July has come and gone…

Our July was packed! I figure it is easier to document our month in pictures, than to try and write about it, so prepare for picture overload. : )

An amazing sunset one night while Peggy, Larry, and Jennifer were here visiting!

No one looks very happy to be camping in this pic, but it was fun!

Where’s Waldo?

Picnic at Bear Lake

Shaggy before his haircut

Hiking around Bear Lake

I love Rocky Mountain National Park!!

You can see how proud he was of himself for climbing up there without any help.

Such a spectacular view!

Grandpa and his little drama queen 🙂

Loved this little waterfall with the bright greens all around it.

Jennifer with her snowman! There was still quite a bit of snow along the trail.

Jon standing above Alberta Falls.

David hiked with us to the falls. Actually he and Jennifer ran most of the way I think.

Aspens are my favorite! I hope to come take the same picture when they are turning in the fall.

Another shot of Alberta Falls from above.

Jennifer and Big D

The guys at the top of our hike.

Picture with the crab rock

So happy he came on the hike!

Wildflowers beginning to bloom.

There were three of these gigantic males sitting next to the road near our campsite.

Jennifer, Jon, and I went rafting on the 4th.  Here is the set of pics from our class 4 rapid

No one fell out!  We just got drenched.

We had to stop and take a picture!! David was so excited to see the biggest pirate ever!

This picture still makes me laugh out loud! I can’t believe this dog wears goggles and a bandanna and rides on a pillow on the Harley.

Alex is our budding artist. She loves to draw and paint. She discovered that wet chalk is kind of like paint and it entertained her for hours!

Lego Buzz at legoland in Grapevine.

You could go “inside” some of the aquariums at Sea Life.

Sea Life at Grapevine.

The spectacular rainbow roses Jon sent me for our anniversary.

David teaching Ayden the alphabet on the Ipad.

Emilee’s lingerie shower

Alex and Grammy at the rehearsal dinner.

Her pink and purple fingers and toes. She waited in the spa chair for an hour! Such a girlie girl 🙂

They did much better than I had anticipated during the ceremony.  (of course they were under bribe by Leslee!)

Leslee graciously coordinated the ceremony and did a fabulous job!

This is my favorite picture of them!

Yeah!! I got a kindle for my birthday! (I know it is a really grainy pic)

You know what they say about old habits…

This week was a particularly emotional week for me. Nothing really caused it to be, overall it was just another normal week. But, I found myself throwing a bit of a pity party none the less. Now, I am not going to go into the specifics of it all because it wasn’t worth the time I spent on it, but it made me think. I wondered if I would ever be completely free of habits that I formed when I had a much more immature faith and naive outlook on life. Why do I still allow myself to believe lies that are thrown in front of me?
I didn’t come up with a profound answer, but I did hit my knees and cry to Jesus over my pain, and just like He always does, He helped. I do not want to sound trite. For a long time I have struggled with the “how to” part of my faith. How do I let go, how do I give things to God, how do I fully trust? All of these things are things I want, but just don’t always know how. The thing that struck me so hard this week, was when I was really hurting I didn’t think about any of the “how to’s”. I just desperately cried for solace and it came. Which then led me to think that I think too much. I let my head get in the way of my heart. Jesus says in Matthew 6, ‘ where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. I think if my heart were always in a place of need for Christ, my head would not need so many instructions. This was further driven home later in the week as I watched Alex play. She was talking to a butterfly and telling it how beautiful it was, and exclaiming that she was so lucky to get to see this butterfly. I went out to look at it, and it was actually a really large black and brown moth. I told Alex it wasn’t a butterfly and that moths actually can damage things and I made some comment about how it was only black and brown. She looked at me said, “mom this is a beautiful butterfly that God made. It is not bad, and brown and black are very pretty colors too” I gave her a hug, and told her she was absolutely right. She still only sees things with her heart, and because of that, she trusts implicitly, loves everyone, and finds beauty in everything. Oh to once again have the heart of a child!!
How I pray I don’t teach her my bad habits.

