Drooly Julie

so it was a nice sunny day yesterday which is a nice change since I've felt like we moved to Seattle and no one told us, so we decided to head outside and enjoy the sun and get a few cute pictures along the way.

Maddie also has been enjoying lots of tummy time and just starting to figure out that her toys are there to entertain her. We've also moved into the "if i can hold onto it, it will eventually make it's way into my mouth phase" which has quickly moved into the "lick everything i come in contact with phase". it's quite comical actually, but since it's so new i'm sure the comedy will soon wear off LOL.

This weekend is Maddie's baptism. I just found out today that it will be performed by Deacon Joe. I'm excited about this, I love Deacon Joe, and unfortunately he understands our pain all too well as he lost a baby as well. Pray for nice weather on Sunday! Oh and tomorrow is Maddie's first "professional" photo shoot. Mike is super upset about this because he feels that all the pictures he takes are a lot better than professional :) So pray that she cooperates and doesn't fall asleep or get cranky mid-way through LOL.

2 months...

I swear that on our dry erase board it has said for the last two weeks : Update the blog!

I'm not entirely sure how many people even still follow the blog, however for those faithful few I will continue to try and keep updates coming.

So, what is new and exciting in Maddie's world?? Well pretty much everything!

She has been able to hold her head up for weeks, however she is really starting to be able to keep it up for longer periods of time. She LOVES to be on her belly and when she is there she is always kicking her legs trying to propel her body forward. Maddie has also been trying to work on rolling over. She seems to have an easier time rolling from her back to her stomach, which is harder to do, than from her stomach to her back. She will definitely be a tummy sleeper!

Just a couple days ago, Maddie discovered her hands and they have been in her mouth pretty much ever since! Sometimes she even spits the paci out so her hands can go in.

We also got Madison a Bumbo chair. I originally thought they were a waste of money, however she loves to sit in it. I'm not comfortable enough to leave her alone in it yet, but I can see this being helpful in a few months when I need to throw a load of laundry in, since you can buy a table that snaps on top of it, just put some toys on there and voila! instant independent playing.

Maddie also is quite the conversationalist. She enjoys "talking" to us about what she did that day. I've read that to help babies begin to understand words and how conversation works that you should ask them questions, wait for a "response" and then respond back to what she said. Maddie has really taken to this and I've been able to have atleast 5 minute "conversations" with her.

Madison also has a new favorite game: Peek-a-boo! One day she was sitting in her bouncer and I threw a receiving blanket over top of her head, pulled it off and said in a "very happy" voice Peek-a-boo and she just about cracked up! Now she even tries to pull the blanket off to get the "peek-a-boo!" quicker.

Since summer has unofficially began we've had lots of time to play outdoors. Madison has even tried her hand at swimming--unfortunately, she slept through most of it, although I take that as a good sign of her liking it :) She also likes to go for stroller rides around the neighborhood. Tonight we even took her to St. Leo's carnival. There was so much to see and do, she fell asleep right in her snugli about 5 minutes after we got there LOL. We will try again on Saturday.

We also have been trying to get Madison on a loose schedule- although bedtime is always between 8:30 and 9:30, except for when she stays at Grandma's who lets her stay up until 11pm!! During the day she is usually up between 8 and 9 and then will play for a good hour. After that she fights sleep, even though you can see she is tired, and will finally nap for about 30 minutes. Then it's storytime/relaxing with mommy. After lunch, she plays in her crib until she falls asleep. Then its up to either eat or play games, depending on how long the nap lasted. By 6:30-7:00pm she has finally fought sleep long enough and will usually take an hour nap before bedtime routine starts of bath, lotion & pj's, story, eat and cuddle with mommy. I must say that even though she fights sleep all day long, when bedtime comes, she is out for the count! At just 9 weeks old she is sleeping most of the time for 5+ hour stretches.

On Aidan's birthday, May 16th, we had a picnic with friends and family to celebrate life! I can't believe he would have been 2 years old already!! We had a balloon release to send Aidan birthday greetings and it was absolutely beautiful. During the release it was perfectly sunny out, yet still raining! I believe it was Aidan, crying tears of joy from all the love he felt!

