Blessed baby

Eleanor's blessing was on Sunday.  It was a lovely day and Mike gave her a lovely blessing.  He told me after that he kept getting distracted while he was blessing her because she kept looking at him and smiling.  Awwww.  That's my pleasant baby, though.  She's a happy little chubby thing, although I've been consistently failing at getting a picture of one of her big smiles. 

Mike's family has quite the collection of blessing heirlooms, too many for any single baby to wear at once, so Ellie Belly and I had a little photo shoot on Sunday morning.

{CHEEKS.}

The heirlooms:
The christening gown was worn by Karen (she brought over a picture on Monday of her wearing it as a baby) when she was christened and by Mike and all his siblings when they were blessed.  Mim wore it, too.
The blankets that are the backdrop- one was made by Karen's grandmother, the other by Hugh's mother (Monica- where we got Eleanor's middle name).
There were two sweaters- one made by Karen's grandmother, another made by Hugh's mom.
Two sets of booties- one pair that Nanny made for Mim, one pair that was made by Karen's grandmother.
The bonnet- made by Karen while she was teaching a French hand sewing class (fancy, right?).  I was delighted when she showed it to me because I had wanted to make a bonnet to go with the dress, but it didn't happen.  I love how old fashioned and sweet they are. 

After sacrament meeting, we went to my parents' for a little light lunch. Thanks again, wonderful family, for making it happen!  The kids all played outside and most people that wanted a turn with the baby got one (or maybe not- all I know is that someone else was holding her every time I looked around).

These two have been being little friends the last few months and it's super cute:

The littlest with her handsome daddy (I switched her into my blessing dress at the luncheon):

She looks worried, but my dad's only burping her.

 

It was a wonderful wrap up to an excellent week.  Speaking of excellent weeks, this was probably Mim's favorite ever.

Excellent week for Mim= On Wednesday, Mim got to go to the Jr. High preschool as the guest of her cousin, Maddie.  We walk past an elementary school on our walks and Mim calls all the kids there her friends and tells me every time we pass that when she's a very big girl, she'll go to school with all her friends.  She's really excited about school.

After the preschool we had a playdate with Ari and Will at Grandma's house.  On Thursday Gramma and Lexi came by with dinner and then Nana came by with all the heirlooms.  Somebody else visited too, and now I can't remember.  Then on Friday, Kaid and Granpa were over here doing sprinkler stuff and Gramma was here for a little bit.  On Saturday a whole bunch of family was over, helping put in our sprinklers.  So really, Sunday was just the grand finale to what I'm sure was Mim's greatest week ever.  

{Playing dress up with Maren on Saturday- Mike says this is the cutest picture that's ever been taken}

Excellent week for me= Getting sprinklers in!!  Rather, Kaid and assorted family getting our sprinklers in!!  Kaid was the foreman at our house again and he did an awesome job- it was all finished in 2 days.  And we have a big ol' yard.  It was great to have so much family over, and then to get to see them all the next day at Elle's blessing, too.  We have the best family ever.  And now, thanks to them, the girls and I get to have grassy shade next summer!

The quickest blog I've ever blogged.

Mim has these little bendable people figurines that are actually meant to hold office supplies (they have magnets on the ends of their hands) and she loves them.  There's a black one, which she says is daddy, a blue one, which she says is me, and a pink one (guess who the pink one is).  The other night she had them in the tub and Mike told me what she was having them say.  The daddy was saying he had to go to work and the mommy and Miriam ones were saying, no, no, no, don't go.  Then the daddy would come home and they were all happy.  I love it. 

Yesssss!

New glasses!

Your toilet is exploding

My mom totally said that to me this morning.  Awesome. 

So, my mom comes over some mornings to hold the little one and play with Mim while I get an extra bit of sleep, which I really appreciate (Thanks, Mom! You're the best!).  So today, while she was here, she heard some noises coming from the bathroom.  The kind of noises that made her think I was being violently ill.  She felt bad for me, but didn't want to interfere- she figured I would ask for help if I needed it.  Then things started picking up and she was worried enough that she decided to check on me.  On her way to the bathroom she passed the kitchen and noticed the sink was gurgling.  She ran the water to make it stop and while she was doing so noticed a big city truck out front with a big pipe sticking down the manhole.  She began to suspect that it wasn't me making the noise in the bathroom and that it was possibly the plumbing's fault.  She opened the bathroom door and saw the toilet...exploding.  Water was spraying out of the bowl in all directions.  She was holding Eleanor and thus didn't want to get in the middle of it, so she came to tell me what was up. 

I was kind of awake already when she came in- the noise in the bathroom had gotten loud enough that it actually woke me up a little bit.  Not all the way, though.  I was still asleep enough that I was thinking things like "Why is mom cleaning the tub and splashing so much?" and "Why is Mim in the tub?" and "Why would my mom let Mim be in the tub and splash that much?"  Obviously my thought process was a little behind.  Anyway, after Mom told me the toilet was exploding, I got up to take and look and was amazed.  The bowl was almost empty, so much of it had splashed out.  She told me about the truck so I went out to make sure it was them causing this and not some spontaneous bizarre plumbing freak out.  The worker I talked to just kind of shrugged and basically said that, yeah, the bubbling and splashing was because they were cleaning the line out there.  Apparently our plumbing is more likely to be affected since we live in an older house. 

