Emma's first dr's appt...

Emma had her first doctor's visit on Friday. She weighed in at 8lbs 13 oz. She was born at 9lbs and left the hospital at 8lbs 7oz. She's a healthy eater! Her coloring is great, no jaundice, and the doctor had no concerns. Hooray!!

Emma has been our healthiest newborn. Evelyn had to have IV antibiotics for several days, She had an antennae stuck out of her forehead for her IV. Elora had jaundice, so we came home from the hospital with a blue light blanket and had to return to the hospital every day for 3 days to have her blood checked. That was not easy.

All is quiet....for the moment

Evelyn, Elora and Emma are all sleeping. David is reading a magazine, the tv is off, the dishwasher is not running (although, I should have started it before I left the kitchen), the washer and dryer aren't running (although, it should be!). The only noises are the hum of the air conditioner and the soothing dull noise of Emma's swing rocking her. Wow. What a moment. So you might ask, "Claire, why are you not sleeping?!?!" and the answer is, I don't really have a good reason. I could very easily lay down and sleep, but thought I would blog for a moment instead. Evelyn and Elora are adjusting nicely to having a sister, Evelyn likes to show her all the toys and stuffed animals. She also enjoys holding her for a moment or two until tipping the pillow Emma is lying on to try to push her off. Elora is a big helper. Her job is to carry the bottle from the kitchen to whomever is going to feed Emma. If I make the bottle, and am going to feed Emma I have to give it to Elora and then I follow her to either Bertha (David's man chair) or to the red recliner/rocking chair we stole from mom and dad. She's very proud of being such an integral piece of Emma's feeding routine. Elora then likes to climb up next to the feeder and help hold Emma's bottle, and give her hugs and kisses as she eats. It's all very cute until someone either gets hurt (Emma) or gets their feelings hurt (Elora) because she can't help as much as she'd like.
Evelyn and Elora are wonderful, sweet girls, and unfortunately I lose my patience with them all too often. They however are sleeping very well and falling asleep well too. Lots of work has gone into training them to stay in their beds and fall asleep quickly. Emma on the other hand has very little routine, except to wake up every night at 2am. This wake up session usually lasts several hours. Last night until about 5:30am. Frustrating that her days and nights are all switched around. Yesterday, Evelyn, elora and I left the house to go visit Aunt Dawn and then head to walmart at around 8am so that Daddy and Emma could sleep. Today it was my turn to sleep in and get a few extra zzz's. I wonder how it will work this week as David goes back to work and the girls and I are on our own....
Alas, life is good.

Family of 5...

Our family is complete. Well, all 3 girls are home and sleeping in their beds. Life is good. God is good. Having Evelyn and Elora greet Emma and hug and kiss her was a great moment. Evelyn was very excited to hold baby Emma and sat eagerly waiting in the rocking chair with a pillow across her lap to rest Emma on. She and Grandma had been reading a book about new babies this past week and Evelyn learned that she can hold the baby as long as she has a pillow. So she quickly ran to her bed and brought out her pillow to hold Emma. They are both intrigued by the baby and how small she is. Elora loves to just rub her head, pat her belly and gve her kisses. Just for a moment or two and then runs away. Evelyn likes to hold Emma and give her a bottle. Evelyn and Elora were showing off their belly buttons and asked to see Emma's. Of course Emma still has her umbilical stump which is not very pretty. Elora was very concerned about Emma's belly button, frowned in pain and said "hurts" over and over again as she pointed to her own belly button. She is a very compassionate child.

Emma is a very peaceful baby so far. I can remember lots of crying from Evelyn and Elora at this time. I have chosen not to breastfeed Emma so the feedings are much less stressful on both of us. So maybe that has attributed to her happiness. She is most defintely a joy. And our joy just woke up : ) It's bottle time!

Emma Joy

Emma was born Monday at 4:54 pm. I took my time all day but when Emma was ready to join us we couldn't stop her! She was born very quickly and very easily. Praise the Lord! We had wonderful nurses the whole time we were at the hospital. We are now home and very tired. Evelyn and Elora are visting at Grandma and Grandpa's house but should be returning tomorrow. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts, prayers and praises! Praise the Lord for Emma!