Early in the month of May we got an invitation to a banquet to honor families of organ donors. We decided it would be a nice opportunity to take Madison on her first plane trip (since she will be flying out to Europe in a few months) as well as see where her brother spent some of his life. We received a medal from the governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty and his wife, as well as got our photo taken with them. The governor's wife told us how beautiful Madison was when we were up on the stage. We then told her we were here because her brother donated his heart and she got "the look" on her face. The "I'm so sorry, I'm not sure what to say, but that must be heartwrenching" look. I always feel bad for people when we tell them about Aidan. No one really knows what to say, and I understand that. A few years ago, if a person I knew lost their baby, I'd have no clue what to say either.

The next day, we showed Madison some of Minnesota AKA The Mall of America and Stone Arch Bridge, where you can see the new bridge that replaced the one that collapsed while we were out there. While driving around, Mike made the comment, "wow there are only two season out here: Winter and Construction!" and it's the truth, every road we travelled had some sort of construction going on....some of it was the same construction going on 2 years ago!


Anyways, that's pretty much our lives since the last update... hope you enjoy these ramblings and the pictures below.

Maddie in her Tutu

I'm one month old!

Happy Birthday, Aidan!

Family Shot at the Pool

Maddie and Daddy

Taking a Dip!

Maddie and Mommy!

Say What?!

Happy Baby!

Chillin after a bath

Trying out her Bumbo

I like it!

Apologies

I didn't realize how difficult it would be to update everyone as much as I would like to. As tough as it is to have a child in the NICU, you have a lot more time to throw a quick update on the web.

Madison is a complete joy! She has her moments, however Mike and I could not be luckier, Maddie is an angel of a baby. She lets us sleep quite a bit more than I first expected. The only time she gets overly fussy is if she is hungry or has been up too long and is overtired.

My favorite moments of the day are:
1. after Madison has her early morning(between 5 and 6) feed, she never wants to go back to sleep in the cradle, so we bring her into our bed and have Maddie cuddle time and we get a few more hours of sleep.
2. just as Madison is about to fall asleep, sometimes she gets this big goofy grin on her face as she is drifting off...always puts a smile on my face!
3. Maddie is a cuddle bug and she loves to lay on her belly on people, however when she lays on me, she lays on her belly but sideways just like she did in utero.
4. when Madison is being held and she is looking around the room, she gets wide eyed as she is absorbing everything around her.

I promise to try harder to give more frequent updates and add pictures. I plan on adding in the near future "Things I've learned along the road of motherhood" to our blog.

Deadly Drycleaning

So after a party where I decided to clean up nice and wear a suit I put my suit on the dining room table with my SD cards in the pocket. The suit, which was sitting around, my mother assumed needed cleaning and put it in the dryel bag with the SD cards still in the suit pockets. 2 cards survived and 1 didn't quite make it through. So I glued it back together with some duco cement and the 8GB card worked again. Unfortunately, the cement didn't hold it together for very long and I moved on to Super Glue. With our Nikon D90 currently getting warranty repairs and us unable to find our old camera, we bought a Samsung 10Mega Pixel "Mickey Mouse" camera. [Mickey Mouse Camera == any camera that isn't a Digital SLR]. Laura had warned me not to use the cemented / super glued / dryeled SD card but I couldn't resist I wanted the other 2 cards for the DSLR. It worked fine until I tried to remove the card to put the pictures on the Internet for Laura's latest blog post. Some of the pictures we lost because of my mistake of using the decrepit old busted card:

Madison 2nd bath Pictures which included her deciding the best time to pee would be when she was naked en route to the bathtub. Soooo she sprayed her daddy a bit.

Madison holding her head up playing on her activity mat.

Madison looking in the mirror at her cute self.

:-(

Laura is MAD

Snugli

So I wanted to tell everyone how much I love having Madison in a Snugli. Laura gets mad cause I hold her in it for about two hours while I play on the computer then pass her off whenever she gets cranky. I'm sure this post will be used against me but I don't care I love when Madison is sleeping on my chest!

Happy Easter

Madison just wanted to tell everyone:

Hospital Photos

We just got the hospital photos in the mail today. We cracked up when we saw how cute they were. She looks like she is saying, "back away this is my bear now!"

