Grandma Peggy and Papa Paul joined us last weekend! Then, my brother and his family and my mother and father came up on Sunday for Caroline’s blessing in church. None of these picture are very great (and I’m sad I didn’t get any pictures of my brother or his wife or Grandpa S with Caroline either!) but we were too busy enjoying each others’ company and holding that cute baby to take pictures, I suppose.
Paul was very excited to host a “party” for our Friday Fun Night with Grandma and Papa. It was full of made-up games that he enjoyed inventing for us. Here is one of them.
Blessing Day Pictures
This picture is very out of focus but I love Paul’s ear to ear smile, so I had to include it!
(I promise, we will get real family pictures in the next few months.)
Paul saw me warming the bottle and asked, “But how are you going to get that back in to you to feed her?” So I had to let him give her her first bottle.
Reading bedtime stories with Grandma Peggy and Papa Paul.
Caroline didn’t cry when she was born. She went from swimming in amniotic fluid to completely born in twenty minutes, apparently gulping lots of fluid in the process.
They gave her to me immediately. My only thought was that she was pink and looked well. But she didn’t cry. Paul didn’t cry either, but this was a bit different. Something seemed odd.
After just a few moments, the nurses took her back from me. They wanted her to cry, so they gave her a shot she needed, gave her a bath, and proceeded to give her a vigorous rubdown. She had her eyes wide open, but she did not make a sound. I was stuck on the delivery table getting stitched up and I couldn’t see her, but Ryan stood by her. I remember starting to get a bit concerned after about ten minutes or so of this.
Shortly, Ryan and the nurses left with her “for a little while” to take her to the special care nursery where she could get further attention.
I can’t recall thinking much other than “a little while” isn’t very long.
I was still running on adrenaline. When I was discharged from Labor and Delivery we went straight to the special care nursery. Because she was born so quickly, Caroline had developed TTN (Transient Tachynea of the Newborn) which meant that she had liquid in her lungs and as a result was breathing quick shallow breaths.
Because I’d been up more than 24 hours at this point (well, except for the brief, contraction-filled two hours I’d had at home), I was incredibly the first day. The three days Caroline spent in the Special Care Nursery were rather draining on me; I like to know what is happening and I felt pretty out of control for my little girl’s sake. Anyway, let’s not dwell on those days. You’ll notice I didn’t take many pictures. The nurses were great and Caroline is fine: there are no long-term issues from TTN.
Caroline came home on her third morning.
Paul came with Grandma and Grandpa (where he stayed Friday night to Saturday) and he was so excited to finally meet her. He’d seen her through the nursery window. “That’s my sister!” he said with pride. When she and he were finally together, he was so excited to read her a story.
Paul is a great big brother. He’s feeling the stress of new rules and less attention, but overall, he seems quite pleased to be a big brother now!
This post is evidence that I must update my blog more often! But since I’m now 2.5 weeks away from my due date (!!) I really just feel this urge to get up to date…so I can hopefully soon move on to newborn pictures.
Our family Christmas present this year was a new patio door for our kitchen. We ordered it the first week of November. After more than a few hiccups, it was finally installed the last week or so of January! Here it is!
It does not stick when we try to open it! It’s not rotten on the outside! It doesn’t leak when it rains! It’s a sliding door instead of a swing open door, so there is more room in the kitchen! In general, I think we’ll like it very much. Ryan applied primer to the trim: we still need to paint the trim and figure out curtains at some point before the Western setting sun gets too irritating come this summer.
And then it was my birthday. Birthdays are very much NOT a big deal for me. My friends treated me to a baby shower a few days before, and it was so fun to get excited for a newborn baby GIRL!
Here are some pictures of Paul making a birthday cake for me with his grandma!
And then we ordered a rocking/recliner chair for the baby’s room. We got it the week after my birthday (after a bit of an issue: why did we have so many issues with delivery people in January?!).
And then we come to the fact that I’m now 37.5 weeks pregnant. The count down is on! As of two weekends ago, we had a disaster area in the room formerly known as my “office.” I was in tears bawling because I was less than a month from having a baby but WE DIDN’T HAVE A NURSERY READY! Ryan talked me down off the edge of break down and we got busy painting. I did the walls; Ryan did the trim. I think it turned out very nice! We intended to have a grayish blue, but it turned out far more blue than we anticipated. With the dark brown and light pink accents we’re anticipating for the curtains (Ryan says he has an idea what we should do; good, because I am not a curtain person), it should look just right for our baby girl.
Now that the nursery is set up and I’ve officially reached “full term,” I personally am feeling rather emotional. I am incredibly excited to meet my girl. And I am so bored with being pregnant: feeling miserable, feeling exhausted and in pain, waddling when I try to walk, grimacing when I stand up, having to pee every 60 minutes, and waking up to pain as I try to move in the bed at night. Not to mention not sleeping well at night overall.
