Oh Baby!

Ella Grace has arrived! She officially missed her due date by 12 minutes coming into the world at 12:12am Saturday, July 26th. Weighing in at 7lbs 2oz Ella is a whole pound smaller than her big sister was, and meauring at 20 inches long she's a half inch longer. She just seems so tiny, even compared to how tiny Sycely seemed as a newborn; she definitely has less bulk to her. I guess that's the12 additional pounds I gained with Sycely :) I started having contractions around 9:15pm and we started timing spacing and duration around 9:35. They were about 5 minutes apart and a minute long so around 10 we called the midwives. We were on the road headed to the Midwifery in Wasilla by 10:30. The ride out was definitely less comfortable this time than with Sycely as my contractions were alot more intense by the time we were driving out. We arrived at the birth center around 11:2o. When we got there I was at 8cm and expecting I had a couple hours yet, started to get myself settled in to labor in the shower and tub, but after only 2 contractions in the shower Ella was ready and it was time to push so I got into the tub and about 10 minutes later Ella entered the world, much like her sister, in a big tub of warm water, caught by her daddy, smelly candles, dim lighting and the sound of ocean waves filling the room. It was very similar (though even faster!) than Sycely's birth and we're so grateful and blessed that both of our girls have had peaceful, natural, tranquil entrances into the world surrounded by joy and prayer. We're so very thankful for our midwives and can't imagine a more splendid birth experience for our girls. Because of my history of "shocky fainting" the midwives were keeping a close eye on my bleeding and such so we stayed at the midwifery until around 1:00pm Saturday. Fortunately, with no tearing this time, I'm facing a much easier recovery despite the super fast delivery, which I am stoked about! Nanny and Papa spent the night Friday night with Sycely and they came out Saturday morning so that Sycely could meet her baby sister. She brought out the elephants she made at build-a-bear and wished Ella a "happy birth-day!" So far she's been pretty enamored with her baby sister. We got about 50 rounds of "Look! She's so tiny!" and she told me last night, "Baby Ella is the best baby sister ever!" (as if she's got grounds for comparison or something) Sycely keeps asking us, "Isn't she adorable?" and is pretty attentive to her needs responding immediately is she hears Ella fuss at all. She's being pretty helpful and is in high spirits and has been enjoying time playing with her Far Nanny and Papa Scott who arrived late Saturday night. We will continue to post more updates and pictures as we rest up and continue to adjust to being a family of four !

Belly Art

One of midwives, Christine, came to do an appointment with us last night. She did a little tummy art for us. She's uses special crayons to trace the baby's body parts, then uses shading and fills in the placenta, umbilical cord and amniotic fluid to show how your baby is positioned. Ella has dropped so much you can just barely see a tiny part of her little profile since her head is down so low, but the rest of her tiny little self is all there. Christine's pretty amazing and it's a pretty neat thing so I thought I'd share some pics.

The Countdown Continues...

We set up the "home studio" this week and tried to get some good photos of our growing family. Everyone's been requesting tummy pictures of how big Baby Ella has gotten (still much smaller than Sycely ever did!) so here they are! Sycely wasn't too hip on posing, she was more into playing around in the curtains and backdrops than anything, but we figure we'll have lots of chances to capture her and her little sister once Ella's actually born. Things are moving right along around here. The house is ready, Baby Ella is DEFINITELY ready, indicating she's got plans to get here a little early, based on the progress discovered at our appointment last week and I've spent the last 5 days trying to lay as low and be as still as possible to try and hold her off until the weekend so that Lem can finish up teaching summer school this week. Once he's all wrapped up with that it shouldn't take much to bring her along-a little walk, mopping the floors, that sort of thing will most likely do the trick. We will be sure to keep everyone posted and will email and post details and pictures as soon as Ella arrives.

Ella-Phant Fun

We took Sycley down to our local Build-A-Bear shop this weekend. We thought it'd be fun for her to pick out and make some matching stuffed animals for her and Ella, plus, Mommy had a coupon! :) We had talked about what kind of animal she wanted to choose and she was pretty set on elephants. When we got there she had a brief moment of relapse and wanted to do bears for a minute or two, but eventually went back to her original choice, the elephants. So she picked them out and set about the process of filling them with fluff and love. She had lost of fun going through the whole process, and even was brave enough to stand on the pedal that makes the fluff shoot in this go round-progress over our last Build-A-Bear visit in Arizona. She knew just what to do picking out hearts to put inside the elephants and followed every step of the "ceremony" the store employee led her through-rubbing the heart on her nose, cheeks, neck, shoulders, etc then eventually giving each one a kiss and tucking it inside. The elephants got closed up then she gave them the traditional air bath and was super meticulous to screub behind their big floppy ears :) She helped me use the computer to fill our their birth certificates-we named Ella's Ella-Phant (hee hee!) After we finished up with that adventure we had lunch at one of our favorite places-Arctic Roadrunner, and of course, wouldn't you know, BOTH elephants just HAD to join us for fries and milkshakes. Mommy made the elephants matching shirts that say Big Sister and Baby Sister (hopefully we'll be able to keep them straight for a while that way-maybe).

