I Am Thankful For...

Two beautiful, healthy kids!

Blake enjoying some time on the floor looking around. He is really starting to fill out and his hair is looking lighter every day! We are still in Greenville, so I am posting pictures of the kids since I feel like they change every day!

Kate has used the phone a few times to call GiGi and Pop (my parents). She will be playing and randomly says their names, so we have called them to let them know we are thinking of them.

My clean kids in their matching PJ's! I know it is cheesy, but I only have so long to be cheesy, right? Kate was running and spinning around and busted her lip on the coffee table today, so I love that she is actually smiling in this picture.

I know it is blurry, but this is when I asked Kate to smile and show me her teeth... and she showed me every tooth in her mouth! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone- we are truly blessed to have such sweet friends and wonderful families!

Hanging Out In Greenville

Blake has been a busy man... sleeping the time away! He is staying awake longer and longer now, but he still sleeps a ton! He had an upset tummy yesterday, but after some huge diapers, we are better today. He is definitely a good eater, I cannot wait to see what he weighs at his 1 month checkup. He has spit up a handful of times, but not like reflux- at this point in Kate's life, we were using multiple burp cloths a day!

Here is Kate riding on her train. This train has a circular track or you can ride it on the floor. She has had a blast pressing all the buttons and figuring out that the pedal makes you go forwards. She makes the funniest face when she makes it move and it startles her. She has enjoyed all of her toys and books that Papa G and JoJo had waiting on her!

We have figured out that Blake does not care about being swaddled. Kate had to be wrapped tightly in the miracle blanket to sleep at night, but he will not have it! He grunted and groaned all night for a few nights until I tried letting him sleep without the miracle blanket. Last night, I just wrapped his legs to stay warm, but I let him keep his arms up by his head and he lasted around 4 hours between feeds without a sound! I am doing much better than I thought I would with him sleeping in our room... either he is very quiet or I am very tired!

Kate has enjoyed visiting with Grandma Slagley! Grandma figured out that Kate likes animal crackers, and when she brought Kate some, she found a friend for life! Sometimes Kate gets shy when she doesn't know someone, and she has been shy towards Grandma in the past. But, the past few days she has climbed up by Grandma with her books and toys and has given her some big hugs. It has been a great trip for Kate so far, she is the center of attention! That makes me feel great because she was getting a little less attention at home with us getting adjusted to Blake.

What We Have Been Doing...

My babies snuggling in my lap. Kate still drinks her bedtime milk like a baby on me. There is no better feeling than having these kids curled up in my lap. I have to say that the jump from 1 to 2 is not half as bad as the jump from 0 to 1 was for me. It is like I just had to bounce back and keep being MaMa, and I feel like I am a better mom now that Kate is back in the house. It was hard to feel normal without her around last week! Even though she gave Blake a little stuffy nose, it is a treat to have her back. Also, having Brandon home has been a huge help. It is great to have one parent for each kid, and I have even left him alone with both a few times to get out and run errands and go to Kelly's baby shower.

Kate loves getting as close to Blake as possible. She loves to kiss him and help me burp him- which she thinks is an easy opportunity to hit him. He doesn't seem to mind her getting so close, he is a pretty happy camper most of the time.

Some Daddy time! Blake loves snuggling, so he will curl up on Brandon and lay there all day.

Hanging out in the swing. He sleeps a LOT, so we try to put him in the swing to see the world, but he would rather snooze. He has been doing pretty well with nights too- I am knocking on wood right now- he only wakes up twice to eat. He doesn't even wake up crying, he just grunts and moves around enough to wake me up, and when he is done eating, he goes right back to sleep. I am so used to Kate with her bad reflux, and I would feed her, hold her straight up for 30 minutes, then she would spit up, which woke her up, so I would rock her, and then it was practically time to eat again! I think God knew we have our hands full, so he must have spared us from reflux this time!

Some time awake just checking things out. He loves looking around and watching Kate play. I don't know that he can even see past his arms' length, but it always seems like he follows Kate with his eyes.

We have really been blessed lately by some wonderful friends who have brought us wonderful meals and saved us a LOT of trouble by not cooking and cleaning up dishes. We are about to pack up and "move" to Greenville for a few weeks while the outside of our building is completely renovated. Brandon will work with his family at their hardware store and I will be enjoying my babies with JoJo and Grandma Slagley I am sure! It will seem like a vacation for me to let the grandparents and great-grandparents love on these kids. We will have our camera and computer there to continue posting pictures.