Happy Father’s Day

To the love of my life,
You are an amazing dad! Your love for your children is very evident in everything you do. You work so hard so I can stay home and I cannot put into words how thankful I am to you for that gift! You are so quick to help me everyday when you get home, even though you are tired from working. I know you would like to sit and relax but you don’t relax until the kids are in bed. I love how you load David and Alex up and take them all over the place without me, because I have to stay home with Abigail. You make it look like it is no big deal, but I know there are plenty of dads who would be too overwhelmed to take a three and four year old to ski lessons, jump houses, movies, and baseball games with no help. What fantastic memories the kids will always have with their daddy!
Abigail will still only laugh for you! She can be completely solemn and she sees your face and you both just light up and start laughing. It is precious!! You can always make me laugh with your weird humor and horrible dance moves (which we can pray our children don’t inherit) and when I hear the kids cracking up at you in the basement, I can’t help but laugh too. My favorite thing to do though, is stand at the bottom of the stairs when you are putting them to bed. Hearing you read bible stories to the kids, sing your dads creative version of Hush Little Baby, and then praying with them before tucking them in, completely melts my heart.
Thanks for sharing this life with me, it is truly blessed.
Happy Father’s Day Jonathan, I love you!

For father’s day we went camping this weekend at Twin Lakes. Here are a few snapshots from our trip. You can click on the pictures to view them full size.

The view from our campsite.

Camping is messy!

Covered in dirt and hot chocolate.

Amazing rapids!

His sword and shield.

Cooking at camp.

Abigail did fantastic!

At “the view” as Alex called it.

Our crazy hair girl!

Cheese

Stealing sweet kisses

Posing on the giant rock we found on our walk.

David insisted we climb the rock.

Gorgeous view of the rushing river.

We Love Daddy!!

The past two weeks in pictures

We traveled back to Colorado a few days early because storms were making it impossible for Jon to fly standby. David and Alex are great little travelers, and I pray that Abigail comes around! She cried through most of the trip.

David loves his baby sister! Usually he expresses it by being way too rough, but I was able to capture him being really sweet and gentle 🙂

We went to pick up Jon’s car the day after we got home, and found he had a flat. David came to our rescue since he had insisted on coming in full Buzz regalia. Alex and Abigail were asleep in the car the whole time, but David had fun looking at all of the sculptures around Daddy’s building.

Last weekend we worked on improving our curb appeal. Jon built me a planter box to go under the front window. It looks great and he even painted all the shutters to match the box :). I spent two days weeding and planting and I was a little sad when I finished, because I love the work! Gardening is therapeutic…

Abigail is the smiliest baby! She smiles for anyone who gives her attention, even inanimate objects 🙂 She is eating food like a champ now, and so far, is not picky at all.

She fell asleep on the couch watching veggie tales.

Then she fell asleep reading books. She must be growing!

Showing off his karate moves.

“Look mom, I got dressed all by myself!”

Best Friends!!

Abigail is rolling all over the place and hates to lie on her back even long enough for a diaper change.

She loves to be on the floor with her toys. She will roll and talk and then I won’t hear her anymore. When I check I always find her like this. She just rolls over, puts her thumb in, and takes a nap 🙂

I often forget she is only 3. She learned how to swing herself today and she was very proud!

Another fabulous sunset!

4 Month Update

I deleted the other posts I had started and decided to just skip to the present.  I am going to do a post on each of the kids instead, and I will start with Abigail.

We managed to make it back to Denver with our sanity.  My mom drove with Abigail and me, while Jon drove with David and Alex.  Our cars looked something like the Beverly Hillbillies and it took a couple of weeks to get everything put away!  Mom stayed for the week and helped get us unpacked and settled in. And then she left and Jon went back to work, and I found myself home alone with 3 children.  I had not been by myself for 3 1/2 months.  It was kind of like culture shock, but we all adjusted.

