Olivia Lucille: A Birth Story

Wednesday December 20th 1230 am- I woke up to a pretty hard contraction and I timed them for a little while but they were really far apart so I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't because the contractions were uncomfortable enough to keep me up. 

After a couple hours I just got up and walked around the house trying to get them to get closer together, but it wasn't working. Around 5:30 I told Greg we should just go to the hospital and see what they say. They had us walk the halls for 3 hours and I went from 3 to 5 cm, but the contractions weren't any stronger. I was stuck in early labor.

They admitted me anyway because I've already had 3 babies and anything can happen and happen fast after 3 babies. My doctor got there sometime around 12:45 and she wanted to break my water to get me moving. I was hesitant because I don't get epidurals and laboring with your water broken is so hard. Eventually, I decided to just do it. My doctor seemed so sure I would go quick if they broke my water and I really wanted her to be born by 2:50 pm because that is when Evan gets off the bus and I knew he would be wanting some good news.

They broke my water around 1 pm. Two contractions later-- we were in business. I was thinking "how in the world am I in transition already? There's no way, this is just going to be an awful painful labor." Nope-- I was in transition.

I was chatting with my nurse about how I wanted to be done by 2:50 and she said, "oh, you'll be done." I totally didn't believe her. My Nurse checked me at 2:30 and I was a 9. My doctor came in around 2:40 and wanted to check me too, so 10 minutes later and I was a rim. She said she wanted to check me during a contraction to see if the rim would go to complete during the contraction-- it did. She was in complete shock that I was basically ready to push. She couldn't stop talking about how she JUST broke my water and now we were nearly done. She said, "I'm sorry I'm just in shock!" (PS- you know your doctor is amazeballs when the nurses feel comfortable enough to call her by her first name and nearly all of them use her as their doctor. I lucked out finding her on my google search haha) Apparently, my demeanor had them all fooled. I guess I should have been losing my mind (I sort of was, but internally haha). I'm not sure if I just have a high pain tolerance or I'm just able to focus well enough to handle it.  Either way, I can do hard things... At least that's what I tell myself when I labor med free :)

Anyway

My doctor said she was going to get her gear on to be ready to push. I was so ready to get her out. I was exhausted and in lots of pain and my back labor was, as always, INTENSE. Greg always rubs it really hard and it always helps. A few minutes later I felt so much pressure and it was time to push. I pushed 3 times and her head was coming out, but she had her hand/arm on the side of her face. I've never experienced the "ring of fire" until I had to push an arm out with a head. I know all about that ring now! My doctor told me to hold one of my pushes and she was doing some stretching at the same time to get that arm through with the head. That was fun ;) All I could think was this baby is not getting stuck! Talk about gaining some strength to push real hard for a second. She was born at 2:50 pm. How funny is that?  Exactly when I wanted her to be born. I also tore through one of the branches of a varicose vein I developed and that took a lot of stitches to stop the bleeding. Poor girl had some serious bruising, swelling, and blood shot eyes from her quick descent and arm to head delivery. Greg's first reaction to seeing her and before her cries was, "Holy crap she is blue, is she alive!?" Like, totally freaking out. She was so blue the nurses told me to check the inside of her mouth if I was worried she might not be breathing or having a hard time because there was no way we would be able to tell by her face or around her mouth.

I'm glad she is here.
I'm glad she is safe. I'm also super glad she no longer looks like she got punched in the face haha.
I'm glad I'm not pregnant anymore! That pregnancy was a doozy. I've NEVER complained in any of my pregnancies because they were just so easy. This one hurt in all the wrong places and the exhaustion-- not sure if it's because I already have three and I'm not 25 anymore, but goodness was I tired the last trimester.

Olivia Lucille -Olivia because we like it and Lucille after her Great Great Grandma
~
her poor poor face..

Evan's first 2 weeks of mommy school

In the spring, the Greg and I signed Evan up for Preschool for the fall, but had reservations the whole time. It was four days a week for 3 hours each day and 100/month. I have no doubt that he would have loved it, but honestly, I don't want him under anyone else's influence until he has to be (if we decide to not homeschool, which I just don't know if I'm cut out for) and I think paying money for something I can do is so dumb. So, I'm going to try and blog weekly about our homeschooling because eventually I want to get my blog made into a book and I want to have this in it! So far, we have had so much fun! Have a little sneak peak...

We work together 3 days of the week and we always start with prayer, calendar, Pledge of Allegiance, and we work on telling time.

