The Princess Has Arrived!

Our little lady, Elise Hart Bastian arrived on March 14, 2012. She weighed 8 lbs, 7 oz and was 20 inches long born at 5:02 pm. She has already turned the house upside down. And here are a million pictures followed by the whole story :)

 

Who knew the hospital would stick cute little bows on her head?!  (Probably someone who has had a girl before.)

 Our first moments together

 Can you see it? He's already wrapped around her little finger :)

 Her first bath

  Oh she's so cute!

  Joey was the first to visit with dad, but he wasn't really all that into baby sister. He just jumped on my bed and laid down on me with the biggest smile on his face. Poor baby who is no longer the baby! :( He's having a bit of a hard time.

 Then Lance took Joey home for a nap and brought the other two back after school. They were much more excited about baby sister.

 

   Getting ready to go home

 First ride in the car seat

 And Elise arrives at home

 Joey was much more excited to see her when she first arrived. Now he's kind of hit and miss with Elise. Sometimes he loves her and sometimes he's had enough of her.

 Mikey never gets enough of her :)

 

We sure love her!

And now a little birthing story. You can take this or leave this. It's for my own personal record.

It wasn't too exciting as I was induced, but it sure lasted way longer than we thought since each labor has gotten shorter and shorter. But this little lady sure took her time getting here!  We went in at about 7:45 am. The doctor broke my water at around 8:30 and I got the epidural at around 9:30 or 10:00. The epidural is my least favorite part of all of pregnancy and delivery (though still worth it once those contractions really kick in.) This epidural, however, really took horrible to the next level. At this point, though, all I knew was that it seemed to take a little bit longer than usual.

So my progress was slow. I sat at 4 cm for hours. Then made it to a 5 1/2...and then sat for another few hours. Finally at about 4:15, I made it to 7 cm. 10 minutes later I was a 9 1/2! The epidural was not really working from about my pelvic bone down which was really horribly painful at that point. Finally we got that working a little better and waited for the doctor. At about 5:00 I started pushing. I pushed 2 1/2 times during one contraction and out she came at 5:02! The best part? No stitches! Yay! She was beautiful and perfect and off we went to our new room.

Well as the night progressed I realized that I was getting the worst headache ever!  The last two nights I had slept absolutely horribly so I chalked it up to lack of sleep and a rough day. Well I woke up the next morning with the headache going strong. Like seriously the worst headache I have ever had. It was pulsing down my neck and shoulders and sitting up was absolutely torture. That was when the anesthesiologist came in and told me about the "complication" during the epidural. He punctured the spinal fluid which was now leaking and causing my brain to "sink" in my head. A complication not unheard of, but still my nightmare. It was my nightmare because the fastest fix was to do a blood patch which involved the same process as an actual epidural.

And in fact it was worse. So I had to get a second epidural that morning except the anesthesiologist had to get into my back and then wait there while the nurse dug around with an IV needle to get blood to give to the anesthesiologist to force into the little spot in my back. That resulted in the worst pressure in my back and a horrible back ache for the next few days while the headache slowly subsided. That was the worst morning in all of my pregnancies and births ever! *sigh*  But we made it through. Of course she was worth it :)

Bless you!

This one of Joey's cutest bits right now. He just started doing it one day. I never get tired of it! (And of course, whenever he sees the camera he has to stop and say, "cheese!" It makes it hard to get videos of the kid.)

 

No one can get enough of this kid. He's just so darn cute!

Joey alone in his crib....

There are times (very few, I assure you ;) when Joey is left in his crib for a bit longer than he wants. He does what he can to pass the time, which basically consists of throwing everything out of the crib and sometimes trying to climb out. But on this particular morning, it appears he was going for some kind of fashion statement.

I seriously couldn't even begin to figure out how he did this. His shirt was all sorts of twisted and flipped over and all that. But it was pretty awesome. :)

Three weeks to go....

 Well there it is in all its glory. That belly of mine with only weeks to go. Good thing because it's feeling like I really can't get much bigger.

So here's to early babies! Yes, I'll probably get to that last week, like always, but one can dream, right? :) Actually, it's the constant, super painful, labor-like, crampy contractions that I experience all the live long day that makes me wish a little harder for an early baby. I feel like I've already been in labor for weeks! But such is my uterus. It just likes to contract. Well you can be sure I'll let you know when she arrives!

Batter up!

One of the boys' favorite activities is evening baseball. It is a frequent activity with dad before bed. Joey is more pretending to be a part of the action as he's a little bit little, but he sure tries. Lance is the pitcher and the older two take turns being the catcher and the batter.

 (On a side note, one of Mikey's favorite things, is to match at least one of his brothers when getting into PJs. When we put Joey into Luke's old Christmas Monkey PJs, Mikey dug out his Christmas Monkey PJs...from 2010...which should now be in Luke's drawer. Thus we have a Mikey in basically painted on PJs. They were SO tight! It was awesome.)

The large basement was one of the biggest reason I wanted this house. Definitely no regrets!

