Have a happy day!

Ian sure is!

My Kids Are So Creative...

My sister came last week for a visit, which was spectacular. But I haven't got all the pictures organized yet, so I can't blog that. For now I just wanted to share the special art project my kids collaborated on while I was in the bathtub yesterday morning. Behold their masterpiece:

I know you are all extremely impressed and jealous of the talented little artists I am raising.

Blog Stealing

I've been thinking about this post for a while, every day really, when I start to get frustrated with something at home. But then I was blog hopping and read a post from my sister's friend from high school who has four kids and her son is autistic. I felt pathetic for wanting to post about this. However, I've still been thinking about it so I'm posting it anyway.

I've found myself getting increasingly frustrated with how cluttered and dirty my house gets now and how quickly it happens. I don't consider myself a neat freak in the least, but my when my kids' empty every dresser drawer onto their floor every day (literally) and I trip or get stabbed in the foot by small toys and train tracks wherever I walk, it gets to me. And when I am frustrated I am not the nicest mommy or very fun for my kids to be around. I was reading a friend's sister-in-law's blog (who has four young kids, two are twins and her husband is a doctor and gone a lot....again, I feel like a wimp but oh well) and found this that she posted on her blog by someone named April Perry. I stole it.

"How we feel about our lives depends on the relationship between our expectations and our realities. One way we can understand our potential and the nature of family life is to accept the fact that the world is made up of opposites. If it seems like the world is against us some days, and that we’ll never “reach our potential” or create the “perfect” family life, that’s okay. In order to enjoy the good, we need to experience the bad.

We wouldn’t know how beautiful an entire eight hours of undisturbed sleep is if we hadn’t had nights where we saw the clock change every single hour. When we become mothers, we need to expect opposites and realize that we have the capacity to grow and nurture our families—even when times are tough.

If you wake up in the morning saying, “Well, I know I’ve got my work cut out for me today. Hard things are definitely going to come my way, but with the help of Providence, I am ready for them,” then when hard times DO come, you think, “This is what I expected. And look what a great job I am doing!”

On the other hand, if you wake up thinking, “Today better be less crazy than yesterday. This is my itinerary, this is what I need to get done, this is what I want to happen, and if anyone gets in my way, there’s going to be heck to pay!”, then when the challenges come, we scream, “I've been cheated! Today turned out horribly! This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

I'm really working on trying to change my expectations after reading that, because it's so true. The days I get most frustrated are the days when I have a list of things I want to get done and a timeline of when I want it done. So from now on I'm going to expect my house to look like this by 9 am every day:

And I'm going to expect that my kids will be in cahoots when I have a phone call to make and two emails to respond to and start "cooking" with all my silverware and many of the bowls in the cupboard....

And I will not be surprised if I return to my room from putting away the kids laundry (which now resides in their closet on a shelf that they cannot reach, I'm not ready to expect the empty dresser daily yet) to find that a certain little boy has done this in my bathroom.

When I first started thinking about changing my expectations I felt kind of like I was just giving up, but the more I've though about it I've changed my mind. I will expect my children to be normal, curious, mess-making machines. I will also expect my children to help me clean up the messes they make (and probably not willingly either.) I will expect to hear whining every day and "mommy, get me (fill in the blank)" 50,000 times a day. But I will also expect them to say rephrase their request in a normal voice and with the word "please" inserted into the sentence before I will comply. You get the idea.

One day last week we just sat around all morning listening to acoustic music, dancing, and reading books together. The kids trashed the house. I didn't do any laundry or sweep my floor which was littered with dried-up macaroni and smashed pretzels. And it was okay. I didn't feel stressed out. I just enjoyed being with my babies and tried to remember what they said and how they felt in my arms as I held them, because I know it won't be long before they grow up. I wish I could say every day I had hours or even moments like that but I'd be lying. I'm learning to let go of some of my expectations and adopting new ones that will allow me to enjoy my kids and motherhood more...at least that's my goal. Wish me luck.