Abigail was showing signs of reflux early on, and by the time she was 5 weeks old it was getting pretty bad.  The dr. we saw in Plano had given us a prescription for zantac but told me not to use it unless it got a lot worse.  I started her on it, and she began throwing up at every feeding.  I took her to our pediatrician here, and he said she was probably reacting to the alcohol in the zantac and switched us to axid.  This worked like a charm! After two days, she was a different baby!!  She ate a lot more at each feeding and napped much longer in the day.  Then she started having a horrible rash mixed with raw patches of skin all over her body.  I took her back in, and the dr. said it was just really bad baby acne.  My other two had acne too, but this looked awful!  I stopped eating dairy and cut back on caffeine, but nothing helped.  The acne part finally went away but she continued having these horrible skin irritations that would seep like a burn sometimes does.  I started noticing a correlation between the breakouts and the soap/lotions I would use, as well as formula intake.  I switched to an all natural soap and lotion and that helped a ton.  I started using Yes to Baby Carrots and I am a fan! She would also get the rash after we attempted to give her a bottle with formula, but she would also throw up all of the formula every time we tried.  I was not trying to stop breastfeeding, I just wanted to be able to leave her for a couple of hours if I needed to.  We tried several formulas with the same result. So I called the Dr. and he said to try Nutramagen, which is like $22 for 5 oz., but she would not even allow the bottle in her mouth by that point.  Peggy attempted a few more times with a bottle and breastmilk and she still would not take the bottle.  At her 4 month checkup, our dr. decided she has a milk protein allergy and told me to stick with the nutramagen if I want to try formula again and to be extremely careful with introducing new foods because she may be prone to several other allergies as well.  Hopefully she will grow out of the milk allergy.  If not, we will start addressing the issue at her 9 month appt.   Other than those issues, Abigail is a great baby!

She has turned into our little chunky monkey!  At 2 months she weighed 12.10 lbs. and at 4 months she weighed 14.7 lbs.  This puts her in the 95% for weight and height.  She started sleeping through the night at 3 months and thankfully has continued to sleep 9-11 hrs. a night.  I love going in to get her out of bed, because I get the biggest smiles!  Abigail is the happiest baby I have had.  All you have to do is look at her and she grins from ear to ear.  The past two weeks we have noticed a few attempts at laughter, but nothing official.  Jon can get the best attempt out of her, and it is really cute.  There is just something about a daddy and his little girl!

Wednesday was the first day she rolled over from back to stomach.  She still isn’t rolling from tummy to back though.  When she is on her stomach, she puts her hands right against her sides and lifts her head up, and this is just not good form for rolling over 🙂  The pediatrician says this gives her very strong neck muscles, therefore she has great head control, but looks pretty funny when you lie her down!

This week has also marked Abigails ability to get things to her mouth.  She has been grasping at toys for a couple of weeks, but would get pretty mad, because she could never get them to her mouth or not for long.  She has figured it out though, and can keep a toy in her mouth for a while, and this makes her very happy.  I thought she might start taking a pacifier now that she wants to put things in her mouth, but I was wrong.  She is a thumb sucker all the way.

I am not sure what color hair she is going to end up having.  She was born with dark hair and lots of it, but half of it has fallen out and the new growth seems reddish, so we will see.  I would love to have a red head, they are just so cute!!

We have been using cloth diapers with her since she was 1 month and I really like them!  I wish we had used them with David, but I was not organized enough at that stage of my life to keep up with a new baby and more laundry.  I really like the system we use, and it truly is not as gross as I had expected it to be.  The only drawback is how big the diapers make her booty!  She is already long, and with the extra padding, her onsies just don’t fit that great, so we have to go up a size.

I don’t think there is anything left to update 🙂  so I will get to the pictures…(click on the pictures for larger view)

Abigail Lynn

Well our little bundle of joy is here and I must say, she is amazing!  Abigail arrived at 9:02 am on December 18th, weighing 7 lbs. 6 oz.  I have never been so relieved to have something over with as I am with this pregnancy.  It has been a long road, with several scares of pre-term labor, and way too much time away from Jonathan.

