Introducing....

WILLOW CADENCE

8/22/09

8 lbs. 1 oz.

21 inches long

She's absolutely perfect and so far, looks more like Aspen to me.

Wow, officially a family of five!

She's got his heart already...

I can already tell you that Aspen is going to be a great big brother to his two sisters. He is very proud of Willow. But in the hospital, he seemed more concerned with me and how I was doing. Isn't he sweet?

That is, of course, before we told him about the presents the baby brought him...


Journey is already loving to give her sister lots of kisses. Here she's wearing the sunglasses and bracelet the baby got her :)

A couple of proud grandmas!

We are so blessed to have such loving and involved families. I love that our kids are close to both sets of grandparents.



WARNING: This is Willow's birth story (and it's long). For those of you not interested or TMI, this is the time to stop reading :)

My due date was August 18th, Mark's birthday. At my 38 week doctor's appointment, the midwife that I saw estimated the babies weight at between 8.5 and 9lbs. Knowing that I had two weeks until my due date and my history of being overdue, I was pretty freaked out at how big this baby was going to be.

I have delivered a 9 lb. baby and have not forgotten the pain! I had also worked hard this pregnancy to keep in shape and not gain so much weight, hoping that that would lead to a smaller baby.

At the 39 week appointment they suggested acupuncture to try to get labor going. By my 40 week appointment (actually 40 weeks + 2 days) I had gone to acupuncture 3 times, tried Castor oil (which they had suggested doing), and was pretty discouraged. Mark actually came with me to the appointment to try to talk them into inducing me.

After checking to see how dilated I was, the midwife said she was not comfortable breaking my water to try to induce labor because the babies head was still high enough that the cord could come in front of the head and cause a medical emergency. She did say that if I was to go into light labor, to come in and they would break my water to keep things moving along.

The next day one of our good friends who was due two weeks past me went into labor, and I couldn't help but cry (yes, I'm happy for her, but everyone I know due around or after me had already delivered their babies, and being overdue is emotionally draining!) That's when Mark came up with our 'induction plan'. He thought that if I tried taking Castor oil one more time to get some contractions started, we could go into the hospital and convince them that it was labor enough for them to break my water.

I really didn't want to do Castor oil again, but decided to try one last time. I choked down the oil, took a 30 minute walk, and prayed that this would work. The contractions seemed to start coming more often around 3:30pm so I began to time them. They were not painful, but more than just braxton hicks. I called my mom around 5pm while I was making dinner to let her know our plan just in case it worked so that she would be ready to pick the kids up. At that time the contractions were about every 3-5 minutes. She felt like this was going to work and be the real thing and came right over.

I was still very doubtful since the contractions still were not ones I would call painful, but I could feel them enough to know that they would register on the monitors. On our way to the hospital, we called to let them know we were coming in and found out that all the maternity beds were full! They diverted us to another local hospital which wasn't a big deal except that I had planned a water birth and would not be able to do that at the new hospital.

We got to the hospital around 7pm on Friday, 8/21. When the midwife checked me out, I hadn't changed from the day prior. Still 3 cm dilated and the babies head was still high. She also noted that I didn't seem to be in much pain! I didn't want them to send me home and quickly started to show some discomfort with the contractions :)

She recommended that I start walking and would come back at 9:30pm to see if there was any change. Each time she would pop in to check on me, I felt like I had to act like the contractions were getting more painful. Really, I was praying like mad that the babies head would come down enough for them to be able to break my water.

At 9:30pm, she came to check me. I was 4 cm. and the babies head had moved down enough to break my water. After she did that, I felt an immediate difference in the strength of the contractions. We were both so relieved that this was it, we wouldn't be sent home, and I didn't have to 'act' anymore! Haha :) Our plan had worked.

I began walking around the room and using the birthing ball to deal with the pain. I was planning on laboring in the jacuzzi tub, but didn't want to get in too soon and stall labor. Around 10:30 or 11pm, I asked the nurse to fill the tub up so that I wouldn't miss the chance to use it.