Music...

My girlfriend Gina recommended Matisyahu. A Jew from New York... He sings Old Testament Reggae. Very cool. Check it out: Warrior click here

Miss the Girls...but this sure is nice....

David and I are almost at a loss as to what to do with ourselves! David and my mom met last night at our halfway meeting point...a Sonic about 1.5 hours for each of us.. And David gave her the girls for the next few days. Praise the Lord!! I slept so well last night. No concerns and no girls needing our attention in the middle of the night. We've had a wonderful day full of relaxing, housework, and just spending wonderful time together. It's kind of like a date weekend instead of a date night : ) what a blessing just before baby Emma arrives. Today we visited the mall to make some returns and ended up shopping in the Christian bookstore. We purchased some excellent Christian music. We can now highly reccommend Caleb Collins- he sings beautifully! Something like Michael Buble or Frank Sinatra. Ahhh, the combination of Frank Sinatra style and lyrics about Jesus...something to soothe the soul. Very cool music. I think it's defintely David's new favorite cd! We also purchased a new Passion cd, and I've been hunting for Christian music with a Jack Johnson sound and we we introduced to Shawn McDonald...kinda similar...the lyrics are a little odd or cheesy..something just not quite there. Anyways...

We had a wonderful day. The day is almost done and we're down to less than 36 hours before we go to the hospital to meet Emma. The days of full nights sleep are over again. We're fairly ready here at home. The bags are packed, car seat is ready. The bottles have been ordered and should arrive in the next few days.

David took pictures of me so that everyone can see my pregnant beautyness. Enjoy! Laughter is totally okay, well maybe just a chuckle. David bought be a book today called, "bouncing back from pregnancy" it is based on the "body by God" and "Food By God" plan by dr. ben lerner. Looks interesting. We shall see : )

Nesting and a few more days...

Nesting.. David and I have been catching up on long put off organizing and cleaning. What fun it is to be nesting. Almost everything is reorganized and cleaned up. Day before yesterday I spent the day organizing our MP3 players and all the cords/paraphanelia that goes along with that. I emptied the MP3 player memory and started fresh for the hospital visit. There are no radios in the L&D rooms so it will be nice to have an assortment of praise and worship music. Jack Johnson might be my new favorite artist. He's a Secular musician but soooo mellow. You can listen to several selections of his at amazon.com if you're not familiar : ). back to cleaning...over the weekend and into Monday and Tuesday, David and I spent time cleaning up the garage. It's amazing as we seem to have to reorganaize the garage every few weeks. Tis a good thing we don'thave a basement because I don't think we could keep up! The garage is where we just go and dump things...We also have oodles of boxes of baby clothes and baby toys, stuffed animals, eletronic cords, tools, etc. stacked from floor to ceiling in the garage. So at any rate, the laundry will be caught up again today, the bathrooms might get cleaned, yesterday I cleaned out the van. I have to move around the car seats in the van for Evelyn and Elora to be in the back seat so that Emma can ride in the middle. That should be interesting. Evelyn yesterday (as she helped clean out the car) informed me that she did NOT want to give Emma her spot in the car. She was very adament that it was her spot and it was not okay for Baby Emma to have it. Uh-Oh.
As I have been organizing I have been trying to put stuff away in the girls photo albums..only to realize that I have not printed photos from our digital media since Easter last year. So in an effort to catch up I have orded 780 prints. Some are duplicates though, so it's not like we had 780 individual photos...just prints. THat should be a fun pile to organize by date and then put into the photo albums...my guess is I'll have to buy new albums after this as theirs will be stuffed full! All along with having Emma at home. Wow.. I should have done this months ago.

We have 5 more days until we meet Emma (today included). We are a definite for Monday morning. We have to arrive at the hospital at 6am so that I am ready for my IV and paperwork around 6:30am. That's crazy!! I can't believe its time. The girls really have no comprehension of what is going on. Our bags are packed and lists are made. I have explicit directions written out for those who are taking care of Evelyn and Elora. Oh what fun!!!

