Love love love...

I know it sounds silly and cliche but I just can't get over how much I love love LOVE this little girl and how much I love being her mommy! I go back and forth between being sentimental (and almost sad) in realizing that she'll only be this little for a very short time and then being so excited about watching her grow, teaching her things and doing girly things together.

She looks less than enthused to be in this picture with me, but I'm pretty sure she loves me too...

Busy Bees

That's what I feel like we have been over the past week. Miss Lainey is 4 weeks old today. Her 3rd week of life was full of family, new friends and FUN! I now understand what new moms are so busy doing all of the time. Taking care of a newborn is a lot of work! Yes, they do sleep a lot but not always for long periods of time and there is just a lot to figure out. I feel like Lainey is only slightly less of a mystery to me today than she was the day we brought her home. Some things about her and tendencies she has are getting more consistent... but not always. She's predictable about some things (crying when she's hungry, liking to hang out in just her diaper, etc.) and really unpredictable about others (sleep schedule, eating habits, etc.). This week I felt a little more comfortable taking her out and doing more things with her. So here's a recap of all that we did...!

My parents came down to visit over Labor Day weekend. They just can't get enough of their grand-daugheters ... understandably! Lots of baby holding and baby watching on Saturday, then church and on Sunday we went to Knoxville to my Grandma Charlotte's for Sunday dinner with some more family!

This was so cute - my Dad was rubbing her sweet chubby cheeks and she was LOVING it!
Sleeping with Great Aunt Barb
Snuggling with Great Uncle Bill

On Monday, my parents stopped through on their way back to Minnesota and then in the evening, Lainey made her first trip out to Jordan Park camp for grilling and volleyball for Andy's birthday. She LOVED being outside and watching the sky and the trees and watching people look at her, ha.
On Tuesday, we visited my friend and former co-worker Angela and her boys Troy and Wesley. Little Wesley was born 6 days after Lainey. On Wednesday, my friend Julie came over with her little man Oscar to play. Lainey mostly slept. Then, we headed to the hopsital to meet Lainey's new friend Mia Rude who was born on Tuesday! Yeah! On Thursday morning, we went over to the Richey's to play with Kaisa and JJ. JJ is 10 days older than Lainey. Thursday evening, we went to the hospital to meet the third Bible study baby, Lainey's other brand new friend Penelope Laehn who was born on Wednesday. This was very exciting and so surprising - all 3 of the babies in due in our Bible study were GIRLS (we only knew that Mia was a girl)! As previously mentioned, I was convinced Lainey was a boy and Tim thought their baby was also a boy. We were both so wrong. And now we've got 3 girls to add to our Bible study fun! Finally, this morning we rounded out our busy week of fun with a nice long walk outside with Kristy and Amaia. Sadly, I got pictures of zero of these events! I will have to get better about that!

We did take a few pictures at home last night...
Lainey's new toy! I really wanted a fancy one from Target that I found online, but I stopped into Once Upon A Child and found this one for just 12 dollars. Considering how long she'll probably be entertained by it, I think I made the right choice.
Playing with Mom
Lainey watched her first NFL game last night. Much to my dismay and Jed's excitement, it was a Packer game and yes, the Packers did win. He is bound and determined that she will be a Packer fan.
Sometimes when Lainey has a belly ache or is fussy in the evenings, Jed holds her like this and funny enough, she really loves it. I think she just loves being held by her Dad!

To continue the busy fun, we are going to a wedding tonight - our first as a family of 3. Congratulations to Yvonne and D'Angelo! We can't wait to celebrate with you!

