Rodrick Royal 3 Months

Rodrick goes by Rocky about 60% of the time. I love it. I sometimes punch his little fists in the air and yell "Yo Adrian!". He's also built rock solid (in that perfect squishy, baby way) and has hands and feet that are gigantic. I'm fairly certain he'll catch up on the growth charts with our other kids. He's stretching out of his 3-6 month clothes and looks deliciously chubby. 

He does a lot of unblinking staring. I love startling him. His already wide-open eyes get HUGE. I can't handle it. He is starting to smile so much more and does these adorable breathy giggles. He has a perfect, full mouth like his father and brother so when he smiles, his mouth gets gigantic. It makes me want to eat him. Actually, everything he does makes me want to eat him. 

He's been a bit more fussy than I remember my other two being. He really loves being held. I know that's not unusual, but I think he realizes he is in mortal danger in our house the times he isn't being held. If he's being held, he's pretty content. Rodrick can roll over, but has only done it a few times. He is intent on sitting up. It's so funny. If he's in a reclined position, he crunches right on up to sitting then immediately falls over. It's funny because he was doing little crunches in one of his early ultrasounds and we joked that he knew he had to prepare to be Lyra's little brother. Too true. 

Rodrick seems to have some tummy issues. My other two never projectile vomited, but Rocky does. He's done it a handful of times and it's shocking each and every time. The volume and the force behind it is impressive. 

He loves being outside. He'll calm down really easily if I take him outside for a few minutes. Rodrick blissfully takes a binky! It makes it so much easier when they do. Driving in the car with him is painful. He hates it. He cries constantly. We made the 14 hour drive from Omaha to Utah with him and it was better than I imagined, but still painful. He's starting to get really interested in toys and we luckily brought a baby toy that got us through a lot of the trip. 

I like being able to tell more and more what makes him happy. He will pull off over and over again while nursing when he really needs to burp. I can tell every time and I love being able to know what he needs without words. I've started signing milk each time and I'm already getting grateful all over again for sign language. He makes cute little desperate sounds when I ask if he wants milk to acknowledge in the affirmative. 

He sleeps really well and that makes all the difference. He starts in the pack-n-play around the kids usual bedtime 7/8pm and joins me in bed around 4am. I couldn't be more grateful for sleep. He takes a consistent morning nap an hour after he wakes up for about an hour and the rest is still just whenever he can catch one. 

The kids both still love him. Lyra is getting so much better at actually helping. She loves changing his diaper. They both sometimes fight over helping which is...unhelpful. BUT I'm not going to kill their helpful spirit. Rowan tells everyone about his baby brother and how old he is and that he likes him. They both do a good job holding him, but are luckily asking for it a little less than they did at the start 

Rocky also loves: bathes, when Lyra and Rowan make faces at him, having his warm, soft head rubbed,  cuddling with grandparents, a colorful bunny rattle, fans, sucking on his hands and feet

Rocky dislikes: getting changed, getting out of the tub, riding in the car, Lyra's voice (it's sad because she is so sweet and loves being able to help him, but she is SO loud)

Rodrick Royal Birth Story

It's already been three months since our littlest boy joined the clan. He is as sweet as they come and I've never wanted a baby to stay little more than this one. I just want him to stay so snuggly and soft for as long as possible. He's absolutely perfect in every way. He eats great, sleeps great, and is a content little thing. Time is determined to race ahead of me this time. I feel so sad I was more diligent in recording more information about Rowan and Lyra from the start. I've looked back on their posts multiple times since having Rodrick to compare since it's so easy to forget so much. I have a book for both of my older two that has pictures and blog posts about each month of their first year and I already missed out on it for Rodrick.
SO I'll do a three-month post right after I finally get his birth story down.
His birth was different in a lot of ways than our other two. 

I had geared myself up for a beginning of April induction, but at my next OB appointment we found out little mister was flipping around again. He was transverse which felt way more hopeful to me, but my OB still felt like he could go back to being breech. He wanted to schedule an inversion/induction, but I was so on the fence about it. I was really feeling at peace about letting this pregnancy go until 41 weeks. We had family coming then, Sel would be off and we would know he was pretty darn cooked in there by then. I was thrown about scheduling an induction before I was even 40 weeks and didn't really know what to do. After hours of discussion, we asked my mom if she could come twice and be here right before the inversion/induction. She could! Sel could get the day of and after off. So we decided to schedule the induction for 39 weeks and 4 days. We spent so much time fasting and praying while he was breech. Though it was a smaller worry than many have, it still stressed me out. I am grateful for the sweet moments that drew my family and I nearer to God as we sought peace to know what we should do.

