Baby Elise comes home

We are having so much fun with our baby Elise. She's just so stinking cute! The boys all can't get enough of her. Luke and Mikey always want to hold her and Luke is even willing to do things just for the privilege of kissing her. (i.e. "I will eat all my food after I get to kiss baby sister." Seriously.) And whenever Joey hears her crying he stops what he's doing and runs to her saying, "baby! baby!" Well, it's more like "beebee, beebee!"  He is very concerned when she's sad and he tries to help by shoving the binki into her mouth.Yes, this is one taken care of little girl.

 Her first bath at home

 All cleaned up and awake!

 She's never awake for long

 There's nothing I love more than napping with my baby :)  (You may notice that she looks a little yellow above :(  She had pretty bad jaundice. We spent her whole first week under home photo therapy lights and running to the hospital every day to get her blood drawn to check the bilirubin levels. It was rough.)

 This is my favorite picture of her ever!  She looks so good in pink :) 

So in love with this girl!

Curious Joe

A few months ago our little Joey really seemed to suddenly kick the "curiosity" up a notch...or 10. Of course he was into things now and then before that, but now he leaves no stone unturned. (Perfect timing, wouldn't you say? Just as my growing belly made chasing him around a breeze and now my little bundle of pink joy that really only takes up a few moments of my day... ;)

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of all of his adventures. But I do have these few. 

One of the best ones has been his attempts at cleaning the fireplace. (Or at least that's my best guess at what he was doing.)  This incident captured below was actually his third and most successful attempt (and by successful, I mean he managed to get the most ash and fireplace crap out onto the hearth and carpet and, clearly, onto his person.)

This was very shortly before Elise was born so I was hugely pregnant and trying to rest every chance I got. I knew Joey was out in the family room and knew he was "quietly watching a show." I was about to get up and go get him, but then I feel asleep. The next thing I knew he was clomping into my room. He was still in his pjs with one of Mikey's snow boots on one foot and one of Luke's on the other, while holding a blackened basketball and the biggest, blackened-faced grin on his face. Well, you can see below. How can I stay mad at a face like that.

In case you're wondering, ash doesn't actually come off very easily. The kid had black nostrils for a while. There were also little black hand prints all over the house. He had obviously wandered around a little before coming to find me in my room.

One of Joey's other favorite activities is to empty the salt shaker. I try hard to not leave it on the table, but I'm only human. I forget. This was one of his more thorough attempts. I'm pretty sure the salt shaker was completely empty. Usually I catch him in the act and stop him. This time he was able to finish the job undetected. 

Some of his other "adventures" not captured on film include:

• emptying an entire bag of rice all over the family room carpet (it didn't photograph well) 
• covering his hands, face, and legs with LOTS of lotion and creating a full circle of lotion around himself in the carpet 
• climbing up on the TV stand and getting BEHIND the TV, sometimes knocking the power out on the TV and always getting stuck

That's our little Joe! :)

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!