Cousins

One of the first thoughts that I had when Lainey was born was how fun it was going to be for her and our nieces Claire and Jaylen to be so close in age! Holidays with the family will never be the same! Lainey is also blessed to have lots and lots of clothes passed on from Claire as well! It's fun to put her in the little outfits that I remember seeing Claire in not so long ago! Jed and I stopped at Kohl's this week and of course I just had to walk through the baby girl clothes! It's so fun to do that now that she's here. I will say that we saved A LOT of money not finding out the gender, not to mention the excitement in the delivery room, but truly all we bought before she was born was one boy outfit and one girl outfit! We were handed down some gender neutral things and then Emily brought TONS of girl clothes the weekend she was born so we were really set! Anyway, I've only bought her 3 things so far, summer things on clearance. This yellow romper below is just adorable. It's a 3 month outfit so it's still pretty big but I just had to put her in it to see what it looked like! As it turned out, Claire has the same one! How cute are these cousins?!?
We also Skyped with Em and Claire the other morning. It was so fun! Claire LOVES to Skype and she was very excited to see Lainey and blow her lots of kisses! Thank goodness for technology!

Sleeping Beauty

I know "THEY" say that I should be sleeping when my baby sleeps, but I don't think "THEY" must have had this beautiful of a child because I can hardly help but just stare at her!

the BEST day ever!

[Every time I sit down to write this post, I get distracted or busy with Lainey or something else... I guess she wanted me to keep you all in suspense!]

August 12th, 2011
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5:something AM - Alarm went off (like I was really sleeping anyway...). Today we're going to have a baby! I took a nice long shower and we got everything settled around the house, said our goodbyes to Simon and headed to the hospital at 6:30.

6:30something - Checked in on the 3rd floor. Everyone I came in contact with would look at my chart or paper work and see "41 weeks, 2 days" and sigh and express their pity for me.
7:00ish - We got settled into our room, which was thankfully (for Jed) right across from the galley where he could fetch me popsicles and ice chips and met our first nurse of the day! She was wonderful!
7:30 - Dr. H arrived and cracked lots and lots of jokes (that's his thing, he was one of Jed's favorite doctors we saw) and then he broke my water. I was already 3 cm dilated and 75% effaced so I had a good start to go from! At this point, Dr. H also guessed that baby J was about 8 lbs. HA. They monitored baby J for 30 minutes and then I could get up and walk around. They said they would give me until 10 or 11 to progress a little before they would start pitocin. We walked the halls for a little while and they monitored the baby again, and then we walked again, etc. We passed Dr. H in the hallway and he suggested I try skipping. Jokes. I started to feel some real contractions but nothing was too terrible yet.
Shortly before 11 - The nurse starts the pitocin so I was stuck in bed :(
11:06 - (I know this because I texted my sister) Contractions already are getting stronger! This is good!
Shortly before 1 - I started to not feel so awesome. I was also incredibly HUNGRY.
2:00ish - The nurse checked and I was still only at 3 cm but more thinned out. This was a bit discouraging and I was starting to get more and more anxious and unable to rest in between contractions because they were getting more painful. The nurse suggested some fentenol to help me relax so my body could start doing what it was supposed to do! We thought about it for awhile and decided to try it and it helped A TON! It made me feel a little crazy but it helped distract me and rest - the contractions were still painful but I didn't focus so much on the pain.
3:00 - New nurse! She was even better than the first!
5:00 - At this point I had had 2 doses of the fentenol and was only able to get one more dose. I had only progressed to 4-5 cm and it was looking like this whole labor thing would never end. So around that time I decided to get an epidural - I went in not sure what I would do about pain management because I didn't know what it would be like! I am glad that I decided to get the epidural because it ended up being such a long day and I was able to rest again and store up some energy for later. Plus, it helped me progress later on!
5:30 - I texted my sister and said I was feeling "Awwwwwesome!" Ha. I was at 5 cm and the doctor said he was going to go home for dinner. More jokes. I asked him how much longer this could potentially take and he said the extreme was 7 more hours. Yikes.
6:00 - 8 cm! The epidural really helped my body relax and progress!
6:30 or 7:00 - 9.5 cm! I got another new nurse - she was FABULOUS and so sweet - she checked in a lot which was really nice as we neared the end of the day. She suggested that that I just relax and labor down so that when it was time to push, I was really ready and wouldn't have to push for as long. So I rested some more and tried to even fall asleep.
9:00 -I started pushing. And then I threw up. (TMI? Sorry.) Pushing, pushing, pushing. Jed and the nurse were both incredibly encouraging and their praise really helped so much. Jed told me I was the best laborer ever. The doctor came in a little before 10 and turned off the epidural. Rats. At this point, things got a little crazy and I don't really know what all happened but Dr. H was working at a furiously fast pace and like Jed said, a SWAT team of nurses came in right before baby J arrived. As it turned out, I was just about to birth a 9 lb 4 oz baby who had some rather large shoulders. The doctor had to perform some of his fancy doctor skills in order for the baby to be born as quickly as possible. (I will gladly explain this more in detail in person if you'd like).
10:14 - It's a........ GIRL! A beautiful baby GIRL!