I was told the hospital would call me the day before to let me know what time I needed to be there. 

By 4:30pm, I was wondering if they forgot about me. Sel encouraged me to call and I'm so glad he did. My OB had not actually scheduled me for an induction that day. He had scheduled me for the following week when NO ONE would be around including Sel. It was comical when we were originally trying to sort a time where Sel could actually be there for the birth and not surprising in the least bit that our OB had gotten confused. After a bunch of calls, we finally sorted it out and luckily got a spot for the next day. With both Rowan and Lyra, I had to go in the night before to get cervical ripening started. I hated it both times, but was super confused why they weren't having me do it this time. I was just as dilated at this point as I had been with Rowan and Lyra (aka NOT dilated at all), but the OB didn't feel like it was necessary.

We woke up early and drove to the hospital. They checked us into the room and I loved my nurse right away. She's a country girl who entertained us with her stories of hunting the evil beaver that lives on her property (that means exactly what I said it does), her son that is obsessed with fire alarms, and showed us pictures of her gorgeous 5 acre property. They did an ultrasound to confirm he was breech. He flipped! I was so incredibly relieved. I had been stressing over the idea of getting an epidural before I even started labor since my OB recommended it for the inversion. I hate being chained down. Even staying at home and watching Netflix longer than 90 minutes drives me bonkers. I started cleaning in the room where we are watching TV so being strapped to a hospital bed for an indeterminate time sounded like torture to me. My nurse was adorable and squealed and jumped for joy. They started me on pitocin quickly and told me to walk the halls.
I was JAZZED. I was super confident and happy that my body was going to do what it was supposed to quickly this time. We jammed out to Imagine Dragons for an hour of walking. I started to get tired and wanted to go back to the room. There was our nurse, a nursing student and a med student studying my contraction monitor. They just stared at us for a bit and told me to keep going. I was super confused. It turns out, Women's only assigns their nurses to one patient so I was today's only entertainment. All three of them were there to study JUST me. It was overwhelming and I hated it. I do not like attention especially when I'm in pain. I had a whole entourage who had nothing to do but stare at me allll day.

They told me to keep walking and they would just hang in our room studying my monitor for me. K.
So different than my other births where they acted like I was super high-strung when I insisted I walk around instead of lay on the bed all day. We walked around for a total of three hours and the contractions were really picking up. At one point, Mike sat on this little window ledge while I did step ups on it.  I finally decided I didn't care anymore that they stared at me because I wanted to watch some Netflix and bounce darn it. They checked me around 11:00am and I was a 3!! Wahoo! It normally has taken me about 12 hours to get to a 3. We were SO hopeful and optimistic. Sel was planning dinner with my mom and the kids that night since surely the baby would be here soon. Little did we know we still had 12 more hours ahead of us. I progressed slowly the rest of the day. I can't remember much of it now which is sad. I know we talked lots to my medical fan club, I didn't get to watch any of The Office like I envisioned, and I had lots of contractions. Around 6:00pm, I asked for an epidural. My nurse had me sit on the bed to wait while they gave me the necessary bags of fluid for an epidural. I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. And waited. Annnd waited. I had to pee every 15 minutes which was cute. They all stood in a circle around me while Sel hung out in a chair (he was very supportive. I was just super irked that I didn't also get to just stare at my phone like we had both planned) and assisted me to the bathroom. Every time a contraction came I would close my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at them looking at me. They would respectfully stop the conversation and wait for it to pass. Sometimes I would leave my eyes closed longer than the contraction because I seriously did not want them to look at me or touch me anymore. I got a little snippy at one point and my nurse pointed out to the students it meant I was getting close to transition.

After 90 minutes of waiting for the anesthesiologist, she called and we realized the message to him had gotten lost in translation somehow. He had not actually been paged and so we had to watch the screen that showed how far behind in line I was at this point. It was far. I tried not to despair. I had talked quite a bit about not getting an epidural this time around, but certainly hadn't done much to prepare for it. I knew I could get through contractions on my own, but pushing terrified me. I had heard from all my un-medicated friend/family births that pushing was the worst part and as fun as it sounds...oh wait! It doesn't. The anesthesiologist finally showed up and was cranky. I didn't love him. He was older and talked a bunch about golfing and how he'd love to be out on the green right now. Me too, brah. And I don't even like golfing. He was also not super nice to my nurse who was amazing. Not cool. He kept telling the nurses my back wasn't curved enough, but kept poking the needle in anyway. Super duper painful. My other ones were not painful at all, but this was enough to make me cry. Once it hit, I was loopy. I fell asleep really fast and my three observers went off shift. My new nurse came on shift and was equally wonderful, but luckily didn't want to stare at me the whole time.

