Happy 4th of July!

We had such a great weekend celebrating the 4th of July!

Jordan was lucky enough to have a 4 day weekend. It was a MUCH needed break. After all his long days at work and the spider disaster and having newborn through all of it, we were ready for a fun weekend.

On day 2 of our long weekend, we headed to Tulsa and went to the zoo and the aquarium! We went with our good friends John and Amber and their daughter Anniston. We hadn't been to Tulsa yet, so it was a fun new place to be! We went to the zoo in the morning, hoping to beat the heat and crowds on a holiday weekend. I didn't think the crowds were that bad, but man, it was HOT!!! I need to just get used to this heat, but it is not easy for me! Evelyn didn't get a good nap in that morning, but she really loved seeing all the animals and spending so much time with daddy!

In the afternoon we headed to the aquarium and saw tons of fish and a cool shark tunnel! It was way better than the zoo. Mostly because it was inside and out of the blistering heat. Natalie was much happier inside and Evelyn went from tank to tank loving every single fish or sea creature she saw!

After our fun adventures it was time to explore Tulsa a bit and find a good place to eat. We came across Andolini's pizza by recommendations and reviews online. Oh my was it delicious. Very unique pizzas and they even gave the girls dough to play with while we waited for our food! I fell in love with Tulsa from just seeing a small glimpse of the city. It was more 'hipster' than any other place in Oklahoma, and I gobbled up the unique streets, shops and restaurants that seem to be missing from Enid and other places in Oklahoma - at least the Oklahoma I've seen!

A big highlight of the weekend was on the 4th when Jordan smoked ribs for a bunch of our friends! Everybody that was still in town came over and we hung out while the girls played in our kiddie pool and trampoline. The dads drank beer and us moms drank some wine and we all had a great day! The girls all had red, white & blue colors on and we really, really enjoyed ourselves. Of course we ended with fireworks and a late bedtime. Evelyn was actually scared of the fireworks even though we saw them from a distance and didn't have the loud sounds that accompany them. She was being a silly girl. Natalie was a dream baby that night and slept while I had her wrapped in my Moby wrap! 

I am starting to get a little sentimental about our time here in Oklahoma as its starting to come to and end, so days like these really fill up my happiness tank. We are so lucky to have made such great friends to spend fun holiday weekends with!! 

Evelyn & Aubree! 

Great friends! 

Happy July 4th, 2015! 

One.Month.Old

I'm a couple days late! Our sweet Natalie is one month old!

We have had quite the month!

We brought Natalie home on a Thursday afternoon and that evening it started raining. And it didn't stop. It literally did not stop raining until late Monday. It rained for four days straight. Record rainfall in Oklahoma. It rained so much it pulled the whole state out of a four-year-long drought. Something like 19in of rain in the month of May - and most of it was that weekend. Now why have I mentioned all this rain? Well if you know what its like to take a newborn home - slightly chaotic - and be stuck inside the house with an almost two year old it made us all a little crazy!! But our sweet Natalie was a trooper through all that crazy. For the most part, she was a mellow happy baby that weekend who was figuring this whole being in the world thing out!

Natalie's first week or so home we spent time outside [after the monsoon rains stopped!], visited the pool for big sister, ventured out to dinner, and thoroughly enjoyed our Natalie.

She is quite the [welcomed] opposite of her sister - at this newborn stage at least! She has a lot of nice quiet awake time, she only wakes up once or twice at night [most nights!], and she is pretty relaxed. She does have some reflux trouble and isn't always happy after mealtimes, but that is quite minor compared to what we dealt with when Evelyn was a newborn.

We had great visitors in Natalie's first month. My parents came down when she was about 2 weeks old and stayed for a whole week. My sister Katie was able to come over from Nashville and hang out with us too! We went to explore the Oklahoma Salt Plains and the OKC Zoo. I bawled like a baby when my mom & dad had to leave us!

Jordan's parents came down the following week along with his sister Megan & her boyfriend Caleb. We hung around Enid and they took in all the sights & sounds of living on a busy Air Force base. We hung out at the pool a bunch while Grandma got to spend time with Natalie inside (it was 95 & humid all weekend!)

We were certainly blessed by our family making the long drive to meet Natalie and visit with us!

This month went by in the blink of an eye and I'm sure the months will continue to move quickly past us.

Natalie's sweet smiles & her sweet personality bring me so much joy. She is starting to find her little voice and having even more awake time. I can't wait to watch her continue to grow and change as the months go by. She is just a bundle of love!

