Six

Happy 6th Birthday Jack!

I went to St Luke's hospital Saturday morning April 29th at 7am to be induced with Jack. When Dr. West first checked me (at 8 am) I was dilated to a 4(on Monday I wasn't even a 1), hmm sound familiar?  Long story short, I dilated very quickly and Jack was born at 10:51am, weighing 7 lbs 11 oz and 21 inches long.




JACK six of the many reasons I love you!

1. Friendly--The first thing out of Jack's mouth when he walks through the front door is can I play? This boy loves to be social and it almost kills him to not be busy or playing with something or someone. Sunday's we have a rule of no Wii, no iPad, no TV, no DS and of course no friends...these are hard days for Jack! He loves today's technology!!
2. Smart. Can look at a group of objects and can tell you how many are there without counting each individually. Sounding out everything. His birthday cake has Twinkies on it  and he sounded it out and then asked what they were. (our poor kids don't even know what Twinkies are).
3. girl trapped! He was praying that little Lilly would be a brother for him to wrestle with and do boy things but secretly Lilly has a thing for her older brother! Jack doesn't seem to mind that he has 3 sisters. It'll always mean he gets his own room and that he gets lots of BOY toys and won't have to share them with anyone. Lexi is going to miss him going to first grade next year, they hang out all morning long together. Ok I'm going to miss him LOTS too!
4. good helper -he empties the dishwasher, helps mom with the baby, puts his laundry away, he is the recylcing dude at our house, he keeps that bin empty so we can fill it up again
5. lover boy--Jack has a passion about each and every one of his stuffed animals. MOM despises stuffed friends but not Jack. He carts several friends with him: 2 turtles (not sure if they have names), 2 pillow pets,  Molly the horse (he's a boy horse don't tell Jack Molly is a girls name), and a new little yellow bird that he got for Easter and when he goes to Grampa's house for the night his suitcase is full of stuffed friends
6. sensitive, loving, peace maker, energetic, kind, passionate, thinker, and a charmer

And a trip down memory lane.
It's hard to believe 6 years ago, this was you.

BTW, I think Lilly resembles Jack a lot. They both have the same eye brow thing!!

Jack started walking at 10 months. By his first birthday he was walking and into everything!! Here Jack is trying to eat the frosting on his baseball cake!

And at 2, your Thomas the Train cake.

At 3, your race car cake with chocolate donut wheels and life savor lights!

 4, the Dump Truck Cake.

  Luigi cake for # 5.

Happy Birthday Jack!

Welcome

Welcome Lillian! We had several of these printed to deliver but they came back smaller and darker than we'd anticipated. So here is our official birth annoucement instead. Thanks Mike for working on this, they turned out perfect.

Update

Maddy visited Dr Bateman an Oral Surgeon who performs frenectomy's on Monday. He looked at her teeth and gave her lots of encouragement and then sat her up and said "she's too young." Really, shouldn't that procedure be done when the big teeth are gone? Nope, he'd prefer to have 6 permanent top and bottom teeth in place to see if the procedure is really necessary but would settle for 4 permanent top and bottom along with her 6 year old molars. She has only lost 3 total and has her molars, so I guess we are on the waiting game! We stopped at 7-11 on the way home to treat her to a slurpee.

Thanks for every one's concerns. No I wasn't out hauling rocks, I was weeding and watering the garden but nothing too strenuous. I had my 4 week check up this week and things are healing nicely, I got back in another 4. Laundry and vacuuming and lifting my 3 year old are limited but necessary. I was warned about blood clots and if they were the size of my fist to head to the ER immediately. Luckily I haven't  had any at all and especially that size.

Lillian's umbilical cord has finally healed (it fell off at exactly 2 weeks but was a little bloody for another week or so and Dr Mohlberg said not to give her a bath until it wasn't bleeding). This week Maddy and Jack both commented that Lillian smelt like "string cheese." LOL, it isn't cheese more like spit up, so yesterday we had a sink bath. I must admit she liked it much more than the sponge baths we had been doing. After her bath, Jack said "she smells much better than cheese." Isn't that a heavenly smell, a baby clean after a bath.

It seems to be every ones favorite question "are you getting any sleep?" so here you have it. Nope!! But what else is to be expected with a newborn! We are surviving and loving having Lilly and someday the sleep will come, maybe not at 6 weeks like with my first but someday!