They checked me again around 9:30pm and I was maybe a 6cm. Explosion of tears. With both Lyra and Rowan, I progressed really fast after the epidural. Within maybe a half hour of getting the epidural, Lyra was out. They had me do the leg raise, side-laying stuff and I started to feel really uncomfortable. Around 10:00pm, I told my nurse I was in lots of pain. She told me I would expect to feel pressure. Nope. I know what pressure is, this was pain. I mentioned it again a few minutes later to Sel that I was really, really not feeling well. It hit FAST. All of a sudden, I was in the worst pain of my life. I can luckily not remember much of it other than I know it hurt and I was delirious with it all. I wasn't screaming like I envisioned it would have been. I was just so. so. sad. I cried a lot and felt so awful. Not shockingly, I was at a 10cm and crowning. They told me not to push a lot and there was absolutely no feeling to do so. I was neeeevvver going to push. No natural instinct to push washed over me like I've heard happens. There was no way I was subjecting myself to more pain than I was in. That baby was staying in until someone could remedy this. It's blurry, but I distinctly remember Sel holding my arm telling my nurse he should have realized earlier how serious I was about it hurting. The face of my rescuer is super sharp too. He was Asian and incredibly kind. He grabbed my face and told me everything was going to be alright. He was right. He fixed it super fast and I finally felt like I could push. My OB was there and ready. He had been out to dinner earlier and debated about drinking in honor of his father-in-laws birthday since he was certain I would have had Rodrick earlier. Nope. 11:00pm exactly was when this little guy fiiiinnnally came. I blissfully felt nothing after the bolus and got to enjoy those first moments of cuddling his tiny, screaming self. He came out SO angry. Rowan was our quiet one. Lyra and Rodrick share being equally enraged at being pulled out of their warm home. I remember being so in love immediately. He smelled incredible and his skin was perfectly smooth.
He was 7 lbs 9 oz. I could tell before they weighed him that he was tinier than my other two. I felt a moment of guilt for having induced him before he was maybe ready. Luckily, he latched quickly and slept solidly for five hours. I needed that sleep. Poor Sel had to drive the 40 minutes of home to go to sleep and had to round the next morning.

The rest of the hospital stay was really nice. I had not forgotten how uncomfortable you are after having a baby. You just feel beat up. Or at least, I do. I ache all over. I feel exhausted. The beauty this time around was how much I appreciated the stay. I felt so taken care of. It almost felt like a spa stay with all these people taking care of me and cleaning for me and cooking for me. It was pretty amazing. I'm SO grateful for my mom and Sel taking over my usual life of taking care of small people and the house. Meals started the day we got home and didn't stop for weeks. I was so filled with gratitude. Rodrick brought such a sweet, easy-going spirit with him. He looked so much like Rowan at the start, but then sort of (and still does) look like a blend of both of our older two.
He is such a blessing to us and I couldn't love him more.

Flippin Amazing

First things first, this baby boy FLIPPED! It's a nothing short of a miracle for me. 

I'll relay the whole story for anyone that cares to hear it momentarily. I've been thinking a lot about miracles in 2019. We've been studying the New Testament this year and my children are fascinated by the miracles Christ performed. They have such a sweet faith and spirit about them as they learn about all He did in his mortal ministry. What is more miraculous to me than walking on water, calming a storm, healing the sick and afflicted, causing the dead to rise, and all His other beautiful miracles, is how he acted and what he taught. To imagine myself being able to change to become truly meek, humble, forgiving, unconditionally loving, slow to anger, and utterly selfless is far harder for my faith to cling to. I struggle minute to minute to hold onto becoming that new creature I know I can be through Christ. It feels absolutely impossible most days. I find myself waking in the morning re-commiting to being better than I was the day before. To spend more time listening and less time talking. To remove "I" and "me" out of my vocabulary and mentality and add more "they" , "he", "she" and "you". Slow to anger has been such an embarrassing struggle lately. I find myself following that funny, but also sadly true meme of the cheery and kind Mary Poppins when telling my children to do something for the first time then morphing into Batman's deep, scary voice by the end of it. The miracle for me comes when I do receive that strength to be just a bit more patient in the moments I feel like being so the least. I know until that day my faith makes me wholly that person I want to be, I can still be of good cheer knowing it will happen someday. My kids will probably be adults, BUT it's going to happen. 

