Happy Birthday - another one

Abigail Elizabeth turned 2 last Wednesday. Because we'd been kind of busy the previous week or so, I didn't plan anything big.

In fact, I didn't even go out and buy her any new presents. At Christmas we purchased a "Pink Butterfly Baby So New" set at Costco fo about $20 I think. It came with a baby doll and a baby bed, which we gave Abby for Christmas and then we saved the rest for now.

I didn't even make her cake. Someone in the ward who brought over dinner last week also brought over a chocolate cake.  We just waited a few days, stuck two candles in it, and called it good.

I didn't make dinner the night of her birthday. We had so many leftovers, that even though my in-laws had offered to buy us dinner, I suggested they just come over and help us eat up our food - chicken fettucini alfredo, an entire roast with carrots and potatoes, funeral potatoes, jello, homemade italian sourdough bread, etc. etc.

We didn't invite any friends over. Honestly, she's only 2. We haven't been in the area long enough for a not-yet-two year old to make any real close attachements. So it was Derek and I, Joshua, Abigail, Lukas, Grammy and Grampy.

Talk about low key/low stress.

For her birthday she got a Tinkerbell doll and Tinkerbell blanket from Grammy and Grampy, a stroller, a highchair/baby swing/car seat/baby seat combo thing, and a diaper bag to go with her baby. It also had some accessories in it like a plate, spoon, fork, bottle, binky, etc. She was totally thrilled. However, "baby" doesn't get to enjoy these new accessories very much because "bear" is always in the stroller/swing etc. poor baby.

oh yeah, Abby found all her headbands that had been stashed away in her top drawer and decided to put them all on at once - around her neck. I think I was just too tired to care about taking them off for the photos.

 Here she is trying hard to be polite and use her fork...

But we all know this is really how you are supposed to eat Birthday Cake!!

 Lukas with Grampy.

 Lukas with Grammy.

A lot of people would take this opportunity to write about how much they love their little girl and how big she has grown, etc. etc. At Valentine's day I felt guilty for not writing something about Derek, about how much I love him and on and on. I think there is just too much to say.  What I will say though, is 1) I love my kids and my husband more than anything else. I think I sometimes love them too much! One of my worries is that they wont know how much I am totally in love with all of them so I have to hug and kiss my kids all the time and tell them everyday, so Abigail, I'm totally in love with you, and 2) despite all that hugging and kissing, I'm just not a very lovey dovey person - most of the time- so even though Derek knows I'm not going to write him poetry or something, hopefully he knows that I try to show him I love him in everything I do do. So Derek, I'm totally and completely in love with you too. There. Said and done.

Our Family

Here are just a few fun photos of the last few days.

 Lukas has been under the Bili lights the last few days - actually not today, but we've got to go back into the lab tomorrow and see if he's done for good or has to go back on again. Hopefully he's done. Despite the calm and peaceful look on his face, he does NOT sleep well under the lights. Joshua was also under lights at our apartment for maybe a week or so after he was born, but Abigail was only under lights a few days at the hospital after her birth - exactly one year ago today, Happy Birthday Abigail - photos of that to come.

Lots o' Little Lukas

Yea!!!

Lukas Elijah (we'll be calling him Lukas)

(as in Luke from the Bible and Elijah Fordham, one of Derek's ancestors)

9:28 am Thursday, February 10th, 2011

9 lbs 1 oz 20 in

First, the cute photos...

 Next, the NICU photos. He was only in for about 36 hours. At first he needed a little (very little) help breathing, and then help stabilizing his blood sugars. But overall, he was very healthy and doing very well. He had an IV in his head, a feeding tube down his nose, and during only the first hour, that thing you see in the last photo helping him keep air in his lungs.

 And finally, this isn't Lukas. This is Joshua. I just thought it would be fun to compare. These photos are from the day we brought Joshua home from the hospital.

Here's the story of Lukas' birth.

My water broke at 4:30 am but since there was only pain and no "water" I wasn't sure exactly what had happened. 15 minutes later after a very hard contraction I woke Derek up, the water came, and we got everything into the car and went to the hospital. We got there around 5:30 ish. I was in tons of pain (I tried so hard to relax everything through the contractions and focus, but I obviously wasn't very good at it, despite my efforts. I suppose I could have done worse).  Labor and Delivery was full so we got sent to a triage room, another woman in labor right behind us went to the next triage room. I was dilated to a 7 so the nurses started running around in a panic trying to get some help. The epidural was a fabulous help - I'm glad they found it! Then an operating room opened up so they moved us in there, you know, to make more space in the triage area for the rest of the laboring women coming in, our hospital has been on baby overload the last few weeks. But less than a minute after being in the OR we got to move into a real labor and delivery room, which was much much better. After the epidural labor slowed way down. 3 hours later I was ready to push (actually I was ready to push as soon as I got to the hospital.) Pushing took longer than anticipated, but when he came out we realized why. Nine pounds is not an easy feat. And I was really tired. They took him to the NICU, but there was no room down in Mother Baby so I had to wait in the labor and delivery room for a while. Eventually something opened up. Every three hours I went up to Lukas to nurse him. He made steady improvement, was taken off formula (just to keep his sugar up) and then he finally got to spend the last night with me. Very nice. Now we're home, he's sleeping, Derek is falling asleep reading his scriptures, and I'm going to hit "publish post" and go take a nap.