We have two black birds calling our barbecue as their new nesting zone. I first noticed them scouring out the deck and bbq and then noticed lots of poop. I was getting Maddy off for school and heard noises outside the sliding door and saw one jump in the bbq with a mouthful of grass. I was too chicken to open up the lid but my son came to the rescue, sure enough grass was filling up the bbq. I left the lid open all day and they just watched me from a near by tree. Mike thought lighting the grill up would get ride of them but as soon as the lid was down and the flame went out they were back bringing grass to the bbq. Mike made a late night trip to buy a new cover for the grill. This morning I've seen them coming with mouthfuls of grass, sometimes dropping it on top of the cover, I'm still too chicken to see if they made it up and under the cover~Mike will have to tonight.

Lesson learned this week. We were all upstairs getting ready for bed when the door bell rang about 8:30pm. I was busy and so was Mike, so I sent Maddy to see who was at the door. She came back and told me someone was here but she didn't know who. I went downstairs ton find the stranger was inside my house. She had let him in!! YIKES! Luckily, Mike came quickly down too. Or I would have told the guy where to go. He said he was looking for donations for the Special Olympics. We had a good heart to heart with the kids. I also learned that the door can wait, I need to be the one opening it. And hello, SIR, can't you read my no soliciting sign. Guess I need to get one like my neighbors, I bet she never gets them!

Weekend Haps

Yay for a beautiful weekend with lots of projects completed and one that I didn't even know was a project also got completed. I'll admit I was NOT supportive of this weekends ward service project. Of course, it would take place on the first nice weekend that we've had this year. A weekend that was beautiful and that I was feeling well enough to get out and do things. 79' and wonderful. I was also missing out on a girls retreat because my hubby wasn't home to watch the kids.

I just got Lilly to sleep and looked out the window to see several ward members unloading tillers. What? They must be at the wrong house?  Nope Mike said they needed projects so he volunteered our weeds to be pulled, our rocks to be gathered and service to be fulfilled. Humbleing on my part! It was really a win win for all. All my kids gladly got out and picked a bucket of rocks (I use to have to do this as a chore or punishment rather and I don't remember ever not complaining about it) the ground got tilled and the HUGE thistle bushes that lined the side of the house got removed. We are patiently waiting for cement to give us a new patio/basketball hoop/side walk chalk area in May. Thanks Bradley, Andrew, Bro Hill & Bro Seline for hours of work. Mike finished up his assignments for the service project and came to help as well.
Yay for no more weeds and cement soon!

Next project was bark. Brody graciously helped us with this project. We loaded the back of his truck with 3 yards of playground certified bark and filled up the holes in the playground area. 2 years ago when Mike constructed the play ground (Can you believe we are coming up on our 2 year mark?) we didn't have a fence and it was hard to know exactly where the property line went. Bark now goes to the fence and the weeds will NOT take over that section!! And it smells so heavenly and really gave the play area a face lift! Maybe next weekend we can stain the playground, picnic table and deck. (wishful thinking anyway)

After the bark was unloaded Mike and Brody headed back to the nursery for a yard of sand. The nursery guy was surprised they were back so soon. Sand and I have a love/hate relationship. It provides hours and hours of entertainment but then it also slowly finds its way out of the box and into other areas of the house, yard, laundry, bath, etc that it wasn't designed for. Yesterday the sand was a play haven for 6 other kids in the neighborhood. These 3 spent all night in the sand and then after church went right back out to play.  The sand was worth it!!

Mike mowed the lawn, I got lots of weeds pulled (still have lots to pull however) and the yard is looking nice and green. He spent last weekend planting our new fruit trees or sticks as you could call them. We got 3: an apricot, an apple and a pear. It'll be SEVERAL years before I'm able to bottle fruit from our garden. On the plus side, the other apple tree bloomed this year(guess it was too little last year) and the peach and cherry tree already have small fruit growing on them! When do you spray fruit trees?  The spring garden is doing great (we'll be eating fresh spinach any day) and I hope soon to plant the other veggies!

