Easter 2012

 Don't let this picture fool you, Easter was a big hit again this year and the girls had a blast.  Okay, maybe Mylie wasn't too into it, but Kinsie and Britnee sure had a fun time this year.  As always we started off the Holiday celebrating with family at Chad's grandparents annual Hot Dog Sacrifice...aka The Wieney Roast.  This usually involves lots of food, an egg hunt, horse back riding, and the ever famous tractor ride.  I forgot to pull out my camera to capture some of those moments, but lucky for me I had family who were able to snap some quick shots of the girls.

 That night I got the girls "baskets" put together and Chad and I hide all the eggs in the front room.  Thanks to the previous egg hunt the girls new exactly what to do Easter morning and had so much fun hunting for eggs.

 Of course we topped off the celebrating by going to church as a family.  I've been going to church solo the last few weeks as Chad has been busy at the Stake Center with his calling, so it was nice having him there with us for all three meetings.  The girls looked beautiful, as they always do, and continue to make me so proud.  I simply love these little girls of mine!  Hope you all had a great Easter too!

Current Events

We've been playing in the doll house...literally. 

 We've been buidling lots of forts, and having parties.  As you can see everyone is invited to one of Kinsie's parties.

 We've been getting lots of good reading time in.  We like to do it in style around these parts.

 We've been coloring and drawing.  Lately I've been doing most of the drawing while the girls watch.

 We've been enjoying spending lots of time with this little beauty.  LOVE HER!!!

We've been seeing lots of family.  Chad's sister was recently in town and we got to spend lots of quality time with her and her new little guy Dominic.  He and Mylie are only 25 days apart.  Chad's dad was also put in as a Stake President for one of BYU's young single adult stakes.

 We've not been able to get enough of our little ladies smiles.  They make my heart burst!

We've been visiting the temple.  When we went down to participate in Chad's dad getting set apart we decided to take the girls to see the Provo temple. They've redone a lot of the surrounding grounds, so we spent some time walking around taking it all in.  It was also fun to see all of the missionaries and watch the girls interact with them.

We've been getting in some tummy time and practicing sitting up in the car seat.

We've been getting ready for Dannie's upcoming wedding.  Yep, Kinsie's birthmom is engaged and scheduled to be married on May 5th.  Kinsie and Britnee are going to be flower girls.  We're so excited for her and Francesco. 

We're also busy getting ready for Easter and Mylie's baby blessing.  But who am I kidding?  Life is just plain busy nowadays, but we're trying to keep it full of laughter and fun family times too.

Grateful???

Yesertday Kinsie and Britnee woke up at 6:15.  This is not normal for my girls.  They usually end up making their way out of bed around 7:30.  Not that much later, but it does give me an extra hour of sleep.  Now that extra hour may not seem like that big of a deal to most of you, but when I'm getting up in the middle of the night to feed Mylie that extra hour is heaven.  Especially since Mylie likes to wake up at 6:00 to eat again. 
So, when I finally got Mylie back to sleep this morning (after her 6:00 feeding) my heart sank when I heard the sound of "mommy" escaping from behind the girls closed door.  It was only 6:45.  I decided to stay in bed and let them play for awhile only to be continually awakened (and annoyed) by the fighting and crying that began to ensue. 
As I laid in bed struggling to make my eyes open it dawned on me that daylight savings begins this weekend.  Oh joy!  (That comment is laced with sarcasm)  I then thought to myself that I shouldn't be shocked with the shift in the girls sleeping habits.  This always happens.  For some reason my two babies have a sixth sense when it comes to this time of the year.  They know that change is coming.  They know the clocks are going to be moved ahead one hour.  They know that I'm going to need to wake up an hour earlier than normal.  They somehow have all of this information hardwired in into their little subconsciousness and are simply getting me geared up for it.  So I suppose I really should be grateful that they are getting up earlier than normal...right!?

It's only skin deep

After I got looking through Britnee's baby pictures I was finally able to see some similarities between her and Mylie.  These two pictures below are a great example of those similarities.

Britnee                          Mylie

I've had several people tell me that they have the same eyes and look similar from the nose up.  (Probably because they share the same nose.)  However, Britnee has a narrower face and even though you can't tell the difference in these pictures, Britnee actually has much larger lips than Mylie.  I had a hard time trying to figure out how these two could possibly be related, but it's obvious they share some of the same genetic makeup.

Because I had such a fun time trying to find pictures in which Britnee and Mylie resembled each other, I only thought it fair to try the same with Kinsie.  Here is what I came up with.

Kinsie                                Mylie

What do you think?  Can you see some similarities between the two of them? I think so.  I also think it's safe to say that in spite of their different genetic makeup they are definitely sisters!

I can't help but smile at how blessed I am to have three beautiful girls who are each unique and different, yet so perfect in their own little ways.

