Neverland

Ever since Grandma brought us Peter Pan after Emily was born the girls have been obsessed.  They play Peter Pan all the time. Every morning they fly to Neverland and pretend they are mermaids, dance on a drum like Tiger Lily (aka jumping on their bed). This game became even better when Lauren discovered that we actually have a Peter Pan costume (thank you Sarah and Jacqui).  She now wears it almost all day, every day. Lauren has also declared assignments for Halloween: she will be Peter Pan, Rachel will be Wendy, Dad will be Captain Hook, Emily will be Tinker Bell (because she is little), and I will be a pirate.

Peter Pan

Flying

Peter Pan and Tinker Bell (a Cinderella that lights up)

A Little Crazy

This month past month has been a blur.  Aside from doing some life adjusting, all of us have been in a perpetual cycle of sickness. We have been to the doctor way too many times for my taste and spent a lot of money in co-pays and prescriptions.

For my own record this is the chronology of the past month since Emily was born:

Feb. 4th - Released from the hospital with instructions to stay home and take it easy.  haha
Feb. 5th - Took Emily to the doctor for check up and jaundice test.
Feb. 6th  - Took Emily to ER
Feb. 7th -  Met with lactation consultant
Feb. 8th -  Ryan had to go back to work
Feb 9th - Woolsey parents here
Feb 11th - Took Emily to a friend's for newborn pictures. I come down with chills and a fever
Feb 12th - Friend comes over to take pictures with all the girls. I still have a fever and find out I have mastitis. I call the doctor and order a prescription and they ask me to bring Emily in so they can check her weight and make sure she is getting enough to eat.
Feb. 16th - Merkley parents here
Feb. 17th - Emily's baby blessing
Feb. 18th  - Family all goes home, Ryan has the day off
Feb 19th - Emily's two week check-up, everything looks good
Feb 24th - Emily wakes up with lots of greenish goop covering her eyes, kind of congested. The two older girls and I start coming down with colds.
Feb 25th - Dr. visit for Emily to look at goop, doctor takes culture and tells us she will get back to us
Feb 26th -  Lauren first day of "preschool" (actually more of a glorified playgroup with kids her age)
Feb. 28th -  Lauren wakes up with red goopy eyes,  that evening the doctor calls confirms bacterial infection for Emily and asks about other girls, she tells me since these infections are so contagious she would order a prescription for all three girls
March 1st -  Rachel wakes up with red goopy eyes, all girls start prescription eye drops
March 2nd -  Lauren wakes up with hives, they disappear within a few hours.  I call the doctor and they tell us to stop using eye drops on her and to give her some benadryl. I spent the morning at a church women's conference and Ryan cleans the whole house while I'm gone (I love him so much :)
Mar 3rd -  Girls stay home from church due to their nasty colds and eye infections.  Ryan comes home feeling sick.
Mar 4th -  Rachel wakes up from nap with hives on ankles and feet, they disappear within the hour, doctor tells us to stop using eye drops with her and give her benadryl. Emily is very congested and starts to get a little bit of a cough.
Rachel wakes up at 9:40pm screaming, she has hives all over legs and spots on arms, hands, stomach. I call the doctor and they tell me to give her more benadryl and we schedule a doctor appointment for the following day.
Mar 5th - Rachel wakes up in the morning with a few spots of hives but they don't seem to be bothering her. At our appointment Rachel breaks out in hives behind her ears while waiting for the doctor.  By the time the doctor came in she was crying and holding her ears shouting "I don't like it!" Doctor checks her out and can't find anything, she says often with hives you never find out the cause. Great.

Rachel woke up again this morning with hives and saying her eyes hurt. Good. Grief.

