9 Days Later...

Nine days after Rebecca was baptized, Lia Elizabeth was born.  She was one day shy of three weeks early.

I got a phone call from Dr. Groom on Friday the 7th.  He informed me that my recent tests showed that I was getting preeclampsia, which was what I had with Rebecca.  He did not want me to wait until the 27th to be induced, so he called Valley Hospital and scheduled me to be there at 3:00 am on Monday the 10th.  I was nervous that the baby was not ready and might need to stay at the hospital, but I was also a little relieved.  I had a seven day window from December 20 through December 26 when Dr. Groom was going to  be out of town.  If I went into labor on my own during that time, there was a good chance the on-call doctor would have taken me down for a c-section since I had one with Rebecca.  Most doctors won't attend VBACs (vaginal births after cesareans).  I'm lucky that Dr. Groom  will, but if he was gone when I went into labor, I didn't have a choice.  With this new induction date, I didn't have to worry about that window anymore.

***Warning: Birth story to follow.  Skip to the pictures if you don't want the details.

I was at Valley at 3:00 am, which is what the hospital requested due to limited space.  Dr. Groom got stuck at Summerlin Hospital with another patient and didn't get to me until about 10:30 am.  So Kevin and I got a good nap while we waited.  I was already significantly dilated when he got there so he broke my water and started me on a low dose of pitocin.  I had just a few complications.  My blood pressure was high, so I was given something to lower it.  Also, the baby's heart rate decreased with every contraction, so I had to wear an oxygen mask.  My doctor also put some fluid back into the placenta which kept the umbilical cord from getting squeezed with every contraction.  I thought that was interesting.

I did get an epidural when I wanted it this time instead of right at the end, which is what happened with Braden.  My anesthesiologist was Paul Reynolds who happened to go to high school with Kevin.  Since he knew Kevin, he took good care of me.

Lia was born at 4:08 pm.  She weighed 5 pounds 8 ounces, and she was 17 inches long.  She was a little peanut compared to her 8+ pound brothers.  But she still wasn't nearly as small as her 2 pound 11 ounce sister Rebecca.  Rebecca even asked if Lia was smaller than her as a baby.  I told her, "Rebecca, we'll never have a baby smaller than you."

Except for having low blood sugar and having to stay in the nursery for an extra few hours until the nurses could get it to a healthy level, Lia was perfectly fine at almost three weeks early.  We got to leave the hospital with her the very next night.  I'm so grateful everything worked out the way it did.

Rebecca's Baptism

My oldest was baptized on December 1st.  My induction date was set for December 27, which isn't too close to the 1st, but I was still a little concerned that we might have to postpone the baptism due to a baby arriving.  We didn't, and everything went really well.

When we got there, no one had a key to the closet with the baptism clothing.  President Seager showed up with a key that opens every lock in the building and saved the day.

It was a stake baptism, but there were only four kids getting baptized.  The organizer asked us to find a musical number.  Rebecca's Aunt Emily sang "Baptism" and my mom accompanied her.

Congratulations, Rebecca!  We're so proud of you!

Leaving AHA

Rebecca graduated from 1st grade and William graduated from preschool at American Heritage Academy this year.  I sent Kevin to William's graduation at the park due to morning sickness, so we don't have any pictures.  But we loved his teacher Mrs. Devito, and we will miss her.

I got a few pictures of Rebecca's last day in Mrs. Walker's 1st grade class.

Here I am with the high school teacher from 2011-12.  We had a crazy year switching from BYU Independent Study courses to the AHA curriculum, but we made it work, and we had a great year.

We'll miss being a part of American Heritage Academy, but we enjoyed the time we got to spend there.

William and Spencer's 5th Birthday

William and Spencer's birthdays are about two weeks apart, so my sister and I have a combined birthday party for them every year.  This year we had their party at Pump It Up.

Here are most of the cousins watching the safety video before the party started. 

(from left to right: Hannah, Rebecca, Abbey, Braden, Kennedy, Gage, William, Ryder, Spencer, Tyler, Brooke, and Whitney.)

Here's Avery

This is my cute sister Jodi going down the slide.

And Whitney with her broken ankle wasn't supposed to be playing, but this little gymnast couldn't resist.

Birthday Boys

I love these two boys.  Happy birthday, William and Spencer!

Mother's Day

I've had a great Mother's Day this year.  All three kids came home from church with something special for me.

Rebecca:

William:

Braden:

And this morning from Kevin I got breakfast in bed and THREE candy bars.  Chocolate is always my favorite gift, and my husband knows me well.  I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day!