Mylie Loryn

She's here!!!...and officially 1 week old today.  Mylie was born January 31st at 12:00 pm.  She weighed in at 7 pounds 8 ounces and was 20 inches long.  I'm glad she came when she did.  In fact, this little beauty of ours decided she did not want to be induced and made her arrival the day before I was scheduled to go in. 

Here's the story:

Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:30 and was unable to fall back asleep, so at 5:00 I got up, ate some breakfast, and watched some TV.  Then, around 5:30 I decided to try and get some sleep before Chad had to get up for work.  Unfortunately at 5:45 Britnee woke up and wouldn't go back to bed, so I got her and took her back to bed with me in hopes of catching a few more minutes of sleep.  At this point Chad had gotten up and was starting to get ready for the day.  At 6:20, while Britnee and I laid in bed and Chad was in the other bathroom brushing his teeth, my water broke.  (FYI: that's two for two.  My water broke with Britnee too!)  I quickly called for Chad and told him he probably wouldn't be making it to work.  Luckily, he was ready for the day, so he took Britnee and started getting things together while I called ours moms and showered.  The timing really couldn't have been any better.  I had enough time to shower and get ready while Chad got the girls changed and fed before I felt like we should start heading to the hospital.  Chad's mom got stuck in some of the morning commute, so we took the girls over to our neighbors (Thanks Rob and Michelle!)  and arrived at Labor and delivery around 8:45.

(This is me right before I started pushing.)

Once we were at the hospital i seemed to take the nurses forever to get the ball rolling.  We sat around for quite awhile before I was given and IV.  We sat around for awhile before they sent someone in to ask me some medical questions.  We sat around for awhile before they sent someone in to check how dilated I was.  And, we sat around for at least an hour before I got my epidural.  Luckily, once I got my epidural and was able relax my body I progressed really fast.  At one point they checked me and I was dilated to a 6 and within 30 minutes they checked again and I was 100% effaced and at a 10.  I think I pushed for about 45 minutes (give or take) before Mylie's head popped out. So, my labor was less than 6 hours. 

Some of the issues that we had consisted of the cord being wrapped around Mylie's neck twice.  Luckily, it was very loose and didn't pose a single problem.  Because the cord was wrapped around her neck she didn't drop down and come out as fast as the doctor had anticipated.  Mylie was posterior facing when I first arrived and was checked out.  So, the doctor had to get her facing the right way before I could start pushing.  Luckily, I had an epidural so I didn't have to deal with feeling any of that!  Apparently I have a narrow pelvic bone which means I have to spend a little bit more time pushing a baby out and regardless of how many kids I have they will probably all come out with a slight cone head.  But as long as they come out healthy I can handle a few extra pushes!

(The proud daddy)

Unfortunately, I didn't feel as much of the delivery as I would have liked to.  Next time I'll have the epidural, but won't have a drip to go with it.  I like to feel some of the delivery and I HATE not feeling like I have control over my pushing.  In other words, I hate it when I have to ask the doctor if I'm do anything, because I feel like all I'm doing is going to pop a blood vessel in my face.   Other than that t was a perfect delivery.  I mean look what I got out of it!

Isn't she absolutely perfect.  I am so in love with this little girl and she already has me wrapped around her little finger.  I'm having a hard time seeing Britnee in her.  In fact, sometimes I think I see a bit of Kinsie in her, but that probably has to do with the darker hair color.  I guess she'll be a good balance between Kinsie and Britnee who are complete polar opposites of each other.  Speaking of the girls they can't get enough of their new little sister and it's so fun to watch them interact with her.

 (Daddy and his girls)

 Some things that I simply forgot about:  (This is a "note to self" for the next baby)
-contractions that come with breastfeeding are just like the contractions during labor
-the recovery process is just that...a process...sometimes a very slow process
-it's no fun having your milk come in and continues to be no fun for quite awhile
-nursing is a bit on the uncomfy side.  As much as I love nursing it's still uncomfortable for the first little bit.
-getting up every two hours in the middle of the night is exhausting.  It's worth the one on one time I get to have, but still exhausting
-no matter how much I tell myself I'll be fine I still have a few baby blue moments...stupid hormones!
-no matter how uncomfortable things can become they are worth every bit of it!

I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS GIRL!!!

For those of you who may be wondering how we decided on her name it came down to a few things.  We both felt that Maylie was a good name for a little girl, but didn't feel like it worked very well as a name for someone older.  We felt like Mylie worked at both levels.  The more we looked at her the more she looked like a Mylie to us...if babies can even look like a name.  It just seemed to fit her, so that's what we went with.  As for the middle name Loryn.  That was given to her in honor of our other "daughter" Ashley  She's a dear friend of ours that was one of my Young Women and was baptized my Chad.  Each of our girls have significant middle names and we wanted Mylie to have one too.  We felt like using Ashley's would be perfect even though we did changed the spelling :)