8 weeks

Okay, so Lily is actually already 10 weeks, but I'm slacking on my post. She had her two month check-up a while ago and she weighs in at 10 lbs. 8 oz. (40th %). She's gained two pounds from her birth weight, which is great. She's still so tiny, but she is starting to get some fat rolls (which I don't remember Ava ever having...and still doesn't have!). Her length is 23 in.(74th %). Lily is smiling all time and cooing a lot. I love to hear her raspy little voice. She's been such a great sleeper, too. This week she gave me a very special gift, she's sleeping through the night consistently now. It's wonderful!

Below is a picture of Lily at 8 weeks. Right below that is a picture of Ava when she was 8 weeks old. Can you even tell that they are related? Some people think they look alike, but I defnitely don't see it.

Ava has been a riot lately, let me tell ya. I have a list of things written down that Ava has said recently that I don't want to forget. (Some of which I couldn't share on here!) But she definitely keeps us laughing, that's for sure! One thing she must do is hold Lily. She asks me all the time. Lily is a trooper about it. She doesnt seem to mind, except of course when she's sleepy.

We have been enjoying our summer so far. Jonathan leaves next week to work at summer camp with our church. We both went last year and had a great time with the youth group. This year I obviously can't go since I'm nursing, so the girls and I are going to visit family. We will miss him a lot, but I'm looking forward to hearing all about it.

What did we do on our rainy day?

Well, we stayed in our pajamas all day and we did some baking. It was fun relaxing with Ava (& Lily) and just enjoyed my daughters. And, as you can see, I think Ava enjoyed the day too.

Ava & Lily

My good friend, Catherine, took some great photos of Ava and Lily. Lily was right at a month old, so I thought it would be fun to get a few of her before she changes too much. Catherine also made the shirts they are wearing. They have their initials on them. She did a great job. She's one of the most creative people I know! It's nice having a friend that's so crafty since I have no crafty or artistic ability.

Thanks, Catherine, for taking great photos!

Lily has recently started smiling - it's precious.

Probably my favorite photo. It's so sweet!

1 Month old

Lily Jane's stats:

9lbs. 1 oz. - 47th percentile

21.5 in. - 68th percentile

The doctor says she's a healthy little girl. Not much else to say about this check-up. I guess that's a good thing!

Life with two

So, as shocking as this may sound, I've been a little busy lately. Life with two kids is very different then life with just one. It's been such a blessing to have so much help after I've had Lily. My mom came in town to help for almost two weeks. The last week she was here, my dad came up too. It was nice to get to spend time with both of them. While they were here, Jonathan decided to go back to work so that I would have the extra help once they left. So this week Jonathan is off work. I've definitely been spoiled with all the help. Next week I'm officially on my own with two kids. If I don't post much in the weeks to come, you'll know why!

Mama with her two granddaughters. She was a HUGE help!

Here is my sweet Lily. She's changing so much already.
I wanted to put a few pictures of Ava and Lily together, but that's actually hard to do, especially since Lily sleeps so much right now. But Ava loves her little sister...A LOT! She wakes up saying, "Hold her?". She can be a little rough at times because she kisses her all the time and wants to hug her. (And Ava's hugs aren't the softest.) But it's sweet that she loves her so much.
While my parents were here, we ended up going to the zoo a couple times. Ava really needed to get out of the house...actually, we ALL needed to get out of the house.
Ava's favorite part of the zoo, the play area. This is also one of my favorite parts of the zoo because I get to sit and watch, using no energy at all. And, it gets Ava's energy out, so she usually takes a good nap after a morning at the zoo. A win win for both of us!

Papa and Ava looking at the meerkats.

Lily has been such a blessing for our family. She's only three weeks old, but I already forgot what life was like without her. God is so good!

The photgraphic evidence of Lily

Here are the pictures I promised on my last long post of the story.
One note: There have been questions about the timeline of the birth, yes the timeline is literal, down to the minute.

It's a girl and a wild ride!

Well, most of you already know that Amber and I finally met our newest child, a girl, Lily Jane. But, most of you may not know the story behind her entrance into the world so Amber asked me to fill you in and share some photos.

