Bubble Head

Here's the laugh I got last night from the boys having a bit too much fun with the bath bubbles....

2 1/2 Weeks

Life is returning to a somewhat normal state now! I actually have made several outings by myself with my two children and PRASIE THE LORD the outings have been uneventful and easy! The first trip to WalMart was a big obstacle crossing for me. I had imagined trying to juggle a potty-training toddler and a newborn in Wally-World would be a nightmare, but it actually wasn't much different than before....at least this time!! :)

Update on our sweet baby girl: Ella is simply wonderful. She is a "by the book" baby and eats every 3-4 hours. She actually did a 5 HOUR stretch the other day! She sleeps wonderfully and has yet to mix up her days and nights. Her overall personality is pretty chilled. I can tell, like Aaron was, she will thrive on a consistant schedule. Just yesterday, we got "off" a little bit and I could tell by the end of the day that she was overstimulated and a bit cranky. With a schedule of feeding her, letting her have some "awake time", then falling asleep for a couple hours, she seems perfectly content with life!
At last week's Doctor's appointment, she was 9lbs 1oz (just 3oz shy of her birth weight) and grew 1/2 inch since her birth.

Me: It's one thing to be getting up every 3 hours at night to nurse when you are perfectly healthy...it's another thing to be doing that while trying to recover from your tummy being cut open! :)
Now that I am able to successfully get out of bed without pain, life has been much easier! I no longer need a nap, so this has been helpful in using Aaron's naptime to catch up on any church work, housework or phone calls. Since Ella's birth, I've lost 32 out of the 38 pregnancy pounds, and I'm very happy about that. My ankle bones have surfaced once again and my wedding ring is back on my finger! YAY for no more swelling! I'm still really itching for that 6 week "green light" for exersise! Ah, I want to swim laps and run and attempt to do a sit up SO BAD.... and....*ahem* yes, that too! :)

Life as a family of 4? It's really fun! I know how fast time flies with kids so I am doing my best to enjoy every moment.

Ella Claire

Ella is sleeping contently in her swing and sweet Thomas is putting Aaron to bed.
We are home. Ahhh...it feels absolutely wonderful to be home.

Ella Claire...my daughter is finally here. The one word I can find to describe how I feel is: complete. My family feels so complete now! She fits perfectly with us and the transition has been incredibly easy. Aaron is an adoring brother and has shown nothing but pure affection, gentleness and tenderness. He always wants to hold her and any time she wimpers or even make the slightest noise, he rushes to her side and makes sure she is OK. I get so emotional, because it couldn't be better....
Thomas is amazing. Watching him hold Ella in his strong arms just melts my heart. He uses the same "love-names" for her and he does for me and I just MELT! (Sugar Bear, Sugar Baby, etc...) He dotes on her constantly and I can already see his fatherly protection beginning to form. She is amazingly blessed to have such an incredible Daddy. ....ahhh! I'm crying already!

The C-Section went smoothly on Friday. There was such peace that morning. Thank you so much for your prayers for us.... We went in, got hooked up and prepped and before I knew it, I was feeling the doctor pull a small life out of me! That first day went well. Pain pills helped tremendously. Friday night was a little more rough due to some catheter complications, but that worked out and I was able to rest. Saturday morning they took out the catheter and IV and I made that first painful walk. Overall, the recovery was good. Not as easy as my first pregnancy/delivery, but it could've been worse. I had alot of what the nurses referred to as "gas pain". I think that term does not give NEAR as much credit to the pain that it actually was. They were sharp searing pains in my shoulder and excruciating cramps in my abdomen that would follow with animal-like sounds rumbling in my stomach. "Gas pain" sounded so...whatever....but, whoo...they were painful! I also had a mysterious fever that would spike up to 102 a few times over a 24-hour period accompanied with chills and uncontrollable shaking! Sunday night, it was getting so intense, I was really having to fight off fear of it being something other that normal recovery stuff. Pastor Richard and Thomas prayed stongly over my body and rebuked any scheme of the enemy that would try to enter in. They prayed and prayed in the Spirit boldly and confidently and sure enough, the fever broke an hour later and never came back.
That last night at the hospital (Sunday) I slept wonderfully. Ella nursed every 2-3 hours so I was only awake twice for her feedings.

Thank you all so much for your love and support! We feel blessed to have such amazing friends and family that love us and are always available for us.

PS-I'm so excited for my sweet friends that will be holding their bundles of joy in the next couple weeks!! Jennifer, Katy, Brooke...you sweet girls are going to be such amazing Mamas...again! :)

8 hours away...

I have just a few minutes to blog before needing to get to bed. Thomas is finishing up some work on his laptop for the weekend and we are both hoping to be in bed by 10:15 for some much needed rest before THE BIG DAY tomorrow!

