Driving and laughing

On Thursday I was driving home from morning work and Jeslyn was being cute.  She stated that she wanted to drive and it was her turn.  I informed her that she had to be 16 to drive. I then asked how old she was knowing that she always answers this with "3".  Instead she said, "I'm 16.  It goes 1, 2, 3, 16.  I'm 16."  She sure is smart.

I went to night work that night, and took Dai and Keila with me knowing that no one was on the schedule.  Daily was there to read, we were desperately behind on her reading and I figured 3 hours stuck in a boring office might help her read.  Luckily it worked, we got 9 books read, wahoo!  After a few books, she was getting tired.  I am always tired so I started pretend snoring for her.  Keila looked up at me and started laughing with each fake snore.  It was so sweet to see her so happy! 

The night before I looked at her neck and and saw that her creases were quite red, so when I tried cleaning them out they started bleeding.  It made me so sad, and she was screaming from it.  A lucky call to the Dr. On Thur., they had the night clinic that night, and found out how to help it.  It looks better, but its still really sore.  The poor girl.  Now we both have colds, so we are being shut-ins this weekend.

Milk

So this morning we got to talking about different types of milk.  They were asking how different milks came about.  I told them about almond milk just being ground up almonds and then they started on about rice and coconut milk.  Avi then asked about the white stuff in a coconut and why its there.  I told her that was the fruit part of it and she was really confused.  With a little more conversation and a bag of coconut in the freezer she finally got it.  I pulled out as pinch for each girl to try (they have had coconut before, its just been a while) and they all 3 decided they didn't like it.  Nor questions followed about who likes it.  Rt he funny girls thought it would be hereditary to like it.  After assuring them that both my parents like it, and that I thought that Nathans mom likes it, they started asking about grand parents.  Sorry grand parents I don't know if you like coconut or not.  Strangely enough this lead to conversations about step parents and blood line.  Nathans grandma is a step grandma, and I don't think they understand that there grandpa is Nathan's step dad.  It's fun to follow conversations and see whether they go.

sleep

Oh how I miss getting sleep!  Since the begining of November (I think) I haven't gotten a descent nights sleep.  Back then it was just my hips causing me pain that kept me up.  The funny thing is I was just wishing to be done being pregnant so I could sleep.  I knew that I would be waking up to feed the baby, and that would have been better than the tossing each hour to relieve some pain.  What I didn't expect was the waking every 10-20 minutes or having a squirmy baby on my chest from 2:00 on each morning.  I still get my 6-8 hours between feedings at night, but the joy of them is greatly diminished.

On another note, yesterday I started seeing the change in look from the new born to baby.  It makes me excited to see the change, but sad that she's growing up.

I bought a sling to carry her in about a year ago, and until yesterday I hadn't been able to use it in a way that I was comfortable.  I was trying to clean a little and Keila wanted to be held, so I pulled out the sling, figured out how she fit in it, and went to work.  She fell asleep all snuggled in next to me.

3 weeks

 

