Cadence's birth story, part 1

i am completely ecstatic for my pal Kacie from Sense to Save, because she had her baby! She had him 4 days ago, which means i've been crying off an on for the last 4 days. i get, erm, a bit emotional with new babies, especially when it's my really good friends (albeit long-distance) who have them. Congrats Kacie, Shane, and baby Johnny!

Anyway, i'm inspired to write out Cadence's birth story. So here goes.


She was very easy to conceive. i'm one of those super-lucky fertile people. i don't take it for granted. Anyway, Kris and i thought, "Let's try for a baby!" So we did. A few days later, i was ovulating. Turns out i didn't need to buy the super-jumbo ovulation kit, even if 11 tests were only $3 more than 4 tests.

Two weeks later? Positive pregnancy test.

That week was really crappy. Except for the positive pregnancy test, of course. But within an hour, my dog died and my car died. Remember? It was really sad. Being hormonal didn't help much, either.

But the pregnancy progressed nicely. i was a little bit more sick, and quite a bit more tired, but blamed it on running after a toddler, though hoping against hope it was a girl.

And she was!

So that was good news. And then things kept going on. i was sure she was going to be late, like David.

Don't tell anyone, but about 2 weeks before i was due, i did some of those things you're not supposed to that are supposed to spur on labor. i drank a glass of wine every couple of days. i took raspberry leaf tea. i took blue cohosh. These are supposed to soften your cervix and stuff, and mine was already soft.

35.5 week checkup-37.5 week checkup: 1 1/2 cm dilated, 50% effaced

Raspberry leaf tea, blue cohosh week.


38.5 week checkup: 3 cm dilated, 90% effaced!

It was awesome! Except it didn't let my hopes get up too high. i tried not to, anyway. My Dr. had been stripping my membranes for a couple weeks, but usually that is supposed to work within a few hours if it's going to work, right? It didn't.

39.5 week checkup? Didn't happen!!

Back up 4 days.

October 5, Sunday night. My dad went to the hospital with horrible tummy pains. Turns out he had an obstructed bowel. Poor guy! He was in the hospital till Wednesday. Thankfully, they were able to use meds and diet to get it to go back to normal, and not surgery.

October 6, Monday night. Found out some sad family news about a couple separating. That was sad and unexpected.

October 8, Wednesday. My van got broken into: my GPS and 60 GB ipod were stolen. That pretty much sucked. i have missed each of them every day since it happened.

October 9, Thursday. 8:37 AM. Our power went out. Kris forgot to pay the bill. Here's a word-for-word reprint of my texts to him that morning.

8:37 AM: Our power just went out. i wonder what's up.
8:42 AM: i think my water is breaking.

That, my friends, is what happened leading up to her delivery. The weeks surrounding our discovery of her and of her birth were shrouded in bad news, but my little angel sitting next to me, in her little "Santa's little reindeer" sleeper made all the bad events seem brighter in the light of her beautiful new life.

To be continued.

Pictures

Hey ya'll. It's been a while since i've posted any pictures, so i thought i'd change that.
Pardon the blurry ones, the red eyes, and the lack of croppage. It is difficult to put out quality pictures when you have my lack of talent, my camera, and subjects who will not sit still! Anyway, i think they're still cute. :)

 

i love this one. He's so happy. Doesn't he look old there?

 

teensy toes!

 

She looks as though she's smiling there.

 

She is smiling there, but of course i took it on my cell, so i can't make it full size. This is the first smile picture ever taken of her!

 

David sleeping on his couch.

 

Completely ignoring the comfortable "big boy bed" he's got going on right next to it. 

We ended up moving the couch out of his room finally.

  

She's got some HUGE eyes. She gets that from me and my mom.

  

i'm making vanilla extract as gifts this year.

 

Just chillin' after eating spaghetti. 

 

...Must....eat....goldfish....crackers....NOW!

Anyway, these are my offspring. Aren't they adorable?

Alcohol abuse

Kris bought me a bottle of wine last night. i put it in the freezer so it would chill fast, because it had been a rough day with the kids.

i instead went to bed.

Liquor doesn't freeze, right?

Because wine popsicles would probably not be acceptable for breakfast, would mimosa slushes be ok? They've got orange juice in them!

Really, though, i'm hoping the wine doesn't taste like crap after it melts, because in my house, white wine holds a sacred place, and i hate to see it wasted.

Update

Hi! How are you all? Did you know that doubling the amount of children you have makes you more than doubly busy? i didn't know that till recently:)

Anyway, you may be asking, what's going on? Well, here we go.

