Annie has toys too!

Yes, the day finally came for Annie muffin to get a toy down from the closet!  Can you tell how excited the boys were about this?  I swear, Wyatt has asked me every single day since we got home from the hospital to get this down for Annie to play with.  So I got it out just to humor him, but she actually really liked it!  I remember when we got this toy down for Noah J.  He must have been around 4 weeks old or so, and he was able to deal with it for about 30 seconds, and then he just broke out into frantic crying.  He was so easily overwhelmed, and still is!  I'm happy to say Annie did much better.  Maybe just because she is so used to being overwhelmed by these two boys all day long!

 I had a teeny tiny happy window, between all the crying and trying to get her to eat, so I wasn't really sure how this would go.  She surprised me so much cause she just loved it!  She even loved the boys getting in her face and talking to her.  Wyatt cracks me up cause he is obsessed with the idea that she needs a toy to play with at all times.  He ran off and got her little pink elephant off of her carseat and laid it down next to her.  He's so sweet!

I love this last photo cause you can see how she is so seriously concentrating on the zebra toy.  Like she just can't quite figure it out.... :)  She was so incredibly chatty that I made a video of it.  Neither of the boys were chatty like this little girl is.... she just coos and ahhs when she is happy or excited.  Maybe she will actually speak before she's 2 years old!  I won't know what to do with myself!!

I loved this small piece of my day cause it is a teeny peek at what Annie can be like when she actually feels good.  She is doing much better now that she is on the second medication, but still we are trying to tweak things and get it just right.  And of course getting her to eat is a constant battle.  Although we did get her to eat a whopping 19 ounces yesterday!!  That's a big deal around here.  But things are looking up!

Dewberry Farm

Last week we took the kiddos to Dewberry Farm, and they had a great time.  I am so glad we were able to go as part of the CHA fieldtrip.  We were really excited cause all our best friends were able to go too.  I just LOVED the pumpkin stroll thing..... they didn't have that last time we were there.  They had a barn type building all blacked out, and there was a path lit with Christmas lights that led you through hundreds of lit, carved pumpkins.  It was really beautiful! 

 Annie girl did pretty well, although it was SO incredibly windy, I'm sure she was just inhaling dust the whole time.

Josh took the boys on the hayride to the pumpkin patch to pick out teeny tiny pumpkins.  You can see they loved it!

 They had tons of fun on the other play things, like the rope jump into the hay.  Wyatt was so excited to try it, but then chickened out when he got to the top of the hay.  Noah LOVED it!  Noah's favorite part of the day, though, was jumping on the pillow.   Not only does he love jumping, but he got to do it with his older crush, Catie.  It is so funny looking through all the pictures cause you can just see how much he loves her.  He has a smile on his face in all of them, but then when we get to the pictures of him and her holding hands and jumping you can see that it is just pure bliss!!

 When we were looking at these pictures with my parents he pointed out Catie in each and every picture.  He even went so far as to say, "Catie  sure looks pretty in that shirt!  I didn't even know she was going to wear that today."  lol :)

 And to make the day even better, Catie rode in Noah's barrel on the train ride.  Could it get any better than that? Not to Noah J.  And Wyatt was super thrilled to get to ride with Natalie.

 And as Noah so properly narrated to my parents when we looked at the pictures, "the three momma's"!! (and Olivia!)

Fun times!!

Airport field trip!!

 Well, I'm so lost and confused about time these days I really have no clue when we did this.  Last week?  The week before?  It was definitely October, that much I know!  We took the kids to Hooks airport for a field trip with our homeschool group. 

 The boys got to play around in a flight simulator, and then they let the kids get in a couple of airplanes and fool around.  They were quite excited about the planes!  I have to say, though, that I would be a bit nervous to actually fly in these planes after these kids were in them.  They were rough!!!  And the airport folks just let them do whatever they wanted.  I guess planes are sturdier than I picture them to be? 

While the boys loved the planes, they were mostly excited cause their best friends were able to come.  We did our best to get a group shot of the kids, but that is pretty hard to do with so many little ones!  Noah was especially tickled cause we let him hold Annie all by himself for the picture - you can see how happy he is about it!