Blake in his carseat after we got home from the hospital... it took a lot of blankets to stuff around him for him to fill in the seat.

Showing off some pursed lips.

"Why are you snapping in my face, I am trying to relax here!"

Just to show you how long and skinny he is... this one looks like you stretched out a frog's legs, but he is our little string bean!

We are really enjoying having him home! We got home Sunday morning and Kate came home around lunchtime. When I got her up from her afternoon nap, she had a fever of 102.5, so she went home with my parents for another night. My mom took off Monday and stayed home with Kate, and Derek kept her this morning, but we had to get her back sometime... So she is now home with us and loving having free reign of her toys and books. Brandon took her to the doctor this afternoon and she just has a viral cold, but the fever is still there. We are just keeping her away (as much as we can) from Blake and washing hands a lot! I am so glad to have her back home. I never knew how hard it would be to be away from her for that long. I am with her all day everyday, so I was missing my girl! Brandon is glad she is back too, maybe because he is a little tired of my tears! We are still working on sleeping- Blake sleeps ALL DAY LONG, and then gets a little restless at night. I think I will just have to learn how he is comfortable. I have tried to make him stay awake during the day, but he is not having it! We will figure all of this out soon, I am sure. More pictures later!

Welcome Blake!

Our family just minutes before Blake got here... Kate had spent the night before at my parents' house so we could get up and out of the house early. We got to the hospital a little after 6:00 and walked right on into our delivery room. When Dr. Adcock got there to check me, he said if I had gone to his office, he would not have sent me home because I was already 5 cm dilated. I thought, "why didn't I go to his office all week long?" but oh well, we made it to Friday! He broke my water and started Pitocin a little before 7:00 and he told me that when I started feeling contractions, I needed to call for the epidural if I wanted one... of course I wanted one! Around 7:30, my nurse said I was 8 cm and so I called for the epidural. The anesthesiologist put in the epidural in the middle of a bad contraction, so it really didn't even phase me since the contraction hurt so badly. And- if you are already in pain, why not do a few things at once?! Anyway, I got the epidural aound 8 and then the family came to visit and we had a great time. I started to feel a good deal of pressure, so I mentioned it to my nurse around 9:15, and when she checked me, I was complete and ready to push. They paged Dr. Adcock and I started to push just to see where we were, but Blake was so ready that they made me stop pushing until the doctor made it from surgery. He came running in, I pushed a few times, and Blake was here at 9:31! It all happened so fast that I could hardly take it in! What a quick morning!

We have this exact same picture when Kate was born. Dr. Adcock and his family have become really good friends of ours, and it is such a blessing to know that he loves our kids!

Blake resting on the warmer bed after delivery. Since the delivery was so quick, he did not quite get a good squeeze on his lungs on the way out, so he retained a little fluid in his lungs, so we had to watch him pretty closely.

He weighed 7 pounds and 12 ounces, and he was 20 1/2 inches long. Kate was 7 pounds and 1 ounce, so he was only a little bigger than her. We noticed right away that they have different noses and different mouths, but they do still look similar in many ways. We will just have to see who he looks like!

How do you like that pouty face? His cry was such a wonderful sound! After several hours of him still grunting (the whiny noise that let me know there was fluid on his lungs), I mentioned it to my nurse that it wasn't going away. She called our pediatrician, who wanted a neonatologist to look at him. Luckily, I work for the neonatologists here, so I knew we could get to the bottom of this and do what was best for Blake without going to extremes. He checked in on us and decided that Blake was probably fine and we would just give him some time to clear it up on his own. We held him skin-to-skin all night long, and it went away by this morning!

Here we are this morning doing some more skin-to-skin time. He calms down so much when he is right up next to you! He got circumcised this morning and that wore him out! He has been so sleepy all day today, so we have loved all of the snuggle time.

In case you were wondering what Kate has been doing through all of this... she has been pushing her baby doll around in her new stroller. She has done great with all of the new-ness. She has gotten a little whiny when the attention is not on her, but she has been very sweet to Blake. She kisses him when we ask her to, and when he cries, she fake cries too. I don't think she realizes that he will be going home with us just yet, but it will be an adjustment for sure. For now, she is loving time with her grandparents. We should be able to leave first thing in the morning, so I will be home and able to relax a little more soon. We will keep the pictures coming! Thank you for your prayers- God has really blessed us more than we could have ever imagined!