Love you sweet girl! 

A Newborn

You only have a newborn for one month.

One whole month.

Sometimes a month sounds and feels like an eternity and other times a month goes by in the blink of an eye.

They say time moves faster when you have children.

"They" are not lying. Having these two girls in our lives is like nothing else. But this time is literally going by faster than I like it to. Some hours seem long because of a crying newborn and a busy two year old fighting for my attention. But the days continue to slip past me.

We are coming up on one month with our sweet Natalie. I'm not sure how that is possible, but its happening.

In a few days I will no longer have a newborn by definition, I will have an infant. I will have an infant for 11 months before I have a toddler. I don't even want to know how fast these next 11 months will go.

For now, I will soak up as many sweet moments as I can with my newborn. I will take in each snuggle, each sleepy smile & silent laugh. Each grunt and groan as she's sleeping in our room keeping me awake will remind me that she's only a newborn for a short time. And that short time is almost over.

Welcome, Baby Girl!!

On May 20, 2015 at 11:20am we welcomed our second daughter, Natalie Jane. 

6lbs 14oz of pure perfection! 

Our sweet girl had quite the arrival, and we learned a lot about my body & labor in the process! 

At the end of my pregnancy, around 37 weeks my blood pressure creeped up high enough to warrant bi-weekly appointments for non-stress tests with baby heart rate checks & blood pressure checks. I wasn't so hypertensive that we needed to deliver urgently, but was high enough for close monitoring and my doctor wasn't comfortable letting me go past 39 weeks. My body was saying enough is enough! It worked out well because she came just before Memorial Day weekend and Jordan had a 4 day weekend, so he didn't have to take any time off of work. 

I was super nervous about having to be induced if she didn't come on her own. Evelyn came a week late, so I had no hope that she would come anytime before my due date. The time came and it became a reality that we would need to be induced. All I could imagine was a long day/night/day/night with terrible pain from piton and a bad epidural and then a c-section. But thats just my worst case scenario nurse mind going crazy. But every one of those scenarios played out in my mind over and over again. I just couldn't help it! The plan was to head in the evening and get cervidil to help the cervix along and then do pitocin in the morning. The night before we headed in I woke up with some pretty good contractions which helped calm my nerves about a worse case scenario induction. I saw my doctor that morning before the induction and turns out we were dilated to 3cm, so things seemed even better! 

That afternoon I was so sad. And excited. And nervous. 

Evelyn had no idea what was coming. And I was heading in earlier than we expected, Jordan was stuck at work, so neither of us were able to put Evelyn to bed on her last night of only-childhood. I was devastated and mad at Jordan's work for not being more flexible, even though I knew the more he got done before she was born, the less he had to do after she arrived. Thank goodness for our good friend Kelly who stayed overnight with Evelyn and put her to bed with no troubles! Evelyn LOVES Kelly and it worked out great for her to be with Kelly while we were in the hospital. All that didn't make me any less sad & nervous for what all was going to change in our lives. 

The time came to head to the hospital and it was  an absolute MONSOON outside. Serious thunder & lightening with monsoon rains. Seriously. Another great friend of mine {Kate} offered to drive me to the hospital and stay with me until Jordan could get there. She has two kiddos of her own and it was incredibly wonderful and I was so grateful she took the time to hang out with me! The cervidil went in around 6pm with no trouble and we were officially getting induced! Jordan got to the hospital around 9:30 and we got settled in for the long haul! 

Now this cervidil isn't suppose to induce contractions or anything like that. It is literally just suppose to "ripen" the cervix. Well for me apparently that wasn't the case. I was having some pretty good contractions every 2-3 minutes. They weren't THAT bad and I was talking through them, but nonetheless, I was consistently contracting and they were gradually increasing in intensity. I was able to sleep, but overtime baby girl and I got checked out, those contractions kept up and weren't going away! When the time came to take the cervidil out, my contractions kicked up like crazy! This is when I consider our labor started. It was about 7am. I took a shower before they started the pitocin and we were settled in to have our baby! 

