Let Rose Eat Cake

Our beautiful little baby girl who made me a mom turned TWO a few weeks ago! It probably doesn’t seem as crazy if you aren’t her mom, but it seems crazy to me that she could possibly already be two years old! I’m pretty sure I just had her yesterday ( or maybe that was Lucy 😂).

Rose is just as sweet as her name sounds. I’m pretty sure that God gave me a practically perfect daughter in order to convince me to have more children after her. I’m not saying she is perfect, because she definitely has her two year old moments. But I just feel like I lucked out in the daughter department big time.

About Rose at Two:

• She loves books. She doesn’t like to sit still but read a pile of books to her and she will be content for an hour. 
• On that note, she will also sit still for a while if Daniel Tiger is on. She loves Daniel Tiger, he’s one of her best friends. 
• She loves to help me with anything I’m doing (cooking, dishes, laundry, changing diapers, getting a blanket for Lucy, etc. Picking up items of clothing and saying “dirty?” And taking it to where the dirty laundry goes (even if it isn’t dirty).
• She loves to say “Bless you!” When someone sneezes. It sounds more like "mess you!"
• She loves being around people. She loves listing off the names of everyone she knows and talking about them. (For example, Ryan’s friend Preston who she thinks is SO cool. He rides a motorcycle and whenever she sees a motorcycle she says “Preston? Bike? Preston backpack? Preston’s puppy?") For her birthday I made her a book with pictures of everyone in our family so she could flip through it and say everyone's names.
• For a while she loved giving "big hugs" and "nose sisses" (kisses), but now she’s just a little too busy doing important toddler things to stop and give hugs. 
• She loves to go outside. Her favorite thing is walks when she can walk and be free, but she will settle for the stroller or being carried if it means going outside. Her favorite item to find is rocks and flowers are pretty cool too.
• She likes being able to look out the window now that she is finally big enough to be in a forward facing car seat. On a drive the other day we passed a semi truck and she said “woah! Das a biiiiig tuck!” 
• Her favorite food is sauce (preferably in the form of ranch dressing or fry sauce but if she can dip her food or fingers in it, then she loves it, she has also been known to drink it.) Other foods she loves: chocolate, candy, broccoli, salad, yogurt, and all fruit. 
• She loves hats and shoes. Hers and other people’s. She can often be found trying on both. (The funniest is when she wears Lucy’s hats and mom’s shoes, the cutest is when she wears dad’s hat.)
• Rose prefers to do things on her own. "Rosie do it!" is what she says when I try to help her.
• Rose loves when people laugh. She says "Is that funny?" about a million times a day. And it's super cute.
• Rose is pretty easygoing and sweet about 95% of the time, but what really turns her into a typical two year old is her dad. There is like this switch that flips when Ryan is trying to get Rose to do anything verses when I try. It's actually pretty hilarious because she turns into this teeny tiny defiant human being that she isn't normally. One thing that really cracks me up is when Rose is doing something she isn't supposed to and Ryan says "You better stop before I count to three! Oooone." and then Rose says "twwwoooooooo" in her little high pitched voice, proud of herself for knowing the next number. haha and not even a little bit afraid of her dad. 
• Rose knows and can recognize the letters "A" "S" "R" "E" and "W" and sometimes she remembers "V for Vorkink"
• Her favorite song is "Your Welcome" from Moana.
• She loves "treats" meaning anything sweet, taking after her mom she seems to expect dessert about 300 times a day. 
• She gets very upset when life takes away from her very important work of playing with her toys. The other day I gave her a bath and when I tried to put her diaper on afterward, she ran away yelling "pay toys!!!" ("play with toys") and was playing with the magnets on the fridge while completely naked. I got a picture for the scrapbooks... but not for the internet.  
• Rose is a little bit cautious compared to some of her cousins and friends the same age. She's never liked being thrown into the air, however, climbing on top of things has never been scary to her. So, she's just choosy with the kind of adrenaline rush she likes to have.
• It took us ages to teach her the number 3. For the longest time she would count "One, two, six, seven" and then one day I was trying to get a video of her counting like that and she decided then to count to three. 
• She loves when we say prayers. Every night when we tuck her in she reminds us to say a prayer and sometime after we say "amen" she says "again?" and like the heathens we are, we say "no more prayers tonight, we'll say another one tomorrow." haha
• At her 2 year check up she was 23 lbs and 35 inches tall. She's in the 86 percentile for her height and 13th percentile for weight. So, tall and skinny. We've been trying to fatten her up so that she can fit in her life jacket this summer. But considering it's taken 6 months for her to gain 2 lbs, I'm thinking the 7 lbs she needs to fit into her life jacket just isn't going to happen this year... she is healthy and happy though. It's just the way her body wants to be. 
• A few days before her birthday we tried to get her excited about it by telling her it was almost her birthday and that she was going to be turning two. We also started saying we would open presents and have cake. The big thing she took away was that birthday = cake. So, when we said "Rose, it's almost your birthday!" she would look at us with her beautiful giant Vorkink eyes, tilt her head, and say "caaaakkkee?" With a big grin on her face. and since her birthday that's also what she remembers the most. When we went to the pediatrician for her 2 year check up he asked her how her birthday was and she just said "cake" haha She has her priorities straight, that's for sure. 