Ian at Two Months

I can't believe my sweet Baby E is already two months old! However, it does seems like forever ago that I was pregnant and weirdly enough, I kind of miss it. It seems like with the other two kids I wished away the newborn stage; I was excited for them to start smiling, and rolling over, and laughing, etc, etc. This time I don't want him to grow up at all. I guess I just realize how fast kids grow up now and I want time to just stop!

He had an appointment with the doctor this morning and got two shots, which he was not happy about in the least. He's packed on three pounds in the last six weeks (now 11.8 lbs) and has grown almost three inches too (24.25 inches now)! He's still a lightweight compared to the babies on Tyler's side of the family but about on par with our kids.

When I was home last week I had some pictures taken by the same person who took the family shots at Christmas. He was tired and not happy to be having pictures taken, would not go to sleep so we could get cute sleeping baby shots, and was not having being naked at all! Nevertheless, I think we still got some good pictures. I sure love this little man of mine!

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Last night as we were travelling home from our Spring Break vacation (more to come on that plus some pictures soon) we were delayed an hour by an accident on the freeway. After some Googling on our phones, Ty figured out that it was a fatal crash a few miles ahead of us that was holding up traffic. Lydia and Luke couldn't figure out why we were not moving on the freeway, so I explained that it was a sad day because there was an accident ahead and somebody had died in the crash. They asked a few questions like if it was a boy or girl, and where the dead person was. I told them that their body was on earth and would be buried, but their spirit had gone back to be with Heavenly Father. A few minutes later Lydia asked another question about where the dead person was and then said "it's actually a special, special day Mom." I asked her why. "Because her spirit is back with God again, so it is a special day." I love the simple faith and understanding of my little girl.

New this week....

My husband went to play church basketball last night and left looking normal. It's been a pretty calm season. He's only sustained a ripped shirt and a few bruises, and hasn't had anyone ask him if he "wants to take it outside right now" like last year. He returned from last night's game looking like this:

(It looks more impressive today, this was a mere hour after it happened.) If you get grossed out easily, try not to look at the next shot.

Some guy jammed his finger in Tyler's eye socket, breaking a bunch of blood vessels and giving him double vision for a while. A different teammate got his other eye with his fingernail. Apparently church basketball in Hillsboro involves some vicious, bloodthirsty opponents!

Last week I was upstairs feeding this guy, who thinks he needs to eat all day long. Lydia and Luke were in the backyard playing when I went up to feed him, since for once it wasn't raining! I heard them come in and out of the house and turn on the bathroom sink a few times, but that's pretty normal since they get dirty playing in the dirt and think they need to wash it off before they can put more dirt on themselves.

Lydia came in and asked me if I wanted to go to their picnic when I was done. I agreed, thinking they were making mud pies on the kitchen set on the deck and it was a pretend picnic to eat them. Not so! These two set up this picnic all by themselves, including washing the fruit before bringing it outside to eat (I was a proud mama that they remembered to do so!)

We enjoyed a lovely afternoon picnic of apples and strawberries together (Luke had politely taste-tested my apple before giving it to me) and chatted about springtime and what we want to plant in our garden in a few weeks. Luke also informed me that "when I was a baby I popped out of you and drank your milk. But now I'm not a baby; I'm handsome." That's right little man, you are, most especially with your jammies on backwards and wearing your sister's boots!

I love these two so much and I'm glad that I had them as close together as I did. I love that they have a playmate when I'm busy with the baby and can't play with them. They still fight about things but they've really gotten so much better at playing with each other since they started sharing a room. Sometimes it's bad that they have a little buddy though; they dream up some naughty things to do when I'm not paying attention. I was lucky this time and I hope there are many more picnics to come with my favorite kids!

Our New Life

Their faces pretty much sum it up: mostly happy with moments of uncertainty about how we're handling the adjustment to our new addition. Even Ian seems like he's not sure about this whole "being in the outside world" thing yet, as demonstrated below.

He goes between grumpy and surprised, with a lot of this in between....

complete with the "don't hate me because I'm beautiful" model pose.

