Time Flies!

Boy how time can fly! I cannot believe that this is my last week at home with my babies! As much as I have loved this time at home, I am very ready to get back to my kiddos at school. Some people may call me crazy, but I am not cut out to be a stay at home mom. I love my babies with all my heart, but I need the structure of work (not to mention the adult interaction!). For all you stay at home moms out there, I commend you! And for those of you that feel like I do, know you are not alone and through all the comments that have been made to me, I know that I am not a bad mom by being ready to go back to work. In fact I feel that I am a better mom by going back to work. A very smart lady told me yesterday that "It's not about quantity, it's about quality". I don't have to spend all day with my babies (quantity) to get all of the quality time that we need!

And of course I can't post without a couple of pictures of my babies!

Brother and Sister

One of the questions I get asked all the time is "How is Cale doing with Madelyn?"

I am so pleased to say that he is doing awesome! He loves his "little sister" as he calls her. He constantly wants to love and kiss on her. And I promise that I cannot leave the room with her without him right behind me!

He wants to hold her and feed her too. Mommy just has to be there to help him because when he is ready to move on, he is done. He is too funny!

I love these shirts that I had made, but hate that I didn't get a picture of both of them together wearing them!

It's official

After 2 long years, and more hours of work than I would ever care to add up, my reward arrived in the mail this week. It is funny how one piece of paper makes all of the time and effort worth it!

Cale's 3rd Year photo book

I have worked on finishing Cale's 3rd year photo book while I have been home.  And then I took advantage of all of Shutterfly's specials going on (20% off books, $10 off a $30 purchase and free shipping!).  So I got it for $21 :)

Click here to see it.

I hope to start on his year 4 book and start Madelyn's year 1 book too before I go back to work.  I am very sad to say that I only have 2 more weeks at home....wow the time has flown!  I will be back with more picture soon!

Meal Planner

Being home for another month, I am hoping to do better about cooking. For the past 2 years I have been working on my masters degree, which meant I was not home 2 nights a week. This made my cooking hit-or-miss. I saw a cute "Meal Planner" on pinterest, and took the idea and made my own.

If you have a google account, you can download it here for free. It has been uploaded to google docs and you can save it to your account :)

Hopefully it will help me get my meals in order!

2 week check up

Madelyn had her 2 week check up yesterday at Carithers. I took both kids with me for our first real outing. Her appointment was the first one of the day so I knew it would be quick. Plus poor Cale has been left (some days kicking and screaming) for all of Maddie's blood work last week, so I knew he was feeling a little left out, bless his heart! So I decided that I had to bite the bullet at some point and take them both. It was an easy trip (I hope they stay that way).

At the doctor we saw Dr. Wendy Sapolsky. Love her :) We have seen her once or twice before with Cale and always liked her, but we usually don't request a doctor, we just see which ever one is available. We have liked all the ones we have seen so far and will continue to do it that way until we find one we don't like.

So baby girl weighed in at 8 lbs 8 oz. That's a whole 1/2 pound over her birth weight, so Dr. Wendy was pleased with that :) and was 21 inches long. She is in the 75% for both height and weight! While we were there she made a BIG present for Dr. Wendy! She pooped EVERYWHERE!!!!! It was coming out the front, back, and sides of her diaper! I think the thermometer in her little hiney is what prompted all that! But Dr. Wendy was awesome and she changed her and cleaned her all up so she could finish checking her out.

I am proud to say that the jaundice is all cleared up! She does have a little bit of a thrush infection in her mouth, but we got some meds and after just one day's use it is already clearing up! She is eating like a champ! I have been pumping for her, but have had to start doing 1-2 bottles of formula (usually at night) because she is eating more and I can't keep up with her. Yesterday was her first full bottle of formula and she did well with it. She did spit up some, but she does that with my milk too, so no biggie there.

I am glad to say that we have worked out a schedule so that she is only getting me up twice a night. We are able to feed her between 10-11 before I go to bed. Then she is up around 2ish and again around 6ish. Sometimes if I am lucky (like today) she gets up about the time Bryan is getting up and he will feed her. But I am not lucky enough for that to happen very often. She usually waits until right after he leaves before she decides to get up :) But then she goes back down until about 10. So I get to go back to bed until Cale gets up. And he will usually come and watch TV in our bed for a little bit, so I am getting to at least rest until 9 or so. It seems to be easier with her at night then is was with Cale, so I am grateful for that!



Well I think that is enough rambling for now. I will leave you with a picture :)

Madelyn Ruth has arrived

Thursday, August 4th, started like any other day. I had a doctor's appointment that afternoon and was hoping for good news, but trying not to get my hopes up at the same time. Bryan dropped me off for my appointment and he headed out to his last knee appointment. It just so happened they were only 30 minutes apart so he had to miss my appointment. I was nervous waiting for the doctor. I was 2 cm dilated at my last appointment, and I had been having lots of contractions over the past week. I was hoping she would check me and say "it's time!". But of course that didn't happen!!!

