listened to the prophets and the beautiful music from the choirs. I remember General Conference seeming so long when I was a kid, but this year it felt so short! I'm so grateful for the spirit I felt and the inspired words of the prophets. I really needed it this year! Here's hoping I can make it through another month of being pregnant! And the sleep deprivation before and after...

Pregnancy Ticker

When I was pregnant with Lily I could never tell you exactly how far along I was, I'd just refer people to my due date. This time I downloaded one of those pregnancy tickers for my desktop, and one for Mike's because quite often these days I can't stand sitting down at my computer and if his is on I'll just check a few things on it. So this pregnancy anytime someone asks me - I can tell them exactly how many weeks along I am and even how many days I have left (before the due date anyway - it would be heavenly to actually be done by that date!). It's been nice to know what week I am on when people ask me - I am confused by how it is calculated, but the ticker is jiving with what my mid-wife has been saying so I'm going with it. The problem with these pregnancy tickers is I don't just want the little message about what is happening with my baby to change once a week, I want it to change every day, scratch that - I want it to change every time I look at it! The rest of this pregnancy is looking really long to me right now!

Here's my baby belly at 33 weeks:

This week has been hard. I taught my last lesson in Relief Society at church before the baby comes (Ah, nice to not have to worry about that for a while), but since Sunday my back pain has been getting worse and worse. I can't get in a comfortable position. Walking, sitting, lying down...can't do any of those things comfortably for an extended period of time. When I do and I go to change positions the pain is excruciating. Mike moved our glider chair downstairs so I'd have a comfortable place to sit in our room, and then he walked over next-door to get a recommendation for a pregnancy massage from our friend who is also a massage therapist. I hope we can set up an appointment soon - I am in desperate need! When Mike called and left a voice mail with the lady to set up a massage - he started it out introducing himself and saying: "My wife is...10 and a half months pregnant..." I busted out laughing and set him straight saying nobody is ever 10 and a half months pregnant! He was thinking it was 12 months and subtracting back on how much time he thought was left. Thank goodness pregnancy doesn't last an entire year! According to some friends and random strangers I will probably look about 10 and a half months pregnant by the end of this. It is funny how many different perspectives people have looking at the same thing. I have been told everything from I'm "so tiny" to "Whoa! you're ginormous!" I tend to agree with the latter, but according to my midwife I'm measuring on target. So that gives me some comfort, but oh how I look forward to getting back to my normal self again.

Pregnancy is such a strange experience. It is so crazy and miraculous what our bodies can do! This time it seems much more real that there is a tiny individual growing inside me because I've been though having one come out and getting to know her. I'm getting pretty nervous about being a mother of more than one! It seems kind of sad to me knowing that I won't be able to give the same kind of attention to this baby that Lily got. Not that that might not be a better thing in many ways. Sometimes I think maybe I'll be a better mother of two than I am of one. It's just going to be such a different experience. I've been a mother to one for almost 4 years now! It's a big change, but an exciting one.

Lily has been such a dear especially these last few days. I'm so grateful to have her as my little girl! She's played so well on her own as I've tried to rest my back, and given me such sweet loving attention. Not that there haven't been moments, and time outs, but she is such a sweetheart! Now if only she will go to the bathroom on her own without saying she's too scared!

Me and my girls!

Catching a nap on what's left of mom's lap!

Still kicking!

Written last night - I just had to finish adding the pictures. I haven't been feeling like posting most of the time because it's just too uncomfortable to sit in my little folding chair at my fold out computer desk and I don't exactly have a lap for my laptop right now - so I've hardly even been turning on my computer these days. Plus all my energy has been going into growing a baby and taking care of the little girl I still think of as my baby - though she is growing up so fast it constantly catches me off guard. Here are some recent pictures of my little lady that I love. 

I have this one as my desktop wallpaper right now

She is gone to the hardware store and the bookstore with her dad right now so I thought I'd take some time sitting at the softer kitchen table chairs to write a little update. We'll see how far I get...

Still 2 and a half months (~10 weeks) to go before baby Sierra is born, and I am counting the days! I so wish I could fast forward through the next two months and just be holding my little baby in my arms right now! I am looking forward to meeting her, and having my body back to myself - sort of... Not that you ever are all to yourself again once you are a mom, especially when you are nursing! But I think it is preferable - as interesting and amazing as it is to have a little person growing inside you and wiggling and kicking...there comes a point where you've had enough. I'm hanging in there, but my back is so sore, and I wake up in the night to make myself turn over because apparently I need a conscious effort to roll the weight of my tummy from my left side to my right. And by the time I wake up to do it my body is so stiff and sore I can't help but cry out from pain as I make the transition. Before I even lay down at night I just sit there for a minute as if 'I'm not really sure I want to do this..' 