New Trees (very hard to see but look for the blue tag at grass level and you can see it)

And then some random pictures taken this week. Lexi loves to hold Lilly. We dropped Jack off at school and Lexi wanted Lilly to watch a movie with her. She held on tight for about 40 minutes until it was nap time. Lilly is going to love to watch movies with her big sister Lexi!

And just a picture of a picnic lunch outside in the beautiful sunshine

Lilly isn't so photo-genic these days. Can't wait for her to give us some personality and smiles in the upcoming weeks. She is getting bigger. Newborn clothes don't fit anymore and little chubby rolls are gathering on her legs and of course her cheeks!

Sunday afternoon we headed to Great Grammies house. She hasn't seen Lilly yet and we (or I should say I ) were up for an outing.

Great Grammie Maggie aka Margaret

We had a great evening. The kids played out back in the yard, in the tree and with all the toys that I played with as a kid. Not sure I'll still have any toys around when my grand kids come let alone my great grand kids. Our kids don't really know how lucky they are, they have 6 great grandparents alive and they get to see most of them often. I only remember my Great Grand Dad (Grammies Dad), he died shortly after my mom did at age 90. Grammie will be 93 in May. We all just love her to pieces, I'm so grateful that Lillian is named after her.

Beautiful

Maddy has been working on several loose tooth's lately (say that 10 times fast:). She came home from school on Friday and her top front tooth was especially loose practically hanging on for dear life. Apparently loosing her first 2 teeth was very dramatic & traumatic. Member, Jack kicked out the first one...you can read about those here and here; she didn't want anyone or anything touching this tooth. It was making me crazy! All the whining and complaining that she couldn't eat this, or do that. I did apologize later for being so crabby about it. I asked her if she was excited or not to loose her tooth. Saturday was the same thing. She finally let Mike have a tug Saturday night...after many tears not because it hurt but because she was scared of her tooth coming out. She went to bed Saturday night and in her sleep, she woke up with the missing tooth in her mouth. The Tooth Fairy must have already passed our house, so she made an appearance the next night. She left Maddy a shiny gold dollar.

She has 2 other teeth loose. Her missing gap already has a replacement coming in (yep that is only one tooth missing!) It's sad she won't get to be sung "All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth." Hopefully the other top front tooth will come out soon so we can get a picture with both missing teeth.

With loosing the top tooth, we also have a consultation with an oral surgeon to have a frenectomy. What's a frenectomy? It is the removal of a section of tissue (the frenulum) that is attached between the two front teeth. Pretty much a big chunk of skin that won't allow the two teeth to be together. Guess it's hereditary, Mike had it removed as a child. And so far Lexi and Maddy have the big skin flap in their mouth. Wish us luck! Hopefully the prognosis is a simple procedure!

Today, Maddy and the whole 1st grade went to the Ballet at Capital Theatre. She was so excited to be dressed up and have curly hair she could hardly sleep. Can't wait to hear how it went when she gets home from school today.

2 weeks

Can you believe it's already been 2 weeks? Lilly and I went to her appointment this morning. We actually made it on time and dropped off 2 extras at their bff's for a morning play date. Thanks Kami!

Stats are in:
Thrush WTH? Both Lilly and I are on some yeast medication--good to know hopefully we caught it early--can it be painful?
8 lbs 5 oz ! Yay, 7 oz gain. Guess the 2, 4, 5 and 6am breastfeeding sessions 2 nights ago seems to be paying off! Thanks for sleeping 5 hours last night to make up for it! I feel like a new woman today!
21.5 inches long....hmm really... she grew 2 inches in 2 weeks. somewhere along the way someone messed up.
Head 36 same as birth
Umbilical cord fell off today!
Birth certificate arrived in the mail today too
PKU test is mean and cruel

My cute SIL Stephanie always does this with her girls. Each month she takes a picture with the same stuffed animal to see the growth...of the child...not the stuffed animal! Didn't get one taken on her birth day but am going to try and remember to do it each month. Here's to Lilly and Fluffy (who is on loan from Maddy--I thought it was a lamb but apparently it's a bunny). Happy 2 weeks!

PS keep those compliments coming in of how good I look...they are helping me. Not going to give you a side profile picture of me post partom 2 weeks! That's for sure.

Spring Break

Lilly and I came home from the hospital Sunday afternoon and had linner waiting for us to eat (too bad I had just eaten lunch at the hospital). Mike would be staying home from work this week to help me and to do all the mom responsibilities and a couple honey do's here and there.