Our Tuesday evening started out pretty normal we had a friend over for dinner and during the dinner Amber started to have some, what we thought were "mild" contractions, about 5pm. After our dinner Amber thought that we should go on a little walk to help the contractions pass. We walked around our neighborhood for a little bit having to stop every 2-3 minutes so that Amber could work through the contraction (you would think this would prompt us to go to the hospital now, but no). At 7 we got back to our house and Amber once again stopped for a contraction, but along with this contraction came some water (again another hint to start heading to the hospital). Amber decided to take a shower to help with some of the contractions, I took this time to call her parents who live 3 hours aways to tell them that they may want to start the drive to Nashville. After her shower Amber came out to the living room to lay on the floor and by this time the contractions were coming faster and stronger, we still thought that she was in the very early stages of labor and we had plenty of time, wrong! Amber wanted to call her twin sister who has three kids of her own to get some advice, Annie said, "if your water broke you may want to get moving to the hospital because your second child and move pretty quick after the water breaks". Had Annie not filled us in on this little piece of knowledge we would have had an unplanned home birth! At this point we called the doctor and filled her in on the situation and in a very calm but concern voice she says, "yeah lets just have you come in". Amber then tells me to get someone to come over and watch Ava while we get going to the hospital so I ran next door to our neighbors to ask if she could sit at our house while one of our friends came over to watch her for the night. The neighbor was a little concerned because her daughter, who lives with her, just went to the hospital in labor an hour ago! (There is a funny side story here, but I will stick to our story for now) Our neighbor was able to come sit at our house for a couple minutes while our friend Angela, who was over for dinner earlier, came back to watch Ava.

Once the neighbor came in our house, I ran out and got our car ready for to go, then ran back in and picked Amber up off the floor and helped her to the car. Once in the car I downshifted and started to run every stop sign and red light I came to. I tried to be the good calming husband to Amber saying, "just breath, stay calm, keep relaxing" and she responded to me, "this baby is coming now and I need to start pushing!!!!!".
Now let me pause for a moment. When you hear your wife exclaim this, a few things go through your mind. First, "No, I am not a licenced delivery doctor so lets just relax and wait until we get to the hospital", second "Should I pull this car over and then pull this baby out and save the money from the hospital stay, no, if I do that then I have to push this car in the river because the resale value on this car just dropped down into the negative", third "Let's see how fast this little car can go because I ain't about to deliver this child".

So there I am racing through the streets of Nashville, my car riding the red line and my pregnant wife in some serious pain the passenger seat. We finally arrived at the hospital and I drove straight to the Labor and Delivery door and helped Amber through the door. The admitting clerk looked at us and didn't really seem to care that she was about to witness the birth. She finally grabbed a wheelchair for Amber and not so speedily took her back to the delivery triage rooms. The clerk finally came back to me after what I can only assume was her lunch break, smoke break and coffee break all in one because she was taking her sweet time. She forced me to sign some papers, and I can honestly say I have no idea what they were, but working in the hospital industry I know they have to collect tons of signatures to prevent lawsuits, but these were the least of my worries at the time.

Finally she allowed me to pass her mind games and go find my wife. I wandered through the halls of the hospital for Amber and one of the nurses stopped me and asked who I was looking for once she knew who I was she said, "you better hurry". So I started a trot. I finally walked into the room with Amber in a bed, an armada of nurses around her each sticking her with a needle or monitoring machine. Two minutes after my entrance into the room Amber had another contraction and she says, "I'm about to push, can I push?" The doctor tells her it is ok to push, after Amber hears the ok she lets out the loudest scream I have ever experienced, so loud in fact that (remember our neighbor that went into labor 2 hours before us?) our neighbor hear Amber and the neighbors nurse said, "Well, I guess she's not getting an epidural" After the first yell our new doctor very calmly says, "lets take all the energy that you are expressing through the scream and re-focus it into a push". Amber then started to apologies to everyone for screaming, because if you know her you know that she is not a screamer. Two minutes later another contraction came along and Amber (minus the scream) started to push, and surprisingly we now had a daughter.

And just like that, as quickly as it started it was over and we had a healthy baby girl. I will end this very long description with a run-down of the timeline for everyone keeping track.