I feel like my belly got bigger a lot faster this pregnancy, but I found a picture of myself last time at the same stage and it looked pretty big at this point when I was carrying Lily too. Maybe it was just a more sudden change this time. Maybe it's just harder because I'm older.

29 weeks - last time I just happened to be turning 29 at the same time.

I think I felt a lot better at this stage last time, but it's hard to remember. I do know by the end of my pregnancy with Lily - which went about 10 days late - I was not sleeping, having chest pain and trouble breathing and my body was going numb if I laid down. Since my back feels so bad already this time - I really hope the time left just flies by, and that this little girl is not so content as Lily was to just stay where she is. I would be thrilled to have her come a few days early! We'll see how lucky I get :)

February has been a good month. There have been better and worse days of course, but we have made some good memories. Lily was so excited about Valentine's day (obviously since she was preparing for it in January) And though we didn't do anything major or extremely romantic it felt like we drew out our little celebrations of love over several just nice days. I love Valentine's Day - not for cheap stuffed animals or overpriced flowers, but just because I think it makes us a little more aware of expressing love to each other. We made even more valentine cards for our Grandmas who live far away with hand-print hearts and this cute picture of Lily playing in her ballet dress. 

We planned dinner and a movie rental with our friends Mikey and Apryl for Wednesday, but it just so happened that Mike had Monday off, or got done early - so after Lily's little Valentine celebration that morning at preschool we had a nice day out as a family winding up with dinner at Red Robin on a gift card we had. I am always happy not to have to cook, and it's even better when we don't even have to pay for it! 

Lily at preschool with her Valentine bag - she had to wear her tutu that morning!

Lily with Miss Ginny her preschool teacher

A Valentine Lily made at preschool for our family - the Sweetheart hearts on either side are one for mom, one for dad, and the heart with the face in the middle is for Lily's baby sister - the other ones are for all of us to share :)

Lily with her preschool valentines this year

Mike had a job Tuesday morning (the actual Valentine's day), but he had bought Lily and I each a little gift and had me open mine before he left. Then as I was making a little video of Lily opening hers so Mike could see how she liked it - he walked in the door from a last minute cancellation and got to see for himself! It was kind of a bummer about the cancellation, but I was thrilled to see him and get to spend another day together! Lily got some mini La La Loopsy dolls which she loves and some M&M's. (The pictures I took of Mike and Lily playing with them were all blurry.) Mike got me my favorite chocolate truffles and the new Taylor Swift CD. I hardly ever even think to turn on music myself, and have never been a country music fan, but Mike knew that I was kind of intrigued by Taylor Swift from a show I saw about her. I absolutely love the CD - it was such a good gift! I need to turn on music more because it just brought such an upbeat romantic feel to the day. Mike danced me around the room to it pregnant belly and all, and we've been listening to it a lot since. The other day I had to laugh out loud to hear Lily and Mike playing legos together and Lily singing along in her cute little voice: "Someday... I'll be... livin' in a big ole' city!" Especially since at one time it was Yo Gabba Gabba or nothing! Seriously - she was like a little music Nazi. I am definitely a Taylor Swift fan now - what a beautiful talented girl - her videos are really great too. I must confess I am a girly girl at heart and love to watch cheesy romantic movies with happy endings (though not trashy ones and I'm not into romance novels!). Her songs tell stories and are real and romantic so that's right up my alley. I got Lily and Mike the soundtrack from Despicable Me to try to broaden Lily's musical horizons, so even though there are more grown up songs she loves it because it is Despicable Me and "the music my mom bought for me!" She is so cute dancing around and singing: "I'm having a bad, bad day..." with her hand on her hip and this little swagger in her step. 

I almost forgot, we also caught a movie that Friday as a family - which is always a treat for us. We saw The Secret World of Arrietty - it was really good, though a little scary to Lily (though the movie treats make up for it to her). We love Hayao Myazaki movies - he had a hand in this one, and it was as beautifully done as the others we've seen. It was such a nice week just enjoying spending time together. It's so refreshing to do nice little things with and for each other that we don't do every day. 

That's probably enough for one blog post so I'll save some of my other thoughts for another time. I think I hear Mike and Lily at the door. Oh! - gotta go read her new Pinkalicious book with her! It has paper dolls, and a fold out poster, and stickers!!! She's so excited! What a cutie :)