After the plane ordeal we had a picnic lunch at the pond that is at the airport.  And this was truly the boys favorite part of the day.  Seriously - they both said that when we had our nightly 'what was your favorite part of the day" conversation over dinner.  They ate only a tiny bit of their picnic lunches, and then fed the ducks the rest of it.  Quite exciting, evidently!  Noah kept telling everyone later on how he didn't get to eat his lunch cause the ducks needed it.  Ummmmm, not quite.  I think it was more one little boy who doesn't like PB&J and was thrilled that he had an excuse to not eat it!!

Little Annie muffin even enjoyed the nice weather in her adorable little dress that Corrie got her!  So excited that we caught this cute picture of her smiling while she was all dolled up!!  I really can't even believe that she is old enough to be smiling at us.  It just breaks my heart she is growing up so quickly!  At 4 weeks she weighed 8 lb 14 oz, so I guess she is still pretty tiny.  We just finally got her into size one diapers - the boys wore those weeks ago.  Maybe she's going to be a wee thing?

Our little angel

 From here Josh got to take Annie out to the waiting room to meet her brothers while I was whisked off to a labor and delivery room to nurse and recover in.  You can see how pleased the boys were to finally see their sister!

Like I said in an earlier post, they actually let me nurse right away, but they were still in the middle of all the recovery stuff.  You can see in this picture they are still taking my temp, but I got to hold my baby.  It was so great!!  She actually got to nurse about 30 minutes after she was delivered, and she did a great job!  She was wide awake - it was so much easier than waiting a few hours till they are conked out!!

Now here is where the ridiculousness began!  As I am laying there focusing on nursing I notice that Josh has kind of stopped taking pictures and is just standing over by the window.  And then he starts calling the nurse by name, which was just bizarre to me.  The man almost passed out!!!!!  Yes, a half hour after the surgery he thinks he is going to pass out.  So immediately all the nurses rush over to tend to him while I am laying there in disbelief!  They start going over this list of symptoms, and it even went so far that a nurse had to cut off his scrubs!!!  Yes, he sat there while someone cut his pants off of him.  So they're getting him juice and sandwiches, and a bucket to puke into.  I felt concerned for the poor guy, but at the same time I just had to laugh!  The nurse grabbed the camera and got a shot of him sitting over on the couch recovering!  I'm so glad we at least have a picture to commemorate the moment!

After all three of us recovered we went to our assigned room and the boys finally got to meet their sister! You can see how much they were instantly in love with her!

4 weeks later, they are still this much in love with her.  The girl doesn't get a spare moment to breathe without having one of the boys in her face talking to her and kissing her.

These next few pictures are my favorites - they perfectly capture the lighting in the room later that night with just the three of us after everyone left.  It is such a special time where you get to finally breathe and get to examine all the little details you haven't had the chance to see yet.  And everything is just so warm and cozy - you're holding your baby and dozing in and out for hours.  It is so great!

Ohhhhhh, she is just so beautiful.  You just have to wonder what she is dreaming about......

Annie's arrival!

I was a little nervous about the pre-op stuff at the hospital, but it went really smoothly this time.  They had changed it up since we had been there with Noah, but I kind of think it was even better.  And it was SO much better than Tomball.  The only trickiness was that they could not get any blood out of me for the bloodwork stuff, so they had to call the blood people, whom I am now bffs with.  Of course Josh got his lovely scrubs to put on - you can't tell from the picture but they were pretty funny cause the top was a bit too small - they are those papery ones - I swear if Josh flexed they would have popped at the seams.  I love it!

And of course I got my lovely hairnet.  I was really put at ease when I went into the operating room, too.  We were there a few minutes early, so I got to talk to the nurses for a while, and see all the prep that goes into slicing someone open!  The anesthesiologist was super nice, too, and he made me feel really confident, unlike the last delivery.  The best part I think about this hospital is that they wait to do just about everything until you are numb - not to get into the nitty gritty details, but it is super nice and makes you feel completely at ease! 