Today was fun, busy and exciting, yet very peaceful.
Aaron and I headed out of the house at 10am, stopped by Smoothie King for my beloved Pineapple Surf smoothie, picked up dry cleaning, gassed up vehicle and hit Wal-Mart for some final items. After lunch, we played the Wii together before he went down for his nap from 2-4. I used those couple hours to straighten up the house, do laundry and mop. Thomas and I went to the hospital at 4:30 to pre-admit and dropped Aaron off at my mom's house at 7:00. Now....I'm packed. The house is clean. Laundry done. And I am getting sleepy.
Aaron was just precious today. He would randomly come up to me and tell me "Mama, I love you SOOOO much", then grin and go back to whatever he was doing. Also, when I would casually ask him to do something, he would reply, "Yes Ma'am!!" Ahhh...sweet music to my ears. The months of prompting this reply have finally begun to pay off. We talked about seeing Baby Ella tomorrow and he informed me how he was going to "give her kisses and hugs and gentle hands." Too sweet.

We go in to Abilene Regional tomorrow morning at 5:30am and the C-Section is scheduled to begin at 7:30. My doctor told me that things should stay as scheduled and Ella will be shown off by Daddy in the nursery by around 8 or 8:15! I'll be back in my room by 8:30 or 9:00. They say the 2nd C-Section is alot easier and quicker recovery than the first, so I am happy about that. Really, the first one was a breeze...so maybe this will be even better!

I love visitors so please come see us if you want! Most likely, I will be pretty groggy that morning/early afternoon...so don't mind me if I start talking funny or telling you random things. Morphine...good stuff! :)
My doctor also said that we should be able to go home on Sunday afternoon.

Aaron is being well taken care of while we are in the hospital. He will be staying with his grandparents and I know they will keep him very busy and happy....and spoiled! :)

Feel free to call mine or Thomas' phone...we will have them on silent if we are busy or sleeping. I'll try to have him send out a mass text or FB status tomorrow with her details! Any bets?? :)

Goodnight! Thanks for all your prayers and support. Tomorrow I will be holding my sweet baby girl!!!!!!

Love you.

potty training updates.

I figured it out. Boys are just plain l-a-z-y! :)
Every mom of boys that I know have told me, "Wait until they are 3 years old...it will be MUCH easier!" Of course, I dig my heels in and am adamant about my son being out of diapers before sister bear arrives. But, I can say with relief that the past 3 days have been wonderful dry pull-up days!!

What do I do? NOTHING!! When we are home, the pull-ups come off and my son runs around the house with a shirt on. That's it! The UPS delivery man was caught off guard when Aaron went to the door to receive a package with his twig and berries exposed. I just smiled, thanked him and informed him that "We're potty-training." :)

Without the security of a diaper or pull-up, Aaron will run to the bathroom without needing to be reminded by a timer or by me! Oh my...it's been SO nice. Last week I was in tears and at my wits end with that boy. He simply did not care. He would walk around with a wet pull-up on all day until it leaked and not have a care in the world about it. I tried using normal big-boy underwear, but he still would wet those and then I would have extra laundry to do. No time for that!!

So today, I am still in my pj's and my son is happily playing with his trains...bottomless. He has pee-peed consistantly all day and doesn't even ask for his typical M&M reward. (Which is good, because it's hard for Mommy to resist chocolate when I give it to him!)

When we go out and do errends, he does great! I make sure to take him right before we leave the house and periodically while we are out and about. I appreciate clean public bathrooms more than ever! Khols has won that award with a sparkling clean FAMILY bathroom. It's complete with an adult potty and a little boy potty, a sink that is reachable to kids and paper towels instead of a loud obnoxious hand dryer.

So for now, that's what we are doing. Pull-up in public, bare-booty at home. What I see happening is that he gets so used to "going" by himself, we can graduate to underwear next week at home....we'll see.

wide-awake

Can't sleep, again. Between mild contractions and Ella kicking inside of me, I tossed in bed for an hour before deciding to get up and give my husband a break from my tossing and turning. Poor guy. He's been so incredibly busy and is totally exhausted. I didn't have the heart to keep him up any longer. So...I will blog! :)

A mature Pastor's wife once mentioned to me that I would have to develop "tough skin" being in the ministry and being married to a Pastor. The thought didn't set well in my mind at the time. When Thomas and I were first engaged/married, I was extremely sensitive and self-conscious of the way I was perceived as "a Pastor's Wife". I hid my outgoing and too-talkative personality around "church-people" and made sure that I never stuck out. I desperately wanted people to view me as a grown-up! Not as a silly 18 year old child. My husband was (and always has been) an encouraging and empowering spouse. He constantly reminded me of the giftings the Lord has placed in me and encouraged me not to shrink back from them due to my age. He has a way of taking me from feeling like a small girl to a regal queen.
Anyways, I sure didn't feel like I had "tough skin". Any negative word spoken about me was taken to heart, even if it was unintentional or joking. Even during our marriage preparation, I got so sick and tired of the typical reaction to our engagement. Instead of gushing over questions about what our wedding colors would be, when the date was or even how I was proposed to, I got: "You're getting married? How old are you?" Followed by a haughty sniff and a critical stare. Oh, and the classic from old high school friends, "She must be pregnant."