Around 11:30-11:45pm, before getting in, she wanted to check to see how I was progressing. I was 5-6 cm. dilated and the baby was still pretty high. I felt a little discouraged when she said that because judging by the strength and pain level of the contractions, I had guessed I was more like 7-8 cm. dilated.

A few contractions later, I faintly heard Mark say that judging the way my labor seemed to be going he wasn't sure if I would be able to use the tub, to which she agreed. She felt like I may go from 6-10 cm very quickly. I was disappointed, but didn't have much time to dwell on the fact as the intensity of the contractions quickly escalated.

Between contractions I could hear the nurse quickly getting the supplies ready for the birth. All of a sudden, the uncontrollable urge to push came and she was in my face, telling me to breathe and not push. She pressed and emergency button and chaos ensued with huge rush of nurses and midwifes. Two pushes later at 12:01am 8/22, Willow was born crying. Two and a half hours of real labor left me exhausted and in shock that it was over already.

After all the predictions and stress over having large baby, we were amazed that Willow was only 8 lbs. 1 oz. - our smallest baby! We are so thankful she is here and healthy.

Passing the time & enjoying the summer

We've been enjoying our summer, and being pregnant I've had lots of things on my "to do" list. I've tried to keep things fun by planning different activities for the kids. It has also helped to make the last couple months of my pregnancy go by really fast!

Cousin Over-Niter

Playing computer games & DS.

The original plan was for Aspen's cousins Luke and Adam to come over and spend the night with him. Unfortunately, Adam was sick, so only Luke came, but they really had a blast.

We are not campers, but did grow up camping, and know how much fun it is when you are a kid and don't have to do all the packing, planning, etc. So Mark set up the tent on the deck with the plan to camp out with the boys. They made it until about 11:30pm before the boys got scared and they came inside. I sure was glad Mark was willing to camp with them, because I sure wasn't going to :)

The next day Aspen and Luke spent the entire morning outside in our forest area.


Fun Family Time as Four

It is very rare for us to all go out to dinner as a family. There are many reasons...Mark and I love our dinner's out just the two of us, sometimes going out can be more stressful than it's worth, not to mention, Aspen doesn't usually like anything they serve anyway!

Okay, so these are some bad pictures, but we wanted to remember what could possibly be our last dinner out as a family of four. This was at Hoda's, one of our favorite Lebanese restaurants. The kids did great and loved the pita bread and baklava for dessert.

Boating

Mark usually keeps the boat at the beach all summer for ocean fishing, but had to bring it home for some repairs. It's a long story, but during one of his tuna tournaments the boat started bringing on lots of water, both bilge pumps quit working and they had to call the coast guard to come rescue them 50+ miles off shore. Life with Mark is never dull (or inexpensive)!

We decided to take advantage of having the boat home to go out on the river for an afternoon and cook dinner on the water. Unfortunately, once we launched we figured out that the engine started had gone out from being submerged in salt water. Since we were already out on the water, we used the trolling motor to very slowly take us out to Government Island.

Despite all the unexpected setbacks, we had a great time out on the river. Aspen especially loved swimming in the water with a life jacket. I wish we had the boat home more often to go out on the river...



The Children's Museum

Peyton 2, Journey 2 1/2, and Aspen 5 years

Peyton got a membership to The Children's Museum for his birthday this year and Charity was able to add Aspen and Journey to it as well! We had a great time playing at The Children's Museum during the week of super hot weather. It was so nice to escape our house when we weren't able to play outside. Being 8 months pregnant, I just couldn't stand the 100+ temps.

Random Life...

Like father, like son... Mark working away on the computer while Aspen plays kids games online on Kidzui.com

The frogs have been a big deal here this year. Aspen caught and released this big one a couple times before he sadly passed away. Not to worry though, there are lots of little froggies in the pond still!




Happy Valley Splash Pad

Ava and Journey are normally a little timid about getting into the water. Journey's like me, she hates to be cold!

Still, it's fun!