I went to see my midwife on Oct. 7th for a routine checkup and told her I was feeling an increase in contractions.  She debated doing a cervical check but decided she needed to, after I had 3 contractions in 30 minutes.  She found I was dilated 1 cm. so she did a test called a Fetal fibronectin swab.  It was positive which indicated I had a 16% chance of going into labor within the following 2 weeks.  I headed to the hospital to be monitored for a couple of hours.  They sent me home and told me to take it easy and then my midwife called to let me know I had to transfer to an obgyn because they do not mess around with high risk pregnancies.  We decided to transfer to a dr. in Tx so I could stay with my in-laws for the duration of the pregnancy and have help with David and Alex.

Jon and I were in Plano by the 9th and I saw my new dr. on the 12th.  At this point I was 27 weeks pregnant and Dr. Jacoby did not like the way my sonogram looked or the amount of contractions I was still having so, I was put on strict bedrest ( only allowed to take a shower or go to the bathroom) and sent for more hospital monitoring.  He debated admitting me so he could give me 48 hrs. of steroids to boost Abigails lungs, but decided to wait and see if medicine would stop the contractions and if bed rest would help my cervix close back up.

A week later, the bed rest was a definite improvement, so no hospital or steroids but I still had to stay on bed rest until 36 weeks.  During this time, my fabulous mother-law, Peggy,  picked up all of the slack and became super mom to my two kiddos!  We enrolled them in preschool to give her a break a couple times a week, and we tried to settle in to a schedule to ease the transition as much as possible.  David struggled the most I think.  He told Peggy and his teachers that I was dying, so he just didn’t grasp what was really going on.  This broke my heart into a million pieces, and I tried to explain why I had to stay in bed and why daddy was stuck in Denver so far away from us, but it was rough.  Peggy and Larry went above and beyond anything I could have asked for to help us and to help the kids feel as little anxiety as possible.  Larry gave up his two days off every week  for 3 months to help watch my kids and offer Peggy a break.  They are truly the best the in-laws a girl could ask for.  I constantly received sympathy from anyone who heard I was staying with my mother-in-law, on bedrest, for 10 weeks.  But it just wasn’t hard.  We get along so easily, it is like I have always been a part of their family.  I am just so thankful I could go there, because I am pretty sure Abigail would have made an early appearance otherwise.

Once I was taken off of bed rest at 36 weeks I was ready to have the baby, mainly because Jon could not come down until I was in labor.  We were all so ready to have Jon there to help out and just be part of everything!  Thanks to my dad, Jon was able to fly in several times to see us.  Dad works for American and so we can fly standby. If it were not for that, we probably would have only seen Jon once before I had Abigail, and that would have been horrible!  So thank you Daddy!!  My parents were really great about helping out with the kids too!  They took them several weekends to help give Peggy and Larry a break, and of course to spend time spoiling their grandchildren. I don’t know what I did to deserve such an awesome family!

