Here she is!!!

Alexa Bryant - 11/19/2012 - 7 lbs 15 oz - 21 inches long

It was quite the interesting labor and delivery, much different then we were expecting. After the very fast labor with Courtney (just over 2 hrs  once I woke up to a very small leak of amniotic fluid until she was born) my doctor and I were worried that I may not make it to the hospital! Needless to say it was my second longest labor.

I went in for my checkup and had a fairly long wait. While I was waiting I started to have regular contractions (but no real pain yet). I only had false labor once with Lauren. While my doctor was checking me I changed from a 3 to 4 cm dilation! She stripped my membranes and told me to go to the hospital if I had even 2 more contractions because I was probably going to have a baby that day! It was super exciting but scary too. I started having contractions again on the way to pick up carpool. I made it to our house and waited for the wood floor guys (who happened to be 45 min late!). I called Brock and he me at my mom's since that is where we were living while our house was being fixed. I went to my mom's, packed a bag quickly, took the car seat apart so my mom could wash it and waited for Brock. My contractions were very regular and I was a little uncomfortable but felt like I still had some time to go.

Brock drove us to the hospital and my contractions stopped briefly while we were on our way. Thankfully they started up again. I was surprised to find out I hadn't changed dilation any after being there for an hour, but I knew my doctor would keep me because of my history of precipitous delivery. My contractions came strongly for a while then would stop for about 10 min then start up again all evening. Dr. Haakenson decided to start a mini dose of Pitocin, but then quickly turned it off < 10 min after starting it so she could attend another delivery, thinking I would progress rapidly. . .and I did! I was dilated to a 10 and ready to push when she came in to check on me after finishing the other delivery. Unfortunately Alexa's heart rate dropped and scared us half to death, so I had to push her out quickly! Thank goodness I pushed her out quickly with not too significant of a tear, but it was worth it for a healthy baby.

Alexa was pretty calm while we were in the hospital, usually only crying when she was hungry. She was quite a spitter though and frequently choked on her secretions and reflux and that hasn't changed but her good nature certainly has! She has a classic case of colic, which have been unfortunate enough to know about since we had to deal with it once before with Courtney. Luckily Courtney's colic ended right around 12 weeks when I went back to work, then Lauren was diagnosed with cancer. Needless to say things can't go according to plan for us around here. We are keeping our fingers crossed that Alexa's colic will end around then too and not the 9-12 months it CAN last!!! She is 6 weeks old now and I can't imagine dealing with this much longer then 6 more weeks. Alexa has a more severe case of colic and after trying lots of remedies, it has only lessened it a little bit. We given her a probiotic, Colic Calm gripe water, and Mylicon (which doesn't seem to do anything except for calm her down for a few sec and maybe get her to suck on a binky for a minute or two). She is our first baby that hasn't taken to the binky which makes it even harder to calm her down. She will calm down if you hold her close, bounce her while patting her back/bum, and making the shhhhh noise over and over, walking around at the same time. It makes for 1 sore back and shoulder area. I remember well with Courtney how everyone thought she was the best baby, but they didn't see her from 8-midnight every night! Brock and I would trade off every 45 min trying to get her to stop crying. . .NO FUN at all! Alexa's is worse because not only does she cry a lot during the middle of the night, she usually starts crying by around 6 PM and it doesn't generally let up. I have to laugh whenever anyone makes a comment about how good she is. . .we love her despite the endless screaming, but we can hardly wait for this colic stuff to end!

I'm here!

Do you see the family resemblance?

Courtney meets Alexa! She is such a good helper too:)

Proud brother.

Happy big sister. They all loved holding her for a few seconds at a time.

Thanks Grandma Nita for watching the kids and toting them around to school and to visit us at the hospital.

Aunt Anna.

Aunt Alyssa.

1st Family photo! Maybe one day we will all be looking at the same time:)

Little ball of love!

Grandma Jenny got to see Alexa at work everyday while we were in the hospital.

Papa Greg. . . p.s. thanks for the yummy chocolates:)

Aunt Frankie.

Cousin Serena.

Great Grandma Dolores.

Aunt Becah. . .Courtney loved playing with her nail polish while hanging out at the hospital with mom and dad. Thanks for the cute outfit too! It will fit Alexa in no time!

Aunt Heidi

All stretched out! She is one tall lady:)

LOVE the hospital photos! Thanks Bella Baby Photography.

Going home on daddy's birthday. Best gift ever!

 

Look Who's 3!!!