Now on to that miracle that happened with baby boy flipping head down. I was SO anxious about him being breech. I feel like I'm particularly anxious while pregnant no matter what, but this just drove me crazy. I was incredibly touched by how many people reached out to me to comfort me and offer advice. It was such a relief to me and made my heart burst with gratitude and love for those who took the time to reach out for something that might not seem like that big of a deal to most. We found out at my 36 week appointment he was breech and were told 1/8 babies turn on their own past this point. I'd known he was breech since week 34, but didn't do much past a few spinning baby moves because I wasn't worried about it yet. I was super taken aback by how quickly we were talking other options at my appointment because I had barely let it cross my mind he wouldn't flip. 

If he didn't flip by 39 weeks, I would have to be scheduled for a c-section. There were risks in letting myself go past 39 weeks that he might have a short cord and that stillbirth risk of breech babies past a certain point went up significantly. I was scheduled for an external version for March 11th, but Sel and I had decided against it after a bunch of research. I'd talked to plenty of people who had successful ones, but we just didn't want to risk the chance of having to have an emergency c-section if things went wrong instead of just having a scheduled one. My OB does an epidural for eversions simply because of the risk and because it can range from being mildly uncomfortable to more painful than actual childbirth. We decided to try everything we could and just hope he turned by 39 weeks. I did a bunch of headstands off the couch, had Sel prop me upside down on an ironing board (which was terribly uncomfortable), went swimming, rubbed pressure points, put an ice-pack on my tummy and played music downstairs. My SIL even made a fun playlist to draw him down under. I scheduled an appointment with a chiropractor (who Sel was adamantly against having me see) and was looking online for acupuncturists (shhhh my husband would equally dislike me seeing one of those). I was such a hot mess during the days following my appointment. I was talking to everyone I possibly knew about their experiences with c-sections/eversions/breech babies. I made a trillion threads on social media and got tons of responses. It was almost more confusing to sift through those because so many people had such varying experiences. Since I already don't sleep great for physical reasons (tiny bladder, giant belly, sore back), I was now barely sleeping at all because my brain wouldn't shut down. People were way too nice to me in my fragile mental state. It wasn't even like there was anything that serious going on, but I was seriously going nuts. 

The miracle came in such a dramatically beautiful way. We went to a session at the temple and the MOMENT I was done and changing in the dressing room, he moved in this weird, painful way and I felt a tiny gush of fluid. I was so confused and uncomfortable, but moved on. The next day he kept moving in weird ways which was always accompanied by some more fluid. I started googling things wondering if maybe I was leaking amniotic fluid. After reading a bunch of things that described water breaking as a trickle instead of the dramatic movie gush, we decided I should just go get checked out at L&D to make sure it wasn't. The first test strip they did had two positive drops on it. The second strip was positive for amniotic fluid. They made me stop drinking water and said there was a chance I would have to have a c-section THAT night. I started to freak the freak out. I had left Sel at home with our sleeping kids and who were we supposed to wake up at 11:30pm to come over to be with our kids? I hadn't really packed anything but my contact case and was NOT ready to have a baby. Baby boy was so incredibly high up that they couldn't find his heartrate most of my stay there because he was up by my sternum. I know now he was transverse and trying to turn which is why his heart was jammed so far up there. They decided to run another test that was more accurate and I had to wait for the lab to send the results up. It was just so frustrating. I feel like this whole pregnancy has had really random, really weird happenings to it. Things that border on being potentially serious, but aren't as obvious that way and not things I could just dismiss. Finally, she came back to let me know I was clear and gave me an entire cup of delicious ice-chips to chew. I went to my OB the next day to find out he was all the way head down. Sel had even come (his first appointment probably since we had Rowan) because we figured we would be trying to sort out our options and it would be nice to be together for that. It was a blissfully anticlimactic appointment. 