That said, I feel panic whenever I realize that I could give birth tonight or tomorrow. I dread spending time in the hospital. I dread the pain of childbirth, while at the same time I dread the fact that I may end up with medication like an epidural or a Cesarean against my wishes. I panic at the thought of having a newborn to bring home this weekend. I dread the lack of privacy in my own home. (Don’t get me wrong: while I”m glad to be near close friends and family and I’m excited to share my baby, I’m still a bit in a panic about how life will go on with visitors. I am a private person!). Paul will lose the one-on-one time we’ve been enjoying so much lately. I’ll be so exhausted from never sleeping. I’ll have 10 or more diapers to change a day. I’ll have a human being depending on my body to provide nourishment every hour or two (for an hour!). I’ll have two children to get ready to go out to whatever we have to go to — even the drop off for preschool is going to be quite the bother, since I’ll have to take Caroline in with me each time! I can’t handle another child yet! I should be so happy to have the time to clean my house right now.
Except I can’t bring myself to do the basics: clean my house (it needs it!), go to the gym to exercise (my last chance!), cook a fantastic creative dinner (I have time!).
So I’m torn between feeling exhausted and bored and overwhelmed and guilty and excited and delighted and just plain tired.
Photo at 37.5 weeks.
Incidentally, I’ve been collecting a few things others should NOT say to a nine-months pregnant woman. Any others you can think of that really got on your nerves?
“I see your third nipple!” (This from the nurse, referring to my belly button poking through my shirt. Great. Thanks. Can I kill you now?)
“You look far too happy to be about to have a baby!” (Oh, how I hate you for saying that! I feel so miserable I can’t even begin to express it. Maybe in public I really try to not be a whiner? Ever thought of that?)
“My, that went fast!” (I’m quite tired of hearing this too. No, it didn’t. It’s been 37 weeks. And I’m tired of it.)
“Oh, I didn’t know you were pregnant!” (I can’t blame people on this one if they haven’t seen me in a while. But REALLY? A bit annoying to hear since I obviously have a baby in my stomach at this point.)
“You’re about to pop!” (I’m not a balloon. And while I wish it were true that the end was near, it really could be 2.5 more weeks! Which seems like an eternity at this point.)
“I was 10 days overdue with my third…” (Not what I want to think about.)
Something I love to hear:
“You look fantastic!” (No other comment necessary from giver of this comment. I don’t feel fantastic, but I’d love to pretend I look it!)
One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to update this page with family pictures in the same month in which the activities took place, starting with Christmas 2011. I especially want to be better since I posted 50+ pictures a month of newborn Paul and I want Caroline to feel she’s just as special a newborn.
I intended to post these pictures the last week of December. And yet, here I am well in to the new year, waiting for Paul to go to preschool to do so.
At any rate, Christmas was wonderful this year. I baked cookies and fudge to enjoy for a month and to give away to neighbors. Paul was incredibly excited to countdown until Christmas and he enjoyed the activities we did.
Before Christmas, I was able to attend Paul’s preschool holiday party. I haven’t attended any of his parties before so it was fun to be there to help and take pictures, etc. This was a rather chaotic party; I wonder if preschool is always like this? At any rate, they had some carnival games, a few craft projects, and then a gym floor covered in bath sponges that were called “snowballs.” They were encouraged to have a snowball fight. Put 20 kids aged 3 and 4 in a room and tell them to have a snowball fight? Um… Paul reacted much as I would have. He threw a “snowball,” then watched people for a while. Then threw another. It was a bit intense.
Here are some of the best pictures of my little guy. The full album of the preschool is on flickr with a guest pass.
Reindeer bowling
He's proud he knocked some bowling pins down.
We are low-key about presents (I do not want to raise a spoiled or greedy child who says “I want that!” for every toy he sees). I gave him a (plastic) kids microscope, books (which is what he asked for), and an inflatable globe, among some other smaller things. Grandpa Sorenson gave us a book of silly stories that he wrote and Grandma gave him a Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle. Grandma Peggy sent Trio blocks, which along with our Legos, have given me lots of time as Paul slips downstairs to create yet something else. (YES!)
We enjoyed the true spirit of Christmas. At the beginning of the month, he loved selecting some clothes for a “poor boy” from the library’s giving tree and talked for days about the boy who was too poor to get his own clothes. (He was particularly excited because the boy was FOUR just like he is so he knew just what the boy would like.) He loved selecting gifts for his cousins (we do a family gift rotation among my siblings). He loved the excitement of wrapped presents and waiting for them. I don’t think he was tempted to open them, he just loved shaking them and counting them and wondering. He was fascinated by the mystery of magical Santa (although *cough* the reindeer forgot to eat the reindeer food that Paul left on the front step. How’d I know he’d check that FIRST?! even before looking under the tree?).