This week we focused a lot on apples because it's fall and a fun fall thing to do is visit an apple orchard. So, I'm taking him to Lynd's fruit farm for a little field trip sometime after the baby comes (or maybe before if the wee one is late). After we read some books and sang some songs we moved on to fun hands on things.

Evan LOVES to use scissors, so he cut out a bunch of things for our activities

We read some books about how Apple Tree's grow, what happens to them during all the seasons, and how Apples grow from a flower on the tree (which is pretty cool, actually!) Then we talked about the parts of an apple and he was able to glue all the parts together. We used the apple tree he cut out to drop buttons (apples) on. He would try to predict how many buttons he could get on the tree when he dropped them and then after he would count them all and see if he was right. Such a fun counting game! He could have done that forever.

We moved on to some fine motor things. He used a q-tip, dipped it in paint, and filled in the dots to paint the numbers. Then he practiced writing his letters by writing words.

Day 2

We have some great people in our neighborhood that homeschool all of their kids and they were kind enough to invite us to their messy art day.

 Then we came home and did sight word Hopscotch (thank you husband for writing the words so I didn't have to bend over my giant uterus!) I called out a word and he had to jump to it. He loved this one as well--a nice gross motor activity. 

I made a tree with numbers and cut out some leaves numbered 1-20 and he just had to match up the numbers. Just a simple number recognition activity. The tree we dropped buttons on yesterday we used to glue the buttons onto today. It was more of a "I don't really know what to do with this, so just glue them on" but Evan actually made a little lesson out of it himself. He lined all the buttons up and as he glued them down he would count them all and say, "I have 24 more until I'm all done." Well done child.

I had him write Apple Tree today to get some writing practice in. We also read more books and then called it a day.

Day 3

I had a baby! So we took some time off.

Day 4

It's been pretty low key lately and totally not according to my lesson plans I made through the spring/summer. I'm just really jumping around, but we're getting it all in, so it works.

This was some candy corn math. He counted out the candy corn according to the number Ihad written and then we practiced adding and subtracting from that number.

Then we worked on some fine motor skills and literacy things. We stuffed the apple after he got the majority of it laced. He was so proud of this apple we had to hang it on his wall haha.

I printed off this little book and he read each page and colored it according to what the book said. I was impressed he didn't need help reading any of the colors

Day 5

A little STEM activity. He tried to build these pumpkins as tall as he could.

Pumpkin patch number match. For number recognition....I drew numbers 10-30 and he had to put the candy pumpkin on top of the number.

I made apples with uppercase letters on them and clothespins with lowercase letters and he matched them up. Then he put all the letters in order.

More writing

Day 6
He collected sticks and then he arranged them in order for tallest to shortest

Practicing patterns. I printed this off, he cuts out the animals and finishes each pattern.

Practicing adding.

More writing.

Mitchell Everett: A Birth Story

Thursday I had my 39 week appointment and I was almost dilated to a 3 still 80%. We had scheduled an induction for Thursday the 3rd (5 days late) if the babe hadn't come yet. My doctor was convinced I would have him before then, but I was not. I did notice my contractions were stronger that day but not any closer together than they had been.

10:30 that night, Greg and I were watching a show after the kids went to bed and I had one contraction that was pretty strong, but I was thinking- ok this baby might come this weekend! Well then, they started coming every 3-5 min and I had to breathe through them. I started timing them for an hour and called my mom to get her prepared to come that night. Literally, 10 minutes before I started having those contractions my mom sent me a text that said something along the lines of--your dad said it's a full moon tonight, you're going to have the baby-- so that was kind of funny.

I told my mom to just wait until I timed them for an hour to be sure it wasn't a false alarm, but needless to say, my mom got in her car and was on her way and got here around 11:45. We were at the hospital by 12ish. I was in Triage for about an hour and had progressed to a 4 while at home. I walked the halls for an hour and dilated to a 5 and then got admitted. My doctor wasn't on call that night, but if I didn't have the baby by 6 in the morning she would come and deliver. So I kind of didn't want to do anything that would make me dilate so I hung out in the bed for the most part. I was a 7 by 4am and hung out on the birthing ball for about an hour and didn't change.

I was having so much back labor (like I did with Eva) so they thought maybe he was posterior. So I got into bed again and labored on my side because that helps turn the baby if it needs to be turned. You guys, it is real hard laboring on your side. Contractions hurt anyway, but have them laying down and it's excruciating. So that lasted about 4 contractions and I'd had it. so I had her come and check me and I was still a 7 but my contractions were getting so much harder.