I do not find it a coincide he decided to start to turn in the temple. I had a friend later tell me she had put my name on the prayer roll that afternoon and I'm positive that was a factor. I'd felt so much peace after Sel gave me a blessing that everything was going to turn out okay no matter what. I was feeling calm about a c-section or not. I just kept feeling like my answer was "wait" and now I know why. I also feel really grateful for this brief period of worry. I was moaning about going over my due date and having to be marathon induced (since I go in the night before my inductions to get cervadil) and NOW I am so incredibly looking forward to the 41 week scheduled induction. I know I'll have people to care for my kids, I know what to expect, and I'm not left waffling between all these choices with unknown consequences. Things can always go different ways for birth, but if things follow the previous pattern, I'll be zero percent dilated at 41 weeks and never experience a contraction until I'm pumped chock full of pitocin. AND NOW I'M SO HAPPY. Life has such a beautiful, strange way of teaching me things.

36 Weeks Pregante

Have you watched the video yet where the guy reads a bunch of online questions about pregnancy? I laugh until I can't breath every single time. It has over 28 million views, so I hope you're one of those privileged millions to have laughed about it. If not, join us in the cool kids club https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShUeudtaFg 

The misspelling in today's title is brought to you from said video. 

Oh my. I'm so done. I still have FIVE weeks left. I try not to focus on the negative, but I've done this twice now and I'm terrified of the next few weeks. I know what's ahead. Every day is about a week long. I also remain incredibly bitter about all those women who get to have babies between 38-40 weeks without being induced. I love you in the way that I love all mankind, but I also despise you. Gah. I can't get over it. Can you even imagine what it would be like to have a baby in TWO weeks instead of FIVE? It's about as unrealistic for me as getting crowned the Queen of England. I am pretending I'm not secretly hoping to go into labor on my own before April 1st, but I'm a fool (get it? Cause I'm scheduled to be induced on April Fools Day). It would be SO impractical for me this time around to actually have a baby before my induction date. Sel has a crazy work week the week I'm due and fo sho can't get anytime off that week. He has a blissful week off work starting 04/01. We also live 40 minutes from the hospital and how would I find someone to watch my kids plus another individual to drive me to the hospital? I don't even know what real labor feels like. No one from our family is getting here until then either which makes me crazy for hoping this boy opts out any earlier than 41 weeks. I AM crazy though. I own it. 

My poor kids and family. Lyra was being her typical tornado self yesterday. She colored on the ottoman, took one of my favorite lipsticks and flattened it in an artistic design on the kitchen floor, peed on the bathroom floor then used her clothes and an entire roll of toilet paper to clean it up (props to her for being resourceful and cleaning it up without me asking her to) then scattered ponies and scrabble pieces all over the playroom. This is a typical day for us by the way. Messes are regular occurrences. I was trying to get us to the library for an HOUR while she rampaged. It also always takes us an hour to get out the door no matter what. Lyra is always defiantly ignoring my demands to get ready and Rowan is usually busy fighting someone/something in his mind and has very little idea what's actually going on around him. I asked them to get their shoes on for the eighth time then just started crying when they didn't. I sat on the kitchen floor and let it all out. They were so disturbed. Sweet Rowan started assisting Lyra in her required clean-up and even brought me my tennis shoes and tried to help me put them on. He said he knew it was hard for me to bend over because of big baby brother. I just cried harder while they both tried to sit on my lap and comfort me. My shining knight of a husband found a gift card to Chick-fil-a and let me know I didn't have to make dinner or clean-up after it because we were going out for some gourmet grub. He also did bedtime and rubbed my back. I have the best people. 

My body is falling apart swiftly. I've felt honestly pretty good until this point. I ran a mile this week under ten minutes. I can sort of jog right now, but it's sad. I went to Zumba today and felt awesome for two songs and then wondered for the entire rest of the class how realistically I could fit my body on the locker room benches for a brief nap. Before this week, my skin started falling apart. My hands looked like a 90-year-old woman and then I got this ridiculously annoying (and painful) red mark behind my leg. It was frustratingly confusing. Since we know I have a mild clotting disorder, we weren't sure if the red mark was indicatory of a clot. The placement of it and symptoms were vaguely like one, but since I'm pregnant, it also could have just been pregnancy related. I spent a Friday debating whether I should go in or not. I had some kind other residents look at it during an HOAA event and gathered opinions on whether I should get it checked out. OF COURSE it was the weekend by the time I called the OB office and they told me to go the ER. We only ever have weird medical things happen to us on the weekend. I hated going, but I knew I would regret it if it was a real blood clot. Luckily, it was just some odd bodily failing due to pregnancy. It cleared up after a week and my skin in general is only mildly dry.

