Sophie Grace

 

Dec 13, 2012

4:22 am

6 lbs, 12 oz and 19 1/2 inches of georgeous perfection

 

 

Of course, there's more to the story than just that. Sophie decided to be just like her big brother. The night before she arrived, I got through cutting up my and Dylan's chicken for dinner. Then (at 6 pm) my water broke. Nana fed Dylan while we both tried desperately to reach Jeremy, who had worked a full day and was now helping a friend of ours move. Mom finally got through - Doug answered - and explained that Jeremy needed to come home now. It was a very nerve-wrecking half hour for me while I waited for Jeremy to get home. I mean, come on, the doc had said to "come in NOW." But I wasn't about to let Dylan come to the hospital for that one - he was already upset that I was telling him Mommy had to go to the hospital. He kept saying "no noisy bed" (Dartmouth had the "air" beds that made noise everytime you move and D did NOT like that). Finally, we get to the hospital. I'm hardly diliated and the midwife is hemming and hawing about me going home, fretting over a birth plan and the fact that mine really was as simple as "Keep Sophie safe. Keep me safe. Give me drugs." They claimed it couldn't be that simple. I claimed it could. It was. Jeremy went home to get me food, since I hadn't had the chance to eat, and came back with Mom - Deb had arrived to watch Dylan. This time I got the epidural in a nice timely fashion. Jeremy slept as much as he possibly could (it's amazing how he can sleep anywhere). I got the easiest birth ever. EVER. The midwife wasn't even ready. At 4:15 she said, "okay, you're having a contraction, push" and I did, and she went "Oh!!!" And Mom went "Oh!!" and Jeremy went "Holy SH^%!" Then of course they all tried to tell me everything was fine, that she was fine and I had a minor panic attack. Apparently one push really got things going because only one more was needed. Yup, you read that right. Two pushes and suddenly I had two kids. I think Jeremy's sentiment expressed it best.

 

Since then, everything has been surprisingly easy. Sophie came home after two days. Did you know they send you home after 2 days??? I didn't. With all of Dylan's stuff the week long stay at the hospital felt like a month. And while she is a champion eater and sleeper (she regained her birth weight in less than a week), Sophie gave us an awesome Christmas present last night - she slept from 9 to 5, in the crib. Dylan slept on our chests only for the first three months once we came home, so I really really don't know how to handle this. On a different note, it is Christmas, so Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Merry Everything!

TWO

He's two. My little boy is growing up. And he's TWO. How did that happen? How is it that in a couple of weeks he's going to be a big brother? How is it he knows to say please and thank you and he's only two? How has he grown up so fast? I know it's been fun, and sometimes stressful, and I fully remember a lot of it, but where did the time go? Here's a couple photos capturing his birthday... first the party with friends, than the day with Mom and Dad.

 

Well, they're not going to blow themselves up.

Wow. Candles.

CAKE. Ignore the knife and Jeremy's arm... he was cutting the cake while I was trying to get a photo of our kid eating his birthday cake, Mom-style. AKA Inhalation.

Nana somehow got all the kids to play on the floor. They were kicking around and making funny noises. For us parents, it was nice to all be in one room and able to have a conversation!

Day of TWO. Breakfast. AKA pancakes.

This one and the one below are my little rockstar... did you know you could make a playdoh drum? With drumsticks? Well, really, what else would you make with playdoh??

CAR CARRIER!!! THANK YOU KEENAN!!! (Dylan has told me he wants to share it with Keenan when Keenan comes to play... hint, hint, Carrie, Brian...)

And yes, he "parked" all the cars - I didn't do it. But it's proof we're related... eat cake in big bites and line everything up neat and orderly.

 

Happy Birthday my wonder-boy. I love you more than words can express.

My Worker Bee

Whether it's at "new house" (what Dylan calls what will soon be our home) or at home, playing, this kid is constantly going. Until nap time. Ah... It's nap time.

Sweeping the new house. See the blue room? Yup, that was a bedroom. It's now missing a wall and a closet and will eventually be our dining room.

Daddy took Dylan up onto the new roof, at new house.

Stamping with Mimi.

Adiós October

So that happened. Huh. And it's now November.

I think this blog world already knows about our October but I'll go ahead and fill you in. Get ready for a speal and a few photos. It started with a hospital. I swear, one of these days, this family will be done with the hospital. Haven't we paid our dues yet?

