Elena Arrives in the World

Our kids are much more patriotic than we are. Oskar was born on the Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and Ellie was born on Veteran's Day. I mostly appreciate that Ellie knows I'm weird and appreciate fun number things. Oskar is 12-7-12 and Ellie is 11-11-15. That was considerate. Even more considerate was the fact that she cut 2 weeks off my pregnancy. Downside is that I don't have a 9 month pregnancy picture with her. I think I'll survive.

This labor and delivery was not at all like I had with Oskar. This one started with my water breaking at about 2:00 AM. I'm not going to go into details here, but I will say it was every bit as terrible and awkward as I thought it would be. We got Oskar up and we all went to the hospital. Because it was after hours we had to enter through Emergency. I am so glad we live in a community where the Emergency room is boring had only one dude waiting in it. It was so nice and quiet and no one cared that I had a beach towel wrapped around my waist.

She gave us the cute little cry when she was born that we didn't get from Oskar (he came out screaming louder than most adults). She has since found her voice and has quite a set of lungs.

I think it was the strain of lifting Oskar into a cart at Target that instigated all this. He was being extremely uncooperative and there was quite a bit of unusual pain that I noticed after I finally got him where he wanted to be. On that note- anyone want a 3 year old who doesn't listen to anyone ever? No takers? Strange.

He's got life all figured out.

Labor and delivery went fine. MUCH less pain than last time- they had my epidural on full blast apparently. This made it extremely difficult to walk and stand afterward though and I didn't regain feeling in my right leg for probably a good four hours. Last time I was able to stand and shower right after delivery. This time there were multiple almost falls due to my stubbornness in accepting that I was not able to stand at the time. Another highlight is that there was no pre-delivery vomiting! Just one post delivery episode that subsided quickly. Dan now understands that when I tell him to get me the garbage I am not joking around. The hospital stay was pretty good. Had just the right amount of visitors and overall the nurses and doctors were delightful. I especially liked my anesthesiologist.

Absolutely crushing tummy time.

The beginning days of having a child always trick you into thinking you have it all under control. No one tells you that the first few days home are the easy part. New born babies sleep A LOT and even Elena, who ate a ton, didn't eat that much then. It's a couple weeks in  that you find yourself wanting to punch walls. Our walls are plaster so I'm trying to avoid this.

Sometimes she's awake.

Sometimes sh'es very awake.

Ellie has decided that she needs to eat the most food. I usually nurse her for about an hour and then give her 2 ounces of formula. This cycle occurs about every 4 hours. Sometimes we have a very special night (of course) and we do nursing, formula, diaper change, nursing, formula. This fun experience takes about 3 or 4 hours. Not my favorite.

I made her hold her own bottle. I'm sick of feeding her.
(Don't yell at me- I know she is not old enough to hold her own bottle, I hold it for her to be sure she's eating properly)

Oskar is excelling at potty training. This makes us all very happy.

3 years old! Can you believe it?

Oskar had a wonderful birthday party a couple weekends ago. After the straight up neglect and laziness that resulted in having leftover funeral cupcakes for his 2nd birthday (they were delicious by the way) we went all out and got him a Paw Patrol cake for his 3rd. He loved it. We also got him a present this year too, even though he has a billion toys. We got him a violin. He was pretty pleased.

Some day we are going to convince him that you don't need to take off your pants when you get home.

Best day ever.