All picked out and ready to stuff...

Stuff and Fluff...

Picking out hearts for the elephants

The Heart Ceremony...

Tucking the hearts in our elephants...

All done

Bathtime for the elephants...

Filling out the birth certificates

Having lunch with our new elephants (and demonstrating how to "call their Mother...Ba-Roo!")

Striking a post with Daddy

As Time Goes By...

Sycely and I headed out for our annual daisy photos this week. This being our third year of this endeavor, we're shaping up to be rather seasoned professionals at it-well, she's pretty professional about smelling and picking the flowers, anyway. She had even more fun this year than last year and let her Mommy get a FEW decent snapshots. It's pretty amazing to see how pronounced all her growth and changes are when we compare the pictures from all three years. Praise God we got finally got some sunshine to help us enjoy the adventure!

2006

2007

2008

Happy Birthday, Moose!

Last week Sycely started talking about going to Moose's birthday party. Side note: Moose is a stuffed animal. She had all the details worked out-including cake, balloons and party hats, as well as the location (Nanny and Papa's). So, we turned our regular Sunday family dinner with Nanny and Papa into Moose's birthday extravaganza. Nanny made some cupcakes with candles (Sycely had determined Moose was turning 6) and I headed out to the party store for some hats, balloons and a few party favor treats for her and Moose. After nap, Sycely picked out a "Happy Birthday party dress" to wear and we headed over to Nanny and Papa's to start celebrating. She insisted that Moose ride in the back seat, next to her, wearing his seat belt on the drive over. Moose brought along his friend Pig as a guest and they appeared to have enjoyed the festivities. He seemed to especially like it when we sang him Happy Birthday and he (with Sycely's help) blew out the candles. It was a pretty cute evening and Sycely was so delighted to see her imagination's design come to fruition. The things we Mommies do to humor our little ones!

More About May

We wrapped up May in quite a whirlwind of activity and are easily settling into what is supposed to be "summer." Lem finished up the school year right before Memorial Day Weekend and got to have a whole week off with his girls before his summer classes and summer school started up this week. Of course, we spent most of our week working on projects around the house, etc, but we did get a chance to enjoy some quality backyard time together, including a picnic-the highlight of Sycely's week. Softball season has started and hockey has finally ended for Lem-the two actually overlapped for about a month or so.

Our spring skating show went off without a hitch and I'm teaching my last week (praise God!) of group lessons this Saturday. I'll continue on with my private students until July and then start my time off to get ready for Baby Ella to arrive. Her room is all clean and mostly ready. I've unpacked and washed all her clothes and gotten most things into their places in her room. We've still got some other things we need to stock up on before she gets here, but we have lots of time for that yet. My most exciting news is that Ella (after much coaxing and praying on her Mommy's part) has decided to get herself settled "head down" the way she's supposed to be which eliminates the prospect of her being breach and all the complications that go with that scenario-God is so good and faithful! We're seeing our midwives every two weeks now and will soon go to weekly appointments. We're entering the home stretch.

On the note of babies-our church babies have started to arrive. We now have 3 of the 18 new babies due to our church friends this summer. Six of us moms-to-be went to dinner together. It was such a fun outing and a nice treat for all of us who've been focused pretty much full time on gestating for the last several months. It's exciting to start to see all those babies. It sure is helping the time pass while we wait for it to be our turn! We can kind of live vicariously enjoying all these "tinys" for the next 7 weeks. It's be so much fun, and such a blessing to have all my best friends pregnant at the same time as me, with our due dates so close. It's been fun to have some of us sharing the same midwives and having group pre-natal visits too.

We spent Memorial Weekend in Homer with my Dad and Kate. We had lots of sunshine, but also LOTS of wind so that made for pretty chilly trips to the beach. Sycely had fun once we got out there and she could did with her shovel and bucket. Her and Nanny Kate even built her first sand castles together and they had lots of fun collecting sea treasures. Every trip to the beach reminds me of how magnificent God's creation is and what a blessed part of it we are. Such a grandiose setting demonstrates quite a perspective.

One evening we went down to have ice cream on the Spit. It was a pretty neat image having three generations of ice cream eaters sitting there on the bench enjoying our treat. Now, we just need to get Grandpa up here-I know we wouldn't have ANY trouble coercing him into eating some ice cream!

We will spend June plugging right along-Lem teaching summer school, me teaching skating, Sycely growing like a weed. We'll be doing some minor projects around the house, like getting our new garden going and some deep cleaning, having a garage sale, etc. I'll be doing lots of baby showers, of course as well as coaching at an upcoming competition next weekend. We'll also celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary on the 25th with some sort of something special-all while trying to enjoy whatever sunshine we get and playing outside as much as possible.

Hope you're all enjoying a lovely start to your summer!