Mike did great getting Maddy and Jack off to school and I got to stay put and love that little baby of ours to pieces. Lexi got lots of attention from everyone. She especially loved when Grama and Emma came and took her to lunch!
The last day of school before Spring Break officially started the 1st graders had an Easter Parade at school. They made cute hats and marched around the gym (too cold to do it outside). Mike took Lexi and they had a great time.

After the parade, the candy was pulled out and the kids all had a turn to gather some yummy treats.

Even Lexi came home with a bag full.

Spring Break officially starts today!

So glad to have my little chicky's home with me.

Wednesday night they all headed up to G&G's house for a sleepover.

Lilly and Mom have stayed put all week. I'm a full believer that the less you do that first week the easier it is to heal. Mike heads back to work on Tuesday and I'm in for a rude awakening!

Friday we played with eggs and glitter and food coloring and dye. Jack was very patient and came out with the most perfect blue egg.

Lexi wasn't so patient and plopped her eggs in just about every color and ended up with lots and lots of pink eggs. She didn't mind the color, she loved coloring eggs. She did plop 2 tablets in the same cup, she was so excited to help.

Maddy is very creative and was the slowest or the most creative at coloring her dozen eggs. That's ok, she also loved every minute of it. After her dozen was complete, she drew a map and named each egg. After she has eaten the egg she crosses it off the list. Now that's dedication to your work!

Friday afternoon, the kids played with Emma and then that night, G&G came again to take the kids for a sleepover. The nieghbors figured that we had the baby because they kept seeing my parents at our house. Yep! Thanks for giving the kids lots of G&G time!

They had so much fun! When they pulled up in the driveway Saturday morning, Lexi said I don't want to go home, I want to stay at your house. They had a craft date, rode horses, went swimming and did an egg hunt at the swimming pool. Lexi said the swimming egg hunt was her favorite part of Easter.

G&G stayed and held the baby after they dropped off the kids Saturday afternoon. Grampa was giving Lexi some tickle wars and sheloved it so much that she told Jack to come and get tickled because it was so fun.

Sunday morning quickly came. I looked at a lot of place for Easter clothes and didn't find anything I loved. I got Maddy's dress on winter clearance at Sears including a dress for Christmas and only paid $15 for both! Jack picked out his. Jack is much more a sweat pant kind of kid. He wears the same thing every Sunday...putting this on today was a challenge. Mom lost the battle but Dad got him to put the tie on and tuck his shirt in for most of the day and at least a picture! Lexi is a hand me down from Emma and Maddy. Didn't get matching clothes but I'm already on the lookout for Christmas!!

Lilly and I stayed home from church and chilled. Thanks Linda for the Easter bib (even if her hand is covering it).

After church, Lilly was awake and we snapped a group picture. Jack was so excited to hold Lilly so I thought what the heck and he did fabulous. I posted this same picture on FB and many were concerned that he was holding her, but he did just fine! Maddy had a fever most of the weekend and I was quarantining her away from the baby anyway. Fevers gone just in time for Easter.

And Lexi loves Lilly. For the most part, Lilly loves Lexi too.

Mike went out back and hid some eggs in the back yard and then sent the kids off to hunt them. Who does't love an Easter Egg hunt (or 2).

After our little hunt, Mike took the kids to Tonya's house for Easter lunch and another Egg hunt. I wasn't there so I'm just going to let your imagination run with thh pictures.

 Heather and Isaac.

Kamryn

Jack

Eric and his eggs!

Jack & Karsyn

They brought me a plate of dinner home and it was heavenly. One more meal from the neighbors coming and then I'm on my own. 

Today is Tuesday and I am awake. Mike is at work (10th of April and his first day at work this month). Maddy made the bus. 3 kids are still asleep (and one only woke up once last night!!). Mike took the kids to Planet Play yesterday for arcades, pizza, and lots of fun. We definately had a busy week. The weather had its ups and downs and today is suppose to be in the 80's and then tomorrow back in the 50's. Oh well, we'll take todays forcast and hope for more sunny days to come!