I started talking an epidural, but before we did it, I felt my water break and I was feeling pressure. I went from a 7 to a 10 in like 5 minutes. I did the same thing with Eva--when I got to transition I was like I ok I'm done, I don't want to feel this anymore, but then right when I started talking epidural, it was time to push. Transition- you are the worst!

My doc showed up and got gowned at like 7:15 and I had Mitchell at 7:24. We did about 3 rounds of 3 pushes. Basically, during each contraction I pushed 3 times for 10 seconds each.  He was so tiny when he came out! No one thought he would weigh much more than 6, but he showed them!

His delivery was so easy compared to my other two. Completely uneventful, not a single decel the whole time, and because my water didn't break my contractions weren't as insane as they were when I had Eva--the nurse accidentally broke my water while checking me when I was an 8-- Eva likes to hold him for about 5 seconds. She loves babies, but I think because this baby takes up her momma's time, she's a little hesitant to be mushy with him. Evan, however, would hold him all day. He LOVES his baby brother. I've seriously never seen something so cute in my life. When Mitchell cries while Evan is holding him, Evan says, "I got ya Mitchell, I got ya." Evan has always been a tender hearted little guy and he's just presh right now, taking on this big brother role for the second time.

Our Mitchell, he's a keeper!

Homemade Pizza Dough

Greg and I became obsessed with homemade pizza when we lived in Utah and I thought I found the best crust recipe ever, but then I found this one... (Sorry, Rachel! haha) It will take a lot for me to ever change my crust recipe! 

1.5 C warm water

1 pkg Active Dry yeast

1 tsp Sugar

4 C Flour

1/2 C Veg Oil

1 tsp salt

I guesstimate the herbs...I usually make a little pile in my palm and throw it in the mixer.

Basil

Oregano

Thyme

Garlic powder

I used my kitchen aid mixer-- So put water, yeast, and sugar in mixer and let it get foamy.

Add 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup oil, and salt. Continue adding flour with herbs. Dough is a little sticky. Oil all sides. Let rise until at least doubled.

Preheat at 475. I spread my dough out on the pans and then took a fork and poked holes all around the center and then baked it for 3 minutes without any sauce or toppings. Then I added all the toppings (we used green peppers, pepperoni, bacon, and onion) and baked it for about 12 min. 

I should have taken a picture...maybe I will when I post my sauce recipe. I finally found the perfect sauce recipe too!

Someday

Someday my little Evan will no longer ask to "hold uh my hand" as we go up and down the stairs.

Someday, my little one won't want to help hold the vacuum and "be mommy's big helper"

Someday, we will no longer have to feed the shark aka garbage disposal.

Someday, he'll stop asking for fruit snacks.

Someday, my little boy won't want butterfly and Eskimo kisses at night.

Someday, he won't even want tucked in.

Someday, he won't pick rocks up and put them in his pockets.

Someday, he'll leave the sticks on the ground.

Someday, he'll quit sitting on my lap to read stories.

Someday, he won't want me to hold his hand until he falls asleep or sneak into bed beside me in the middle of the night.

Someday, he'll go at least a day without spilling something.

Someday, there won't be owies that need kissed.

Someday, there won't be anymore make believe stories.

Someday, there won't be any super powers.
Someday, he won't want to wear his "packback" all day long.
Someday, he won't hide in our laundry hamper.
Someday, I'll stop finding toys in random places throughout the house.
Someday, the greasy hand prints will no longer be found on our walls.
Someday, he'll stop saying, "what movie you watch?" which translates to "what movie DO you WANT to watch?"
Someday, he won't want to be like "Tigey" aka Daniel Tiger.
Someday, he won't want to play "bowling pins" as much as he does now.
Someday, he won't give me the play by play when he goes to the bathroom (it's quite funny)
Someday, he'll learn to say banana's and not "Ban-nana's"
Someday, he won't add extra syllables to our last name.
Someday, he'll stop talking in 3rd person.
Someday, "this little piggy" won't be so funny.
Someday, dance parties with mom won't be so cool.

Someday, my little boy won't be so little. Until that someday comes, we are going to soak up every little bit of his fun, sweet and messy little self every second of every. single. day.  

Happiness

For those who don't know...we bought a house a month ago. aannndd we love it. 

 homemade decor for each of the children's rooms. I hope that as they get older theses scripture verses and others will inspire them.

lately

this girl is just presh...we adore this little Eva Rose

I made Evan  a felt christmas tree...he likes it :o)

crinkle nose smile...perfection

Evan refused to go to bed. He wanted to watch Rudolph with papaw

He legitimately beat my at cooties..