Of course, these came from people that had no idea the uniqueness of our courtship and relationship. Everyone close to us and everyone that had opinions that actually mattered to us were 100% behind us and supporting our marriage. And of course, here we are 4 1/2 years later!! :)

The first year of our marriage was a lonely time for me as far as not having many girlfriends. As all my friends were preparing for prom and college, I was putting away my wedding dress, painting our first home and planning meals for my husband every night! I poured myself into my home, my husband and work and began noticing a gradual change in myself. There was a wall being formed! New relationships began, but only went so deep. I wasn't sure how to let my personality shine through, afraid of what others might think. A couple years later, after a specific extremely hard and critical season, I completely put my guard up. My trust was broken toward relationships and I was going to make sure that didn't happen again. Sure, I had my 1 or 2 really close girlfriends that I could confide with and be completely open and honest to, but that was it.

Fast forward. Two weeks ago, the speaker for our Women's Summer Bible Study talked about breaking down walls we've built up around us. At the end of the study, she asked us all to have some quiet time with the Lord and ask Him to reveal any walls that we sub-consciously built up. I was running the sound system that night and found myself sighing as I heard her say that. I sat back in my chair after flipping on some dim lighting and "soaking music". I could already feel emotions rising up around the room. It was like a heavy dew. Get a group of ladies in one room and ask them to dig up old, forgotton feelings of inadaquecy, depression and rejection and you might as well ask for a bawling session. Sad to say, but I didn't really participate as much as I should have that night. For about 4 minutes, I prayed and asked the Lord to reveal my "walls" to me, but shut down when I heard His gentle voice whisper in my ear. Ugh, I didn't want to go there! So I pushed it away and left early.

Fast forward to tonight. I was lying in my bed and a word kept repeating over and over in my mind: Tenderness. Where has all my tenderness gone? Then I remembered the advice about getting "tough skin". There's got to be a balance. 5 years ago, I was young, open, a little naive and very trusting. I also cared too much about what others thought and was willing to change my personality to minimize any critical judgements.
Today, even nurses at the hospital complain of how "tough" my skin is! Literally! It takes 3 nurses and 10 different pokes to get an IV going in me. No joke. But seriously, I don't let my mind wander anymore about what others think about me or look for approval from anyone other than my Maker. I know I am right where I need to be and doing what I should be doing. I am confident. But as I was lying awake tonight, I was saddened at the lack of tenderness I have shown lately. I want to be transparent and tender. It's so hard for a woman to do that. It's hard for me to do that. It's like I have to take a deep breath and risk people seeing the raw me. It's easy for me to put on my Sunday face and look like my life is perfectly fine and I don't have a concern in the world, but incredibly hard for me to let my guard down and say, "This week was hard! I'm hurting and heartsick." Then I realize, hello Amity! You are human. Better yet, your are a woman not a robot!

Tonight the Lord gently lifted a curtain from my eyes. I asked Him to restore that child-like innocence, trust and tenderness. I also began lifting up a wall that has been building up. I don't think it will all happen overnight, but it will be a process. I think, little by little, my Father will show me where those bricks in the wall came from and I can break them down from there.

Now, I get to chew on all of this and try to sleep!

Tuesday

I'm sitting here smiling while I watch my tummy bump every few seconds. She has the hiccups again!

We had our last sonogram yesterday and it was absolutely breathtaking to see our baby girl. The detail was incredible and we saw her chubby little face perfectly! Her hand was also positioned in a "thumbs-up" way and I thought that was cute! It was like she was saying, "OK Mom, I'm ready whenever you are!" Since today I am at exactly 37 weeks, I gave her full permission to arrive at her earliest convenience. So now, it's just a matter of waiting. Dr. Anderson measured her and announced that she will be at the 9lb mark by next Friday and casually referred to her as "A King-sized baby". It made me think of her as a candy bar. King-sized! Ella the King-Sized Twix....lol.

Speaking of Ella...I thought that we were set on her middle name, but we're not. As I was lying awake the other night, I couldn't get her original name out of my mind. Ella Beth. It means "beautiful House of God" and Beth (Lafuente) is a woman that I deeply admire and respect and was a mentor to me before Thomas and I were married. I love the name Ella Claire, but I just keep thinking it might not be "us". I don't know though! Which is SO crazy because I usually make a decision and cannot be swayed from it! I honestly don't know what her name is going to be. *sigh* Thomas feels the same way...he likes both, but doesn't necessarily have a preference. SO! Her middle name is still yet to be decided...we have 10 days, so hopefully we will nail it down by then. Hopefully!