Chicago

A few years ago, we decided that for our tenth anniversary, we wanted to go to Hawaii. We've been saving ever since. But then God had an amazing surprise for us in the baby department and since I am currently a nursing mom, we decided to postpone Hawaii until we can go just the two of us. But we still wanted to get away. So Matt's parents were kind enough to let Ben stay with them for a few days and we spent a long weekend in Chicago. We shopped, relaxed, ate lots of good food, and spent an afternoon downtown. Traveling with a three month old is always interesting, but we felt refreshed despite the constraints of a nursing schedule.

 Elijah spent quite a bit of time in our Kozy carrier while we walked.

 Taking our own picture at Millennium Park.

 Dipping Elijah's toes in the water at the fountain in Millennium Park

 Stopping for photos in front of some beautiful rose bushes

 While we were walking to the restaurant we ate at for dinner, we saw this beach and I just had to stop and get Elijah's (and my) feet in the sand.

I bought this hat while we were shopping. I just couldn't resist! :-)

Ten Years

Ten years ago, on June 1, 2002, I said "I do" to the boy I was in love with. Ten years has made that love grow stronger and deeper and I feel so blessed to have Matt as my husband. 

Ten years ago, I sealed up my wedding dress and half jokingly said I would put it on at our ten year anniversary. So I got it out and put it on, just to see if it still fit. It was fun to see Ben's face light up and to tell him about wearing this dress when I married his daddy.

April

How is it possible that April is already over?!? We had a super busy month! 

To start things off, we attended an egg hunt with the mom's group I'm a part of. There were over two thousand eggs scattered across the grass. Ben had a great time collecting them and I was just thankful that a lot of them had stickers, erasers, and pennies inside of them instead of all being filled with candy. 

 We spent Easter with my family. The weeks leading up to Easter were busy ones, so Easter outfits were not even a consideration until the night before. My sister gave us this super cute button down onesie and dress pants set for Elijah and Ben happened to have a hand-me-down suit jacket in his closet. Matt and I, well, I decided that Easter is definitely not about dressing up. :-) I meant to get a family picture, but I forgot, so you just get the boys.

Ben and I had a little fun project and made cupcakes to take to my parents house for Easter. They are little birds nests with tinted coconut for grass, jelly beans, and of course, peeps.

 My college roommate gave us this adorable "My First Easter" outfit, and it was really too cold for him to wear it, but I had to get a picture anyway. Unfortunately, none of my pictures turned out very well, but he still looks like a little cutie!

 The weekend after Easter, Matt's parents, his sister and her two girls, and his brother and sister-in-law came for a visit. Ben enjoyed getting to play with his cousins and everyone enjoyed getting to see and meet Elijah.

 We like to pack things in, so that same weekend, my Aunt Vicki came for a visit as well. We spent the weekend going back and forth between our house and my parents' house, but it was so fun to see everyone!

Hanging out with Uncle Don and Aunt Chrissy

  

Emma and Addison loving on Elijah

Elijah just being his cute little self

 The weekend after we had lots of family in town, we moved! Talk about crazy times! We are loving our new house and after a week and a half we are finally finding some sense of normalcy and organization. Still lots to be done, but we can function. A couple nights after we moved in, I turned all the lights off and looked up to see the moon shining through the foyer windows. It just looked so pretty that I had to take a picture. So please excuse the randomness.

 Mr Ben is very much into Lego building these days. He loves to make helicopters, planes, cars and trucks and his imagination is amazing.

 Family picture in front of our new house.

 I got a new lens for my camera for my birthday and I've been playing with it a lot. I have SO much to learn about picture taking, but I'm having lots of fun photographing my little sweeties.

So that about sums up the month of April at our house. Other noteworthy events: Ben took an accidental brick to the head and got a major haircut so we could butterfly bandage the wound, I said good-bye to thirty and the wonderful year that it was and now I'm officially IN my thirties, and Elijah is growing like a weed and is a little over 13lbs now.

Thankful!

Yesterday was a beautiful day and we took full advantage and walked a couple miles to a nearby park. Ben was an amazingly helpful big brother as he helped me get things together for our time there. I kind of forgot how many things you have to take with you when you have a baby. Spring is super early this year and the air smells like blossoming trees and the pinks, purples and whites are stunning. It was a great day to be out. I feel like every day reminds me of things to be thankful for.

Thankful to be out on a walk with two sons.
Thankful that Elijah was born during the mildest winter I ever remember in Indiana
Thankful for Ben and for the sweet, smart, funny, helpful, outgoing, spirited boy he is.

Thankful to get to stay home with my boys.
Thankful to be out on a walk with Elijah in my Kozy Carrier that I had begun to wonder if I would ever get to use again.
Thankful for toothless smiles.

Thankful that this has to be short because I need to go nurse my sweet little baby.

Picture Update

Little Man is asleep and the house is a wreck. I should be cleaning instead of blogging, but procrastination is so much more fun. I seem to go in spurts of remembering to take pictures. I forget for a few days, and then remember and take 75 pictures in one day. So here are a few pictures of my boys.

 Sleeping Peacefully

 Our power was out for several hours one day last week, so I used it as a good excuse to finish off the ice cream in the freezer. It was going to go bad you know. Ben enjoyed his to the very last drop.