We decided to celebrate Courtney's birthday a couple weeks early since Alexa was due 3 days before her actual birthday. Thankfully Alexa held out until the day after her party to make her debut! I just kept saying she needed to wait until Monday (11/19) and she did! Alexa and Courtney both came on the day I wanted, which was kind of fun.

   Anyways, back to the birthday girl. Courtney had a lady bug cake (if you couldn't tell. . .not my best cake, but she LOVED it). If you ask her how old she is her response is usually either 4 or 7, too funny. She had a fun time with her cousins, and we had a lot of space at Grandma Nita's house. She got a lady bug that lights her room with stars (she sleeps with it every night), some clothes (she wore several times each week. . .she LOVED them so much), a pink toy dog she can walk around, and a scooter and helmet which she and the other kids would ride around at Grandma's house. It was a fun night to celebrate our fun spirited, spunky 3 year old. She is super talkative and continues to surprise us with what she knows and says. She is a super good helper getting diapers and wipes for Alexa, and LOVES to 'help' mom do things. She is a girly girl, loves to dress up and now plays barbies and house with Lauren. We love you Courts!

SNOW

The girls were excited to play in the snow, but we waited until Brady got home from school. Brady opted to read so he could play the DS though. Lauren and Courtney were super excited to get their new snow clothes on (well hand-me-downs for Courtney except for her new fun monkey hat).

Yes those are the bundles of select Hickory wood floor filling up our living room, waiting to acclimate for the next week or so. Another room full of stuff! Will be super nice to get our house back together hopefully by the beginning of December?

Halloween fun!

I thought I better post something more fun and exciting since even though we are living in a mess we did try and do some fun yearly traditions. So here are some of our Halloween activities for the month of October.

 

We had a fun time at Papa and Grandma Jenny's Halloween party eating a yummy dinner, decorating cupcakes, and making spiders out of pipe cleaners. The kids were super excited to wear their costumes and play with their cousins!

 

 

 

Then on Halloween day we were able to carve pumpkins. Courtney just watched. Lauren wasn't shy at all and used her hands to dig the pumpkin guts out. They were excited to FINALLY cut them out:) We didn't want them to shrivel up and get all moldy on our hot front porch before Halloween.

 Brock told the kids about Witches Brew. He told the kids if they wrote a letter to the witch she would give them the supplies to make it. Well they wrote the letter the first of October then had to wait a very l...o...n...g month to hear back from her (they asked me all the time when she was going to send something). But Halloween morning the kids found a surprise from her on the kitchen table, and boy were they excited! We got to make it to drink for dinner.

 

Then thanks to Grandma 'Nita for cooking the sugar cookie dough I made the day before, they were able to decorate sugar cookies after dinner (our yearly tradition). They didn't get time to eat them because it was time to meet up with some neighborhood friends to trick-or--treat.

 

Here they are ready for trick-or-treating! They had a blast getting candy. Then we spent some time at a neighbors having hot chocolate, goodies and watching Halloween cartoon clips on their garage. Then home to get ready for bed. They did get to chose 1 candy to eat first. Halloween is so much easier on a weekend, but they really had fun and the weather was incredible!

 

Progress finally! Hallelujah!!!

Today, they tested our ceiling speaker, put the insulation back in the ceiling and patched the very large hole with sheet rock. Now for the mud to dry overnight so hopefully the wall and ceiling can be painted tomorrow, then the lights and speaker can be put back in after that dries. It is SO nice to finally have some progress. It felt pretty hopeless for a while, but now things seem to be moving forward.

Friday (11/9) the hardwood floors should come in (hopefully) so they can be put in our house to acclimate for 7 days. Then Monday (11/12) they will try and remove our counter tops and sink without breaking it- not high hopes for this according to the granite guy who came to look at it a few days ago. Will likely break, but they need to at least try and remove it per insurance company rather than just replacing it. Tuesday (11/13) they come to take out all our kitchen cabinets (all except the ones hanging from the wall). We will have to get our appliances, furniture, and kitchen cabinets out of the house - some to the garage, but I highly doubt it will all fit since now we have yard work equipment, bikes, etc, stuff we didn't have when we first remodeled our house and stored our belongings in the garage + more furniture and the kitchen cabinets too! Will definitely need a storage pod by the looks of things. I'm crossing my fingers that maybe the upstairs can start being put back together the week of Thanksgiving??? or the one right after??? Flooring, cabinets, counter tops, sink, appliances, and eventually furniture. Too bad it is a short week, probably not long enough to get it all done:(

We will be kitchen-less for a couple weeks (minus the microwave). So that should be fun. We might end up moving in to my moms for a couple weeks, but we will just see how things go. Who knows when Alexa may decide to come, but I am in no rush for the time being! I will be term this Friday, so technically she can come anytime!!! Let's hope she holds off until things get a little better/more finished around here.