And most importantly, Christmas was, for our family, about the true meaning of the season, the birth of our Savior. I love having Christmas on Sunday, because then church reinforced the real meaning of the season. I wish we had services every Christmas morning, but of course, that’s not how it works.
The not-so-materialistic goals we have worked well this year: we got to church at 10:30 and someone asked him what he got for Christmas.
“Ugh….I forgot.” he responded. (But he did remember to say that the reindeer forgot to eat the reindeer food he left for them…). So, at any rate, I know Christmas for Paul was not about the presents. Mission accomplished!
We also got to spend the afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa and Paul’s Sorenson cousins. It was lots of fun to watch the kids playing, and it was great to gather with family on a special day.
I’m now two weeks late with this. And I feel we’re well in to the Christmas season. But here are some pictures of the cousins having a blast swimming with Grandma on Thanksgiving. Somehow, I didn’t get a picture of the fabulous feast that my Mom created! We visited pretty much all day and Paul loved having so much time with his cousins, Daniela and Jessica (and baby Noah).
Browse six pictures (larger) at Flikr with a guest pass here. To see all the photos we have online, be my friend on flickr (for free). My email on flickr is rebecca[at]reid-family[dot]org.
Paul has been playing “birthday” with imaginary friends for months. He will stir up a bunch of toys in a bowl with a spoon to make a “cake,” then he’ll spread out a blanket, wrap a toy in another blanket (to be the present), and then invite me to celebrate with him. His imaginary friends regularly turned two or maybe 10, and I have had dozens of birthdays since my last special day in January.
So needless to say, I was rather excited to help him celebrate his real special day. Although we don’t plan on having a friends birthday party every year, this was definitely a year to plan something fun.
I was told that a theme is not necessary, but I chose one anyway. Paul loves the concept of Super Why!, who is a superhero for preschoolers because he can read. Besides, Paul has learned how to read, so playing on the theme of reading, alphabet, and phonics was just what he liked. My games were rather loosely based on the show — but it didn’t really matter, because Paul went around for days telling everyone he was Super Paul because he knew how to read. That was the idea in my mind.
A few fun things about planning a party with a kid who is really excited: As I began making lists, he was jumping around the room.
“Can we play Duck Duck Goose?! Don’t forget we need decorations! I need a party hat!”
(He insisted on the party hat. He wore it for about 10 seconds and then told me he didn’t want a party hat. Sigh.)
Below, I have a video that has collected still shots from the birthday party, plus us singing to him as well as still shots from the rest of the birthday party. If you’d rather, you can browse the Flickr collection of photos here.
Paul has accepted that the baby will not be a monkey. A few times in the past week, he has said he hopes for a sister. Yesterday, he said he hopes for a brother. But a sister it is!
Baby is 100% normal in the measurements and has plenty of space to move around. I was about 19 weeks when I had the ultrasound yesterday and baby was even a few days larger than 19 weeks. So, despite the fact that I’m still wearing normal clothes and everyone (and I mean everyone) thinks I’m very small for being that far along in pregnancy, no worries — baby is perfect.
(The nurse that took my blood pressure even thought I was 9 weeks pregnant. I said, “no, 19 weeks.” She was shocked.)
Paul took this picture of me last week (at 18 weeks.)
Well, about these girls. They came as they were, unique, wonderful spirits and my blessing was to just unwrap the package to see who they were and to help guide them into who they could be. I didn’t ever feel like I had to mold them or make them into somebody different than who they were because they were so great when they came. It was a fun discovery to learn who they were. They are different, different people, but they are delightful fun daughters and I always enjoyed our children.
Julie B. Beck on her two daughters
I want to say that about my own children. I never want my son to think I don’t appreciate his own personality. I don’t want him to think that I expect him to be something he is not. That would be a painful thing, to feel like a disappointment. I don’t want my son to feel he disappoints me for being himself.
This means I need to never talk about his faults, or things I disapprove of, in front other people. I need to avoid criticism when he does things differently than I would do them. I need to make sure I don’t manipulate him into doing something I want, when his personality would do something differently. I need to always remember that he came to me a precious spirit, with his own personality. He will make choices different from those that I’d make, but that’s a part of his precious personality.
As his mother, I can help guide him into who he can be. I can help him discover his potential.
I don’t need to mold him: I need to unwrap him.
To listen to the entire conversation between Sheri Dew and Julie B. Beck and her two daughters, visit Mormon Channel.
This picture is very out of focus but I love Paul’s ear to ear smile, so I had to include it!
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