Helping Hands

Whelp, three weeks of helping hands have come to a close. But not before this picture was snapped of Story. A big thanks to my Mom, Stasia and Mike for entertaining Story and walking Rocca while Luke studied for boards and I tended to the new baby.

*edit In looking back at this picture, I realized Story's eyes are open under water. Funny how she never complains about water being in her eyes at the pool. But in the tub, she is such a drama queen if water gets in her eyes. It is quite ridiculous. I also love that she is smiling under water.

Pippa Pictures

While everyone went to the beach, Pippa and I chilled at home and messed around with the camera. 

Pippa Everly: Her birth story.

I always love to know the details of someone's labor. How long were they in labor? Did their water break at home? What were they dilated to when they arrived at the hospital? Did they get an epidural? How long did they have to push for? etc. Not sure why I am creepy and want to know these details, but I do. I just find them so intriguing. 

So because I love knowing the details, I don't mind sharing the details of my own labor.

My goal for this labor was to arrive at the hospital dilated to something like a 5 or 6 so that I wouldn't have to sit waiting in a bed for hours on end. 

Another thing that I wanted to do differently than last time was have Luke take more pictures of the things I miss out on. The baby being weighed, measured, bathed etc. I never specified that I didn't want pictures documenting my contractions. So here I am having a painful contraction in the elevator. Quite literally I wanted to punch Luke in the face at this very moment. Knowing my true emotions at this moment makes me find this picture very comical.

Here goes:

2:00 am -The time my contractions started on the morning of May 12. 

2 - The number of baths I took in the middle of the night.  (I also fell asleep that night too. I must have slept through several contractions. 

9:00 am - The time I awoke from my slumber.

4- The number of potential renters I showed our townhouse to on May 12 while I was having contractions. I think the people felt awkward. I certainly would were I in their shoes. 

12 min, 7 min, 5 min, 6 min, 10 min, 8 min - The complete sporadic-ness of my contractions all day long. 

3:30 pm ish- The time that my contractions got super strong. (I think I was in denial that I was in labor. With Story, I went to the hospital and got sent home for false labor. I didn't want that to happen this time around. Because my contractions never got to 5 min apart consistently for an hour, I figured it was false labor. Note to self: Apparently you can be in labor and have irregular contractions)

8- What I was dilated to when I arrived at the hospital! Holy crap! I started freaking out and told the nurse to get me an epidural as soon as possible. 

2- the hours I had to wait to get my epidural. 

50 billion- the number of times it took the Nurse Anesthesist to put my epidural in. Sure wish my 

brother-in-law was there to help. 

15 minutes- the time that passed after receiving my epidural to the time the doctor came in and told me it was time.

5- pushes ( Ew, I hate that word when referring to labor) and she was out!

0- the number that got me into the Wonder Woman Club! 

Big Sister on her way to see Pippa. She was oozing with excitement. 

Look at the sheer joy on her face. I totally videoed her entrance. It was priceless.


Love this picture.




Pippa in my hospital room.


Story loved opening her gift from Pippa. We forgot to bring the present the first day so the next day when she came to visit we made sure that my mom brought the present for Story to open. I'm kind of obsessed with her expression in this picture.


The morning after we had Pippa, the nurse noticed that her resting heart rate was lower than normal for a newborn. Then, the pediatrician thought she heard a murmur when assessing the heart rate. They admitted Pippa to the NICU so that her heart could be monitored. In the NICU, she had an EKG and an Echo (ultrasound of heart).




The next day, the day we were supposed to leave, the EKG and Echo came back normal but her resting heart rate was still low. For this reason, the pediatrician wanted to monitor her heart one more day. Meanwhile, Luke studied on his phone. I was discharged from the hospital, while Pippa remained in the NICU.   The nurses admitted us as a guest to stay in the hospital with Pippa so that I could be there to feed her.  We were lucky to have a room next door to her room. We were especially fond of the artwork on our walls. Luke also enjoyed the quite room to, you guessed it, study!


The following day, the neonatal doctor came in as a second opinion to Pippa's case. I was so thankful for his knowledge. He was able to describe everything to Luke (Luke loved talking to him) and he confirmed that Pippa's low resting heart rate was completely normal for a newborn who is asleep. He also confirmed that the EKG and Echo were normal and mentioned that she does have a hole in her heart, which is also normal and should close by six months.

We were so excited to leave. We wheeled Pippa into our room and Story was there to greet her. I am obsessed with this picture.


The girls at home. Story loves her "lips." That is what she calls lip gloss.

Pippa Everly Poulter

She has arrived!

Story is quite obsessed and so are we.

She was born on May 12 at 6:31 pm weighing in at 6 lbs 12 oz and 20 inches long.

I am working on a post about the hospital so stay tuned.