For Rose's birthday I made a chocolate-y chocolate cake with chocolate sour cream frosting and strawberries on top. She didn't like the idea of blowing out the candles. She was excited about the cake but then acted like we were punishing her by trying to show her how to blow them out. When we took the candles out she was happy about the cake again. We celebrated with Ryan's family who were in town for the weekend. And Rose got some clothes, a pair of sandals, a baseball hat so she could match mom and dad, a life jacket, a backpack to carry her toys, a little car, some alphabet fridge magnets, and two books (the family pictures one and one about Jesus.) 

We just love this sweet little girl of ours. She's spunky, fun, kind, a little naughty, silly, helpful, and oh so cute. She's my little buddy and I just know that as she get's older she is going to be one of my best friends. I can't wait to see what the rest of her life has in store for her. <3 

Lucy’s Birth Story

It’s been just over 7 weeks since Lucy was born and I’m starting to get the hang of this mom of 2 thing! I meant to write this blogpost sooner but our laptop wouldn't connect to the internet for some reason so I put it off and then tried writing it on my phone... which worked for the words but not for pictures. I finally restarted and updated my computer (which didn't occur to me to do sooner...) and that fixed everything. oops. So here it is!

I think I’ve mentioned before that Lucy’s due date was April 17, which is my birthday. So, I asked my doctor if I could be induced earlier so we wouldn’t have the same birthday. He told me I could be induced up to a week earlier, so April 11th it was! Except, he was going to be out of town that weekend so he asked if the 14th would be okay. I sighed, and said that would be fine but it’s cutting it a little close since Rose didn’t come until 36 hours after I got to the hospital and I wasn't entirely convinced that Lucy wouldn't do the same thing.

Our last photo as a family of three

I was told to wait for a phone call on the 13th (Monday night) to let me know what time to come to the hospital on Tuesday. Around 9 or 10 pm I got the call saying I should expect another phone call in the morning around 7 or 8 to come in. So, Ryan and I got up at 6 am (Rose was staying with my parents) and waited. And waited, and waited some more. Around 10 am I decided to call and the hospital told me they were swamped but that I was the first in line when they had a room open. We waited and waited some more. I was feeling emotional though about leaving Rose for 3 days because she’s never not seen me for that long and I was worried she would feel betrayed when I came back after being gone with a new baby that needed all the attention. (Those pregnancy hormones are no joke, let me tell you.) So, after crying for a bit, Ryan suggested we go wait for the phone call with my mom and Rose. We went over there to wait, Rose was doing just fine and we waited some more. I called again at 2 pm and they were still full. At some point they called and told me to just come in at 8 pm. With that extra time we had, Ryan found a store nearby that carried a gun he’s been looking at and saving up for... so he went and bought it. *insert eye roll here* while I sat and waited and worried some more. It was a REALLY long day. And I was frustrated because by the time I had Lucy it would be the 15th or 16th which is only one or two days away from my birthday rather than the original week I had been hoping for.

The pictures that look like this are from my stories on Instagram throughout the whole birth/hospital experience. 

Around 7:30 pm, Ryan and I drove home to pick up a few things and he gave me a blessing of comfort that really helped to calm my nerves. Then we drove to Two Jacks to pick up a pizza for him to bring to the hospital (we learned our lesson last time around). Then we drove to the hospital.

We checked in and got all settled into the room. I put on the uncomfortable hospital gown, sat in the uncomfortable hospital bed, had my blood pressure checked, an iv put in my arm, the heart monitor for the baby and the contraction monitor attached to my large pregnant belly, and the rolled up towel put under my pack so I wasn’t flat on my back. If it sounds uncomfortable, just know that it is and probably even more uncomfortable than it sounds.