I wake up about every hour during the night to roll to the other side or to pee. I get SO tired during the day. I keep falling asleep when I'm supposed to be parenting. I've been  giving myself some slack in the entertainment department and letting the kids watch shows/play games while I nap on the couch. I'm trying to not feel guilty about it by dragging them about when our driveway isn't coated in 8 inches of snow and doing things that make me feel like they are living happy, productive childhoods instead of being enslaved by technology. My mental state struggles near the end of pregnancy. I just cry a whole bunch or get irrationally angry. It's frightening to feel so out of control. My baby maker feels like Stone Cold Steve Austin sucker punched me there about 5 times in a row. I keep getting these 5-10 minute round ligament spasms. I remember having them somewhat with Rowan and idiotically thinking they were Braxton Hicks and believing I was going to be SO good at having a baby from all the practicing my body was doing. Nope. Contractions don't last ten straight minutes or are on one side of your body. I had to pull over today and breathe through the terrible pain. I used to believe I could birth a baby without an epidural, did you know that? I really, really believed I was going to give birth to my first baby without any pain medication. I cry when I stub my toe. I'm a pansy when it comes to pain. 

There are lots of positives to be seen when I can dig myself out of my woe-is-me pit. Sel is a rockstar. He is so mindful of my feelings and never treats me like I'm nuts. He's so gentle and patient and perfect. My kids are so sweet beneath their age-appropriate behavior. They are both SO excited to have another sibling and spend a lot of time talking about him and to him. It's darling and makes me crazy excited to see them both hold him for the first time. Lyra the other day started by kissing my belly, then blowing raspberries on it and laughing, then morphed into cat scratching baby brother, pushing him and growling at him. It's about what I expect for the beginning of their relationship. Rowan just likes to stare at the 3D picture and say "he looks like me!" and kiss my belly and ask if baby bro kissed him back. I always say yes. 

I honestly don't feel THAT bad. Mostly I'm just constantly a little uncomfortable. Sacrificing comfort for the opportunity to have another baby is a super small price to pay ultimately. I'm so grateful I get this chance to be pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy. I am so excited to hold a sweet new baby boy and watch him grow.

The maybe blood clot

Old lady hands

Rowan 4.5

Man, this boy is a sweet one. The other day, I was telling Lyra she was sweet and she said "No! Rowan is sweet" (She has yet to consent in any form that she is sweet despite certainly being so). 

He is just so tender and loving. It almost makes me cry when I think about how much I love his wonderful little self. 

He says at least ten times a day how much he loves me or Sel or Lyra. He loves to proclaim it at random times and random places. Occasionally, Rowan uses it as a tactic to delay bedtime knowing it's hard to get upset at a little boy who "just needed to say I love you one more time". 

Rowan is a perfect little square for his size. 42 pounds and 42 inches (85% for weight and height). It seems appropriate since Rowan is very particular about having things match and be in their proper order. He's pretty thrilled that another boy will be joining the family so he can "match boys". He is growing so much physically. I can hardly keep shoes on the kid and it bothers him so much. Rowan likes a certain order to his life (like most of us) and hates when shoes that he wears everyday all of a sudden don't fit. I have to secretly hide the ones he's outgrown or he loses his mind and tries to stuff those monstrous feet of his into his old shoes. 

Things Rowan loves: eating his packed lunch at school and finishing it before his best friend, video games of all kinds, chocolate, water books, mazes and puzzles, I-spy books, Hidden Pictures, and Where's Waldo (we have to read one every single night), bell peppers (he recently told me this is his favorite vegetable because it has crispy water in it), being obedient and praised for it, helping with things and feeling helpful. I am impressed daily with how obedient he is. He has his days where he is extra tired, hungry or whatever and struggles, but for the most part, he is a really good listener. Rowan talks in extensive detail about things which can make it hard for him to get everything out that he wants to or makes it hard for people to stay focused enough to get to the end of his drawn out explanation. WOW! The imagination on this kid too. He could go on endlessly about made-up fights and battles and all sorts of made-up creatures who are "bad guys". He loves his teacher, his friends at school, and board games. Rowan loves spiking his hair recently because a girl in his class told him it was cool. Rowan is a snow addict. He could play out there until he got frostbite and not care at all. He's always been an outside lover and the cold weather hasn't changed that for him. He's really into writing his own name lately, figuring out addition, and what words rhyme. Rowan still astounds me with his physical abilities and is a natural born athlete. He has transitioned beautifully to the Come, Follow Me program. His favorite part of the day is "FHE" because we try to do a little something for it everyday. I think he just really thrives on the family togetherness time, the spirit it brings, and the promise of an activity together each time we do it. He has memorized a few scriptures so far this year and is SO ready to tell them to you. We try and learn some on the way to preschool every morning and he only ever wants to say the ones he already has memorized instead of learning new ones. 