Birth Story

Friday, March 30, 2012

• 7:30 am arrive at hospital
• 8:30 am Dr Nippert arrives and checks me Dilated toa  4 and 60 % effaced
• (miracles do come to those who wait apparently)
• break my water, start the pit
• 10:00 am starting to feel contractions and order the epidural
• 10:45 Epidural kicked in just as the contractions started to get heavier
• Benji was fantastic. No pain. No sticking me twice with that needle. Awesome
• Dilated to a  6 (I'm thinking geez this is taking forever but patiently waiting. Here I am relaxed and ready to go)

• 12:00 pm Amber the nurse checked me and said. "You are a 5" I said, what? "She said just kidding, you are a 10. Let's call the doctor!"
• 12:45 pm Dr Nippert arrived. The nurses seemed to be a little short-handed or crazy at that moment. Dr Nippert said they are like chickens with their heads cut off. 4 births at the hospital in 4 different rooms within 6 minutes of each other. Dr Nippert said, all that really matters is that I'm here and so are you. Let's get this show on the road.
• 1:01 pm all set up and I started to push. 5 big pushes and her head crowned. Dark black hair! Mike got woosy and sat down, waited for a contraction to come for one last push.
• 1:04 pm Out she comes. Not just the head, her whole body too. Apparently the cord was wrapped around her neck twice, Mike said Dr Nippert was so efficient she had it off in seconds.

Here she is: 7 lbs 14 oz and 19.5 inches long

The baby surprised us with black hair and dark eyes. We weren't sure if the name we had chosen matched her. For 2 days, we had a nameless baby.

Maddy and Jack and Grampa arrived and patiently waited for me to be taken to my room. They were so excited to see their new baby sister. No Grama and Lexi...Lexi threw up that morning and the two of them stayed home and played. Thanks Tif for cleaning up vomit and taking care of my baby!

Grampa dropped of M&J at Bridget's house to play for the evening and my dad headed to BYU for an alumni event. Thanks Dad for taking the kids wherever they needed to be.

Alex & baby. Mike didn't get a picture of her cute belly. Alex is 8 weeks out for having a baby. Yay for cousins. Here's Jake checking out the baby... still no name yet.

Finally got a bath and a cute pink bow put in her hair. Check out my double chin!!

She wasn't too happy with more pictures.

And later that evening we had more visitors and dinner and dessert. Thanks for the chocolate and vanilla shakes! Here's Great Grandma Loveridge.

Grandpa Loveridge

Grandma Loveridge

And Great Grandpa Loveridge

And a picture with mom and dad.

Saturday morning, Mike brought the kids over again to see their sister. Lexi was so excited to meet her lil sis.

And Maddy loves to hold her.

And we attempted to capture a wonderful family first photo and this is what we got. Oh well, all that matters is that we are all in it!

I decided to stay 2 nights at the Hospital to try and get some extra sleep. Didn't really help. The nurse that night was either too busy for me or didn't remember I kept asking her for things. I did get a little sleep but was ready to come home on Sunday. Mike's parents brought dinner and sat with the kids while Mike picked me and the baby up. Still no name. BUT I had to have a name before leaving the hospital. Nothing still felt inspired. That morning Mike and I were texting each other back and forth, he was asking the kids what they thought of this name. Lexi was always persistent that her name was Lilly. She said it was her favorite. So I wrote down Lillian Margaret. At least 1 of us knew what this baby's name should be.

Madison Brooke - Brooke is my mom's name (Maddy's grandma)
Jack Michael -  Jack is from Grandpa Price (although his name was John but went by Jack) and Michael is obviously from his father
Alexis Mae - Mae is from great great grandma Hansen (Bertha Mae)
Lillian Margaret -  Lilly's great great grandma Loveridge was Olive Lillian.
Margaret is also a family name. It is Lilly's great grandma Perri (my mom's mom). I really wanted the baby to be called Maggie and maybe that's why I had such a struggle with her name but Maddy and Maggie are way too close. So we used Margaret as a middle name instead.

Each of our children have a name from each side of our family. That is why Ava, Rylee, Olivia, Brooklyn, Katelyn & many others were voted out...we needed a name from the Loveridge family.

5 days later, I'm happy to announce I remember to call her Lilly instead of Lexi and feel that we choose the right name. Or I should say, I chose the right name, because Mike said it was my decision.