The nurse then told me that I would have to do the whole Cervidil (cervical ripening) again.... even though my doctor said that I wouldn’t have to do that this time. ( I suspect that he didn’t want to deliver a baby in the middle of the night... which is fair... but I wish I hadn’t waited all day just to be told I had to wait until the next morning to actually be induced.)

When my nurse had to check my cervix I politely let her know ahead of time that I would most likely cry but not to worry about it, I was fine. I just always cry. I can’t help it. Hospitals and doctors and dentists give me anxiety and all the stuff that goes with birth typically makes me want to cry. Even if it doesn’t hurt. (But for the record, getting your cervix checked is extremely unpleasant, and feels painful to me.)

These are from my Instagram stories throughout my time in the hospital.

Oh! I forgot to mention that I was so worried about having a baby during a pandemic and that Ryan wouldn’t be able to be there if the Coronavirus stuff got bad. I’m SO SO SO grateful that he was able to be there because he is the best at helping me to breathe and calm down when I get really overwhelmed. AND along the lines of what was different about having a baby during a pandemic: I had to get tested for coronavirus on Monday before having the baby and that was a horrible experience. (If you’ve been tested with the nose swab then you know what I mean.) and then other than that, Ryan had to wear a mask when nurses were in the room.

Okay, back to the birth story.

So, we hung out all night while my cervix was “ripening” I guess. At 8 am the nurse checked my cervix again (a truly traumatizing experience, does anyone else feel this way? Or am i just a baby?) and the Cervidil actually worked this time! I was dilated to a 3! I was planning on just doing what I did with Rose: epidural, Pitocin, water broken, baby. But my doctor wanted to break my water before his office opened at 9 so he came and broke my water and then I ate breakfast, got the epidural, the Pitocin, and then waited.

With Rose, I accidentally got too much epidural/anesthesia right before she decided to make her arrival so I couldn’t feel ANYTHING of the delivery. This time I decided I wanted to be able to feel a little bit. So I didn’t push the button for more. And the contractions didn’t really hurt, they just felt like pressure. And it got harder to breathe when I had a contraction. After about 2 1/2 hours I could tell that the contractions were coming closer together and getting much stronger. I had to lay back because of the epidural (I asked if I could sit up more and the nurse said no...) and I started having reflux and the difficulty breathing made me feel a little sick. At one point Ryan was trying to talk to me and distract me but then I threw up my breakfast which was gross. Going into labor has that effect on some women according to the nurse.

My doctor got there soon after, they got everything ready and then it was time to deliver Lucy. I only had to push for about 20 minutes. It didn’t feel very long at all. It was actually kind of nice to be able to feel a little bit. I’ll never have a baby without an epidural, my anticipation of pain tolerance is VERY low. But I liked feeling more present and a little bit more in control.

Our beautiful Lucy Del was born at 12:26 pm on Wednesday, April 15th. It was pretty a pretty emotional and wonderful experience. I hate being uncomfortable so all the stuff leading up to having a baby is hard for me and I complain a lot. But I definitely wouldn’t trade any of it if it meant I couldn’t have Rose and Lucy in my life.

Lucy had the cord loosely wrapped around her neck when she came out, which resulted in some liquid getting in her lungs? I think? The nurses didn’t seem to worried about her. And she turned out fine, we just had to suck liquid out of her mouth with the little bulb thing and try to get her to cry to clear out her lungs.

She was 8 lbs 2 oz and 20 1/2 inches long. She had darkish brown hair, her skin was super duper red, and she was fuzzy all over. Her and Rose look completely different to me.

We moved to the recovery room and hung out until Thursday afternoon. The nursery wasn’t open because of the Coronavirus, so they told us we could leave after 24 hours instead of 48 hours if we wanted to. I kind of wanted to stay for the free food, but also my birthday was on Friday and it didn’t seem worth it to stay just for hospital food on my birthday. So we went home Thursday afternoon.

My parents kept Rose at their Airbnb for the rest of their stay (about another week) but they brought her over when we got home so she could meet Lucy. They also brought me a ton of beautiful tulips.

The first few weeks after having a baby are tough. Recovery is difficult and having a two year old and a newborn that rely on you when your body hurts and you are far from feeling normal isn’t easy. But it’s been 7 weeks now and we are all doing really good. I’m getting the hang of having two kids, Lucy is starting to sleep for long stretches of time at night, and my body feels so much better than it did. And I can see my toes again! (Hooray hooray for not being pregnant anymore!!!)

I love love love being a mom and getting to see my girls grow and learn and discover their world. It’s not easy, but it is oh so worth it!