Things Rowan Hates: He says he doesn't like going to school, but is happy pretty much everyday after school, he hates when Lyra grabs pieces of a board game he is playing, he despises being sticky, wet or messy. He refuses to eat soup because it makes him too messy (sigh, it's only the favorite meal of 1/2 of our family), losing games, having to wash his hands, being bad at anything. If he can't master it the first time, it's really hard to convince him he might still like it with practice. He played basketball this last season and didn't want to go back after his first game because he couldn't dribble very well. Luckily, he got talked in to going back and improved like we told him he would. 

The thing most special to me about Rowan is how inherently good he is. I haven't had to do much to teach him how to share, how to be gentle and sweet with his sister, how to be as incredibly thoughtful as he is, or how to be so discerning of other people's emotions. He just came as this incredible little person who I want to be like. He captures for me what Christ meant when he said "be ye like a little child".

He loves matching his dad

Leading his sister in breakfast shenanigans 

Hiking with Papa

He loved climbing to THE very top of all this jungle gyms by my parents house

Rowan told me I was a liar when I took them to frozen yogurt  because he said it was ice-cream 

The boy who could live outside 

Lyra 2.5

Lyra at two and a half is best described as an adorable wild animal. She is hysterical! I find it so hard to not laugh when I should be disciplining because she disobeys in such a comedic way. The other day, I watched her dig in my diaper bag, grab out a snack and then scurry quickly to the back of the van so I couldn't snatch it away from her. She loves to find hiding places to watch everyone from.

She's a light little thing. Picking her up is not hard. I distinctly remember how hard it was to heft Rowan while pregnant, but she's luckily not. I was a little surprised at her most recent wellness check that she was in the 25% for weight. Both of my kids started so high in the percentiles as babies and then slowly dropped each appointment. She was in the 70% for height which is just slightly down from what she was at her 2-year-old appointment. She's officially potty-trained! We did a very slow transition to it. Lyra has such an opposite personality to Rowan in regards to potty-training. Rowan decided he wasn't going to wear diapers anymore a little after his 2nd birthday and would LOSE it if he ever had an accident. Lyra, however, would pee or poop in her underwear and care 0%. She'd say "I peed Mommy!" and throw her dirty pants on the ground and walk away. She would do amazing for awhile and then have three days in a row of accidents. We traveled for the holidays and she just 100% figured it out. I haven't done really much at all in the way of training with either of them. I just sort of let them figure it out themselves which is probably why it was ineffective with Lyra. I'm just grateful she figured it out before the new baby comes. She even wipes efficiently all by herself and loves to wash her hands.

Her favorite things: getting chased, tackling/teasing/attacking Rowan (who responds so amazingly to it and almost seems to like her poking him 24/7), eating straight butter and sugar, peas, green apples, cheese, bananas (but only as a delay to bedtime tactic), frozen berries, green smoothies, avocados anything pink or purple, purses, dolls, ponies, MAKE-UP. Gahhh. She is so obsessed with make-up. She has destroyed countless things of lipstick, blush and eyeshadow. She has an innate sense of fashion and accessorizing. It's always funny to me because I really don't wear much jewelry, never wear heels, don't have a purse, or wear much more than mascara. Yet, my daughter has a full knowledge of what it means to put on the Ritz. I'm not sure how she learned it all, (Probably Sel ;) ) but I love it. It's so fun to see her find such joy in being a girly girl. She loves to help in the kitchen and is quite the sous chef. I love when she drags her stool over to the counter and asks to help making food. Rowan used to love this too and has since lost interest. She swooped in to fill his gap. Playdough! Oh how she loves playdough. Lyra is most content when drawing, painting, coloring, etc. She just loves to sit there and create things. It makes her so easy to entertain. At least it does, until she demands I am the one who should draw every member of her extended family with the appropriate accessories. She also always wants me to make crazy things with playdough that my artistically lacking self never could. Lyra's favorite show is...watching people open presents on YouTube. It's so dumb and I hate that I let her watch it. Her favorite is one where this guy opens playdough. She's learning so much (eye roll). She adores taking long, hot showers after swimming at the gym. She often takes a 15-20 minute shower before I cut her off. Lyra calls going to the gym her "school" and refers to all the childcare workers as teacher. She's SO eager to go to school. I luckily got her into one that starts in the Fall and I can hardly wait to watch her zoom out of the car with her backpack. Rowan, on the other hand, has informed me he would like to not go to school anymore after this year. He was pretty overwhelmed at the idea that his dad just finished going to school less than two years ago and that he would spend the majority of the next two decades going to school.