Sometimes he gets so sick of this place it makes him want to vomit...okay, so it makes him vomit.

(Remember this? I fear my days of eating dairy and chocolate may be numbered. Again.)

The rest of us aren't to the point of throwing up, but we've become rather lackadaisical about personal grooming and dress standards (excluding Tyler, who actually has places to go and people to see every day.) I'm lucky if I get showered before 3 pm, and even luckier if I get dressed in something other than pajamas and/or lounge-wear. (I keep telling myself it's just because my regular clothes don't fit quite right yet...how long can I keep using that excuse?) The kids wear all kinds of weird outfits, and even go to the store in them occasionally, because I either don't care enough to make them change or I haven't done the laundry so they don't have any matching clothes to wear besides pajamas....well, at least Lydia's pj's match. The shoes though, not so much :)

It's been raining A TON here, and yes, we've even seen some of the white stuff too, so I've remained holed up at home. The kids brought home a cold from somewhere (most likely church) and now the baby has a stuffy nose, so I'm trying to avoid exposing him to more germs and exposing my kids to places where they can bring home MORE germs to sicken Ian, so we've been trying to keep things interesting so that we all don't go stir crazy.

We've been watching more movies than I care to admit lately, but we've jazzed it up a bit by having indoor picnic lunches while we watch our movie. It's the new fave at home.

This was the entertainment we came up with today. I used to put my tights on my head and run around when I was little, so I thought I'd pass down the awesome tradition to my children as well.

In all seriousness, so far the adjustment hasn't been as bad as I feared. Ian is a great baby who sleeps pretty well at night and is generally pretty content. It helps that I don't have kids who have to be somewhere at certain times, so we can pretty much do whatever we want whenever we want to do it. We all adore our little Ee-Yon, as Luke pronounces is (think of the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding), or our Sweet Baby E as I like to call him. (Another side note: trying to teach your preschooler letters and sounds, and then throwing a name like Ian at her that is not spelled phonetically and trying to explain why it's not pronounced Eye-An....difficult.)

Even Luke has decided that our new life is not so scary after all.

Labor....My Side of the Story

I think Ty did a fantastic job of reporting the basics of the labor story, but since this is really my only form of journaling for the present time I would like to present my side of the labor story before I forget it. I'm warning it will be long and may contain information which people, mostly males, may consider too much information, so read on at your own discretion. I threw in some pictures of the handsome devil for those of you who don't read posts without pictures.

Thursday morning I was busy, out and about with the kids. We went to a friend's house, went to story time at the library, and went to Costco, where I ate a slice of combo pizza for lunch. (Does that old wives tale about eating spicy food to start labor actually work? Maybe in my case!) I ran into tons of people I know at the library and Costco and was lamenting the fact that I was still pregnant, even though I was only 38 wks 4 days pregnant. After our Costco run, we came home and miraculously both kids went to sleep at quiet time, and so did I which was a huge blessing in hindsight. I woke up at 3 pm and went to the bathroom. I walked out of the bathroom and felt like I peed a little more. "Hmm, that's odd, I don't usually pee my pants" was my thought process at that point. I went in the bathroom again and tried to empty my bladder again, but the same thing happened again once I left the bathroom. I started thinking that maybe my water had broken, but since it wasn't a huge gush of fluid all at once and both other times I'd had to have it broken in the hospital I wasn't sure.

I grabbed my phone and went upstairs, put on a pad and called Tyler as I was still leaking fluid every few steps and I was pretty sure at that point I definitely wasn't peeing my pants. Of course, he didn't answer and I was starting to freak out because when they broke my water with Luke I delivered him an hour and a half later. Luckily, he saw that I called (he was in a meeting) and texted me to see what was up. "I think my water just broke" was my response. He called about one minute later :) He called the neighbor to come down with the kids and I called his sister to come get the kids from the neighbor and stay with them until my mom came. I grabbed my bags, kissed the kids who had just woken up, and ran out the door. I wasn't feeling any real back pain at that point (that's where I feel contractions) but I was expecting at any minute to start feeling them.

I got to the hospital still pain-free and checked myself in to labor and delivery. The triage nurse took me back, hooked me up to the monitor, asked me what had happened, and took a few swabs to test for amniotic fluid. Tyler got there just after that. She left and was gone for seriously 15 minutes at least, which was when I was getting really concerned that I really HAD just peed my pants. I was going to be so embarrassed if I had to tell everyone that my water hadn't broken, not to mention my mom was already on her way to Portland, etc. The nurse came back and said that she couldn't get a positive test for amniotic fluid off the swabs but my story sounded too good so they would watch me for a while. I said, "Are you sure? I have a whole pad soaked with the stuff." She took a test from the pad I had been wearing and was back about one minute later to say that it definitely was positive for amniotic fluid. Whew!

I still wasn't contracting regularly at that point but they put in the IV, took me to a room, and the midwife came in to see me. Her name was Lindsay and she was fabulous. They got my first dose of antibiotics for GBS going but I was still not really feeling any contractions, so Tyler and I started walking. We decided after the 15th lap of the L&D floor that they need an eliptical machine or treadmill for that unit--the scenery gets old really fast. I was serious about wanting to give Ian and Lydia separate birthdays. The midwife had offered to start pitocin if I really wanted to get him out, but remembering my not-so-fun experience when I had it with Lydia I wasn't wanting to start it right away. We decided if at 10 pm I wasn't pretty close to delivery we'd start the pitocin. After multiple more laps the midwife finally checked to see how dilated I was. I was at 6 cm, which was disappointing to me since with Luke and Lydia I had been contracting pretty regularly with fairly minimal pain and had been at 8 cm both times with them. (If you are a woman who has had children and has a typical labor, please don't hate me because of the previous sentence. I realize my labors are not normal.)

After more walking and bouncing on the birthing ball, and starting the second dose of antibiotics, it was about 9:30 pm and I was realizing that labor was not going to start on its own any time soon. I was baffled because this labor was so different from the previous two. After talking it over with Tyler I decided that we should "get the party started" as I put it and start the pitocin. They started it at 10:30 at a low dose per my request and put me on a telemetry monitor so I could still walk the halls. My mom got there just after they started it I think and we walked for a while. I started to be able to feel when I was having contractions but they weren't bad--I could walk and talk through them. They bumped it up every half hour, and just before midnight we went back into the room. The contractions were getting stronger but not too bad. At that point I was so frustrated that it was taking so long; at the rate I was going I felt like it was going to be several more hours before he was out. I was also feeling bad that we had someone at the house with the kids who had to work the next day, and my mom had been up for a long time and had a long drive and would have to be up with the kids the next day, so I suggested that since it didn't look like things were going anywhere any time soon that she go home. I will forever feel bad that I did that, I'm sorry Mom! She left just after midnight and that's when things started picking up. Quickly. (Ironically, my mom had just been telling her labor story with my youngest brother Aaron and how fast she dilated and was ready to push with him.)

The contractions really started to pick up in intensity and I had Tyler pushing on my low back to give some counter-pressure to the back labor I was having. (That's been his job for every labor and he does it fabulously!) I was reaching the point where I was thinking "this isn't fun, I don't like this, why am I doing this without medication again?" Yes, I know that sounds wimpy. I'd been in real labor for what, 20 minutes or so? I asked to be checked again, thinking I must be really close to pushing because last time when I felt this way it was almost time to push. Lindsay checked and said I was at 7 cm, but the baby was really low now. I about cried when she said the number 7, and then I asked if they could turn off the pitocin. The answer was no, they didn't want my labor to stall. After two or three more contractions I felt like I had to pee, but I couldn't go when I went in the bathroom. With every contraction I felt a lot of pressure. She checked me again and I was at 8-9 cm. They had me lay on my side and I really wanted to push with the next contraction, but she wanted me to pant through them to dilate the rest of the way. I made it through two that way but by the third I said "I have to push now" and just started pushing. I pushed through two contractions on my side (I think) and it felt really awkward so I rolled onto my back. I think it was a total of three or four more contractions with pushing before he came out. Once his head and shoulders were out she had me reach down and pull him up on my chest. It was the best feeling ever, not just the relief of pain/pressure but to have my healthy newborn baby crying on my chest with my handsome husband right beside me. I don't think words can describe the feeling you feel after giving birth! He was born at 12:48 am, and the nurse told me later that they considered my "active" labor to be about one hour and I pushed for 7 minutes. Not too shabby, but at the time it felt like waaaay longer than that! I feel like a sissy compared to others who have long labors and terrible contractions--I definitely won't win any labor story contests but that's okay by me!

(I just had to throw in this picture of Luke, who came up with the outfit all by himself and asked me to take a picture. This will be Ian's role model...should I be worried? Another side note--Ian was 9 days early, and so was Luke. He shares the same birthday with one sibling and same gestational age as another. Odd but true.)

All in all I feel really good compared to the aftermath of the other two births. Ian is a really laid-back baby so far, and besides a little bout of jaundice (par for the course for my kids) he is doing great. We love having him in our family. Lydia and Luke love him too, and love to hear his baby noises and his hiccups especially. We feel so blessed to have three beautiful kids and to have had so much help from family. Grandma Shannon was here for a week taking care of us like only a mom can do, and Grandpa Dave is here now for the weekend playing with the kiddos and rocking the baby to sleep. Grandma Shirlene will be here next week and we're excited to see her. In the words of a Primary song we sang for FHE this week, "we are a happy family!"

Now We're Five!

Ok, perhaps this is a bit more exciting news than the destroying of a snowman. Yes - it definitely is. Ian Tyler Stoddard was born just after midnight Friday 2/4/11. The stats: 8 lbs. 15 oz., 21.25 in., 3 in. biceps, 12 in. waist, blond hair/blue eyes ... ok, ok, no hair/brown eyes.

It was a pretty exciting start to labor before things settled down. I was in a meeting at work when I got the text that said, "My water just broke, I think." :) I showed it to my boss, who was sitting next to me, and told everyone I'm out! as I hustled back to my desk. I hadn't really planned ahead since we were a week and a half from the due date and had ridden my bike to work. Nice. Ashley was handing the kids off to our neighbor then driving herself to the hospital while I was peddling as fast as I could to meet her there.

She got there just before I did, and I found her in the triage room. She looked concerned. She said the contractions weren't really consistent yet and so she thought maybe her water really hadn't broken. Fortunately, the nurse ran a test that confirmed it was amniotic fluid. Whew. She was checked into her room and then we started walking the halls. Because the contractions weren't consistent she wasn't in much pain or discomfort yet (she can amend this later if she disagrees). All the nurses were very impressed with how fast and how much she was walking. I estimated that we walked a few miles in total. My feet were getting sore, but that's not really very manly to tell my full-term wife that I may need a break because my feet are sore. I tucked my skirt in and kept walking.

Ashley was hoping to get him out before midnight so he'd have his own birthday. But Lydia was hoping he'd wait so she could share her birthday with him. She said it'd be the best present ever! (I'm sure you can picture her tone and expression when she said it.) In the end, the birthday wish of a four year-old carried more weight. We were told that active labor lasted a little over an hour and she pushed for a whoppin' seven minutes (I'm sure it seemed longer for her) before Ian joined us in the outside world. It was just as beautiful as it was when Lydia and Luke were born! Ashley reached down and grabbed him and put him on her chest. He cried for a little bit and took a peek with his left eye to see the world around him. Both mom and baby are happy and healthy. Lydia and Luke are both excited to have a new baby brother, too. Enjoy a few photos and videos.

Death of a Snowman

This took a little longer to produce than I had hoped but here it is. The fitting end to Mr. The Snow Man referenced earlier that we made at Christmas time. Good times.