My doctor came in and broke my water and we started the pitocin at 8am. They started very low and ended up only increasing it one time! My contractions were strong, changes were happening, and I was hoping it wasn't going to take much longer! When I was starting to not relax very well, I wanted to know our progress because I was getting close to wanting relief with an epidural. Turns out I was at 5cm, and it was now 9:30. I decided it was time for an epidural. With my first experience of an epidural not really working and had trouble with it, my nurse promised me she would troubleshoot if there were problems and would take it out and start over if it didn't work. So the fluid started and we got ready for the epidural. That process started around 10-10:15. I could tell it was a good epidural, but I had a weird pain on the right side of my abdomen near my pubic bone and they told me it was my bladder. They would come and put in the catheter in about 30 minutes to make sure the epidural medicine went where it needed to go and then we would figure out the weird pain I was feeling. That half hour passed and the catheter went in. My nurse checked me when she put the catheter in and I was still at 5cm. My pain went through the roof! My whole lower abdomen was on fire and I was shaking uncontrollably with each contraction. My nurse went to go get some positioning tools, another nurse, and grab the CRNA to troubleshoot what was happening. When they got back 10 minutes later, they were baffled. I was becoming that crazy pregnant lady in labor who cried and screamed and all of the above. They seemed to have no idea why all this pain was happening. The new nurse to came in decided to check me again. Turns out I was at 10cm and the baby was coming! We were all shocked!! I was just relieved that I knew it was time to push. All this pain was because it was time to push, and the end was in sight! 

My doctor ran over from her office and her appointment and made it just in time. 

One contraction, one push and our sweet girl was born at 11:20am! It was instant love. 

During the confusion of my pubic bone pain, the CRNA dosed my epidural again giving me more medicine to see if I was tolerant to the medicine. Knowing I was checked just 10 minutes before and not close to delivery, that was a safe bet. Until I progressed fast. Really fast. So that meant my epidural worked AFTER our sweet girl was born. Meaning, it worked for, like, 5+ hours after she was born. My legs were useless. So that was fun. When it was time to try and get out of bed, we had some deja-vu back to my labor with Evelyn. My first couple times of attempting to get out of bed after delivering a baby are not successful. Turns out, my body likes to pass out and my blood pressure plummets and I scare all my nurses and my husband when my blood pressure drops to 60/30. But now we know, it happens when I have a baby and the next time we can be prepared! 

When it was time to decide on a name for our sweet girl, Jordan and I were not totally prepared for what happened. We talked about two names the whole time we were pregnant and I liked one a little better and he liked the other. When she was born, neither of them seemed to be the right fit. We were a little shocked and had to start all over. We had a longer list of names that were rarely discussed and were names that we jotted down when we heard a name we really liked. So we turned to that and the first name on the list was PERFECT. Natalie. This little bundle was the perfect little Natalie. 

And we couldn't be more in love. 

[Another] Beautiful Pregnancy

I had to share and make a special post about our maternity family photography session. One of the coolest things about living on base is that people come from all over the country and bring their talents with them. I was lucky enough to meet a fantastic photographer who is a fellow pilot spouse who is oh so talented. She had the right vision for us and I am so glad we chose her to capture this moment in our lives. Thank you Abbey Leigh {Roberts} Photography! 

Since we are at UPT and that only happens once in a lifetime, we chose to take pictures out on the flight line with the T-6, one of the planes Jordan trained on, and I LOVE the way they turned out. The evening we took pictures was a bit chilly, windy and had some storm clouds trying to roll in, but it set  the perfect tone and we got great pictures.
It was absolutely perfect.

I also really wanted some pictures that were true to Oklahoma and had a bit of that country, wide open spaces feel that surrounds us here. Our photographer found a cute barn & gorgeous wheat field to capture the perfect pictures (yes, she had permission to use that property!) The results were great! The clouds and the wind made for the perfect dramatic setting! 

So in love!! 

The End [of pregnancy] is Near

38 weeks. 38 freaking weeks pregnant! This is almost over. I can't even wrap my mind around it. In such a short time we are going to have a new baby in our home, and I seriously can't wait. It doesn't seem possible that its time to have her. I do feel like I've been pregnant forever, but I just can't believe its almost over.

When I was pregnant with Evie (and this time around too) I measured small throughout the whole pregnancy and at the end my blood pressure climbed high enough to need bi-weekly non-invasive testing. No big deal. It just comes with the territory of being 9 months pregnant right?! Because lets remember, pregnancy is 40 weeks long...which is 10 month, not the usual 9 months people say...and lets face it those last 4-5 weeks take FOREVER. Regardless...my body decides at the end to push the limits and be a little fussy. Not fussy enough to be too dangerous for me or for baby, but requires close monitoring. With Evie being my first pregnancy, my doctors (with watchful eyes) let me go past my due date to let me go into labor & deliver on my own. I am so thankful for that, because thats exactly what happened.