The $50 Onesie

The day after we came home from the hospital I had to take Emily in to the doctor for a check-up and a jaundice test since her levels were still a little high when we left the hospital. Her weight was down to about 7lbs. 2 oz. (9 oz. less than her birth weight). The doctor wasn't too worried but said to make sure and feed her every 2-3 hours. They start to get concerned if babies loose more than 10% of their birth weight.  At this point Emily was only eating about every 4 hours.  That night I nursed Emily before putting her to bed at around 7pm.  Emily started to stir around 11:30 pm so I got up and tried to feed her. I tried for about 45 minutes to get her awake enough to eat, nothing worked so I just put her back to bed. I woke up around 5am feeling like I was going to explode and assuming that she would be starving tried to wake her up again to get her to eat. She ate for maybe a minute and then passed out.

This is kind of how the morning went, she had maybe two diapers that were barely wet and was really lethargic, even her cry sounded tired and weak and we couldn't get her awake and alert enough to eat. Around 11am Ryan asked when we should be concerned about her sleeping so much and not hardly eating.
Nursing was still really difficult for us so I decided to pump a bottle to see if it would be easier to get food in her that way, but she still would barely suck.  In the packet of newborn info they send you home with they tell you to call the doctor if you can't wake them up to eat and if they don't have at least 6-8 wet diapers in a 24-hour period.  Our insurance works a little differently so I don't have a number to go straight to the pediatrician, so around  I called the number for the advice nurse on the back of our insurance card. I told her what was going on and she asked some questions and told me that I should take Emily to the ER, but that she would check with a doctor to see what they thought. While I was on hold Ryan got Emily awake enough to drink about 1oz. of what was in the bottle, I told that to the nurse when she got back on the line and she said I should still take her to the ER.

Not knowing what else to do I took Emily to the ER. While checking us in they asked what was going on and I told them I hadn't been able to get her to wake up to eat all night or that morning and that she had only had about 2 wet diapers, the nurse laughed and said that having a baby that sleeps all night didn't sound like a problem. The nurse told me to put her on the scale and to not worry about taking her clothes and diaper off (which actually make a big difference in a newborn). She weighed 7lbs. 9oz., which was 7oz. more than she had been the day before (this was due to her clothes and diaper).  The nurse asked what her birth weight was and then told me her weight looked fine and it was normal for her to lose a little weight.
They then took Emily temperature, rectally of course, which made her scream... and poop and pee all over the place. One problem solved. However, I had no extra clothes for her, I hadn't planned on going on any outings for a while and didn't have a diaper bag well packed. The nurse said that they happened to have a 6-9 month size onesie that she could wear.  They then tried three times to check Emily's blood pressure, not easy with a kicking and screaming baby, and told me it seemed kind of high. Obviously. She was screaming.

They then admitted us to a room where we proceeded to wait an hour and half to be seen by the doctor.  During that time Emily was very calm and the most alert I had ever seen her in her short life, a couple nurses even came in to check on us and commented how alert she seemed.  She stayed awake for about an hour and then fell asleep, but I did get her to finish the rest of the bottle I had pumped.  When the doctor came in I told him what had been going on.  He asked if this was my first child, I told him it was my third and he asked if I had nursed the other two, yes I had. I must have seemed very incompetent.  He checked her vitals and said that the nurses had told him she had been very alert earlier, according to him she seemed fine. He called a pediatrician to see if they had anything to add before he sent us home. The pediatrician just said "well sometimes nursing is hard."  Yes. Thank you. I know.

I went home $50 poorer (ER co-pay), starving and shaky (since I hadn't eaten lunch yet), and feeling like that whole experience was incredibly  frustrating and unnecessary.

Emily ate ok that evening and the next day we went to see a lactation consultant.  You would think nursing would be super easy on your third kid, but for some reason it is hard to get the hang of it every time for me.  As the LC looked at Emily's chart she asked about the ER visit, particularly if they had weighed her with her clothes on. I told her they had and she expressed her annoyance and said we would just throw that weight out since it was entirely useless. :)  She gave me some good advice on getting Emily to latch and on helping my swelling go down (which was one reason Emily was having a hard time latching on, not to mention it was incredibly painful).  Needless to say we left that visit much happier.

An even HUGER family...