Our new washing maching is soooo very cool. It chimes a melody when the wash load is complete. So cool! Evelyn and Elora love taking turns to help push the buttons to make it start. Praise the Lord for the "Child Lock" Option.

The girls are done with breakfast and so my time is done. Have a Blessed and Wonderful Day!

A SLUMBER PARTY!!!!

Last night, friday night David was again Super Daddy and Super Husband. A girlfriend of mine had a girls night out/slumber party at her house and David kept the girls and off I went. It was such a blast. Sara has been a dear friend of mine for several years (the pastor's wife that married us). We laughed for hours and hours! We played a great card game...apples to apples. Lots of fun. Very hilarious!
It was very refreshing just to hang out with girlfriends and pig out on junk food.... chocolate fondue....bannana pudding....egg rolls... chips and dip...fudgy brownies...wow... if I weren't pregnant I would have been on a serious diet the day after!

Waiting...

April 21st is the magic date.. Our doctor has scheduled us for an induction... Very Very Exciting. We were hoping for the 17th or 18th including the Dr. but the hospital was booked for inductions already. The doctor's office will continue to call and see if there is anyway to squeeze us in for the 17th or 18th. Ah well, the waiting game begins. Will Emma wait? or will she arrive on her own?

A very big day....

Well, it's been quite the Saturday. We packed it full of lots of fun! We started the day out by Evelyn playing on her new "Smart Cycle". It's a stationary bicycle that gets plugged into the TV and then the kiddo's play a video game by pedaling the bicycle and steering to earn points. She has a Dora the Explorer game for it and a Learning game. She really had a blast. Elora likes to push the buttons and cheer Evelyn on. She's a little too short to ride. David left for an appt at 9:30 and the girls and I quickly got antsy for our chance to get out of the house. So we ventured out to the recently uncharted territory of the Mall. We spent a fair amount of time at sears and investigated a new washing machine as ours broke earlier this week. The washer would agitate but not spin to release the wash water and start the rinse and spin cycle. So at any rate, as I looked at the washer I thought I could figure this out and in the process broke the sensor that registers when the lid is down so that the washer can run. Ha ha, now that I broke the sensor David had no chance of trying to figure out what was wrong with it. So we went today and purchased a new LG front load washing machine that can accomodate King Size comforters (Praise the Lord!!!) It will also wash our 8x10 living room rug : ) Hooray!!! The Washer also has the ability to "Steam" items... Hooray for us as that will cut down on the ironing that I should do but never get around to so we wear somewhat wrinkled clothing at times : ) Boy oh boy do I feel lazy.... At any rate. Our new washing machine will be delivered tomorrow and I can begin to catch up on the laundry that has begun to pile up after a few days : ) Oh yes, David joined us at Sears and we had lunch at Chick fil a and let the girls play in the play area. Whew, busy morning. We left Sears and went to the Flowertown Festival that takes place in downtown Summerville. The area was expecting heavy rain and storms so we took our ponchos and umbrellas, and enjoyed walking around looking at the craft vendors and eating delicious "taste of summerville" foods. Yummy. Our friend Brenna joined us with two of her kiddos, Jonah and Adalyn. Brandon, our long lost naval buddy also joined us for the day. We had sooo much fun sweating outside in the humidity until they closed the festival due to impending bad weather. So we rushed as much as we could to the cars and made it back just in time for it to start raining. What fun : )

We left the festival and headed for Chuck e Cheese. This was the first Chuck e Cheese experience I have had as a parent. And I really have very little desire to return on a weekend. The kids enjoyed it and so did the adults(as much as possible). We brought cupcakes to celebrate Evelyn's birthday with and split two pzza's with friends and family. Dawn, Brittany and Isaiah joined us, along with Nan, Brandon, and Brenna, Michael, Shelby, Jonah and Adalyn. Wow.. it was quite a crowd.

We were very happy to come home and relax. The girls and I watched Cinderella on our return and they are now snuggled happily into their bed.

Tomorrow the washer will be here early between 9 and 11 am. No church for me. A risk we took when we agreed to Sunday delivery. So hopefully I'll be doing laundry by noon : )

Have a Happy Day.