Once she checked me, I had only made it to 2 1/2 cm. I was disappointed to say the least. I think Dr. Walsh could see it on my face! She knew that we were an hour from the hospital, so she wasn't quite ready to send me home, but she also wasn't ready to admit me into the hospital either. So she told me to shop and walk for a couple of hours and then to head back to the hospital to let her check me again.

Since Bryan had his appointment, mom picked me up from my appointment and we hit up several stores and walked for a while. I was starting to hurt so I was glad my time was up and we headed to the hospital. When she checked me this time I was now 3 cm. With slight progress she wanted to hook me up and monitor me for an hour. If I made any more progress in that hour she would admit me, if not she would have to send me home.

I knew my contractions were coming more often, so I was praying for progress! At the end of the hour I was at 4 cm, so it was time to have a baby!!! I finally got admitted and checked into a real room. By this time it was about 6:00 and I was starving!!! I have not had anything to eat since about 11:30 that morning. But, unfortunately I still couldn't eat!

My mom took Cale to her house to hang out with Poppy. We knew it would probably be a while before Madelyn actually arrived so there was no sense in trying to keep him entertained at the hospital. Bryan made the call to his family and they headed to the hospital.

With it being late and no sight of baby actually arriving in the near future, we only had our immediate family at the hospital.

This is us waiting for Maddie to make her appearance.

I got my epidural and we all tried to settle in and get some rest.....yeah right! I didn't sleep at all. Everyone else was able to get some sleep, not much, but a little is better than none. My epidural caused my blood pressure to bottom out, which was quite scary for me. I got really light-headed and thought I was going to be sick. Luckily our nurse was in the room when it happened and she took awesome care of me! So she was in and out all night continuing to monitor my pressure, so sleep was not possible.

Dr. Walsh broke my water a little after midnight and from there things progressed fairly quickly. They checked me the final time at 5 am and I was 10 cm and ready to start pushing. The nurse called for them to set up the room and she did practice pushes with me through 2 contractions and said it was time to get the doctor. I pushed through 3 contractions with Dr. Walsh and we had a baby at 5:26!!!! It was such an easy labor for me this time and I was so glad!


Madelyn Ruth Libby - 8 pounds - 20.75 inches - born at 5:26 am on August 5th.

Trying to burp for the first time.


I could kick myself because we did not get a picture of all four of us!!!! But here is one of the 3 of us.

Proud Nana :)

Holding his baby sister for the first time!

On Saturday they had to put her on the phototherapy light for her jaundice. Luckily it didn't get high enough to have to do it at home.

Finally getting ready to go home!

We are all home and settled now. It is hard to believe that I was not supposed to have her until yesterday. I am so glad that I didn't make it that long. I can't imagine what she would have weighed if I had not had her 10 days early!

Party Time!

This weekend we celebrated Cale's 3rd birthday party! Although his birthday is not until the 31st, with me being SO pregnant, I decided it would be best to do his party a week early. He wanted a Woody party, so Toy Story it was. I must say that I was completely exhausted by the time that the party started, so I didn't get many pictures. I am sure Nana and Granny did, so I will post more once they forward them to me.

Here is the birthday boy in his birthday shirt!

Because it is July in Florida it was HOT! So we set up a slip-n-slide for the kids. They didn't really slip or slide, but they had fun playing in the water!

I didn't do a cake this year. We had rainbow cupcakes instead. Cale loved being sang to and did great blowing out his candles.

Thank you to everyone that made it to the party! A good time was had by all :)

VBS

Cale participated in his first VBS this past week. He had such a great time! Everyday he was excited to get to go to "church" as he kept calling it. Their theme was "Beach Blast" this year so their crafts and snacks and song were centered around that theme. On the final night, they invited all the families to come watch them perform their Beach Blast song (with all the motions). I had caught a sneak peak of it when picking him up one night, but I didn't know how he would do on the stage. Usually he just stands there any time they perform in front of the church. NOT this time! He did the whole thing and was SO proud of himself! Momma was just as proud :) I took a video of it on my phone, but I am not sure how to load it from the phone onto the blog. I will fiddle with it this week and see if I can get it up here. For now here are some pictures of my big boy!

Baby Showers

Bryan and I have been blessed with wonderful friends and family! We were given 4 baby showers for Miss Madelyn! My fellow second grade teachers gave me a shower at work (I forgot my camera that day!). Then my family gave us a shower (I took my camera, but mom ended up taking all the pictures on her camera....you can see them here.)

Next our sunday school class gave us a shower at church (finally have pictures!). We are so blessed to have a great church family that loves us like they do!

Cale was putting on a show!!!!

Finally, Bryan's mom and sister gave me a shower. Again we feel so lucky to have such great people in our lives that love and care about us.

Cale ooohhhed and aaahhhed over everything! He was hilarious!

Mallory is due just 2 weeks after me, so we thought we would compare bellies!