Little Brother

  
On November 2nd we had a little brother. :)  He is wonderful and we love him. He has definitely been our easiest baby as far as almost everything goes (except for nursing, but he's doing much better now). Here is how it all went down:




Around 4am I woke up with what I thought might be a contraction. I got out of bed to walk around and see if it was real. Sure enough they kept coming, so around 4:20 I called my friend to come stay with the girls, then I woke up Ryan. We left the house around 4:40 and  on the way I decided to heck with a natural birth, I wanted an epidural as soon as possible. With every kid I've tried to get farther along, hoping to do a natural labor, but in the end just not being able to take it any more. This time i didn't care though, I had forgot just how painful contractions were.  I just wanted it to be over. We got to the hospital just before 5. My contractions felt close though I wasn't really timing them. We got to triage and they nurse asked me nicely if I came to be checked, I wanted to shout at her "no I'm here to have a baby! This isn't my first kid, I'm know what real labor is!" But I just nodded my head instead. She then asked me other questions that I didn't understand because I was having so many contractions. My answer to her questions was "I just want an epidural." She smiled, then gave me a cup and told me they needed a urine sample (don't ask me why). I went into the bathroom and could barely get anything out, then I had a contraction and dropped it all over the floor.  I came out and told them all I had was all over the floor. The nurse laughed and said that was ok and took me back to check my blood pressure and cervix. While she was checking my blood pressure I felt a pop and a rush of fluid, I told her "I think my water just broke." She did a quick check and said "Yup it did." All at once I felt immense pressure like I needed to push. I started shouting "He's coming out! He's coming out!" The nurse shouted down the hall for a doctor and delivery tray, but the baby was already crowing, then several midwives ran into the room and started shouting at me to push. There was then a lot of pushing and screaming on my part and then he was out. 15 minutes after getting to the hospital and it was all over. Awesome. The tiny triage room quickly filled with people, trying to make sense of what all just happened, the nurse was still shouting for a delivery tray so they could clamp the chord and everything.  Once they got the umbilical chord cut and clamped, they took us to an actual delivery room to finish everything up, like delivering the placenta and doing my hospital registration. He was 7 lbs. 15 oz. and 21 1/2 inches long (basically a giant as far as our kids go). We named him Spencer Matthew Woolsey.
  Ryan left the hospital by 8am, once everything was under control, to go relieve our friend who was watching the girls.  In the afternoon Ryan brought the girls to visit. As soon as she walked in the room Lauren  announced that she wanted to hold the baby.  Rachel announced that she didn't. Emily just wanted to play with the pillows in the window seat and eat the small packages of crackers I saved them from my lunch.  Within about 15 minutes the girls were going crazy so they all went home.

  I must say I'm a fan of natural birth, (that is when the whole thing only lasts an hour).  It was great not being hooked up to anything (although they did still put an IV needle in my arm "just in case I needed it"). I was so amazed at actually being able to feel my legs and get up and walk around after having a baby.  Everything healed so much quicker too.

I have this same picture of Ryan and each of the girls :)

  The day after Spencer was born we got to go home. As soon as we got home, Ryan and Spencer went and passed out on the couch and the girls started screaming for food.  Back to reality.  I got them some cereal and then sat down to eat the lunch I had brought home from the hospital.  Rachel saw what I had and in her sweetest voice said "Mommy is that a sandwich? I like sandwiches. You could half it with me."  (This is why I could never do a home birth.  I actually enjoy a day or two at the hospital. By myself. Nobody asking me for anything. Having food that I didn't make delivered to me.  And no one else trying to eat it.)  I halved my sandwich with Rachel. Emily went and found a stack of books for me to read. At least I was missed.
That night bedtime was a complete train wreck. Lot of tears. Lots of craziness.  Once we finally got all the girls in bed, Ryan and I collapsed on the couch wondering what we had done. 4 kids was going to be a bit harder than we thought.

  One awesome thing this time around though was that for the first time Ryan was able to take a lot of time off work for this baby.  He was home for two weeks and it was wonderful.  He made all the meals, did all the dishes and the shopping, and got Lauren and Rachel to and from school and kept the house clean. He is awesome.  It was really great to spend those two weeks all together as a family, figuring out together how to adjust to the changes. And we are adjusting. :)

Haircuts for the Woolseys

...actually just one of the Woolseys.  I should preface this by saying that Rachel has asked me to cut her hair several times, and every time I put her off saying that I will do it the next time we do Daddy's.  So perhaps this is actually my fault.