One afternoon this past fall I was walking out of a store holding hands with Lauren and Rachel.  Lauren happily said "Look! We are a big family! With a mommy, Rachel, and Lauren!"  I asked her what we would be after we picked Daddy up from work and she said, "We'll be a HUGE family!"  Then I said "What will we be when our baby comes?" Lauren thought for a minute and said, "An even HUGER family!"  (I don't know if that is how you spell it, but I figure spelling is irrelevant on a word made up by a three year old.)

So on February 3rd at 3:02pm we officially became an even huger family. Our beautiful Emily came in at 7lbs. 11 oz. 20 3/4 inches long and lots (relative to our other girls) of dark hair

Introducing Emily Anne Woolsey

It says "Welcome Emily"

Lauren really likes her and will ask to hold her

Rachel likes to talk about her, but doesn't really want to touch her

All ready to go home

They let us go home the next day by lunch time which was pretty awesome. Luckily daddy finished his report at work so he could stay home with us most of the week. :)

All the girls wanted to jump on Daddy

Lauren trying to use Daddy as her magical carriage 

I love these jammies

New clothes

Sleepy daddy

 

She had me worried the first couple days, she was quite the screamer, any time you did anything to her aside from feeding.  Without much warning she would go straight to the shrill, high pitched scream. After a few days being home where they don't jab your heel with needles and prod you with various other objects, she calmed right down and has proved to be a very good baby.  We love our little Emily!

A Pocket Full of Rachel

This is a little song Lauren made up, it is actually just Ring Around the Rosie.
  Ring around the Rachel
  A pocket full of Rachel
  Ashes Ashes we all fall down

They think it is hilarious and will sing it over and over and over.

 Two years ago today our little Rachel was born.
Some things about Rachel:

• She loves repeating what people say, especially Lauren.  Her favorite phrase currently is "What you guys talking bout?" Whenever someone is talking she asks that. She has no idea what it means, but she will just keep asking over and over.
• She is more fearless and mischievous than Lauren and has a much more zany personality. 
• Loves to do things to make us laugh.
• Still sparse in the hair department but we did mange some very tiny pig tails today.
• She is getting really good at picking up little songs and loves to sing them all the time.  She has been singing "Happy Birthday" to herself all day.

We love our Rachel, she makes us so happy. :)

Size comparison

These are my favorite pictures with the girls and their Daddy

She had that same silly, mischievousness look in her eyes at 2 months 

The frustrated face

One year down!

One of her favorite songs is Twinkle Little Star.  She really

can sing the whole thing by herself (along with several other little songs)

 but I have yet to catch it on camera.

Birthday Gift from us

It was a big hit, I barely got them out of it all day

When I asked Rachel what kind of cake she wanted she said
a froggie cake.  I asked her several times to make sure since
I didn't know she was that into froggies but that is what she
said every time.  Here is my attempt :)

Birthday Girl waiting for cake and ice cream

For family :)

Happy Birthday to our sweet Rachel!!

Holiday Break

Even though this was our first year not having a good 2-3 weeks off for Christmas break we did enjoy having Daddy home for a few days and we found some fun stuff to do around town.

Sacramento Zoo:  The Sacramento Zoo had a free day on Christmas Eve and we thought that would be a fun way to spend the morning.  It was a little chilly but we all bundled up and had a good time.  I have never been to a zoo when it wasn't blistering hot outside so it was fun to see most of the animals out and active (except for the hyenas, Lauren was really upset that they weren't out and wouldn't stop talking about it).

The giraffes were the first thing Lauren wanted to see and
they did not disappoint.

Rachel liked the giraffes too.

They had several kinds of "big cats" and the girls thought
they were really neat.

The flamingos were a big hit.  Pink birds, what could be cooler
than that?

Sacramento Children's Museum:  We did this the day after Christmas. The girls had a blast, I think they could have stayed there all day.

The craft room had a glass wall on one side that kids could paint.
When the wall got full they would hose it off and you could start
all over.  This was Lauren's favorite,  she painted for at least half an hour.

We love dress-ups

Next stop:  the moon!

Goggles :)