I was totally shocked (I really thought allllll along that baby J was a HE.... obviously all of you blog voters were right and I was wrong) and I burst into tears out of relief, exhaustion and excitement. Because of the fast and furious delivery, I wasn't able to really see or hold her right away as she needed to be on oxygen and monitored for a little while. Jed followed her as they checked her out and weighed her and then he was able to bring her over to me and I got a quick glimpse of her sweet little face before they took her to the nursery.
A little less than 2 hours later, we were finally able to move to the mother/baby floor and our first stop was the nursery so I could FINALLY, REALLY meet my sweet girl. Lots more tears. She was just so perfect and beautiful and I was totally overwhelmed with the greatest of God's miracles... LIFE!

The joys of Fatherhood.

Well the time has come for Papa Bobblehead to chime in again and leave my two sense worth on the blog. It still seems pretty weird to be a Dad but at the same time I never thought I'd be able to stare at this








for 10 solid minutes with out a break. (I know she's adorable right?" Look at me, using words like adorable)That said, despite having the week off, it has been one wild ride and I've probably learned more I the last week about babies than I have in the past twenty nine years. That said, it's pretty amazing what the Lord was working on inside that previously posted belly. To think, all this, in Sarah's belly!

Anyways, I thought this would be a good time to use the next few entries to go over a few quick do's and don'ts for new or soon to be fathers. First off, for the soon to be fathers, (if you don't know the gender), know that, although it may look like it, your child is not an alien. NOT. Don't freeze up on the gender ID and allow the Doc to hold the baby upside down for a good 10 seconds before you mumble out it's a girl (or boy). It is NOT an alien. Outside of that, it's pretty cool to see all the nurses rush in like a SWAT team clad in scrubs. But all in all it was a pretty smooth experience, and although Sarah was sad to say good bye to the round the clock room service (we didn't even have that on the honeymoon) we got to come home after just two days and start being "real" parents. This brings me to the first don't on the list.

In addition to giving you hands the Lord gave you eyes, use them.

The most helpful thing I've learned thus far is the diaper check. I've come to realize there is a lot of slack in the diaper, which allows the changer to pull it away from the leg and check the contents with your eyes. Not only this, depending on the diaper, a handy yellow strip that turns green when wet, amazing, I know. I thought they only had technology on Glad freezer bags.

However, as not to ramble, the number one don't of the week. Trying to be the helpful husband that I am, (or try to be), checked the diaper to help out my exhausted wife. DO NOTcheck the diaper with your finger. Seriously, all it gets you is an index finger covered in poo, a lot of poo (I'm talking about a spoon full of butterscotch). However if you're the proud owner of this sneaky rascal:











he makes off with a tasty snack and tries (and in my case succeeds), to plant a big kiss on your face about 10 minutes later. I think the moral of this story is this: look before you leap, or in Simon's case, put the money (poo) where your mouth is.

I'm sure this won't be the last poo laden error (or Simon's last snack) so I'm sure there will be plenty more to come in my adventures as a new Dad.

Location:47th St,Des Moines,United States

In love!

We are just smitten with our sweet Lainey Charlotte! I will share more about her BIRTHday and things when I feel a little less deliriously elated and exhausted and can form coherent sentences. Plus, I know you all just want to see pictures anyway... :)

[This one makes me real teary]

Back to my lovely little lady...