Bride

My sister is about to be a bride in 2 weeks. This week we went and took some bridal pictures of her. She looked beautiful.

1 month

Kate is 1 month old today. I can't believe it has already been that long. It seems the more children you have the faster time goes. I feel so lucky to have her in my life. To have 2 healthy kids is a real blessing. Kate at one month: Is a pretty content well mannered baby. She doesn't cry too much unless she is tired or hungry. She sleep pretty good at night. She wakes up usually about twice to eat and then goes right back to sleep. Actually I have to work hard for her to get a full feeding before putting her back down. Right now she is having a hard time falling asleep to go to bed initially. Once she is fast asleep she sleeps very well.  I am trying to follow a sleep plan from the book "Baby Wise" which tells me to put her down awake and let her fall asleep by her self. She does this pretty well during the day but when it is time for bed she cries and cries. I let her cry for about 10 minutes at a time before going to soothe her. After about an hour she still isn't asleep I rock her to sleep and then put her down. The book discourages this but I think that maybe is too young to cry to sleep. She has slept in her crib since we got home from the hospital.  This is much different from Alyssa who still sleeps in our bed most of the time (we will work on that at some point).  She eats about every 2 1/2-3 hours during the day. She looks like she is growing to me although I don't know how much she weighs. At 2 weeks she was 7 lbs 5 oz (almost back to birth weight). She doesn't like tummy time but I try and put her on her tummy every time she is awake. I swear yesterday she smiled when I was playing with her. She is darling and I am in love. Alyssa is in love with her as well. She kisses her, hugs her, holds her a lot, puts her binky in when she cries, crawls in her crib when we wake her up to say good morning.
The hardest part of having a second child so far is dealing with the disobedience of the older child. Alyssa seems more defiant since Kate was born. This maybe not be the case, but I am home full time right now and so it seems like she never listens to what I ask her to do. We have created a star chart to encourage good behavior. The days that we have things planned like library class, gymnastics class she seems to behave better. We are all use to more structure than we have now and I think this is an adjustment for us. I try and plan things to do everyday. I am home for 9 weeks and then will go back to work part time. Here are some pictures.

one month picture #1

Alyssa feels way to comfortable holding Kate. she will pick her up and move her around. She has even tried to pick her up out of her swing

one month picture #2

New Job

We are so so excited for Russ!!! Russ recently was offered and accepted a new job with Navitaire. He starts on April 16th. I am very excited for him. This job is exactly the field he wanted to go into. This is a job that he would have sought out after he received an MBA. For him to get this job now is amazing and we are very excited! Navitaire provides reservation systems for travel industry customers and airlines to use to book travel. Russ's job is the Sr. Product Manager over Travel commerce. Travel commerce is the an online platform for customers to book hotel, car and excursions after they purchase their airline tickets.  He will work with airlines all over the world. Some of the current clients include Azul, Monarch airlines, Ryanair, Jetstar and Jazzera airlines. His office is in SLC but the company has other offices in Austin, London, Manila, Minneapolis, Prague,  and Sydney.  This application and interview process was very tedious and took a very long time. He applied in December and was offered the job in March. He had 6 different interviews. This is a very exciting move for him and I know he will do great.

Wishing for spring

I am dying for spring. Since having a newborn I don't want to go to many public places, the outdoors is the best option. We have had a few nice days but even when it has been a little colder we are still going to the park and on walks. I have a stroller that has a weather shield so I really can go out in any weather and the kids will be warm. The other day we played in the sandbox. I love that we made a sandbox in our backyard, it is one of my favorite features of our yard.  Today it is snowing, that is Utah weather for you. :(

This is what Kate did while we played.

3

Alyssa turned 3 on March 9th. We had a pink princess party. She was very insistant that she wanted this type of party. She told me for months and specifically that she wanted a pink princess cake. We had some close friends and family come over for the princess party. I orded a cake from the same lady who did her cake last year. It turned out darling. We also tried to send off floating lanterns but they didn't really work. It may have been too windy. We saved a few and are going to try and do them again. We had one the went as high as a roof and then got caught by the wind and ended up landing in someones bushes. We ran and got it before it caught their bushes on fire! Alyssa got a lot of great gifts. Now she keeps telling me that on her next birthday she will be 4.

I snapped a few pictures of Kate yesterday. She was hungry so I couldn't get to many but here are a few that I thought were cute. She is so tiny. I know this stage doesn't last long and I am trying to soak up her as much as I can.

Kate's birth story

For those who are interested here is Kate's birth story.
I was scheduled to be induced on Friday Feb 24th. I choose this day so we could capitalize on Russ's time off by using the weekend. I desperately wanted to go into labor before that though. I was trying everything in the book to get labor started. Sadly nothing was progressing. Until my 39 week apt I was dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced. This was on Wed the 22nd. I had my membranes stripped and was hopping for something to happen that day or the next. Nothing happened until Thursday night I started having a lot of braxton hix contractions. Nothing was regular but I went on a long walk and went to bed. The hospital was going to call me in the morning to let me know what time to come in. I woke up on friday morning at 6 am with a painful contraction. They were regular at 6 minutes apart. The hospital called and told me to be there at 9 am. By then I was sure I was already in labor. We got to the hospital at 9 they hooked me up to the monitor and after about an hour my contractions were 5 minutes apart. They were painful but nothing I couldn't handle. They broke my water and there was meconium in it so respiratory had to be there for delivery. The nurse told me if I wanted an epidural I should get it sooner than later because it was a busy day. I decided to get it then even though it wasn't too bad at that point. I got the epidural but it was too strong and I started to get numb up my chest, I got light headed and my blood pressure dropped to 84/40. They gave me some IV fluid and epinephrine and that stabilized my blood pressure. I was anxious about the numbness and was focusing on not freaking out. They turned my epidural off for about an hour. At that point I was a 5. I was nervous to have them turn it back on but they did on the lowest dose. About 30 minutes later I could feel the contractions again. I asked the nurse if we could turn the epidural up a bit. She said no I think you are ready to deliver. I said there is no way I was only a 5 30 minutes ago. She checked me and I was an 8. She said give 2 pushes are you will be there. She checked again 1 minute later and I was a 10 and ready to go. This was so weird to me since I was in labor with Alyssa for 15 hours and it took me forever to progress. They called the Dr and I was ready to start pushing. The nurse said you will probably push for 15 minutes max, again I pushed for 3 hours with Alyssa. She was wrong that time. I ended up pushing for 45 long hard minutes. In the end Kate was posterior (she was face up instead of face down) This makes it much more difficult to deliver. She was born healthy and didn't have any respiratory problems. She has a head of dark curly brown beautiful hair. I am so grateful to have her and love her so much. So glad that she is here and not in me any more =)

getting vitals checked

right after getting cleaned up