She got it!

A while back I asked how people incorporate their littler ones into their home time learning with their bigger ones. My little one tends to "kind of" participate and I always wonder if I am giving her an adequate "education."  But, apparently she can do two - or a hundred - things at once. Remember in December how I taught supposedly both children how to sing 3 Christmas carols? But only one actually sat down with me and would learn the words and sing? Well, Abigail's new favorite thing to do is walk around in circles singing "Als Josef auf die Reise ging" (When Joseph went to Bethlehem) and she actually can sing it too! She can do the first two lines on her own, and when I sing it with her, we found out tonight, she can sing the entire first verse. She got it! I'm so excited! And I thought she had just been doing her own thing on the other side of the room the whole time. It encourages me to think that she's probably "getting" a lot of other things too.

February, Family, Love, C

No baby. So instead, we did some early Valentine's Day celebrations. (just a note: the lamellar count came up 29 instead of 50 so the docs said it was best to wait until the 15th to "induce" the baby. At first I was so disappointed, but now I feel much better - just a little (huge) attitude change.)  Because I probably have another full week plus, I feel like we can get in all our Valentine's Day fun - and we'll be sick of it by the end too.

To start with, there aren't very many words in the German dictionary that start with "C".  Germans use the "K". This is what our reference (children's) books could come up with. Comic, Clown, Cowboy, Chameleon, Cafe, Cousin, Computer, and I think three others.  Notice how none of them are actually German. On my own I came up with Chemie (Chemistry) and Chirurg (Surgeon) but I am pretty sure those come from French anyway. We haven't practiced writing "C" yet, but Joshua is already on the hunt and he can find C everywhere! One fun thing we came up with, since Joshua already knows "O" I explained to him that a C is like an O, but someone has come up to the O with a key, unlocked the door, and went inside. It sounded a lot more coherent/interesting/better in German. He took to it right away and we used our hands to make Os and Cs and with our other hands a little "person" came with the key to unlock the door and go inside. I thought it was kind of cute.

I decided that since we are doing Family this month, we will learn about all of our Cousins - because there are many (23) and more always on the way (just 1 right now).

To learn all of our cousins, especially the ones we have never seen, I finished making the Walker/Berwick memory game. But we call it "Match."  Each time we pick somebody up I explain to Joshua and Abigail how they are related. Eventually even though none of us have ever met baby Lucy or little Grant, they will know that they exist, who their parents are, and what that has to do with us. To my relief and joy, Joshua and Abigail LOVE the "match" games and are always willing to play. This makes me happy because they were a ton of work to make! The only problem is that the kids have favorites and so we have to monitor a little who gets the Grandmas and Grandpa and Papas. Unfortunately, Mama is not on the favorite list. :(

 Uh, my family is huge. This is just my side. Derek's side of the family is less than half this tall. I guess that's what happens when you start out with 10 kids :)

Instead of making a Valentine's Tree we made a Valentine's Can with color coded heart flowers. I shall now explain. On the can are 4 different strips of colored paper with 4 prompts (I know Heavenly Father loves me because... I show Heavenly Father I love Him when... I know my family loves me because... I show my family I love them when...) and in the can are 20 hearts taped onto straws with the "answers" Joshua and Abigail gave to the prompts. There are 5 hearts for each prompt - so the purple strip prompt has 5 purple heart flowers in the can to complete the sentence, and so on. I had hoped this would be a much more interested project to make - Joshua lost attention after the first 10 hearts so I should have broken in up into two sessions, but tonight for FHE we reviewed all our hearts and everyone had a really good time reading the prompts, finding the appropriately colored heart, reading and discussing. Success.

We made some Valentine's cookies. I made the dough on my own one evening.  A few days later we baked the cookies together - and Abigail ate the dough. And the day after that we frosted and decorated the cookies - and Abigail ate the candies and frosting. Although Derek and I broke down and ate a plate tonight after FHE (oops) there are still 4 plates waiting to go out to friends tomorrow - another fun preschool activity. Joshua knows whenever we bake something we always give some away.

And of course, we made actual Valentines cards. They aren't finished of course. We still have a handful to do. And then this week we will be mailing them off. Hopefully Wednesday.

That's it for this week's installment. Next week should be a lot of the same. Or a little of the same. Or we might move quickly into the letter D in order to make some progress before our new arrival. Or not.