1-20-13

Keila is now 3 weeks old, and we are still getting into the groove.  We have been having fun figuring out feeding time.  She started out by not wanting to eat while we were at the hospital.  When I had Avi the nurses were very insistent on how often you feed the baby.  They would get mad at me if it wasn't within 3 hrs, and made me wake her up to eat, etc.  I remember a little fussing from them with Dai as well, but with Keila they were very kind and patient with both of us.  As long as they saw me trying they weren't worried, and the Dr. was great about it as well.  Once the two of us got things figured out we got out of there.  We still had an interesting time getting things into a routine.  I know this for sure, she will not eat if she is not ready! 
We went to the 2 week apt, and found out that she was the same weight as she was when she discharged.  That was so weird for me because the other 3 girls had exceeded their birth weight by then.  The Dr. was a little concerned and wanted me to check back in a few days.  When we went back in she was gaining weight so that took care of my concern. 
Keila gets a bit gassy, which makes it hard for her to sleep, so needless to say I haven't been getting quite enough sleep myself.  I have been learning what crying at night warrants me getting her out of bed and which ones I can binki her and go back to sleep.  I have spent many nights asleep on the couch with her in my arms.  I know that Kristl will just say "let her sleep in the bed with you", but I have learned from the other kids that I don't do good with that.  I let Avi sleep in the bed with us a few times for just an hour or so, and after that I had many many nightmares about a baby suffocating in the bed, and woke up to find that I was yanking all the blankets off Nathan in an attempt to rescue the baby.  I had those with Dai from just napping with her during the day.  I can somewhat sleep on the couch with her in my arms, but not in bed. 
I am lucky though because Keila will go 6-7 hours at night without having to eat.  I love that she does that, the only problem is that she doesn't fall asleep till about 2-3 hours into that, and then starts stirring an hour before she wakes up making it about a 3 hr block that I can sleep.  Jeslyn is pretty easy to distract during the day, so I have been able to get naps here and there to help out. 
The girls still love her so much, but the mauling has stopped.  Jeslyn was indifferent when she came home, started to love helping out with her, and is now back to indifferent again.  If Keila screams for more than 2 min (while I'm in the shower or something) then she will try to binki her, or make sure that I know that she is screaming.  Avi loves being put in charge of watching her while I take care of things like dinner and bathrooms with Jeslyn.  Dai just says hello for the most part, and gets me stuff if I ask for it.  We all love our adorable little girl, and have learned that there are times when Mom can't do things so they are helping out.

  1-30-13

Introducing

Keila Cloye Anderson

She is finally here!  I have spent the last 3 weeks doing everything I could to get her to come, but as usual they come when they are ready. So here I am on Monday at exactly 39 weeks right before I went to the Dr. and get told that nothing has changed in a week, still 2 cm and 60%.  That was discouraging, but I knew it wasn't going to be good news, I just wish I would have washed my mirror before I took the picture, whoops.  I went home and finished making her blanket since that was the only thing keeping her in.  I then spent the day on Tuesday getting things done.  I got Jeslyn and I hair cuts, ran some errands, checked in at work, etc. 

 Then on Wednesday morning at 1:20 I had to roll over, but when I did, my hips were more mad at me than usual, they felt like I had popped them in a not so nice way, then the baby did a little more and I felt another pop like my hips were trying to get back where they should be.  Having had my water break 2 times before I was thinking that this might be it, but there was no gush.  I sat there another min thinking about it, trying to decide if I should try to get off the bed, which by that point was going to be very painful.  I felt the baby wiggle a little and decided that if it was my water breaking I didn't want to be laying in bed when it did decide to gush.  I got to my other side  about to jump out of bed when the gush happened.  As I proceeded to the bathroom I started waking Nathan up.  That took a few min for him to be come coherent.  A few min later we were in the car headed to the hospital, YIPEE!!!  The other two times my water broke (with Dailynn I went into labor and the Dr. broke my water) I did not go into labor.  The first one took about 6 hrs to get going, and the second they gave me pitosin after an hour or so of not really doing anything.  By the time I got to the car to go to the hospital I was in labor, so I knew this was going to be a different experience.  We got in and I was more than happy to get my epidural within the hour, I was starting to hurt a bit and not be able to calm down real well. 
Next was the waiting game.  The epidural slowed down the contractions to about 5-7 min apart.  At 4 the nurse came in to check and see how I was doing.  Mom called at that moment wanting to know how long she had to get there.  I had progressed up to a 6 which was 2 cm in 2 hrs, so that was good.  The nurse was a little anxious to get things moving with pitosin but I wasn't yet, if I was at a 6 and I needed to wait 2 more hrs for Mom to get there, speeding things up wasn't going to allow her to get there.  I asked for a half hour, then we could decide.  at 4:45 I was at a 7+, stretched to an 8, and I knew things would be fine on their own.  At that point I was informed that my Dr. was hoping to get things moving faster so he could go deliver another baby at another hospital, and get to the MTC to drop off his daughter.  He came in at 6 ready to push things along, but the nurse jumped in saying that Mom would be there in 15 min.  As soon as she walked in the Dr. and staff followed having seen her come in.  He checked me and said lets push, she's ready.  Mom showed up at 6:15 and she was born at 6:31.   

