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Life with a new baby

Things are going well so far with the new little baby. Her name is Amy Lauren. I had my list of names. Then Sunday night I looked through my paf file and the baby name book to find anything. A friend thought up Lauren as a more modern version of Laura, which I liked, but Aaron didn't. I handed my list over to Aaron and told him to pick something. He came up with Amy Lauren. Since baby was 9 days old with no name, I said "sure, sounds nice to me". That's our baby's special naming story:)

My new Pollyanna board. (This is the newer one. Some other time I'll take a pic of the 94 year old one.)


Emily


Karen and snails

Picture time!

(And no, we don't have a name.)




Okay, second baby isn't the current one. Do you know which kid she is?







I have to go take pictures of the other two kids now.

The birth story

It's not long and I'm awake, so I figured I'd type it all up now. I woke up at 6 am this morning with contractions I couldn't sleep through. Aaron got up to go to work, so I decided I better time these contractions and find out whether he should go to work or not. They were 20 seconds about 5-10 minutes apart and were bad enough to bother me a lot. I called the midwife who told me she'd be on her way. Aaron stayed home to clean. Midwife came at about 8:45 and started setting everything up. Sometime later she decided to check my progress. Baby was crowning, so no need to check anything. I hopped in the pool that had barely enough water in it. It felt great, but it slowed things down. (I didn't mind sitting there.) The bag of waters just wasn't breaking, so midwife broke it. Next contraction I pushed the baby all the way out. Then we sat around. Cut the cord. Gave baby to Aaron. Sat around. Finally I got out to go to the bed to push out the placenta, but while I was standing getting dried off it fell out. So, that was it. Oh, baby arrived at 10:58am. She weighs 8 pounds, and measures 21 inches long. She's absolutely beautiful.

Activities

Last week the kids finished swimming lessons. Caitlyn passed level 5, Emily passed 3, and Eric 2. Karen is still in level one. They had fun and now are off to doing new activities. Eric has started gymnastics and is very enthusiastic about rolling around and jumping and such. He's having great fun. The big girls started horse riding lessons today. They learned about horse safety, care, putting on the gear, and some riding. They enjoyed it, but it wasn't the picnic they thought it would be. Now Caitlyn is begging for more and more horses! We'll see at the end of summer whether she'd rather do horses or swim team. Sorry we can't do everything!

Not much else going on around here. I'm just trying to clean a little here and there. Maybe I'll have a baby sometime.

What's up

We've mostly just been hanging out lately. Saturday Caitlyn and I had our unplanned Big Adventure. We drove to Sandy as usual for her viola lessons. We left at 9:30am in order to be at lessons at 10:30am. After lessons we immediately drove the opposite direction to get home before I needed to use the toilet. (I need to go every hour, so going 2 1/2 is quite the stretch.) We were driving along on I-80 when we reached a stand-still just before SR201 merges onto I-80. I stopped and parked the van. It was about 11:30am. Then, we got to go very slowly. Finally we made it to the U-turn at 1:30pm. We were not allowed around the mountain. So, we drove towards I-15, stopping in Taylorsville for lunch, a much needed run to the restroom, and to get some more gas. Then, we headed south on I-15 to SR73 in Lehi. Then, we moved slowly through the traffice east until we had passed Eagle Mountain. Then, we were free. (Lucky we weren't heading East- I think all the traffic from Tooele, Grantsville, and Wendover was driving on SR73.) We finally made it home a little after 4pm. We normally arrive home by noon. I looked up the incident on ksl. Apparently there was a crash with a truck and a fedex truck with 3 trailors- one of them was carrying gun powder and was periodically blasting. Glad I didn't drive by it, but wish the accident had not happened or that there was some quicker alternate route to Tooele. (I was not going over the mountain pass. I hear there is a one lane road on the side of the cliff. No way on a day when there are too many vehicles going up there.)

The kids are doing swimming lessons now. They were having fun and such, but Karen has come down with illness tonight, so she won't be swimming. Eric starts gymnastics on Wednesday and is excited.

The weather lately is nice, but getting old. Nearly every afternoon we get thunderstorms. It is good for the water and the temperatures. I just kinda wish it was a tad bit warmer.

Events of the day

This morning Emily got her new glasses. She put them on and everything was clear! Her vision is now 20/200. It was 20/60 with her old glasses. Later the kids and I elicited help from the neighbor with bikes. Karen has a little bike with training wheels that she can sort of ride. Eric's training wheels were all bent and broken, so they were removed. Eric now rides without training wheels and is happy for the freedom. Emily and Caitlyn have their bikes all fixed so that they can ride too. The neighbor also removed our metal pole where the mailbox used to be. Emily had her dance dress rehearsal. Benjamin can now say "momma", "no", "yes", cacker" (cracker), and tries to imitate many other words.

I have the pictures from the play to share:






Here's Caitlyn's flower crown that she picked the flowers for and I made. Then it went bad an hour later. The flowers were on their way to death in the garden anyway.