Anyhow, I was diagnosed at 18 weeks with Sophie as having placenta previa. Basically the placenta covers the cervix. At 18 weeks they (doctors) scare the living daylights out of you, making it sound like it's you or the baby. THEN they say, oh, but 90% of the time it fixes itself and our hope is that you make it to the 3rd trimester. You MAY need a c-section but we don't know yet. Great. Wait and see. If I were to start bleeding, it was to the hospital immediately. And at 29 weeks, just barely into the 3rd trimester, we made that middle of the night hospital jaunt, which resulted in a week-long stay for me.

I've been home for a few weeks now, and am lucky enough to have my mom here helping. I don't know what we would do with out her because even now that I'm allowed to be up 20 minutes an hour, that's still 40 minutes out of an hour where I can't get down and play with Dr. B, can't do anything but sit with my legs up and drink copious amounts of water. The good news, for me and Sophie, is we're almost at 33 weeks. A c-section is still a possibility, but the placenta has moved some, so things are still up in the air. Hopefully we'll know more in a couple weeks. I'm okay with a c-section, as long as both Sophie and I are okay.

Enough complaining. October had it's highlights too:

Dylan took to building lego phones to call Daddy on.

Jeremy took Dylan to Gaines Farm, where they met up with Jill, Conor and Dean. Dylan and Conor had a blast feeding the cows hay, checking out the animals, and stomping around in a corn-box (think sandbox). Dean slept thru a good portion (okay, I'm guessing here.. but he is only 2 1/2 months).

An owl pumpkin was carved. It's a little disporportional, but still good.

 

And Halloween, at which time Dr B dressed up as "Daddy." Clearly.

 

(Breaking the bedrest rules... but hey, I took the elevator up to the gym, and I had my feet up on the bench the majority of the time. No way was I missing Halloween with my boys.)

Bang Bang Bang Goes the Hammer

Isn't it funny...

how this

becomes this...

At exactly 22 months, Dylan has graduated to a twin bed. Mainly because Sophie will need the crib and I don't want this change to happen the day she comes home from the hospital. It's now about 8:30, he's been in bed almost an hour and a half and... fingers crossed, he's asleep. I suppose I should check, but I figure if he were awake he'd either be talking or taking the books off the bookshelf. Or yelling "boom" as he was earlier when he was flopping on the bed inbetween various stages of putting the sheets on. Beds were meant to be jumped on, right?

Little Charmer

We were walking through the grocery store yesterday and Dylan (the little charmer) charmed me with his "charm" smile, arms outstretched and this bad boy of a word "Mommy." Talk about charming. Naturally, I almost dropped the eggs to give him a hug. I got him to say "Daddy" by the time Jeremy came home so he wouldn't feel left out. The important thing here is he said Mommy first. Duh.

Side note... he now screams "no Mommy no Mommy" when he doesn't want to do something I tell him to do. So much for charming.

House!

It's only taken two and a half months, but we finally got a "final" acceptance on our offer on a house! I put final in quotations because the selling realtor has been less than helpful, so while we think it's gone through all the steps to get our offer accepted, well, let's just say we were under that impression before too. The house is in short-sale, thus the long time frame. They really shouldn't be misleading and call it a short-sale (yes, I know financially they're worth it, but timing wise? We might, MIGHT, be in the house when Sophie is born... or we might be paying rent and a mortgage because I don't know if I'm going to be able to move house in the middle of December). All in all, it is a good deal. The timing could just be a little better. Baring any further complications, we should close October 19th. Then it's just a matter of a new roof, insulation, wallpaper removal, painting, new floors, and oh yeah, appliances so the kitchen is up-to-code for baking. Just a few things, really. Ideally we'll be in the house before Sophie is born, but like I said... who knows.

Swim!

Owls!

Dylan loves owls. The library recently hosted an event that we were all too willing to break bedtime for... a presentation about owls. And there were owls there. Unfortunately, as the presenter was walking around with one of these owls, it pooped in front of Dylan. For awhile, whenever owls were mentioned it was followed by "Dada Poop" (Jeremy cleaned the poop up with a baby wipe so no one would step in it). He seems to be moving on from that... he wants a yellow bedroom with owls in it, or at least that's what he's said when I've asked.

Touching an owl wing with Conor's Grandma Patty (she and Conor met us there as Jill was having her baby!!)

The owl, moments before the infamous poop.

Baby...

Sista! (as Dylan says)

Yup, it's a girl. And yup, we've known this almost two weeks. I figured anyone who reads this thing has probably already heard the news. Plus I was busy.

Her name will be Sophie Grace, which is causing Dylan some confusion. Before he thought there was a tiger in my belly, but now that the tiger has a name, Sophie, Dylan thinks that it just might be a giraffe (as in his Sophie giraffe). Either way he gets the "baby sister" part. Hopefully.