So we jumped on the royal wedding party bandwagon. So sue us.  Now you see why I mentioned in a previous post that the name has potential of becoming more popular. At least worldwide, maybe not in the U.S. And yes, we know Pippa is short for/a nickname from Phillipa. We felt the name was strong enough to be a stand-alone name.

We kept going through lists of names and nothing sounded right. I was at church looking at my baby name book in the hall and watching Story color with one of her friends. I saw the name Pippa and I looked up at those two little girls coloring and I could just invision Story and her sister, Pippa. The name just felt right. Honestly the more and more I hear people call her by name, the more obsessed I am with her name. I think it is so cute and it goes nicely with Story.

I also love the name Everly (Ever) and I almost saved it incase we have a third girl. But alas, there are no guarantees for a third child or it being a girl, so I thought it might be a crime not to use the name this time around.

We are so glad she is here and I am ecstatic to have her out of my tummy. More pictures to come.

Baby Shower

On Friday night, some friends from church threw me a baby shower. I have mixed emotions about showers being thrown for me. Of course there is the feeling of gratitude, that someone cared enough about what was going on in your life to plan a celebration for it. But I also feel guilt. These poor people take time out of their busy lives to put a party together just because. And last, I feel major anxiety. Who will come? Do they want to come? Do they feel obligated to bring a present? Will I show enough gratitude at the shower? To be honest, I feel the most anxiety when opening presents. Do I say the right things? Am I grateful enough? What if you open two of the same thing? Will those people feel bad? What do I say if I open the same thing? Or, what do I say if I don't know what something is?

Am I the only person who feels this way?


Moving on...

The shower was beautiful. The colors they used were pink and orange. Always a winning color combination.


These were the party favors. Cute, right?


Gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free and a-bunch-of-other-things-free cupcakes.

I must mention that not only did my friends take time out of their busy lives to put this shower together, they also put forth a lot of effort to make sure that every food item served was gluten-free. And you see, that makes me feel bad. Grateful and amazed, but it makes me feel bad that I'm so difficult to plan for. But it also makes me aware of the complete selflessness and thoughtfulness of others and makes me want to be more like them. They went all the way to Tampa to a special bakery and had cupcakes, the cake itself, muffins, and cookies made for the shower.


The gluten-free cake. So cute.


There were several people who brought dishes to share. All gluten-free. Everything was SO good. At least I thought it was. Not sure what the people thought who can eat normal food. :)




The punch was so delicious!


Me at 38 weeks pregnant. I have to laugh because in my mind I convince myself, "Oh, I don't look that large." But then I see and picture of myself or catch a glimpse in the mirror and...HOLY CRAP! No wonder why everywhere I go people say, "Any day now, huh?" I don't blame them for saying that.


The classic string game.


Some guests. Not sure what they are laughing at but I really want to join in on this laugh-fest.

This was supposed to be a picture of how long Jolyn's string was compared to my actual size.


McCall and Amy taste-testing the baby food. They spent like an hour trying to get the right answers. I'm pretty sure they both lost. lol. It was funny.

...And onto the major culprit for my anxiety at showers: opening presents. It literally makes me hot and sweat. LOL. Not kidding. There were some pretty heinous pictures of me snapped throughout the process. I tried to pick decent pictures or pictures I wanted to comment on.

Love the bright eyes peering over the wipes. Such an attractive shot. I got a lot of diapers and wipes. Always useful when having a baby.


There is a funny story behind this present. This gave me the most anxiety. In fact, I forgot to mention that I get so much anxiety when opening presents that I literally do not see words-just images. I opened these and I was SO confused. I'm sure you could see it on my face. I asked, "are they floaties?" (like pool floaties) haha. And in my mind I was like, "why is this person getting floaties for a newborn?" No people, they weren't floaties! They were books! It it even said right on the front, "Bubble Book." But like I said, I see no words when opening presents, just images. Lol. Cracks me up...and makes me sweat.
 

This cracked me up too. Baking soda. Before you think, "why did she get baking soda?", I had just opened a diaper pale and this went with the diaper pale. But can you imagine? What if someone just brought you baking soda. lol. We were joking about that and that is why I am laughing here.


This picture is so hilarious. Before I started opening presents, I was joking with the girl over my shoulder (on the left in the picture) about my anxiety with present opening. We were joking about opening the same gift, etc. Whelp, wouldn't you know...her and Jolyn (who we were also joking with)  both got me the same teether/rattle but they didn't even know it! This is me opening the second one. We joked about a good/appropriate comment to say after opening them as, "Thank guys, I actually needed two of the same rattle. One for my diaper bag and one for the house!" lol. Still makes me chuckle. The funny thing is, I really am planning on using one for the diaper bag and one at home. :)


Here are the pretty tulips form the shower. Pink and orange. They look so pretty sitting on my table right now.

Again, I am so grateful to those who put the shower together and grateful to those who took time out of their friday night to be at the shower. I felt special.