Things she hates: being told she can't stick her hand down my shirt, sleeping in her own bed the whole night, soda, keeping things in their proper place, not being able to go to pre-school with Rowan,

Cute things she says/does: 'Yesserday" means anything in the past tense, when she first wakes up she'll give me a kiss and say " I love you mom! You're my best friend. And daddy is my best friend. And Mimi is my best friend and Papa is my best friend, etc" It's adorbs. She'll grab my face and go "you cute, cute cute mommy" in this high-pitched voice. She'll say something is cute if it's tiny. We've been watching Pokemon lately and she loves to say "PIIIKKAAAA CHOOOOO". She loves to sing still and does a surprisingly good job remembering lyrics and getting the right tune. Lyra loves hair and doing other people's hair. Her favorite is to pretend she's the evil mother from Tangled and, while brushing my hair, tell me it's too dangerous to go outside. She is an ACTRESS. Born for the stage. We did a nativity pageant with my extended family over Christmas and she took it SO seriously. People were laughing at one point and she said "Stop! Issnot funny!" while making her most regal, serious face in her portrayal of Mary.

I love parenting Lyra. She's incredibly sweet, the funniest girl on the block, and beautiful in absolutely every sense of the word. We are pretty lucky that she's our girl

Wearing her new dress-up dress and coloring 

She made playdough earrings at church one day and did her nails with playdough too 

Wasn't our photographer AMAZING?! She managed to catch so much of who are kids are in such a short amount of time. AND it was freezing cold and they were not cooperative for a giant chunk of it. 

We stayed home today from pre-school and "gym" school. The kids wanted to be ninja turtles so I painted their faces and Lyra was so funny looking at her face on the camera 

Her personality in a nutshell. All the accessories, high heels, a princess dress, toys stuffed in a purse and playing with dollies

Being cute and goofy with her aunt 

Baby #3 30 Weeks

Here we are a few weeks in to the third trimester and about 3-million-years from having another baby. The weeks are flying by, but I know how loooong it gets over the next few months. 

I have been extraordinarily blessed to have very easy pregnancies. That being said, pregnancy is not easy. You have to learn to cope with a daily dose of feeling generally uncomfortable/ not yourself. Bending over is already starting to feel a bit like a chore and my forever pregnancy plague of pants not fitting is happening this time around too. I just want my pants to not slide down to my knees 24/7. You'd think pants falling off would be a sign of slimness, but nay, it is a sign of a rounding belly pushing pant material down with absolutely no resistance from my behind. Belly bands are helpful, but not 100% reliable.

I do feel pretty great at this current stage. I've been able to keep a higher level of fitness than my previous pregnancies, but I've started to get pretty sore in my back if I run too hard. I want to keep running throughout the next 10 weeks since it's such an endorphin high, but I probably need to get realistic about what amount of pain I want to deal with afterward.  The gym has been such a blessing. Being active during pregnancy has never been an issue. If anything, I've been more motivated during it than other times in my life. Now knowing that I have a clotting disorder, I attribute that inner push I"ve had. The post-partum period is really where it hits me hard. I'm so tired, sneaking in working out around a newborn sleeping/other kids schedules (and choosing not to nap instead) is nearly impossible, my body feels awful, my brain is broken...Pregnancy is a good time, but the post-partum is not nearly as nice to me.

Rowan and Lyra have been really sweet to baby bruva. Rowan talks plenty about all the games he will be playing with his brother and Lyra talks a lot about giving him milky and changing his yucky bum. I'm so excited to see them be siblings to this new baby! They both fought over who got to read him a book this morning.

This boy is calm and quiet. I only feel him really at nighttime. He's not super active which always makes me a little nervous. I'm hopeful it will be an indicator of his personality being a peaceful one (instead of someone who only wants to be awake at night).