How Rachel's hair looked pre-haircuts

   Rachel took matters into her own hands the past couple weeks. About two weeks ago I was running my fingers through Rachel's hair and noticed that it seemed like she had some bangs and that it was a little bit shorter in some spots. It didn't look bad and it was kind of hard to tell since she has curly hair, so I think it actually took me a couple days to notice. All the same I asked Rachel casually if she cut her hair.  She said calmly "Yes." Then in a whisper (as if we were keeping it a secret from someone else), " I sneaked my scissors and hid behind the play kitchen and cut it." I told her that only mommy cuts hair and asked her not to do it anymore.  Later that day I went and looked behind the play kitchen to retrieve the scissors.  I found the scissors... and a very large pile of curly hair.  It was a lot more than I thought she had cut.  I immediately exclaimed in despair, "Oh Rachel!" she happened to be in the room and shouted, "You said you would still love me!!"  (Explanation: One of Rachel's favorite books is about a little bear who breaks one of his mom's dishes.  He goes to tell his mom but first asks hypothetically if he were to do certain things, if his mother would still love him.  To each situation the mother responds "Yes I will always love you, but you will have to... clean up the mess or help wash baby, etc."  Rachel often likes to ask me if she does something bad if I will still love her. )  I assured her that I still love her, but she is not to cut her hair any more. I lock up the scissors.
    Fast forward to this week.  Rachel comes out with most of the hair along the left and right side of her head cut up to ears, leaving a very long curly rats tail in the back. Yikes. I am still not sure where she got the scissors. As I picked up dirty clothes in her room I kept finding little piles of blonde curls. But it is now time for more drastic measures.  I tried my hand at "fixing" it.

Before I cut her hair:

After I cut her hair:  Hayley Mills anyone?

It is not my favorite haircut.  I really loved her blonde curls, but still it kind of fits her zany personality.  It also requires basically no maintenance, not that I have ever been good at that anyway.

 ALL scissors in the house have now been hidden and locked up for an undetermined amount of time.

Easter

So Easter was a while ago, but it was fun.  Lots of candy, too much candy, but fun. We had some friends over for an egg hunt a few days before Easter.  The kids had a blast and ate almost all of their candy before the night was over.

Tried for a nice picture of the girls in their Easter dresses, but this was the best we could do.

Spring Break

Ryan was able to take two days off in April for a little spring break and so we planned some fun family activities and hit the road.

Saturday we went to find some snow.  It is kind of sad to me that we have to drive to go and find snow. Lauren is the only one of our kids who has ever played in the snow and she was only 18 months old so she probably doesn't remember.  Donner's Pass had some snow and the girls have been dying to build a snowman (not just because of Frozen, even though they did name our snowman Olaf).  It was pretty nasty, hard, crusty snow but we had fun.  We found half of a broken sled and that made it even better.

 

 

Monday we went to Fairy Tale Town

 Met this little person:

and ate homemade rocky road ice cream.

It was good.

Really good.

Tuesday we went up to Point Reyes.  We took a walk up to a replica of a tribal village.

They look miserable but they actually really loved it.  They decided that they wanted to live here instead of going home.

We also went down to the beach, which was fun as always.

Yay for day trips!

A New Place, More Space

In January I started casually looking the area for a bigger place to rent, we were planning on moving sometime later in the summer but I thought I would get a feel for what was out there and maybe come across a good deal. We found one. This little duplex, located a mile or two from where we were currently living, the price was right, it had three bedrooms and a great yard so we went for it.  We got the keys on Valentine's Day and moved in gradually over the next week.

The yard is amazing

I don't know what we ever did without one.
(Actually we walked to the park, every single day) 

Sorry for the crumby pictures.

We love it and I think we'll stay for a while.  I think one of my favorite things is our very own washer and dryer in the garage...that doesn't require quarters.

We Love Our Birthdays, Every One

So it's been a while but back at the beginning of the year we had a couple birthdays.  Rachel turned 3 and Emily turned one.

All Rachel wanted to do for her birthday was ride a carousel.
Lucky for us the mall has one, so that's what we did.

Trying out the new scooter.

Rachel's cake, cause she's a monkey.  One ear is missing
because she snuck in while I was making dinner, grabbed it,
hid behind the counter, and ate it.

Emily's cake

Our first kid to really go for their cake on their first birthday.

Yum. More cake!