 She was 7 lbs 13 oz and 19 in long.  The fun thing is that our wedding anniversary is 7-13, and she was born on 1-9-2013 being 19 in and in the 13 year.  When Nathan got home and pulled out the bassinet, he realized that Keila was the 13th child to use it.  When we were married surrounded by 13's, everyone joked that we would have 13 kids, I think we just got all the 13's out of our system.

 The girls came by after school to come say hi to their new little sister.  Avi and Dai keep fighting over her while JJ isn't very interested.

 I came home the next night, and loved having all my family together.  It's so wonderful to have her here and with us.  We are getting into our groove and finding it easier than I was afraid.  It has been so wonderful having mom here, I forgot how long it takes to get enough of my body back to be able to keep up with everything here. 

Post Op

Dailynn had her Post Operation Dr. appointment this week.  We went in and everything looks great!  They did an ultrasound on her and found everything working the way it should.  The reflux is fixed and not causing issues anymore.  We can now take her off her medications and let her body do what it needs too.  She still had her homework of going to the bathroom a lot more, but she seems a little more excited about that now. I'm hoping that we will be past the wet beds soon, but that only will come with her doing her homework.  Wish us luck!

Christmas

So we have made it through Christmas.  On Christmas Eve, we got a big snow storm lasting most of the day.  I will not lie, I was so excited to see the snow when I woke up!  The fun was that I started me having harder contractions throughout the day, that made me a little excited and scared at the same time.  We got up at a descent hour and ran down to Carl's Jr for breakfast.  We planned on going to a movie a little later in the day so we ran over and got tickets for that just to make sure they didn't sell out.  We then had 2 hrs to kill, so we went to go find dresses for Avi since she is in need of them right now, why can't kids stop growing?  We lucked out in Kid to Kid and found a great one for a great price.  The girls wanted to go see the mall and Santa Clause, so we went there.  The line to see Santa was much longer than we had time or energy to wait for, so we went to the play land instead.  I was so glad that I had absolutely no reason to step foot in any of the stores there, it was a mad house!  The girls literally ran around the play area for 20 min straight!  We then headed to our movie Arther Christmas.  By the time the movie started the place was packed, and I was glad I got our tickets early when only 10 had been sold before us.  After the movie we went home, had dinner, cleaned up a little, and generally got ready for Santa the next day.  We let the girls open 1 present which were the PJs they were going to wear that night.  

 On Christmas morning, Avi woke up at 6:20 ready to go, Dailynn was excited when we woke her up, but JJ didn't want to have anything to do with it, and wanted to go back to sleep.  The problem is we were too excited to wait for her to wake up causing a little distress for the first few min.

 The girls checking out what Santa didn't wrap for them.  Jeslyn needed a little help figuring out what was going on.

 As soon as she found her leap pad, there was no going back.  She loves that thing!

 When we open presents, each girl gets a turn.  Sometimes if they are the same thing, we will had it to multiple girls at once.  With Jeslyn, she spent the first half of Christmas playing her leap pad and only opening presents if they got between her eyes and the pad.  She would open it, look at it for a sec, then throw it to the side and get back to her game.  Eventually she realized she was getting some cool stuff and put the pad down and got excited about the presents.  Avi got a new camera, an mp3 player, a bunch of drawing stuff and books.  Dailynn got a DSI with games and  a case, books, drawing stuff, and a watch (she has been stealing mine like crazy lately, I wanted to keep it for myself).  Jeslyn got about everything under the sun, and she loves ALL of it so much!  They girls said they had an AWESOME Christmas!

2 days later we had Grandma and Grandpa come share a little Christmas with us.  They brought some puzzles, block, movies, and a great picture.  We gave Mom her gift of the flatware from us siblings.  They loved it!  We had a great time with them and the bobcat.  He liked climbing out Christmas trees, so Mom helped me put one of them away.  That was helpful, now I just have to finish putting the other one away and Christmas will be over and we can work on baby.