Journey's Pictures & Pregnancy Update

A month or two ago we had Journey's pictures taken, but instead of going to a studio, we had Kirstyn, (Troy's awesome girlfriend!) take them for us. I am so happy with how they turned out. Our vision behind the pictures was to capture Journey's two year old innocence.

Go here if you want to check them out. These pictures are also the inspiration behind her new room. I'm almost finished with it so I'll be posting pics soon!

We moved her into the new room a couple weeks ago, and she loves it. The transition went smoothly, I think mostly because we were working on it for so long that she got used to the idea of the move. Aspen was a little jealous for the first couple days, but he's now over it and in love with his own room all over again since we changed the position of his bed. It's the little things, ha ha!


I'm now 36 weeks pregnant, and am winding down with all the projects on my to do list. It feels good to to feel like I'm pretty much ready for this new baby to arrive. I'm feeling pretty big and like the baby has run out of room. As I type, I feel like I'm being used as a human punching sack! I'm guessing that she is already at least 6 1/2lbs., and am praying I'm not too overdue and that she's not bigger than Journey was...

We have not picked out her name, but we do have a list of three that we are planning on taking to the delivery room. The three that are on the list are:
Sterling Rose
McKinley Jade
Haven McKenzie

Aspen's favorites are Sterling and McKinley. We'll see once we meet her :) It's kind of fun to not have everything planned out.

10 Years!

For our 10 year anniversary, we went to Toji Korean Grill. Over the years, we have loved to try new places and types of food. We realized that we had never tried Korean food and found this great place.

The food was amazing and just what we were hoping for. In the center of each table was a grill that you grilled your own food on, and they brought tons of different dips and appetizers to go along with the meat.

Grilling our meat - yep, pretty happy with this place! :)

31 weeks pregnant - Mark surprised me with a dozen red roses for our anniversary!

In the beginning of our relationship, Mark was famous for all the flowers he gave me. It's been a long time since I've received a dozen roses. They are just beautiful.
I love the life and family we have created together. We have truly grown up together, and I'm looking forward to what the future will bring and the new baby that is coming in two months!

I Swear He's Growing Up

I swear Aspen is growing up right before my eyes. I don't know what it is, but all the sudden he is asking us what kind of jobs we can find for him to do to earn money. Here's our latest idea - pulling weeds! He gets a penny a weed (a little more for the really big ones) and has been very motivated to get outside and work!

This is Lucy, Brett's lizard. See the little rodent Brett is dangling in front of her? Aspen found a nest of them at Grammi's house on Wednesday.

I told Aspen that the only way he could bring them home was if he took them down to Brett's house to feed to Lucy (and kept the lid very tightly shut!).

Aspen's New Do

So we finally took the plunge and went and got Aspen's hair cut today. It was so hard for me to let them cut his hair! Aspen's idea was to have it like his friend Isaac (see last post). My idea was to bring up the length, but keep it kinda messy and surfer like.

The lady started cutting his hair according to my idea, but as she was cutting, I could tell that Aspen was unhappy. He didn't say a word, he was very shy, but I could just tell it wasn't what he was wanting. Sooooo, with great difficulty, I had her change and go for a style that Aspen pointed out in a book.

I don't have any great pictures yet, but here's the end product. Aspen walked out happy, saying, "Now nobody will call me a girl anymore!" I guess I can't argue with that.

I hardly recognize him! It's going to take us a while to get used to the new hair. Both Mark and I loved his long blond hair and it killed us to let him cut it. But, it's just hair and it's his head, right?

Aspen

It's been a long time since I've posted what's been going on with Aspen. This is more for me later on down the road, but he is growing and changing so much! As always, he is alternately incredibly loving, sweet and affectionate and challenging, aggravating and dramatic. A lot like his daddy! People tell me to watch out having two girls with all the drama they will bring, but they don't know Aspen and Mark. They are far more dramatic than either Journey or I am! Everything is a 'nightmare' and life crisis. :) We'll see what this little girl will bring, but I am definitely used to drama!

Aspen holding Lilly for the first time. Isn't he sweet? He was so gentle with her.