I love the people I go to church with. I love the friends I have made from Luke's school. I love where I live. I am honored to share this exciting time in our lives with these people who I have grown to love so much.

Happy 38 weeks! Here's to hoping I don't go a day over 40 weeks.

Haven't posted one of these in a while. 36-plus-weeks pregnant. Currently, I'm inching up on 38 weeks. Luke and I headed to the doctor's office today for my weekly check-up. Just before we were about to arrive, I received a phone call from the office informing me that the doctor had to go into surgery. My appointment was rescheduled for Monday. Shucks! I was really looking forward to my appointment today (not!) I freaking hate the last check-ups! Agreed anyone?


*Gotta love Dora face down in the background

Pregnancy stuff:

My left hip joint hurts SO bad. I swear, it's not normal. It is pretty painful. I know other pregnant woman complain about hip pain but I swear I have something else going on in that joint. I will get to the bottom of it one of these days.

I've gained less weight (so far) in this pregnancy than last pregnancy. BUT, I also started at a heavier (healthier :) ) weight than last time. Thus, I am currently weighing in at the same weight I topped out at with Story.

I enjoy being pregnant far more when I can get a tan than when I am forced into pasty whiteness (like last time).

I just tried finding the most hideous, yet appropriate, picture of me either pre or post pregnancy from last time around. Wow, I look a mess.

Number one: What is up with my hair?
Number two: Notice the pasty whiteness?
Number three: Quite literally in my mind I thought I didn't look pregnant anymore. But clearly you can tell I still look 5 (arguably 6) months pregnant. I went to get a massage this day and they had to treat me like I was a pre-natal client and have me lay on my side because my tummy was still such a bubble that I couldn't lay flat! lol! Ohhhh man, makes me laugh every time I think about it.

At least Story looks precious and cute. I love looking back and seeing how small she once was.

Ok, I have a shower coming up tomorrow night so I will be sure to post some 38 week pictures soon :)

Onto our Easter party. Sorry for the late posting on these. Every year a family from church throws a huge Easter party. It is tradition that we smash confetti eggs on each other's heads at the end of the party. I think it is a Mexican tradition, but I could be very wrong on that. Any who, Story loved it.



Story and her friend, Anna. These two love playing together. Every time Story is at Anna's house, they try on a million different shoes and trot around the house. They are so cute.



Story and another one of her friends, Matthew. Story also loves playing with Matthew. I can tell they feed off of each other at church. Often times we stay a little after church is over and these two runs around crazy in the gym. They love playing together...(at least I know Story loves playing with Matthew. Not sure if the feeling is mutual.)





Smashing an egg on my head! Stinker.

Tidbit on Story: Every night she wants me or Luke to lay down with her as she falls asleep. I told her that might change once the baby comes...we'll see how that plays out.

Anyway, we always sing to her. Usually some kind of of church/primary song. Sometimes she will request that we sing about a certain topic. Tonight she said, "Mom, sing about boogers!" So naturally, I just make up lyrics that go with her request and sing them to the tune of whatever hymn I planned to sing. It works perfect.

At another point tonight, I started to sing A Father's Prayer (is that the name of the song?)..."Heavenly Father, are you really there...." Before I could sing, "are you really there?", Story chimed in with her own lyrics but to the tune of the song, "I wanna get my ears pierced.." She is a comical one, that Story.

We told her she can't get her ears pierced until she stops saying "shut-up." But I don't see that happening for quite some time as she literally says "shut-up" 20-30 times a day.

Another Quilt

Okay, so I finished another quilt. This particular quilt will be Story's quilt. It is also going to be her gift from the baby. Story, for some reason, has been requesting that the baby bring her an elephant as a gift. I thought about getting a stuffed animal (not creative enough), then I thought about buying her an elephant charm (sure to be lost the next day), and then I decided on this quilt and I think I am going to have an elephant embroidered on it (a small elephant). I realize now that I should have done the embroidery before putting it all together, but I guess I will have to embroider it on a tag and then stich the tag on. Hopefully that elephant will suffice Story's request.









The directions on how to make this quilt are here. This is the same quilt I made a couple posts back. This time, I chose to use three sheets of cream flannel. I like how it turned out. Although, if I could have found that aqua color in flannel, I think that would have looked cool too.

The fabric is by Patricia Bravo (Art Gallery Fabrics). The collection: Summerlove. The main fabric is called Beyond Bliss in Ginger and the fabric I used to make the binding is called Passionate Spirit in Teal.

I made the diagonal stitches closer together than I did on the first quilt and I think it looks much better. It also helped in making the lines more straight as I lined the pressure foot right up to the previous line sewed (hopefully that makes sense). Because the lines were closer together, it made the cutting on the backside more difficult. For this reason, I plan to invest in a chenille cutter.

What are you waiting for, people?  Get started on your blankets! They are so fun to make!