That was pretty much it.  My mom set Eleanor down in her swing and helped me clean up the water that was everywhere.  It was really pretty funny, no lasting damage, and even though it was toilet water, it was still just water.  After I went and laid back down I imagined several grosser/scarier scenarios that I'm glad we escaped.  I'm super glad it didn't start erupting when Mim was on it- it would probably have crippled our potty training progress. 

So, that's it about our toilet.  Here's the kiddos:

Giving birth

So, I went back and read about what I wrote about Mim's birth and I really wish I had put down more of the details.  It reads as a very dutiful time log, not much about how I felt about anything.  I'll try and do this one a little better.

Dr. Jones suggested, back at week 34 or so, that I make a back up induction date.  I wanted to go into labor on my own, but agreed that it would be a good idea to have an end date to keep me from being too far overdue.  So he reserved me a spot on Friday the 26th.  On Tuesday the 23rd, after a bunch of false labor, I finally accepted that nothing was going to happen until I went in Friday morning.  Sigh.  I know that it's convenient and a lot of women prefer planning births that way (and I can see why), but I still just wanted to go into labor on my own.

Early Wednesday afternoon I began to suspect that I was finally in labor for real, but I didn't want to say anything for fear of jinxing it.  Mike, when he heard that's why I didn't want to say anything, just shook his head and said he had no idea how superstitious I was (I also made up my own old wives tale about why babies have/don't have hair).

By the time we got Mim to bed that night (~7:30), contractions were pretty intense.  Matt came over to babysit and Mike and I went to walk around Target and then go to the hospital.  I knew that I was probably nowhere near where they'd keep me, but I just kind of wanted to check- I was still hoping that this labor would be a lot easier/shorter than Mim's.  As I suspected, I wasn't an automatic keeper at the hospital, although they did give us the option of staying another hour, walking around and then being checked again.  We opted instead to labor at home, and so we headed back (stopping for burritos on the way).  We asked Matt to stay the night, since I was betting we'd be leaving pretty early in the morning.  And indeed, after only about two hours of sleep and then a long bath, I was almost in tears for every contraction.  I woke Mike up, then had to wait for him to shower and get ready before he would take me to the hospital.  I wasn't feeling very patient. 

We got back to the hospital at about 5:30 or so.  They checked me, sent me to one of the L&;D rooms, and told me the epidural guy would be there soon.  A note here- our L&D nurse, Annette, was totally awesome.  She'd been working at AF for a long time, and when she found out that both Mike and I were born there, commented on how it was too bad she didn't have a way to find out if she had helped with either of our births.  We later found out that she definitely did for Mike (she grew up in Lehi and knew Mike's dad and sister) and was probably around for mine.  We also found out that she was Matt's institute teacher and some of her kids are in Mike's parents' ward.  Oh, and that she had known Monnie (Mike's grandma who was also a nurse for a long time) really well.  Neat.

I got my epidural at around 6:30 or so and then got to sleep.  It was lovely.  Mike and I made our official time of birth and birth weight guesses, too.  He won for the time (I was still being very optimistic about how long labor would take), but I was closer on the weight.  I guessed she would be 8 lbs 9 oz, I think.  I was pretty sure she was bigger than Mim, but didn't expect over a pound bigger.

My doctor, who is awesome, wasn't the doctor on call that day, but when he heard that I was in labor and close, told the nurse that he would come over from his office to deliver the baby.  I was grateful for that- he didn't deliver Mim and even though the doctor who did was nice and everything, it was a little impersonal.  Dr. Jones knew that Mike wanted to cut the cord, so he invited him over to do that when he was ready.

Anyway, I finally felt like pushing at about 10 to noon or so, so I called the nurse and she had me do a practice push.  I was supposed to push for 3 counts, but Annette said, "Whoa, whoa, stop!" after getting to 2.  She 911 paged Dr. Jones and used the word "stat" when requesting the respiratory team (Eleanor had pooped in the womb and it's standard for them to be there when that happens).  From our window, Mike could see Dr. Jones run across the parking lot from his practice to the hospital.  He got there, there was a bunch of activity, and they finally told me I could push again.  (I really need to remember to tell my nurse next time that I kind of have a trend of really long labors and really short deliveries.  With Mim I only pushed 40 minutes or so- they had to have me stop so they could get the doctor then, too.)  A few pushes later and she was here.  Everyone exclaimed about her size and they all agreed that she had to be about 9.5 pounds.  She cried a bit at first, and after she stopped the respiratory team was trying to get her to start again and she wouldn't.  Not because there was any problem, she just didn't want to cry anymore.  Her color improved quickly and they didn't have to take her away after just a few minutes like they did for Mim.  It was great.  We got to hang out as a little partial family and Eleanor got to try nursing right away.

That's pretty much it.  We started getting visitors right away.  Mim came and really wanted to see her baby (3 weeks later, she still says "My baby!") and give her a hug.

So, that's how Eleanor came around.  We sure like her.  She's been a good baby so far- mild and not too much of a crier.  Not a sleeper like Mim was; which is too bad, but my dad said it best- "You can't expect lightning to strike twice."  Mim was already sleeping through the night at 3 weeks and little miss Ellie Belly has a much more typical newborn sleeping pattern.  Still, I can't really complain since it's not like she's colicky and up all night.

And now, some more recent pictures of our newest daughter: