4 Month Old Genevieve (12/8/2016)

I am going to start by saying that I am TIRED while writing this, so I apologize if there are more typos than usual!  I feel like I just wrote her 3 month post!  Time continues to go faster and faster.  My work weeks go pretty fast too, which is great, but the weekends fly by as well.  I really cannot believe that Christmas is in less than 2 weeks!

GENERAL:  Genevieve had her 4 month check up on the 8th and she was such a little angel.  She is tipping the scale at 10#7oz and she is 23.5 inches long.  She's still on the tiny side but she has grown 5.5 inches since she was born which is a lot!  She is still smiling 99% of the time and her brothers (and parents) still adore her to pieces.  Both Ben and Josh had fevers and a stomach bug this past week, and miraculously Genevieve managed to stay healthy, thankfully!  I don't think I could have handled another sick child.  I'm so thankful that everyone is pretty healthy at the moment.  Josh and Genevieve are still a little snotty, but it could be worse!

SLEEP: Sleep has been rough lately.  She takes nice naps during the day, but nighttime is another story.  I can't even count the number of times she wakes up overnight.  It's tiring.  She had been sleeping a good chunk from 7:00-1:00, give or take an hour, but now she is waking up during that chunk of time as well.  She will usually go back to sleep after her nuk is put back in her mouth.  After 2:00 though, it's a big blurry mess of wakefulness.  I feel like I've tried so many different techniques and nothing seems to be working.  I've been reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" but all their stats which basically say "most babies sleep well except for yours" are driving me crazy.  She sleeps in the bassinet in our room.  I'm tempted to switch her to her crib, because she has been napping nicely in there, but then I know I would just have to keep getting up to get her which doesn't sound fun given how often I am up anyway.  Alright, I'll stop complaining now.  I'm just exhausted.  I can't be mad at her though because she typically isn't even that fussy, she's just awake and talking or squirming around.  I'm hoping things get better in the near future!

EATING: Her feedings have been going pretty well.  She typically has 2-3, 4-5oz bottles while I'm at work and then I nurse her whenever I'm home.  I'm having a hard time finding time to pump at work to keep up with what she eats during the day!  Luckily, I had a good stash started from shortly after she was born.  The doctor said she should be getting about 24oz a day.  She said if she's getting that, we could try to start rice cereal or oatmeal too.  I think we are going to hold off for now.  Although now that I think about it, maybe that could help with sleep.  Hmm…

COMMUNICATION/COGNITION: She's just the most alert and happy little thing!  She talks all the time and I love when the boys think they hear her say actual words.  Soon enough, guys!  I love how she recognizes my voice and she loves music.

FINE/GROSS MOTOR: Genevieve is definitely rolling from tummy to back and is THIS close from rolling from her back to her tummy.  We don't have her do tummy time as much as we probably should, but that's partly because she rolls off of her tummy so quickly after we put her down.  (She also spits up if it has been too soon after she eats!)  She is constantly sucking on those little hands too.

These pictures are so dark but look at her grow!

We have been having the best time making Christmas memories with all 3 of our babes!  It's the best.  Our weekends have been jam-packed with festive fun and I know I'm going to be so sad when Christmas is over!

3 Month Old Genevieve (11/8/2016)

My baby girl is growing so fast!  I feel like she already isn't a little newborn who sleeps all the time, but rather a little person who loves to watch her brothers play!  I'm back at work and we are kinda sorta getting in to a routine.  Our schedule is different everyday, but it's been good.

GENERAL: I think Genevieve is around 9#8oz.  I haven't measured her lately but I'm guessing she's around 22 inches or so.  She smiles pretty much all of the time and it's the best.  Even when she is woken up or if she has a snotty little nose, she will still be smiling.

SLEEP:  Her sleep has been better the last night or 2, but for the past 2 weeks she has been waking up several times every night.  She would then be congested and I would have to use the Nose Freda and hold her upright for awhile so she could breath better.  I've been tired, but I think that's what happens when you have a baby and 2 boys that are waking up most nights as well.  Oh, and when you work full-time. ;)  She isn't on a strict sleep schedule during the day, but she is still napping every few hours.  She recently started taking a nuk and she also likes to chew or suck on her hand.  She is very particular about how she is positioned in her bed and no matter where you place her in the bassinet, she will always wiggle her way to the top.  I am worried she is going to develop torticollis because she always tilts her head to the left and pushes her face up against the side of the bassinet.  It makes me nervous!  Praying that she stays healthy, especially since her brothers have been a little under the weather lately.

EATING:  Baby G has been eating like a CHAMP and that makes me so happy!  We weren't exactly sure how much she was eating because I was nursing her, so we started out only giving her 2oz at a time, but she quickly let us know that she likes at least 4oz per bottle.  It's hard to pump more than once a day at work, but I'm determined!  I still nurse her when I get home and through the night/morning as needed.

COMMUNICATION/COGNITION: The coos and smiles are the best.  It really seems like she is having conversations with me.   I keep thinking about how we are going to be BFFs someday.  Well, we already are.  (Josh, Ben, and Andy are also my BFFs, but I have such a close relationship with my own mom that I'm hoping for the same with my own baby girl!)  She absolutely loves her brothers and they cannot give her enough kisses.  They still fight over who gets to kiss and hold her first every morning.  There is seriously so much kissing going on in our house!

FINE/GROSS MOTOR: She seems to be close to rolling but I'm really not in a rush for her to do that!  She has good head control now and is always looking around.  She is really using her hands more and more and is reaching for and grabbing the toys on her bouncy seat.  She also seems to hold her nuk in her mouth which is the cutest little thing.  Again, she's not like a newborn anymore!  Tear!

I love my 3 babies so crazy much!  It's wild and exhausting at times but I still love every minute of it.  I'm so excited for the upcoming holidays!  Hopefully they will all love celebrating holidays as much as I do!!

2 Month Old Genevieve (10/8/2016) & Updates On The Boys

My sweet girl is already 11 weeks and counting!  I go back to work on Monday and I am so sad about it!  This truly has been the best maternity leave ever.  Although I wish I could give all of my kiddos more attention, I really feel like I've gotten to spend quality one-on-one time with each of them.  I will miss them so much!  I am going to try and think back to when she was (just) two months when I write this.  She is changing so much and will be 3 months before I know it.  Although this post is late, her pictures were taken right on time!

GENERAL: Baby girl was 8#11oz and 21.5 inches at her 2 month check up.  She looked great!  She is truly happy almost 100% of the time and if she does squawk, she is easily calmed.  I told Andy that if all our babies were this easy, I would want 10 of them!

SLEEP: Her sleep has been nothing short of amazing.  She has had several 8+ hour stretches and for awhile was sleeping 8-5.  Lately, she has been waking up once a night and then will go right back to sleep after she eats.  She is also taking good naps during the day.  I will put her to bed awake and she falls asleep within a few minutes.  It's AMAZING.  As an aside, we moved Josh up to his big boy bed in Ben's (now his) room a little over a week ago.  It went surprisingly well the first few nights but the last few nights (aside from tonight) have been ROUGH!  Joshy has been crying and getting a lot!  By some miracle, he did not get out of his bed at all tonight.  I hope this continues!

EATING: Genevieve has been nursing about every 2-4 hours during the day.  She will spit up if she eats to much, so I try to keep her upright after she eats.  She's pretty easy in the feeding department.  I hope this continues as well!  She has only had a bottle twice so I hope she takes it OK when I'm at work. 

COMMUNICATION/COGNITION: She is such a social little lady!  She loves when you talk to her and will give the biggest smile instantly.  She is even happy when I have to wake her up to take the boys to or from school.  Her cooing noises are the best and I love when Ben and Joshy talk to her too.  

FINE/GROSS MOTOR: She rolled over a few times!  She is such a little wiggler.  She always scoots herself up to the top of the bassinet.  I am a little nervous about putting her on her tummy because she spits up when there is pressure on her tummy, but she's still pretty darn strong with good head control.  She is always looking around and watching her big, wild brothers play.

Speaking of her brothers, I wanted to post a quick update on them too.  

JOSH: 22 months

Joshy is talking more and more everyday.  He will pretty much copy everything that is said, though it's somewhat hard to understand at times.  I'm already missing that he doesn't say "yesh" for "yes" anymore and he now says "Ben" just like we do instead of with a little accent, but it's also nice that he is able to communicate better so he has been getting less frustrated with us!  He is always singing his own songs and is just a happy guy.  I love his little sense of humor and he makes me laugh out loud all the time.  He does certain things that he knows are naughty when he wants attention.  (Like coloring anything but paper or putting a bouncy ball in his mouth to give me a near heart attack as soon as I start to feed Genevieve.)  He is way more adventurous with his eating than Ben is and although he is still picky at times, it is nice that he will try things like meats, pizza, and eggs!  He is going to school on Mondays and Wednesdays and he cries with every drop off which totally breaks my heart.  His teachers report that it doesn't last long, but I'm hoping that he gets more comfortable with drop offs soon!  He absolutely adores his older brother and his baby sister and he is so loving with both of them.  He copies Ben's every mood and fortunately, Ben is a pretty darn good role model.  Even when Joshy is up to mischief, he will give the cutest little smirk so I will just want to give him kisses instead of disciplining him.  He is always trying to make Genevieve smile and will always point to her and say, "happy!" when she smiles.  I just love this little boy so stinking much! 

BEN: 4 years

Ben is such a grown up little 4 year old!  He is loving school so much and comes home with a new song, fact, or question (or 10) every day.  He is so excited to learn his letters and he can now write them all.  He is always asking us how to spell things, though he doesn't quite understand that it would take a long time to spell out, "We need to go to the store to get x, y, z... and then I want to come home and play baseball outside with daddy and Joshy before I eat dinner." He also loves coloring and does a great job of staying in the lines.  He is a bit of a perfectionist at times so I'm trying to help him not get so upset when something isn't perfect.  He does not miss a beat and you really have to be careful what you say around him.  He uses "big" words like "porchantly" aka "unfortunately" and it is so funny.  He is shy at times but other times will also talk to adults like he is an adult himself.  He has such a kind, sensitive heart and he even wrapped up one of his balls the other day to give it to a kid who doesn't have any toys.  He loves to take care of Joshy and Genevieve and he is such a protective big brother.  He still loves cuddles and he told me he will always want to snuggle with me.  I love him to bits and pieces as well.  

In summary, this trio makes my heart want to explode on a daily basis.  I often wonder how I got so blessed to be the mom of these 3 angels.  Truth be told part of the reason I have been bad with blogging regularly is because I have so many pictures that my (5 month old) phone and my laptop are FULL and it's hard to choose which pictures to use.  Maybe once I am back to work we will all have more of a routine and I will blog more.  But maybe not.  :)

1 Month Genevieve (9/8/2016)

Hi!  I am almost a month behind on this post, but better late than never!  I have so, so, so many pictures and moments that I've wanted to blog about, but I always seem to find other things that take priority.  Genevieve is now 7 weeks old and she gets sweeter by the day.  I'm going to do my best to stay on top of her monthly updates!  My goal is to write more frequent, less wordy posts.  We'll see how that goes.  I tend to ramble a bit…

GENERAL: This little girl has just brought so much happiness to our already happy home.  Her big brothers continue to adore her.  I thought the novelty would wear off but they are still both so excited to see her every morning and they kiss her about 1000 times per day.  Unfortunately, she has a little bit of a cold that I believe her brothers shared with her, but she's handling it quite well.  At her 1 month check up, she was 7#3oz and I believe 20.5 inches.  She rarely cries and seems pretty laid back and content as far has babies go.

SLEEP: I'm trying to remember back a few weeks ago, but she sleeps a lot!  There were several days where she seemed to sleep all day and I was afraid she would be up all night, but she wouldn't!  The first few weeks she was up every 2-3 hours.  There were only 1 or 2 nights (that I remember) where she was up about every hour.  She had (has?) a bit of that "witching period" they talk about in the evenings, which is why my blogging has been minimal!  The boys go to bed at 7:30 and then she must say, "awesome--now I get all the attention!" and she stays up until 9:00 or 10:00.  I love holding that sweet little thing, but it leaves me with little time to get anything else done.  Oh well!  As they say, babies don't keep and she is looking less and less like a newborn these days.  Sigh…  She has been falling asleep quite nicely if we put her down awake so I am hoping and praying that we have a great sleeper!  She's a noisy little grunter at night but it beats crying!

EATING: She has been nursing like a (speedy) champ.  I used to worry about how little my kids would nurse for but that just seems to be how they roll.  She will nurse for 5 minutes on one side and then she's done.  She eats every 2-3 hours during the day.  She will spit up if she nurses much longer than that.  I think this is because her tummy isn't that big!

COMMUNICATION/COGNITION: She is becoming more and more alert.  She is tracking and starting to focus more.  We are starting to hear her sweet little coos.  Josh likes to copy every noise she makes and then he laughs at himself.  It's so cute.

FINE/GROSS MOTOR: Just like her brothers, G is a mover!  She can break out of any swaddle and will often wake up with no blanket on her at all.  She also scoots herself up to the top of the bassinet.  She must like it to touch her head.  Her head control is improving as well.  She doesn't seem to love tummy time, but she will tolerate it for a bit.

It's hard to believe I only have 5 weeks left of maternity leave!  I've been stressing about childcare but I think we may have things figured out at the moment.  I love, love, love being home with these 3!  I do miss work and the structure and routine of that, but I'm not looking forward to leaving them!

Meet Genevieve Jayne

I still cannot believe we have added a GIRL to our family.  Genevieve Jayne was welcomed into the world on August 8.  It was truly the biggest and best surprise of our lives.  I am going to do my best to recap her birth story, as she is almost already a week old now and I'm sure there are already details that I am forgetting.  Here we are on the morning of baby girl's birth, even though we were totally ready for a little boy!

I must say that of my 3 c-sections, this one was the smoothest and least stressful.  Like I told my OB, it's hard to "complain" about a delivery when it ends with a healthy, perfect baby, but at the same time, it is nice to have a happy, comfortable story if possible.

We had time to watch the news in the morning and the weatherman gave the weather a perfect 10!  A beautiful day to have a baby.  The c-section was scheduled at noon but I had to be there by 10:00.  My OB warned me that there would have to be a "perfect storm" to actually start on time, as he had clinic in the morning, but that was fine by me.  (Side story, randomly, a few days earlier I met someone who was having a c/s with the same OB as meet at 2:00, so I knew I would at least be going before her!)  It was nice to not have to get up really early in the morning to be to the hospital before dawn.  We had plenty of time to get the boys situated before we left.  Andy's mom watched the boys for a bit in the morning before my mom took over for the next 24-ish hours.

My co-workers had a little pool going.  These are their guesses!

When we got to the hospital, we were on a new unit, so it already felt different than the last two.  Everything looked bright and fresh.  I liked it!  We went to the pre-op room where they started my IV and had a bunch of different people come in to talk to me.  One of these people was the anesthesia resident.  Thankfully, we got a good one!  He totally listened to all of my concerns from last time and was really agreeable to what my hopes were.  (Mainly, I didn't want medicine that would make me feel crazy (aka the ketamine that I got last time) and I didn't want to vomit for 8+ hours (like I did when I had Ben.)  Those seem like simple requests, right?? :)  The anesthesia team ultimately decided that I bad spinal block last time, hence why I was having so much pain and why they gave me the medication that made me feel confused and horrible.  They ultimately decided to give me a spinal in addition to placing an epidural catheter.   This was just in case the medication wore off sooner than appropriate, they would be able to give me a bolus via the catheter instead of something in my IV.  We also decided against the duramorph, which is likely the medication that made me so nauseous in the past.  Anyway, back to the rest of the procedure.

I ended up having several RNs prior to the actual c/s.  I guess it was a popular day to have a baby!  My OB had stopped by and said they were waiting for a nurse to be available for the c/s.  The RN who ultimately was in my c/s ended up having to come in on her day off.  I felt bad that she had to leave her yard work, but she was great so I'm glad she did.  Once she arrived, we were able to start.  I can't remember what time we went back to the OR.  I think it was around 1:30-1:45 or so.  Again, the OR was brand new and bright.  The anesthesiologist (who I later learned was the head of the department) as well as the anesthesia resident and the RN were so nice and helped calm my nerves.  The RN didn't think I had any, but I did have a few!

The anesthesiologists did a very thorough job in making sure I was nice and numb.  I had a little episode where I became light headed and nauseous, but whatever they did made me feel normal again within a few minutes.  My OB finally came in and we got started.  I don't know how long it was, but at one point I asked when they were going to get Andy, because I was afraid they forgot about him!  (They didn't.)  I was feeling so relaxed and comfortable the whole time, but I felt a lot better when Andy was there.  He seemed a little nervous, which I wasn't expecting, but he didn't have much time to be nervous because it wasn't long before we heard a little cry!  It was at 1402, to be exact.  It was the sweetest little cry.  Just as planned, they held the baby up so Andy could tell us if baby was a boy or a girl.  I had told Andy that it would NOT be funny if he told me the opposite sex.  When he said, "oh my gosh, it's a girl!!" I was in total and complete shock!  I was 99.99% confident that she was a boy!  I must have said, "Are you sure?  I can't believe it!  We have a girl!" over and over at least 100 times.  My OB told me not to quit my day job.  Hah!  I still think that suspicious ultrasound picture looks like there are boy parts!

Andy got to cut the cord and the NICU team checked her over quickly before they let me hold her.  It was the BEST!  It was the first time I got to hold my baby nearly immediately after birth.  I was still in shock and on cloud nine at this point.  It was truly the best surprise ever!  My OB said it was one of the best surprises he had seen as well.  Andy and I were so convinced she was a boy!  They stitched me back up and that only seemed to take like a half an hour.  Maybe it was longer, I was just too happy to care.

We got back to the recovery room and my dad and photographer friend came to see baby girl.  It was so fun telling our family that it was a girl!  We had thought about waiting for our family to get to the hospital before telling them it was a girl, but we couldn't wait that long.  About an hour later, we were able to go up to my hospital room.  For the record, I could still not move my legs much by that point, but this was MUCH better than the last time were I am confident I could have walked out of the OR.  (Owwww!)


The rest of the day was a happy blur of excited visitors.  Perhaps the most excited visitors of them all were Ben and Josh.  Their reactions were priceless and absolutely perfect.  I think these videos here and here pretty much sum things up.

Here are some more pictures from Genevieve's first day of life.  This day was so perfect and definitely one of the best days of my life!  I told Andy that I was the happiest girl in the whole world!  I still am!  I just love my three babies (and husband, of course!) so much!