Request for the Tooth Fairy

Rebecca has been losing a lot of teeth lately.  She's lost eight teeth altogether, and she's working on her ninth.  Every time she loses a tooth, she writes a note to the Tooth Fairy requesting what she would like to get for her tooth:  

It says, "Pleas give me a doll a Barbi doll and four $ pleas thank you and I want to keep my tooth"

She's so specific about what she wants the Tooth Fairy to bring her.  I wish I had another note she wrote that said she wanted "ten buks."  And I'm not sure why she always wants to keep her teeth.  They're pretty gross.

This was the Tooth Fairy's response to her on the back of her note:

It says, "I usually only give one dollar per tooth, AND I usually take the tooth.  But here's two dollars and I gave your tooth to your mom.  Smilingly, The Tooth Fairy"

I thought I had kept all of her notes, but I can only find one.  They are all so funny to me.  I'll try to keep the note for the next tooth she loses.  She has a loose silver tooth, and she thinks the Tooth Fairy is going to give her $50 for it because it's silver.  We shall see about that.

#4

We're having baby #4, and it's a girl!  She's due January 1st, but my doctor usually induces me a week early to make sure he can be there when I'm in labor.  So she'll probably be arriving between Christmas and New Years.  We're all excited, but I think Rebecca is the most excited of everyone.  She can't wait to have a sister!

Book Review: Running Barefoot by Amy Harmon

I recently got a text from Amy Harmon, who I used to work with, letting me know that she is selling two new books on Amazon.com.  Each book is only $1.99 if you have a Kindle or the Kindle app, so I downloaded my free Kindle app, and then I bought her two books for less than $4.

I finshed Running Barefoot yesterday, and it is the sweetest story I've read in a long time.  I started reading it Saturday morning, and I let Amy know that I loved the beginning.  I picked it up again on Sunday and stayed up until 3:00 am to finish it because I did not want to put it down.

Running Barefoot  is a Young Adult novel written by an LDS author, which is a double plus for me.  I like to read a good story without being distracted by bad language and/or morality issues, and this book is just that.  It's set in Levan, Utah which is near Nephi, and it is about a girl named Josie who is forced to grow up way too fast.  I thought I had the ending figured out from the beginning, but after a lot of unexpected twists and turns, I ended up being dead wrong.  I give this book 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. 

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I don't do book reviews.  But I was so impressed with this book that I want to share it with my friends.  I think you all will love it just as much as I did.  It's not available at the library yet, but you can't beat $1.99!  

The other book she is selling is called Slow Dance in Purgatory.  I'm starting to read that one today.  If you end up buying either book or both, let me know what you think!

Giveaway!

My friend Jessie writes a hilarious blog, and she is doing a giveaway for a gift card to the movies. Click here for a link to her blog. (If you want to start following her, I promise you won't be disappointed.)

Toothless and Binkyless

Rebecca lost her second top tooth yesterday. She's now lost four bottom teeth and two top teeth. I was worried that she would look awkward with all of her missing teeth, but she's still just as cute as she was before (at least to me anyway).

This Dorito-faced boy is now sleeping without a binky. I never plan these things - I just couldn't find a binky for him to use one night, so he had to go to sleep without it. He did a lot better than I thought he would. He asked about it a few times the first week or two. I would just tell him that it was lost and that he didn't need a binky anyway. He doesn't ask about it at all anymore.

If I knew it would be that easy to take away from him, I would have done it a long time ago!

New Ride

I think I mentioned that our 1998 Camry died, so our plan this year was to use our savings and tax refund to buy a new (used) car. Kevin's parents had this car that they bought for Kevin's Granny Bowman who recently passed away. Their son Brandon was driving it, but he's leaving on his mission in a few months, so he decided we could have it.

It's a 1995 Chrystler Cirrus, but it only has 59,000 miles! I think Kevin's granny drove it to the grocery store and the temple, and that's it. It's always been parked outside in the sun, and the paint was in bad shape, so we fixed it up with a new paint job.

I love this car! Right now I carpool, so I have to drive the big car to school most days, but I think when I'm done carpooling, this will be my car. It looks more like me than Kevin anyway. ;)

Christmas in February!

I was going through some pictures I recently took on my camera and realized that I never posted my pictures from Christmas! I just have a few to share.

Here are the kids on Christmas Eve in their Christmas jammies from Grandma, freshly bathed and ready for bed.

William and Braden got light sabers from Santa. These boys are obsessed with Star Wars lately, and every time we passed these sweet light sabers in the Target toy section, they had to turn them on and wave them around a little before we could leave.

Rebecca loves Polly Pockets and Disney Princess Polly Pockets, so she got a castle for all of her Polly Pockets for Christmas.

Christmas was just okay for us in 2011. Kevin had to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, so I think that's why I never posted anything here about the holiday. The kids and I did a lot of Christmassy things together like visit lighted neighborhoods and The Festival of Lights at the Las Vegas Speedway, but it wasn't the same without Kevin. We're hoping he's around for more of the holiday this year!