A few minutes in Josh got to come into the room, which just made me relax even more.  There were a few times during the surgery I thought I would totally puke, and as soon as I said something Bart (yes, that was the anesthesiologists name!) was right on top of it sticking something in my iv/epidural that made me feel completely better.  To be honest, I still was not completely convinced we were truly going to have a girl, so I was a bit nervous.  Right before they pulled her out Bart tells Josh to get ready, so Josh stands up, but he was really far off cause he was nervous about seeing all the blood and stuff.  So Bart tells Josh, "Get closer!"  Josh told him he didn't want to pass out, so the anesthesiologist seriously rips the camera out of Josh's hands and gets right up in the drs business and starts snapping pics!!!  It was great!!!  I won't share those here cause they a tad bit disturbing, but if you would like to see I will show you!  Bart was great.

Of course the big moment came and this was my first vision of my little angel (please forgive the grossness of it all) - Josh snapped a pic at just the moment they brought her around the screen for me to see.

Pretty disturbing, huh??  But I was just so happy to see she was really a girl and Josh didn't have to freak out!!  My first thought was that she looked really chubby!  She was born at 1:17pm and weighed in at 7 pounds 6 ounces, so I guess she wasn't really chubby at all!

After this point things get a bit fuzzy for me, memory wise.  The one thing I do know is that I just about had a panic attack right there on the operating table.  It wasn't a pain like feeling the scalpel or anything, but just more like someone was just punching all of my internal organs.  I truly started to freak out.  I'm not really sure what all I said or did, but Bart gave me something fantastic, and I don't really remember anything else.  I was nervous about this happening, cause they knocked me out last time, and I missed the first 4 hours of Wyatt's life, but this time I was awake around 10 minutes after the surgery was over.  Bart did a really great job!  Later on I talked to Dr. Samuels about it and she told me that she had her hands inside me feeling around the peritoneum (the sack that goes around all your organs) feeling to make sure everything was OK, and that it is super super sensitive to pressure, and lots of people feel sick from it. 

Now this is the best part of the surgery - Annie got to stay in the operating room with us!  Normally, with a cesarean, they take the baby to the nursery right away, and lots of places keep them for hours.  With both of the boys they were taken for 4 hours before we got to see them or even try nursing.  So I talked with my doc about this and she said that there was only a small chance they would let me see her and nurse.  She told me to get a letter from our pediatrician saying that if room was available we would like to room in immediately following the surgery, instead of me staying in a recovery room for hours.  So I told the nurse when we were getting checked in and ready, and get this - she's just said OK.  She asked if we wanted to keep her in the room the entire time, or if we just wanted to nurse and then let her go to the nursery.  She actually gave me options!!!!!!  It was craziness.  So she just called the nursing desk and let them know we were going to do that and they set me up with a delivery room to nurse and recover in immediately following the surgery.  So instead of her being whisked away 5 minutes after her being born, Josh got to hold her for the entire rest of the surgery.

The nurse snapped this adorable shot of them.  Now, what happened in the delivery/recovery room, well, that's a story for another day!!!!

B.A. - Before Annie!!

Before I can post pics of Annie, I have to post all the other adorable pics we took the morning she came!!

We went in Annie's room to make sure we had everything packed up, and decided to snap a few pics the boys before they had a sister!

These boys were so concerned about me, it just made my heart swell.  They have been so incredibly wonderful this week, I can't wait to post the other pics and tell all the stories I have swimming around in my head!

We also snapped a few pics of the rest of the nursery before it gets messy!  Yes, I finally finished her letters and Josh got them hung on the wall.  I wasn't sure I would love them, but they look really great.  I'm super pleased!  And check out this adorable little birdie above her door.....

They came as extras with the tree, so we put one above each door in the room.  I love them!!  And then we finally got to the hospital!!  Grandma and Grandpa met us there in the waiting room.  Knowing you are having a cesarean makes things kind of easier in a way - we were able to prep bags for the boys full of fun stuff for the long wait ahead.  They picked out this hideous new Spiderman backpacks, and Josh went to the dollar store and filled them fill of all kinds of goodies.  They were really excited!

And our last photo as a family of 4!!!!!

Wyatt with his favorite ball

I just adore this series that Josh caught of Wyatt at the park last night!!  It makes me just want to kiss his little squishy face!!