Merry Christmas!

Hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours! A few quick highlights:

Audrey cooing at DaddyIsaac and Santa (just a little bit happy, don't you think?) Waiting at the top of the stairs to come down Christmas morning. I think mine were the only kids on earth who didn't wake up until 9am to open presents! But by then, I already had breakfast ready, so they had to eat first. What a mean mom I am!Emmie opening a present, I just love that smile on her face!And Isaac getting excited about his new truck . Imagine that. Since I'm the one usually taking pictures, I don't end up in too many of them, but I found one! Merry Christmas!

Cristmas Crafts

I love getting ready for Christmas and all the planning and decorating (even though I'm not very good at it!). I had planned for a few months to make some new Christmas stockings, since we wouldn't have enough for everyone with the new addition to our little family. Before Audrey was born, I bought the fabric I needed and had a plan in my mind of how I wanted them to look, and some how I was able to squeeze in enough time to get them all done! Granted, it took me until about a week before Christmas, but at least they are finished! Here is how they turned out:
Jarom had fun rearranging the stockings to read: MEDIA, M.IDEA, A.DIME, etc. Who knew our initials would be so versatile?

And as much fun as they are to look at, they were even more fun to look inside Christmas morning!The other quick little sewing project I did was a gift card cozy. I got the idea here and used the left over fabric from my stockings. It turned out so cute, I don't know if I will ever be able to give another gift card without a cozy ever again!

Before & After

The other day, Isaac decided to try his hand at hair styling with scissors and Emilie was his target. And being the distracted mom that I am, I didn't even notice it had happened for a couple hours after it happened! Emilie was quick to point out that Isaac was the one that did it, but when I confronted him, he tried to pass it off onto Emilie at first, but finally confessed. Here is his handiwork:
While it's not the worst hack-job ever, it was short enough in places that I didn't trust myself to fix it. So while Isaac was at school the next day, I took Emilie to Fantastic Sams for a hair cut. Here is her after shot: The bangs are quite a bit shorter over all, but I think they look cute and are blended nicely so they'll grow out just fine. While she was there, I had the girl trim all her hair and she now has a cute little a-line cut.

I'm just glad it wasn't shorter - it could have been so much worse!

2010 Scrapbook pages

In my ideal world, I would scrapbook all the time and all my pages would be beautiful and perfect, but until that time, my yearly pages for the family exchange will have to do! Here is how this year's pages turned out:

Getting along

Any time a new baby is born, the family dynamics change to accommodate the new member. I remember when Isaac came home and how much Gabby (the cat) investigated the new noisy little one. When Emilie was born, I worried how Isaac would handle not being the only child any more, and we had our fair share of tantrums and episodes. I was likewise concerned about how both kids would react to Audrey, especially once we brought her home from the hospital. I worried about Emilie the most, since she's very tender-hearted and emotional about "her" things, but the transition so far has been much better than I anticipated! In fact, the kids seem to crowd around Audrey almost too much! Here they are playing with her on the bed:Isaac holding her on the couch. He always asks to hold her. The other day, he actually took her out of her bassinet and took her to Jarom because she was crying. I'm just glad that I didn't see it happen! He just loves to help take care of his baby sister. Emilie has taken upon herself the role of second mother. She gets upset if she doesn't hold the baby at least once a day. She loves to help replace fallen pacifiers (although her insertion methods could still use some improvement). When Audrey cries, she sometimes sings to her to help soothe her. And of course, what baby forehead is complete without its daily bathing in toddler kisses? I'm so glad she loves her new baby sister!But on the off moment when she doesn't have big brother and sister around to help mother, she always has this trusty friend for comfort:I think all our kids are destined to be thumb suckers. Granted,she hasn't really found her thumb since yesterday, but it's probably just a sign of what's to come.

Audrey had her two week check-up today and did great! She was 8 lbs. 2 oz. at birth, and in the hospital had dropped to 7 lbs. 6 oz. She went to the doctor at 5 days old and was up to 7 lbs. 13 oz. When we went in today, they wanted to see her at least back up to her birth weight, but this little girl has been busy - she weighed in at 8 lbs. 14 oz.! She gained a whole pound this last week! She also grew an inch, wow! I'm so proud of my gorgeous little girl!

New arrival!

Just one short week ago, our sweet little Audrey Marie was born! I had an induction scheduled for this Monday, but I guess she had plans of her own. Tuesday night, I felt contractions getting pretty regular, so around 7pm I started timing them. Unlike other times, after a couple hours they didn't let up, so at 9pm we made some phone calls to get the kiddos watched and Jarom and I headed up to the hospital. On our way up, we joked that any time, the contractions will just end - likely as we pulled up to the hospital! But they kept being steady and shortly after checking into the hospital, we were admitted into labor and delivery and the end of our journey was underway!

We labored throughout the night and into the morning, but progress stalled, so they added pitocin into the mix, and after a few hours of that, no progress was made, so we went ahead with a c-section. At 11:09 am, sweet Audrey was born and was 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 3/4 inches long. I had a feeling that she would have darker hair like Isaac had, and sure enough, she had a full head of beautiful, dark hair. Here is one of the first pics of us in the operating room while they were stitching me up.
Back into the recovery room. After 15 hours of labor and surgery, I was one tired mama! Isaac and Emilie were so excited to meet their new little sister! Isaac had to wear a face mask because he's been coughing a lot, and Emilie has a nice little eczema rash on her mouth, poor girl! Audrey wasn't quite sure what to think of these big siblings loving on her!
A very awake little Audrey with her best friend, the binkie.
On our way home. Isaac is wearing his Big Brother shirt, Emilie has a Big Sister shirt, and Audrey has the Little Sister shirt. This was mostly for my sake, the kids didn't find it nearly as exciting as I did - but isn't that usually the case?

Halloween

It's been a few weeks, I figure I should probably share a few Halloween pictures.

Since most of our Halloween plans happened to land on the day I was discharged from the hospital, I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked and had to miss some things, like Isaac's Kindergarten party and taking the kids trick-or-treating at Novell, but Jarom was super dad and made sure the kids still had a great holiday! Here are the kids (Isaac the ninja, cousin Michaela as Ariel, and Emili the princess) at Novell.
Jarom was especially proud of his Jack Skeleton pumpkin. It took a few candles inside to light up enough at night, but it sure looked cool! The kids and I just used the stick-on face elements and the kids thought that was pretty great, not to mention quick and no clean-up required!Saturday, our ward had a trunk-or-treat. Since it was raining outside, the event was moved inside, which I appreciated so I could just sit on a padded chair and pass out candy. Isaac had a blast making the rounds getting tons of candy, but Emile seemed a bit freaked out by the whole experience and would only go to a few different people.
My friend Cami and I. I've been wanting to dress up as a pregnant nun for years now, I'm so excitd I could finally pull it off!