Joey's bath

Apparently we don't bathe Joey enough so he's taking matters into his own hands. This has now happened a handful of times. He's getting better at opening doors and his climbing is quickly improving. It's getting hard to stop him!  And this still makes me laugh every time! But then I have to clean up a child dressed in sopping, wet clothes.

Merry Christmas!

Just pretend I posted this a few weeks ago....

I didn't take that many pictures of all the Christmas festivities this year :( So sad. So many parties where the camera was forgotten. But I do have a few.  

Christmas Eve:

Trying to get everyone to pose...you know how it goes.

It is with reluctance that I post this picture below. So pregnant and chubby in my face...but my love for those other cute little faces overcomes my embarrassment. 

 

Joey grinning innocently at the scene of the crime. You see, every other year, we have a poorly decorated tree because every other year we've had an 18-month-old at Christmas time. Slowly we end up moving all the decorations from the bottom few feet of the tree to the top. At 18 months, Mikey and Luke definitely pulled at all the ornaments until we moved them. But they stopped there. Joey took it to a whole new level. He pulled at all the ornaments until we moved them...but then after that, he did not stop. You can see all the lights clumped together behind him because he was constantly pulling the lights down off the tree entirely and pulled the ribbon this way and that trying to get that off, too. Maybe it's sibling rivalry already?  He's trying to outdo them...?  Regardless, it was our saddest tree ever. But it's so hard to get mad at that cute little smile :) 

 

My homemade ornament wreath :)  

 

Christmas Morning:

Ready and waiting with the stockings

We finally got Joey to sit still enough to get a picture, too.

Joey didn't really get what was going on, but he sure ran around and had fun.

The New Year: 

Some of our best friends came and stayed with us on New Year's Eve which was so much fun!

Our two little (usually) trouble-makers where actually very well behaved the entire time--though not the greatest at posing for pictures. They were both facing me--we considered that a success.

The older kids, however, were almost too good at posing. What do you think? Prom...? Wedding dinner...? Such a cute couple ;)

18 Months for Joey!

I seriously can't believe that my baby Joe is 18 months old. Not only does 18 months sound old, but suddenly he is starting to LOOK so old to me! But then again, he is still my little baby!! I suppose I need to get used to it, though, because once the currently cooking bun makes her debut, I know now, from much experience that Joey is going to suddenly look HUGE and will no longer be the baby. So I'm savoring every moment of his baby-ness. I just can't get enough of his cute little face. I mean, can you blame me? Look at that face!

He is doing some pretty stinking cute things right now. First of all, there is this hat thing. He LOVES hats. He loves putting them on himself, or having assistance. Either way, he will walk all around taking a hat on and off. But what is great is how he absolutely insists on the hat being LOW. If the bill is in the front, he pulls it all the way down so that he can barely see. He gets mad if you try to pull it up. And as you can see in these pictures, even with the back in front, it has to be encroaching upon his vision. But he could see enough to know I was holding a camera and boy does he love the camera.

 He is adding words every day and it is so fun and cute. But one he is quite a pro at is "cheese." In all of these pictures, you might have noticed his "cheesy" smiles. That is because he is, in fact, saying "cheese" in all of these. It doesn't take much to get him say cheese to the camera. The video below is proof.

 His first real word (besides "no") was apple. He first said apple after we decorated the Christmas tree. He went over to the red ornaments and started saying "apple." He also says, "thank you," "night, night," "stuck," and "car."

Some of my other favorite things about Joey right now:

• Joey doesn't eat crayons, he chews them. Mikey ate a few crayons, most kids do, but he got over it. Luke actually never really tried them. Joey has eaten very few crayons. But CHEW them? Oh it's countless. It's like he thinks they are his own personal supply of gum. When he gets a hold of one, he will walk around chopping down on it. When I find him with it, there will be a little stub left and when I put my hand in front of his mouth, he just spits it all out as a crumbly, saliva-filled mass of crayon. He really NEVER swallows them. And if I don't discover him, he will find me when he's done, and start spitting them out in front of me until I assist in the clean up. 
• He does NOT like me doing dishes. If he sees the dishwasher open, he runs over and slams it shut. I seriously cannot do dishes with him in the room. In fact, even if the dishwasher is closed, if I am standing at the sink, he comes and pushes me away. 
• He is absolutely obsessed with shoes. He will put on any shoe he finds. If he has shoes on and comes across more shoes, he will do all he can to get the second pair on over the first (which actually works sometimes if he has on his own small shoes and comes across Mikey's shoes or any of ours.) He actually also really feels strongly about me having my shoes on. When he finds my shoes, he will come and find me and try to put them on my feet. Then he'll yell until I comply and help him accomplish the task. The cutest, though, is when he finds shoes he wants on and can't get them on, he brings them to me, hands them to me and then plops down on the floor and sticks his feet straight out in front of me. It's so cute. 
• And my all time favorite thing is how he insists on your attention when he's on your lap and trying to talk to you. If I am holding him and he is trying "to talk" (in his Joey babble) and I am not looking at him, he will put both hands on my cheeks and turn my head to look directly at him and hold it there until he is satisfied. And the other day, he did that just to give me lots of kisses. Oh, it is so cute. 

Love, love, LOVE him!!!