I've had several people ask what we need, so for the sake of repeating myself again, here goes:

- ABSOLUTELY no blankets (except one very specific one that I plan to buy for Sophie)

- Clothes we're pretty much set on for awhile... a lot of Dylan's stuff is gender neutral until we get to the older stuff. If you really feel the need to rush out and buy clothes (yes, this means you Mom, Aunt Cindy and Grandmommie), Carter's giftcards would be great; they'd allow us to fill in as needed.

- NO TOYS. Luckily these two kiddos are close in age and we have an abundance of toys for baby Sophie, as well as stuffed animals and books.

Okay, so maybe those are the things we don't need more than what we do...

1) DIAPERS. This should be a big fat duh. However, diapers come in all sizes so we'd be happy to have a giftcards to diapers.com or Target. Not to mention, we don't really have all the room in the world to stock diapers.

2) Eventually we will need a double stroller. We plan to pick this out ourselves because it has to meet certain characteristics (as in, I have to be able to lift the thing in and out of the car, it has to be driveable in snow, etc). Again, this is where the diapers.com or Target giftcards come in.

Um, yeah, I can't think of a third thing. However, we really don't expect anything from anyone. I just wanted to field the question en masse (hopefully this takes care of that) so I don't feel like a broken record. Well, I guess we do expect one thing - love the kid. We're super excited to meet her (although Sophie, please wait until December).

A Farm, Science and Hospital Weekend

Dylan had his 6-month Dartmouth checkup on Monday and we decided that since it was an earlier appointment, perhaps we should stay up in that area Sunday night. And since we were staying up there Sunday night, perhaps we should make a day of it on Sunday. Our original plan was to go to Burlington but the Coburns were out of town and we'd discovered some other fun things we wanted to do for the day. We hit up Billings Farm first and checked out the animals, took a walk around the mansion, and had a picnic on the lawn. Then, because it's Jeremy and Dylan and a pregnant lady (and thus we eat a lot), we found a small diner in White River Junction called the Polka Dot. 2nd best grilled cheese ever. The first is still my Dad's grilled cheese on Extra Sour Jewish Rye with shredded chedder (I'm drooling thinking about it). After we meandered up to the Montshire Museum... which really wasn't so much meandering as it took no where near the 20 minutes we'd been told, even going under the speed limit... so much for a nap. We spent some time there but when it hit 3:30 and the kid went insane, I pulled a plug on playing outside in the water. After all, the hotel had a pool and I wanted Dylan to a) nap and b) get used to a swimming pool. Nap, pool, dinner and bed accomplished, Dylan received a great report from Dr. F.: The "problem" areas are keeping pace with his growth rate and thus aren't worse (unfortunately they're not magically better either). Don't come back for 9 months!!!

Cows!

 

Baby cow meets Baby Dylan.

Penny sliding.

 

So proud of himself.

How many Dylans?

No trip to the Montshire would be complete without... bubbles!!

Nana See

Nana is coming to visit us in 2 weeks. Dylan is very excited for this fact. This morning, as we drove to storytime, he repeatedly said "Nana see." It made for a very long three minute drive.

Tarrytown!

This was two weekends ago... at least it hasn't been a year. We had a fantastic, fun weekend visiting Nicole, Brian, Ellie and Gabe. The kids had a blast playing together and the four adults had a blast just hanging out. Brooklyn used to be a trek for us - 5 hours or more in the car - so we rarely made the trip. Tarrytown? Much closer. Just over 3 hours and so much more feasible to do for a weekend.

Nicole decided on the wedding date, Oct 20, 2034 (Ellie's birthday!). Originally it had be 2024, but we decided 14 and 15 were a little young.

 

(one of my favorites. I was trying to get a group shot)

Job Site

Excavator! Or, as Dylan says, "Bulld" (pronounced bowl-duh)!

Slave labor. Really the kid just loves to sweep and Mommy doesn't let him play with the dust pan.

This is WHY Mommy doesn't let him play with the dust pan. See any trash cans around? Yup. You guessed it... it's clear on the other side of the room.

Terrible Twos

Lately it seems like every day is a struggle with Dylan - when its just me and him. When someone else is around, say, Daddy, for instance, he's charming and sweet and generally well behaved (with a few exceptions). I swear the terrible twos have hit. I don't know if it's Baby making me lose my patience with Dylan more or what, but on Tuesday I figured out a way to make him happy. Introducing, the Fort.