I got very frustrated when 37 weeks came along and I had stopped having any signs of contractions!  I know it is better for the baby to cook as long as possible, but I was so anxious to have her on my own time table.  I wanted Jon to be there, I wanted to have her before Christmas so Jon didn’t have to go back to work, and I was in so much pain, I was just ready for her to be out!!  I went to the Dr. on Dec. 12th and found out that he would not be able to schedule an induction.  He was leaving for xmas vacation and you can’t schedule anything with the interns that would have been on call, so I was pretty upset.  Jon had been planning to come in for a scheduled induction on the 23rd but now that was out the window.  Are you getting the picture? I was trying to orchestrate everything to fall into my plan, and I was getting quite angry at God for not following along.  I was just going to have to wait and let Abigail come when she was ready.  My dr. had some sympathy on the situation because he knew about Jon and everything that was going on, so he said if I came in on the 17th, he would try to strip my membranes and see if that would start me into labor.  If you don’t know what stripping membranes means, just be thankful.  It is incredibly painful and I don’t ever want to do it again!! But I am getting ahead of myself.  I went in on the 17th, hoping I was making progress, but I wasn’t.  Dr. Jacoby could not believe I had been so close to pre-term labor, and then made it so far, and remained so closed up! (I attribute this to the amazing prayer warriors in my life)  He attempted to strip a few membranes but just couldn’t do very much because my cervix was still too high.  I left in tears, out of frustration and pain.  I wanted my husband there, and I really didn’t want to end up in the hospital during Christmas.  I wanted to be there with David and Alex and for Christmas to be special.  I felt so guilty for being on bed rest through Halloween and Thanksgiving, I just really didn’t want to be away from my babies for Christmas too!  Peggy could tell I was upset so we loaded up the kids and spent the day having fun with them.  I remember sitting in the car and telling her how I know it is best for Abigail to stay in, and that I know God works things out for the best, so I was going to have to let my plans go, and just trust God.  She leaned over and told me she just had a feeling that everything would be fine.  Little did I know, my husband was already on his way to Plano.  He had asked to work from home for the remainder of the pregnancy and they had allowed it, but he didn’t tell me this.  I went to bed that night with no signs of labor and prayed that God would just give me peace and patience….and I awoke at 3am.  I got up to go to the bathroom and felt a contraction.  It felt different than any of the contractions I had been experiencing.  It was much lower and much more painful.  I got out my handy new iphone with the contraction calculator app and started timing.  The contractions were coming every 6 to 8 minutes for an hour so I woke everyone up and told them to get ready!  I called my mom,  and told her to get to the hospital.  Then I started calling Jon.  I called his cell – no answer. I called the house – no answer.  I start ranting to Peggy about how he never has his phone on, and how in the world am I supposed to tell him to get on the road if he won’t answer his phone!!  I then call the house again and leave a rather rude message.  Peggy and Larry then tell me that I need to calm down because Jon is actually already on his way.  He was supposed to be in Amarillo as far as they knew.  He was planning on surprising me but they felt like I needed to know so I didn’t get really angry with him!  He finally called back and said he was actually in Childress and was getting back on the road.  That put him 4 hrs. away!  I was SO happy!  We made it to the hospital around 4:30am and by then I was having contractions every 3 or 4 minutes.  I was dilated to a 5.  I didn’t think Jon was going to make it.  I had this grand plan of not getting an epidural and that went out the window by 5am.  To all my friends who have done this without drugs, you are my heros! The epidural slowed my labor down a little and Jon walked in the door at 8:30am!!! I have never been so happy to see that man in my entire life!  My dad got off of work and came straight there.  So, in God’s timing, my whole family was able to be there, plus the Morgans were at Peggy’s house which allowed for babysitters!

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…Rom. 8:28

So Abigail made her appearance at 9:02 am at the perfect time, on the perfect day.  I could not be a more blessed and happy mom of 3 🙂

Playing Catch-Up

I have started several posts, saved them to drafts, and never returned.  I am determined to catch up!  I have everyone down for a nap which never happens, but I couldn’t take the constant fighting between David and Alex, so here we are.  I haven’t had this much quiet in a very long time (and it has only been 10 minutes)!!  I am going to complete all of the posts I started.  They begin with  Abigail’s birth and end with our Easter festivities.  So here goes 🙂

Cloth diapers and Preparing for #3

I am finally in my third trimester and it feels like I have been pregnant forever!  This pregnancy seems so much slower than my other two, which I was not expecting.  I figured it would fly by.  I do think the next 12 weeks will go very quickly though, since we have Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  Plus I have Mops and my bible study each week so things are picking up.

I am going back to TX to have the baby.  We decided this would be the best way for me to have as much help as I will need right in the middle of the holidays, and we won’t miss Christmas with our families.  The logistics of all this have been a little weird to work out but now it is all taken care of.   I couldn’t transfer to an OBGYN any later than 27 weeks which would be this week.  I just didn’t want to be away from Jon and have the kids away from their daddy for 3 months, so I went in search of a different option and decided to use a midwife instead.  I have LOVED this decision all the way around and if we have another baby I will use a midwife again for sure.  They are more relaxed in some areas than dr.s and more attentive in others.  I never spend less than 30 min. visiting with the midwife and they have made a point to get to know me and my family personally.   They do all of the same tests my dr. did so I am getting very good monitoring and if I become a high risk pregnancy at any point I will have to switch to a Dr. but as long as I have a normal, healthy pregnancy then I will deliver with a group of midwives who are with Baylor All Saints in Fort Worth.  They have been very flexible and are allowing me to transfer to them at 34 weeks, which is the week of  Thanksgiving.  So I am packing up and going to TX in 7 weeks and I feel like I have tons of things to get done before then!