He really enjoyed holding her and wanted to be able to walk around holding her like I was. Hmmm, I think he needs a little more practice before he graduates to that. Reminds me of myself with Adrian. I always wanted to hold and walk around with him when he was a baby.

Isaac is Aspen's favorite friend to have over. He asks to hang out with him every other day! This week Isaac came over and the boys spent literally hours outside in the front yard catching tadpoles. I was able to paint most of Journey's new room when he was over! Such fun boy time. I knew there was a reason we hadn't gotten around to cleaning out our pond this year :)

Yes, they are having fun.

Another thing Aspen has been totally into the last couple weeks is putting his legos together following the directions. Our normal morning routine is that Aspen will wake up around 6:30-7am. Neither Mark or I like to get up that early so he goes downstairs and plays his DS or computer games until we get up to turn on cartoons around 7-7:30am (whenever Journey wakes up). One morning, instead of playing his DS, he picked up the directions to one of his lego toys and started putting them together. He enjoyed it so much that he continued as he finished each project. I love how proud he is of himself as he finishes each page, and have been very impressed at how well he is able to problem solve, spend the time searching through the thousands of legos to find the right piece and just spend focused time on one thing :) This is a new thing for him!

And a couple stories.....

Aspen learned a valuable life lesson today. A couple of weeks back as we were walking out of the fruit market I noticed that Aspen's hands were all sticky. I asked him what was all over his hands and with as much innocence as he could muster, he responded, "I don't know, maybe I will lick it and see!" As I was telling him not to, not knowing what he could have gotten into, he licked his fingers and said "mmm! Honey." "How did you get honey on your hands?", I asked. Um...I think I may have stepped on one of the honey sticks in the store and the honey squirted on my hands..." he said a little hesitantly.

It sounded a little weird, but since I didn't see it, I just said Okay and we walked to the car. As Aspen was buckling himself in, he said, "Mom.....what would you say if I had bitten the honey stick and got it on my hands.....?" Well, I guess I would say that was stealing and that is wrong because we didn't pay for the honey" I responded. He was pretty silent and I asked him if that was how it happened. He came clean and I told him that I was going to have to talk to his dad and we would decide on the punishment. It was a long ride home for him and he rushed to his room when we got home when he realized Mark was already there.

We decided that he was going to have to pay for the honey stick out of his own money and apologize to them at the store the next time we went there. We discussed how stealing hurts people and it hurts God because that is sin.

It's been weeks since that incident and I think Aspen thought I'd forgotten about it. Truth is, the times I've been there since, he wasn't with me and I wasn't really looking forward to taking him in to apologize knowing the high time drama it was going to be. I kind of had to emotionally gear up for it myself!

So today was the day and I warned Aspen before we left that he would need to get his money together and apologize. It was as dramatic as I expected. Lots of tears, begging me to let him stay at home, etc. We practiced what he would say in his apology and I promised that I would stand next to him, although I would not talk for him. I felt bad for him on the ride there because the anticipation was just killing him. It was almost more than he could take. I sympathized with him and told him to ask God to give him courage to be able to say it with out crying.

It wasn't easy for him. We had to stand in line for about 5 minutes while we waited to speak to the cashier, but I was very proud of him (and almost started crying) as he apologized and paid for what he stole. He was able to do it all by himself, and as he finished, it was like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. He felt so good to have it over with! He also commented that he would never steal again. It was just too hard to pay and apologize.

My greatest hope for him as he grows up is not that he doesn't make mistakes, but that he learns and grows from the ones he makes.


And one more - Aspen is ready to cut his hair (sniff, sniff, I love his long blond hair!). He asked us after church on Sunday when we were going to get his hair cut. Surprised, we asked him what made him think of that. Apparently some of his friends told him that his hair looked like girl's hair. Yes, the ultimate insult! And he has noticed when he has been mistaken for a girl lately. (It happens occasionally, but he never seemed to notice up until now) So we are at that age where it matters what other kids think. Pics to come of his new hair cut when he gets it!