 We had a great time with Matt's parents last weekend when they visited.

 Eyes totally focused on Daddy

 I adore baby feet

 Love the contrast between baby hand and daddy hand

 So sweet!

 You wouldn't know it, but this is the middle of March and we were outside in shorts and T-shirts. Amazing!

 Ben loves to play tag

I went to visit my grandma this week. I love this picture of her holding the sweet sleepy Elijah.

The Birth Story

Do I get to call myself a consistent blogger if I consistently blog less and less? Haha! Now that I am the mother of two, I find myself almost never turning the computer on. I check e-mail and Facebook on the iPad, but doing any major typing on that is a pain, especially since I'm usually one handed. So, here is the update of the last month or so.

February 10th was a day that I had planned to do my major house cleaning for the week. There were at least three loads of laundry to do, the bathrooms were in desperate need of cleaning, the floors needed to be vacuumed, and I had chicken deboned in the fridge to be made into pot pie. I lay in bed that morning thinking about all I had to do and then got up to help get breakfast on the table. 10 minutes later, I was standing at the stove stirring oatmeal when all the sudden I felt like I had wet myself. I thought it was a little strange, but didn't think it was anything until five minutes later when it happened again. I was pretty sure my water had broken and realized that cleaning was not on the day's agenda after all. We hadn't even finished packing our hospital bags. So after we called my parents to let them know we would be dropping Ben off soon, we rushed around packing and trying to figure out what was clean for Ben to wear. An hour and a half later, we were headed to the hospital, nervous and excited because we knew that we would be meeting Elijah in the next 24 hours or so.

When we got to the hospital, we were told to either have a seat, or take a walk, because they didn't have any rooms available. We walked for about an hour and then a small triage room opened up. The nurse came in and checked to make sure my water had actually broken, although at this point, I was positive it had. Then they hooked me up to the monitor and we got to hear our sweet little man's heartbeat. That sound became the background noise for the next 24 hours. Unfortunately, the monitor also showed that I was pretty much not have contractions at all, so they told me they would start a Pitocin drip. We tried walking for a bit to see if that would get things started, but when there was still nothing, they began the drip. I was scared to death of the pitocin. I had heard that it made labor a lot more painful and I wasn't sure how immediate that pain would be. Meanwhile, we were still in the tiny little room because all the labor rooms were still full. We were finally able to move to a labor room about 3 hours later and by then, I was starting to get some real contractions. They were nothing like what I expected. I expected my whole stomach to get hard and be painful, but these were very low and the pain was more in my lower abdomen and legs. After being on the pitocin for over three hours, the nurse checked me and i was still only one centimeter dilated. I felt totally discouraged, but also knew at that point that an epidural was in my future. Two hours later, I was barely at three centimeters and the pain was intense. I asked for an epidural. Things got a little crazy after that with my blood pressure dropping really low and Elijah's heart rate dropping too, so they took me off pitocin for three hours. Elijah's heart rate stabilized right away, but my blood pressure took almost three hours to be consistently normal. My body wasn't doing any work during this time, but once they put me back on pitocin, I started laboring again. Only this time was so much better because I was no longer in pain. It took nine more hours, but finally, I was fully dilated and ready to go. By this point, I was beyond tired and could not stay awake. The nurse told me it was time to push and I didn't feel like I had the energy. I asked if the mirror could be brought over because I figured if I could see progress, I could feel more motivated. I could see Elijah's head before I even started pushing and I started to get really excited. And then I fell asleep. The nurse told me how I needed to push, and then between each contraction, I fell asleep. I have never been that tired in my life. But 45 minutes later, our little man came into the world and was just perfect!! Praise God for such a healthy little boy!

Recovery was a bit harder than I had anticipated. I figured I'd be tired, but I didn't count on so much pain. But even in the midst of the pain, I knew I would do it all over again in a heart beat. Elijah was a pretty lazy eater for the first couple of weeks and we had to wake him up to make him eat. It was so hard not knowing if he was getting enough, but so desperately wanting to be able to nurse him. I'm really loving getting to nurse Elijah. It's something I didn't think I would ever get to do and it has been amazing to experience. It has come with challenges too. Matt and I switched on and off with middle of the night feedings with Ben, and now it's just me. But it hasn't been as tiring as I thought it might be. I think after not sleeping well the last few months of pregnancy, I'm just grateful to be comfortable when I am asleep.

Elijah is growing like crazy now. He is up to about 10lbs and he's getting too long for several of his 0-3 month sleepers. How is that even possible? Newborn sleepers were too big when we were in the hospital. I cannot believe he's a month old already. The newborn stage goes so quickly and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I'm still so amazed that God has blessed us with two sons!! Ben is adjusting pretty well to being a big brother. He has times when he gets too rough with Elijah or when he acts out because he's having a hard time with the change, but overall, he's such a sweet big brother. I can just picture Ben doing all sorts of things to make Elijah laugh in a couple of months.

Well Elijah is awake and it's time to go get Ben from school. I wish I could say I will post more often, but life is kind of busy right now. And to add to the craziness, we just bought a house and will be moving in a little over a month. :-)