Water!!!

Well, last Friday night we went to the Make-a-Wish trick or treat party and picked up Courtney's pictures @ JC Penny's. Our plan was to come home, have a quick dinner and get kids in bed since I had a 24-hr shift the next morning and was exhausted. When we got home Courtney said she had to go potty so Brady backed up from her and stepped in some liquid and totally thought it was from Courtney. She denied it and I looked and said I didn't think that's what it was. So Brock and I (after a lot of struggle - our fridge was super heavy and packed full from the previous Costco run earlier that morning) finally pulled out the fridge and shut the water to the fridge off. It had just made it's way to the front of the fridge so damage didn't seem too bad initially. I went to the basement to see if any leaking had occurred and of course there was a large water bubble in our ceiling and our speaker was discolored too. So we grabbed some towels and punctured a hole to drain the ceiling. Then we decided to just go thru insurance since we didn't have the time, know-how to fix it all by ourselves, and boy are we glad we did! So while I was making calls, kids were running around, Brock was trying to make sure the floor was dry, Courtney pooped all over the toilet and proceeded to wipe her hands all over the shower curtain. So needless to say things definitely did not go anyway close to how we had planned the night. I finally got some quick dinner made and got kids in bed. Brock was exhausted and fell right asleep while I waited for the clean up/mitigation crew to come. They showed up at 10:30 PM and left around 1:30 AM, then I got to sleep for a couple hours before my long 24-hr shift, so needless to say I felt like crap! I got sick on my birthday, and still have not gotten over my cold/sinus issues and still feel and sound terrible. Of course I took pictures of the water damage, but like a dummy I cleared my camera card so I could take pictures at Jenny and Greg's family Halloween party Sunday night, so now there are no photos of the actual damage.The cause for the water leak was from our fridge ice/water maker line. It was almost completely severed. They figured it probably only leaked for 10-15 min. Thank goodness we weren't gone any longer seeing as it is quite a lot worse damage then we previously thought. The floor was 100% saturated around the fridge in the kitchen and extended behind the kitchen into the living room (you couldn't visually see that living room floor damage, but moisture testing revealed quite a large area/most of the room).

We have had 2 giant dehumidifiers and 6 large industrial strength fans running 24-7 since Friday 10/26 night. They said the dry out process should be 3-5 days. but because of the weekend things were delayed some (such as cutting a giant hole in our ceiling downstairs). Our house is older then 1981 so it needed lead and asbestos testing (which they did Monday and got the results back Tuesday. So the hole in our ceiling (4 x 6 foot) was cut then, and the wet insulation was removed (we insulated the ceiling to cut down on noise). We have been living in an 88 degree house that is so loud you can hardly hear yourself think let alone a person a foot away from you. Will be nice to have less noise hopefully today/tomorrow??? We finally got the OK to run the AC Monday, so it's pretty much been running nonstop and the lowest we could get the house was 84 degrees (those dang fans and dehumidifiers put out a ton of heat. Probably going to be one expensive electric bill this month). It's been a frustrating, expensive year, with one thing happening after the next. I figure we have spent well over $10,000 in unexpected expenses, so needless to say things are tight financially right now too. Plumbing main, water heater, car, etc, etc, etc. Hopefully this will be the last of the expenses (well, baby/birth too. .. but Courtney's broken arm and ER visit, plus Lauren's scans pretty much took care of out out of pocket healthcare max-almost).

Right now I am downstairs eating some lunch since there pretty much is nothing I can do upstairs right now. They are tearing out our entire hard wood floor! It is so loud, dusty, and I don't want to watch them rip our house apart. It is going to be quite the headache (well it already has been so far. . .). And to think all I wanted was to have a mellow relaxing time for once welcoming one of our kids (our last). I guess I shouldn't have wished for such a luxury. I am not even ready for her to come, let alone deal with all this crap going on at our house. I just hope it can all be put back together and look as close to what it looked like before as it can. Hopefully it will be weeks and not months, but I am sure time will tell. Only 3 weeks and 2 days until Alexa arrives, we'll probably be out of our house at that time, since our hardwood floor is the only entrance/exit to our house, plus our kitchen will be pretty non-functioning once they rip everything else out. Anyways, sorry for the long post, but it's been one heck of a weekend and we are only getting started! And to think this is the condensed version.