5pm - contractions start to come consistently

7pm - water breaks

7:45 - Amber on the floor with strong contractions

8:15 - Annie says, "go to the hospital"

8:30 - doctor says, "yeah, lets just have you come in"

8:45 - neighbor enters our door

8:50 - we leave for hospital

9:00 - speeding up I-65

9:10 - enter hospital doors

9:12 - Amber is wheeled back

9:17 - I finally find the right room

9:21 - Lily Jane is born

Pictures will be on the next post because of space.

Little Hockey Fan

Ava has no choice but to become a Predators hockey fan. If anyone knows my husband, then you know that he is truly one of the biggest Predators fans around. He's a very loyal fan. Ava and Daddy had a few date nights at the hockey game last week. The first night I was out with friends, so I couldn't make it with them. I was a little worried about how she would respond with the loud crowd, but Jonathan said she LOVED it. She did get a little scared at first when the loud horn went off when the Predators would score, but she got used to it. After they got home Ava told me all about it. She told me she cheered and said, "GO PREDERS!". In one weeks time, Ava made it to three hockey games. (That also means she had a lot of late nights that week and a lot of cranky mornings. Jonathan got the good end of this deal!)

This was when she first got there - a little unsure of everything.

So I did make it to the second game, but we didn't stay quite as long due to me being very pregnant! (The chairs aren't really all that comfortable.) I enjoyed going with Ava. It was fun watching her cheer and get excited, even though she had no clue what was really going on.

Ava's friend, Riley, let her borrow a Predators jersey for one of the games. Ava was all ready to go! I couldn't make it to this game either, so I'm glad I took these two pictures before the game because Jonathan forgot to take pictures at the game. He was a little preoccupied you could say.

Trip to California

Jonathan had a work trip in California the end of February, so at the last minute, I decided to go with him. My parents were gracious enough to watch Ava while they were about to move into their new house.

The last day of our trip we drove into San Francisco. All of the pictures below are from that day. Jonathan had to work the other days, so I just relaxed and took lots of naps. It was a very relaxing week.

China Town

This is where I realized that I don't like authentic Chinese food!

Lombard Street

On our way to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz

We had such a great time touring Alcatraz. It was very interesting and I would highly recommend going if you're in the area.

Ava & Sophie

Well, we are getting closer to D-Day and I keep thinking about everything we have to get done around here before this baby comes. We are getting very excited to meet this precious little one, but there is so much to do before he/she arrives and updating my blog hasn't been on the top of the list. But, I did get some cute pictures of Ava and her friend Sophie the other night. We were watching Sophie so her parents could enjoy a night out. I was getting them ready for bed and found out that Sophie has the same pajamas as Ava, so of course the camera comes out. They were so stinkin' cute together. They were cheesin' it up when the camera came out too.

Sophie & Ava

B.F.F.

There is really not much to update on the pregnancy. I am almost 33 weeks now, so we have 7 weeks left...unless this little one decides he/she wants to come early, then I'm okay with that. Ava felt the baby kick for the first time today and she just laughed for awhile. She thought it was so funny!

Pregnancy update and Baby Eli

I thought I would update you all first with a picture of how big I've gotten lately. This picture is actually a few weeks old. I'm 27 weeks pregnant here, and I'm almost 30 weeks now. But, I'm not so great at taking pictures 2nd time around. I'm getting to the uncomfortable stage, as I call it. That's when you know this baby is coming soon! We still have 10 weeks to go, but I'm really hoping we have this baby early because I'm not sure how much more I can grow. I had a check-up yesterday and everything is going really well. We still don't have a name picked out, which makes me a little nervous, mostly because we have to pick two names since we aren't finding out the gender. Any suggestions would be great!

Also, as most of you already know, my sister had her baby at the end of December. She did great and now has a precious baby boy, Eli Brock. He weighed 9 lbs. 5oz. HUGE! My sister was amazing and had him completely natural. I'm still not sure how she pulled that off. We went for a visit to meet our new nephew and Ava's new cousin a few weeks ago. I didn't get a chance to take as many pictures as I would've liked to, but here are a few.

We love you, Eli. You are precious and we can't wait to see you again soon!!