Daniel

So the picture I have for Daniel on my wall (currently not on the wall, since the boys broke the frame) is from way back when he was around 3 months old or so. He's now 22 months old. So yes, I definitely need to get a new picture of him. On the same note, the pictures of Alex and Chris on my wall were taken when Daniel was a week old, but they haven't changed as much as he has.

So this morning I thought I'd try taking a few pictures of Daniel to see if any would turn out good enough for me to want to get in a larger print to put up on the wall. Here are the pictures I took:

This first one looks like he was lying down, just kind of hanging out, but he was sitting up and waving his arms. He likes having his picture taken.


I think he's cute in this one, but wish I had gotten it a little lower so his head would be all the way in it.


He decided not to really smile for this one, but man, he has huge eyes.


He looks so innocent here.


I swear we have a picture of Chris in exactly this position looking almost exactly the same. Switch the hair to blonde, and it would be Chris.


Daniel decided to walk towards the camera in this one, so it's a close-up.


I think Daniel is a cutie. But I'm not biased in any way at all. If you think any of those would work for a wall portrait, let me know. Thanks!

Some more pictures

I just thought I'd post a few more pictures today. I took some pictures of the boys at their soccer games on Saturday, but of course forgot to get the camera out at Ben's game (his team won that game, by the way, which was their first win ever. Ben says it is more fun to have his team win.). Then I have a few more pictures of Abby. She'd look really cute and I'd go to take the picture and she'd make a face or close her eyes or something. But she's still cute. :)

These first two are from Chris's game:


This one is at Alex's game:

This one was taken by Ben at Alex's game:

Here's Abby:

Why do I get the feeling that she likes making faces for the camera?

She was actually smiling in this one. She had her eyes open wider with the wide smile after I took this, but moved before I could get another picture:

Abby at 2 weeks

Abby is 2 weeks old today. That seems crazy to me. Those two weeks have just flown by.

For the first week, she was on the biliblanket, but got to come off it last Friday. That was really nice, because I could take her more places and not have to just leave her in the crib most of the time.

She's starting to stay awake a little more now than she did at first, but she's still a really good baby. She's very mellow and hardly ever cries, and if she does cry, she calms down quickly when we hold her.

It's kind of crazy to think that we were kind of expecting to have her around now, not 2 weeks ago. I'm glad we have her though and that I don't have to go through all the fun of labor and afterpains (although they weren't bad this time) right now.

Here are a few pictures I took of Abby today. They're not great, so I may try to take some better ones later. You'll probably notice that her face still looks a bit yellow from the jaundice. It's looking a lot better than it was though.





And just because I have it, this is a picture I took of Ben, Alex, and their friend Kyle at the soccer games last Saturday:

Ben's picture

Ben came home today with his class pictures and his newest individual picture taken there too. So just to share and let everyone see how handsome he's getting, I'm going to post it here. I can't believe he's almost 7 though. Time really has gone by so fast. He's very smart and is a great big brother. So without further ado, here's Ben's picture.

Abigail Ann

So Thursday was the big day. Bryce and I got to the hospital around 7:00 that morning and checked in. We had to wait about 15 minutes for someone to come take us back to our room though. Shortly after we got to the room and I was changed into the hospital gown, my doctor showed up and broke my water. The nurse was trying to find a good vein to do the I.V. while he was doing that. I did warn her that I have hard veins to find, which she agreed with after attempting two times to get in the I.V. She decided to call in someone else to try to get it in, which that nurse finally did on the second try. So yes, it took 4 tries for the I.V. And yes, my arms are still bruised.

At about 8:15, they finally got the pitosin and the penicillin started (I'm Strep B positive too, which is why they need the penicillin) and we sat back to wait. It didn't take too long before the contractions were really starting to hurt, especially the ones that were getting me nicely in my back. They started to hurt more when they had me lie on my right side for some reason, but it seemed to help things progress better to have me there. So I was very happy when around 11 (I think) I finally got the epidural. At that point, Bryce told me that he thought that if I had to choose between having him in the room or having the epidural, that I'd choose the epidural. I couldn't disagree. I love the epidural. And the bonus this time was that it only took one try to get it in, unlike the three tries each it took with Chris and with Daniel.

After the epidural was in and working nicely, the nurse checked my cervix again and I was at a 4 and "really stretchy." This was probably a little before noon.
Before the nurse left the room, she said to let her know as soon as I started feeling pressure. Shortly after she left, my doctor came back in to check on me and told me the same thing the nurse had. A little before 12:30, I decided I'd better call the nurse. She came in and checked me and I was at an 8, so she paged my doctor. He arrived, they got everything set up and had me start pushing. Two contractions later, at 12:39, Abigail was born.

Because of the antibody in my system, they had the NICU nurses on hand to immediately check her out. They would ask the doctor questions, like what the biliruben count was when they did the amnio (which he hadn't really looked at because he was more concerned with other things). My doctor told them that the Delta test had showed that on a scale of 1 to 3 with 3 meaning that the baby needed to come out immediately, she was a high 2. So it was a good thing we were getting her out.

Anyway, she looked really good and healthy. She was 6 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 3/4 inches long. She was actually only one ounce lighter than Chris was when he was born, and he was only born 10 days before his due date instead of the 4 weeks.

She's been a really good baby and doesn't cry much. She did have to go under the phototherapy lights in the hospital and came home with a biliblanket since she was DCT Positive, which when I looked it up, looks like it's the same thing as Coomb's Positive, which is what the boys all had. The funny thing is that her blood type is A- like mine, so apparently she has the anti-E antigen in her blood as well. And of course my one girl has negative blood, so she gets to have the Rhogam shot when she has kids, unless they've come up with something different by then. On the up side, it meant I didn't have to have the Rhogam shot in the hospital. :)

Here are some pictures:

This was the first picture Bryce took of her. Yes, that's me holding her.

This is the second picture ever taken of Abigail. Not a great shot.

Because she was born at 36 weeks, they had to do a carseat study to make sure that position wouldn't cut off the air at her esophagus. This is her during the study. You can see the wires from the biliblanket they had her on then and the monitors.

This one was taken in the hospital. They kept her undressed for the phototherapy, so that's why she doesn't have a shirt on.

The rest of these are pictures I've taken since we've been home. My favorite is the last one.