Henry Christian is here!

Poor boy - he's over 3 weeks old and I haven't yet blogged about him - the curse of the second child! Well, our sweet Henry is here and he is great! He arrived via planned c-section on March 15 weighing 10 lbs, 15 oz! The operating room was full of shock and surprise when they pulled him out - even before they weighed him - my big boy!  Having had a baby both ways now, I can, with authority, say that the c-section is the way to go.  The procedure was easy and so was the recovery - I was amazed how easy!

Our family of four is doing great! Elizabeth had a little bit of an adjustment period where she was having some temper tantrums and not sleeping well, but she's doing great now.  And she loves "Baby Henry".  She likes to cover him with his blanket - and has learned not to cover his head, likes to give him his paci, and tell us if he's sleeping or crying.  In her world, these are the only things Henry does. So far he is an easy baby - he hardly ever cries - just wimpers a little to tell you he's displeased.  He does prefer to be held and putting him down seems to be the only thing - other than hunger - that displeases the boy.

Here's some pictures of his first 3 weeks!

Elizabeth Update

Elizabeth has been super busy moving from toddler to pre-schooler the past few months.  We just love love her school.  She knows all her ABCs, not only can she sing the song, but she can identify each and every letter - in any order!  And knows a lot of words that start with each letter ("T is for Tiger;" "M is for Mommy;" "O is for octopus".).  She also can count to 20 in English and 10 in Spanish - and she recognizes her numbers.  She sings lots of songs - some we know and jump in and some we don't. But she loves to sing.  On nights when she isn't too tired, she sings her three night-night songs with me when I sing to her.

She's talking up a storm.  It's amazing how fast we went from sometimes understanding her one word sentences to almost always understanding her multi-word and multi-sentence thoughts.  She such a little person now!

She moved to her big girl bed over a month ago and got rid of the paci at the same time.  I was very worried about this transition, but she did great! She looks so little in the big girl bed, but she sleeps very well now.  And I'm so glad we finally got rid of paci! The biggest problem is that she still only wants to sleep under her green baby blankets and they are getting way too small.  If she lays flat and doesn't move, we can cover her up, but once she rolls over, she calls us to re "pat-pat".  We're trying to transition her to a bigger blanket (or the actual sheet and covers to the bed) but so far it's not working.

We're pretty much stalled on the potty training front.  She tee-tee's in the potty great at school and her pull-ups are almost always dry but she is not interested in poo-pooing in the potty.  At home, sometimes she wants to tee-tee and sometimes she can't be bothered.  We're not pushing it too hard - just letting her do her thing - surely she'll eventually get tired of diapers!

She loves playing babies - at home, at school, at church.  Sometimes she's feed them or push them in the stroller, but her favorite thing to do is put them night-night.  Those babies are always going night-night.

Elizabeth and Eric did some swim lessons last month.  At first she hated it, but eventually came around.  No olympian yet, but she's not quite as afraid of the water as she was and will even go under the water and blow some bubbles.

Can't wait to see her loving on her baby brother!

He's almost here!

Well as it turns out there is less time to blog about the upcoming arrival of a new baby if you have a toddler at home.  Turns out there is less time to do everything if you have a toddler at home!  But that doesn't change the fact that our baby boy will be here a week from today!  Because he is expected to be a BIG boy, he is due to arrive via c-section a few days early - next Tuesday, March 15.  A week and a half ago we had a sonogram which estimated his weight AT THAT TIME at over 9 1/2 pounds.  I have another one on Thursday and we fully expect him to be over 10 1/2 pounds.  Plus he's super chubby!  In fact, his belly is significantly bigger than his head which is the main reason my doctors are definetly set on a c-section even if he did show up early - we'd hate for his head to get through only for his cute chubby belly to get stuck! 

Here's a picture of me with giant baby taken today at 38 1/2 weeks.

E's excited about her baby brother, but I'm pretty sure she's expecting him to be kind of like another cat - something fun to play with when she wants to but easily ignorable if she's not interested - and certainly not anything that will take up Mommy and Daddy's time.  Just the past week, I think she's realized all the baby stuff that has been put out isn't just fun for her, but is actually for something else (she got this when we had to tell her to get out of the bouncy seat she was almost breaking.) 

My facebook buddies know I'm much better about updating the world via facebook than the blog, but I am going to try and get back to blogging.  We'll see!