We have to decide on a middle name.  Her first name will be Abigail but we still have not come to an agreement on the middle name.  This is starting to bug me even though I know we have plenty of time to decide!  We are also doing a big room switch.  Alex is going to move in to David’s room and they are going to share a room until Abigail moves into a big girl bed.  Abigail is going to take over Alex’s current room and I want to get started on decorating and putting clothes away before I leave.  Jon will finish it all up but I really need to feel like I did part of it.  I want her room to look like this, but with white furniture instead of the cherry.   To get all of this accomplished, I need to get all of the toys out of the kids rooms and put them in the basement playroom.  Then I have to consolidate Alex’s closet into David’s.  Once I have that finished I will start getting out the tubs of baby girl clothes, wash them, reminisce about Alex in them, and then get everything put away and ready for little Abigail.

My other big task (which really isn’t that big) is to decide which cloth diapering system we want to go with and purchase those before I leave.   David and Alex both had bad diaper rash, especially David, and I wish I had switched to cloth diapers with him.  The more research I have done, just shows that babies rarely have an issue in the cloth diapers.  Plus, once you make the initial investment for the diapers, you don’t have to buy diapers twice a month, every month, for 3 years.  It is more laundry but I have been following several blogs about families who use cloth diapers and once you get a routine down it is very simple and not nearly as disgusting as I thought it might be.  Jon is also surprisingly on board with this,  (I think it is mostly because I showed him how much we will save over a 3 yr. period) but I am glad to have his support.  My family probably thinks I am crazy for taking on more work but I do a load of laundry just about every day as it is, so one more just doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me.  I am torn on which system to use though.  I would love input from anyone out there who is already using cloth diapers.   I like BumGenius, Smarti Pants, and Flips the most from all of my research, and now I am not completely sure how to make the final decision.  Feel free to visit the links and give me your opinion!

David and Alex are also preparing for Abigail’s arrival and for the most part it is cute.  David likes to pat my tummy and sing pirate songs to her.  Alex likes to give her kisses, listen for her heartbeat, and try to feel her kick.  However, Alex is also vying for my attention a lot more and her sleep habits have drastically changed since we found out we were having a girl.  She will let Jon put her to bed without any fuss, but if I do it, there is a battle because she wants me to sleep with her.  We are working through it, and trying to assure both of them that Abigail is not going to make us love them any less.

I will let you know how all of my nesting goes over the next few weeks 🙂  Blessings!!

The House

I have been promising pictures of the house so I am going to show it to you even though I don’t really have any room completely finished with decor.

This is our room.

This is David's room.

Alex's room

Dining room

Living room

Guest room

Toy room in the basement

Family/Media room in the basement

Upstairs family room. Jon built the shelves and the desk and I think he did a fantastic job!

Lewis, party of 5

We decided moving here and then buying a house wasn’t enough change.  So to mix things up a bit, we decided to add one more little bundle of joy to the pack!  Yes, I am pregnant!, and no, I am not crying this time 🙂  We are very very excited!  Our little gummy bear will be arriving in late December most likely.  Due date is Jan. 2 but odds of me making that are slim I think, but you never know!   David and Alex are as excited as you can expect any 2 or 3 year old to be.  Alex understands more than I thought she would and informed the dr. yesterday that there is a baby in mommies tummy.  I thought it was pretty sweet!  We had fun trying to tell the family by having Alex or David tell them they were going to be a big sister/brother.  I think Uncle Andrew is the only one who actually understood it!  For some reason when my kids get on the phone they start talking like they have marshmallows in their mouths.

Well, all in all, we feel blessed to be getting the house, and extremely blessed to have a family to fill it up!  I will, of course, keep you posted throughout this little adventure : )