And our Ada is growing fast too! Here she is just hanging out on the bed with me while Preston was napping. I take so many pictures of her trying to capture her every move. It’s bad, but I am sure later I’ll be happy I did!

Preston-

Shaun-

Ada-

Me and Ada-

Nolan and Jami-

Jackson-

Tim, skimboarding-

And the sand castle Shaun and Tim worked so hard on and were so proud of :)

AND it is obvious I am having way too much fun taking advantage of the photo opportunities with a baby…I have WAAAAY more but with my computer being down (which, as of today is back up!!!!) I haven’t shared much….but I will…and you’ll most likely get sick of it (except for the grandmas:) But you’ll just have to deal with it.

The kids couldn’t quite break open the pinata…

Here is what Ada did the whole party:

Thank you to everyone who helped!

And thank you to Jami…many of these photos are thanks to her :)

I’ll post more later…we’ve been having some major, annoying computer problems and now we are back in business…hopefully. We better be, or I’ll be ticked.

Here’s our birthday boy with his birthday doughnut!

Also, we made it to Utah and back without losing my mind! The kids were great and we had a good visit with family. I’ll post more photos of that later.

First park trip:

Hanging out with Grandma:

After a long day at Sunsplash…zonked:

Just stalking her in her sleep:

Crazy face:

Chocolate face kissing sister:

Attempting to be a decent, fun-ish mother:

Cranky pants on the 4th of July…but looking so handsome in his bow tie!

Ada with great grandma:

My handsome husband…who I must brag about and he will probably NOT enjoy me doing this BUT…he just got his law school class ranking and he is ranked 25 out of 230 students! YE-AH…way to go babe!

We are off to Utah tomorrow so wish us luck on our first road trip with a teensy baby…she cried all the way to my grandparents, 45 minutes away, and all the way back so this should be a really FUN drive :) Aren’t babies supposed to be lulled by the car rides?

Other than computer problems, Preston and Ada are doing well! At her two week appointment Ada had already gained a pound since birth! You go girl. She is a pretty good baby most of the time…I have stopped eating dairy because she was SUPER fussy and I thought it was something I was eating that might be giving her some terrible gas and she seems to be doing better so that may have been it?

She usually sleeps from about 10pm to 4am-ish…which is amazing…though that isn’t the case every night… there have been many!

Preston is a sweet big brother! I thought he wouldn’t like this new little girl hogging all the attention but he has been great. He gives hugs, kisses, and pats all the time and always says, “I love baby sister.” So cute.

Well, hopefully I will be back with some pictures soon. We hope you have a great 4th!

Shaun did a pretty good job of describing the whole story of the birth…it was LOOOONG, then short, and IN-TENSE. Wow. I have always wanted to birth naturally…and honestly this wasn’t TOTALLY natural…before the nurse left for lunch she injected half a dose of something into the IV…which, in my opinion, did absolutely nothing…no relief. Luckily, I had read my hypnobirthing book (I know, sounds kind of crazy…but it isn’t as out there as it sounds) and had been practicing and I was able to keep myself calm for the most part. I may have died if I hadn’t practiced that! My mom and Shaun were awesome too! I may also have died if they weren’t there. And I know that you’ve all read the story below so I don’t have to go into too much detail…but seriously, I had been at 2-3 cm the last time the nurse checked. Then she left. Not too long after I thought “Okay, either my water is about to break, I am going to poop myself, or this baby is knocking. GET SOMEONE IN HERE!!”  And at that point I knew if those contractions I was feeling weren’t transition, then I was in for one wildly crazy (painful) ride. Thankfully the other nurse agreed to check me since my nurse was still out or I would have delivered my own baby…and I seriously wanted to when they told me I had to wait for the doctor because I was fully dialated.

I never had that urge to push with Preston since I had an epidural. I could feel pressure but no urge. And this was like the gag reflex, no stopping it…they wanted me to act like I was “blowing out a candle,” really?! Couldn’t someone else just catch the baby? Isn’t that all the doctor was going to do? That was the first time I felt not in control of myself and I wanted to cry…I’m pretty sure I did. It hurt. At this point I was just trying to survive and all I remember is I kept saying, “WHERE IS THE DOCTOR?” “Why do I have to wait?” “I just want to push her out!” Doctor got there…finally. I pushed, I could hear everyone saying “there she is keep pushing” and all I could think is “get out! get out!” so I was going to get her out. Then the doctor told me to stop pushing…she was halfway out. Seriously? Stop? Again, I wanted to die. Eventually, probably seconds later, but it felt like minutes, she told me to push again and out she came! They handed her to me and I sort of forgot I was holding her! I could only think, “LABOR AND DELIVERY ARE OVER!!! IT”S OVER” I always worry about delivery since the story is so unpredictable. I was talking with my sister-in-law Jami, wondering what my “labor story” would be and I finally had it. Labor was OVER, and all went very well. No complications, everyone was healthy, and I actually got to feel the full labor and delivery! It was hard, but hard things make us stronger and I feel so blessed!

So anyway, that was my take on the whole thing. We are grateful to have our little Ada in the family now! I’ll write the name story in another post…to keep you coming back :) For now, here are a few more photos.

New big brother:

P.S. that is the little outfit I came home from the hospital in over 26 years ago!!

Jami brought over the cutest little outfit so we took some pictures of her actually looking like a girl :)

First bath. Enjoying it.