Cadence got baptized at the end of October. She was 17 days old at the time, which is a bit early, but the pastor we wanted was unavailable in November, and the next time she was available was the end of December. So we had an early baptism. i'm pretty sure it still counted though. :) It was beautiful, and Cadence wore a dress that several other girls in Kris' family have worn, going back 3 generations. She was absolutely angelic in it, and thankfully slept through the baptism. She didn't make a peep! i don't have any pictures from it yet, because i didn't take any pictures. i'll have to ask family members to burn me a cd, and then i'll put them on here. She really was the sweetest thing.

David is talking a tiny bit more. He now says mama, dada, up, zap "zzaaa!", byebye, hi "eye", ball "ba", and baseball "baba". He also calls cellphones "bye", which i think is adorable. We keep trying to teach him they are phones, but he sees a phone, points to it, and says "bye!"

On that note, he uses all things as a phone. He particularly enjoys two people talking on whatever toy happens to be lying around. If one of us is unable to talk on the phone with him, he grabs one, starts jabbering, and walks around the house, looks out the window, etc. Just like i do when i'm on the phone.

On Thanksgiving morning, i heard him playing with his toys in his bedroom. i hadn't gotten him up for the day yet. So, yes, he learned to climb out of his crib. We got a toddler bed for him last summer, and we need to replace a bolt on it, then it's time for him to be in his Big Boy Bed. He slept on a twin bed at my parent's house the other day just like normal, so i think he'll be ok without his crib. It just came as a surprise to me: i definitely did not have the capacity to deal with that on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was awesome! Kris spent a week getting the basement ready. We have two bedrooms down there (we use them as a music room and office) that were bright purple and schoolbus yellow, due to the kids living here before we moved in. Now one of them is no longer yellow, but a beautiful calm gray, with white trim instead of the hideous 70's dark brown. That music room has Kris' drums finally all set up as well, and it's a very relaxing and inspiring room for us to play our instruments in.

We have a closet under our basement stairs that backs up to our laundry room. There were no walls between them, only the washer and dryer and the beams, so Kris found used drywall and made a wall. He painted the closet, installed a light in it, and reorganized all of it, and threw out a bunch of stuff the previous owners had left. We still have 2 weeks worth of trash to throw out in our garage, but our closet is much more neat and has a ton of storage space!

But you know how whenever you make major changes in your house, it ends up being a lot of unexpected trips to the hardware store and a lot more time than you anticipate? The night before Thanksigiving, i got 3 hours of sleep, and Kris didn't even go to bed. Totally worth it, though.

We smoked a huge turkey and made a smaller one the regular way. Our smoked turkey was AWESOME. We call it "Turbacon", and it was my idea:) Kris put sliced apples and garlic and wine in the skin. He then wrapped and stuffed the whole thing with bacon. (i don't like to eat bacon, but love the flavor it adds to things.) We used hickory chips soaked in apple cider and more wine. It was incredible.

i made these parmesan and mozzarella mashed potatoes, and they were insanely good. Definitely no gravy required. i also made white wine sangria which turned out great. Sangria goes down very easily, which made some of my guests have a better time than normal:) i think there were 5? people who were drinking it throughout the day, and there were 3 liters of wine and a half bottle of brandy in the batch. So, needless to say, good fun was had by all. There were 13 people total at Thanksgiving and it was a smashing success.

Cadence is going to play Baby Jesus at my church's Christmas pageant! i'm SO excited. i think she might be the cutest Jesus since...well, you know!

She has started to smile a bit more, and sometimes i swear she laughs. She also cries a lot more. Not enough to where i'd say she's sick, or has acid reflux or anything, but for like the first 6 weeks of her life she never really cried ever, and i guess i got spoiled. So she cries more, and HATES the car, and cries all throughout many drives i take. David isn't a huge fan of the car, but he does enjoy taking his cues from his sister. i gotta tell ya: when you've got two kids crying at the same time, it's amazing how your mind remembers that bottle of rum in your freezer. Her neck is getting stronger, too. Pretty soon she'll hold it up by herself, which will make her a lot easier to carry around.

She still fits in her newborn clothes, which makes me really happy. David hardly ever fit in his: i think they fit him about 2 weeks or so. She is 7.5 weeks now. She did go up a diaper size though. Those newborn diapers were not effective any more.

She slept through the night twice last week, which was just a tease. She tends to sleep from about 11 PM-4:30 AM now, and then she'll usually sleep again till 8 or so. Except today, where she just hates everyone and everything, especially sleep.

Speaking of that, she's crying (shocker) so i'll go be a good mommy and attend to her.