This time around my doctor isn't as keen on waiting around when my body is showing signs of hitting its limits. It means bi-weekly non-invasive appointments again. It sounds like we will have her before our due date whether by induction or by going into labor before our due date. I'm not really mad about knowing I won't be over-due this time around, can't lie about that! This is what my [dropped?!] 38 week pregnant belly looks like! We had a fun day of doctors appointments, enjoying a summer kick off on base with friends and sharing some ice cream at the end of a hot, humid day!


The hardest part for me at this point is thinking about Evelyn not being my only baby anymore. I know I am totally in love with this new little girl, but I'm sad and sentimental about my baby girl not being my only baby. I know the adjustment will be just that - an adjustment - and our new girl will fit right in with our family. It just seems so weird to leave the family of three behind and take on the family of four.

Family of 3 for another week

 This was Evie and I enjoying Mother's Day and being goofy. She really has been so much fun lately. Her vocabulary has been impressive lately and she has started speaking in mini-sentences. She makes me laugh every. single. day. She is sweet with other people, sassy with me and Jordan and has quite the personality and opinions. The dreaded terrible twos are just ahead, but I am not phased by the toddler tantrums and mind games [just yet]. I can see her frustrations and I just try to help her cope with what she's upset about. Most of the things she gets upset with are just silly, which usually just make me laugh and we move forward as fast as we can. She is a little spitfire that keeps me on my toes and I am forever blessed by her being my little girl. I can't wait to watch her be a big sister to another amazing little girl.

This [presumably] last week of pregnancy may go by very slowly, or move faster than I hope. I want to take in every moment with Evelyn and Jordan before we throw in more chaos to our lives. I am very excited and anxiously awaiting meeting our little girl! 

Pregnant.

Written 4.22.15

This pregnancy is almost done. How is that even possible? I know I'm busy with a toddler this time around, but seriously - how are we 35 weeks pregnant this week?! I haven't taken as much time as I did when I was pregnant with Evelyn to enjoy and soak up the pregnancy. I have enjoyed being pregnant this time around just as much, but its so different. I have nothing to complain about - just some typical heartburn and the usual aches of growing a human. She has been so good to me and I can't be more excited to meet her.

There have been more questions this time around for me. Maybe its because we're away from our families and in a different state, away from the hospital and doctors that I knew so well. But I think my biggest sense of questions and 'fear of the unknown' is the fact that we are flipping Evelyn's world upside down and she doesn't even know it. Its not that I'm sad for her, I'm super excited she will have a sister so close in age. But I worry about the adjustment. I can ask my friends and family who have more than one kiddo and everybody will have a different response of how it went for them. And truthfully, some have horror stories and I don't care to hear them. I don't need to be more worried than I already am.

I am so confident in my ability to care for an infant that with Evelyn I didn't have the 'fear of the unknown' feelings. I knew what to expect for the most part. I taught families how to take care of their infants on a regular basis at work, and I had seen many friends take babies home. The baby thing is easy for me. And this time around I'm still not worried about the baby stage. A little newborn is comfortable to me and I find comfort and solace thinking about taking care of a baby. Taking care of a toddler AND  baby - now that scares me some.

This whole toddler world is so foreign to me and I worry about navigating this unknown toddler landscape. Every week - heck every day - seems to be a different phase, or a different battle, and definitely a different mood. No day is predictable and while that is fun, I wish I knew more about navigating this toddler world. I am constantly wondering if I'm doing the 'right thing.' Am I teaching her enough? Am I missing anything? Is this stage/phase/milestone normal? Is she suppose to be this sassy?!

I think about the change from a family of three to a family of four. With one kiddo, yes, our world is different and we are living in a toddler tornado, but for the most part we can bring her along with us, and after the initial shock of having a person to take care of, the adjustment was pretty darn easy and felt so normal. Will this transition feel as normal? This unknown is a major source of stress for me when I dwell on it for too long. I'm good at that - dwelling on thoughts that I have no control over. I've heard people talk about the difficult transition from one to two children, so I might have some justification in these thoughts, but I know I shouldn't dwell too long.

I need to trust the process and trust that we have given, and will continue to give, Evelyn enough love and grace to get through this adjustment. Although I have been occupied with our toddler tornado and thoughts of the transition to come, I have been blessed by a beautiful, wonderful pregnancy and I am so grateful for that. This may be our biggest challenge as a family to date, and we may not have any clue what is about to hit us, but I am confident in our family and I know we are capable of welcoming this little girl into our lives with as much love and excitement as we welcomed Evelyn.

Did I mention we only have 5 weeks left?!