How Quickly a Week Passes

It's hard to believe that Madison is already a week old!! Last week this time I was in recovery and Mike was taking his first couple hundred pictures of her. We've joked that pretty soon Madison will think that it's normal for lights to constantly flash in front of her face and that the camera is a 5th family member.

On Thursday Madison met 3 of her cousins, Ashley, Sarah and Maria. They were so excited to finally have a girl cousin. Madison loved all the attention and kisses she was getting.

Ashley & Madison

Sarah & Madison

Maria & Madison

Well as I said earlier Madison has spent her days with the flash bulbs popping in her face all day long. It seems every day we are trying to come up with some sort of "photo shoot". These are some of our favorite shots from the different "shoots". Enjoy

How big is Madison? SO Big!!

Bed of Roses

Madison trying out her swing

Daddy's Little Girl

Madison with Aidan's bear Champ

Madison's First Trip to Target

Our first attempt at Easter photos

As you can see it's been a busy week!

After a bit of a hiatus...

Now that Madison has arrived Mike and I plan on updating the blog a bit more, filling everyone in on some of the daily happenings with us, just like we did with Aidan. So feel free to tell friends and family to stop by and see what we're up to.



Since being home we haven't really done much other than just trying to figure out how to get through the day on as little sleep as possible. That being said, Madison is breaking us in gently. The first 2 nights she woke up for a few hours in the very early morning, however this morning she slept through most of the night, waking only to eat and be changed so I was able to catch up on some much needed sleep. She woke up around 9am and we checked out her new room, trying out her swing and playing with some of her hand and feet rattles. We sang some songs and read a story about Easter. After that Madison was wiped out for the rest of the morning.

Mike came home from his unemployment meeting and fell asleep. Madison wanted to join Daddy and an adorable photo shoot insued.

Below is the birth story I posted on facebook:
Alright well we just got home today, we didn't have internet while at the hospital so you know how much it was killing Mike, but Mike is holding Madison right now so I figured this would be the best time to try and write everything down for everyone.We got to the hospital on Friday around 1pm and boy was Labor and Delivery hopping!! It seemed like everyone was trying to have babies in time for the weekend. Our nurse said that we might be getting pushed back a bit, I was nervous already so this wasn't helping any. Then we heard that we were still almost on time they were just trying to find an assistant to help the doctor with the section...I saw a look in Mike's eye and told him, "do not volunteer yourself, you are not assisting him!" LOL about 15 minutes after 3pm the doctor came in and apologized for being late. His excuse cracks me up whenever I think about it- he ate a burrito for lunch and fell asleep! I told him that it was fine, I'd rather him be well rested than doing the surgery tired. So they took me to the operating room, got me all prepped, gave me my spinal and then anxiety took over. They gave me extra oxygen and it made me feel like I couldn't breathe (weird i know) I started to feel VERY nauseous, the docs and nurses calmed me down and then I got really sleepy. They brought Mike into the room and soon they began. I'll spare you all the gory details, the end result was Madison arrived at 3:56pm perfect and healthy. About 2 hours later I got to hold Madison for the first time, I looked at her and saw a female version of Aidan staring back at me, she was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen! All of the medication made me super tired and nauseous, so I don't really remember a lot about Friday night. Mike's parents came and visited and about an hour later they took Madison back to the nursery to let all of us get some well deserved rest. They kept her until the following morning.Saturday was a whirlwind!! Madison had a never ending supply of visitors coming to love on her. We appreciate all of the love and support from everyone that came to visit, it really meant a lot to us. Around 10am, the nurse came in and told me I could lose my IV and try to walk. I remember all the horror stories of people telling me make sure I got up and walked as soon as possible, how sore I would be and more. So I prepared myself for the pain and stood up--it wasn't bad at all, a little sore and uncomfortable, but I was so happy that it wasn't severe pain like I was expecting. I was so happy because the bed was NOT comfortable, so I didn't spend a lot of time in bed on Saturday. After all the visitors left, my nurse came in and asked if I had rested, I told her no, she said, well now you have orders to put your feet up the rest of the night. She said if I push myself too much I will regret it in the morning. We decided to try our hand at keeping Madison for the night. Can I just state for the record right now before this changes but we have the world's best baby!! She woke up a few times when she was hungry but overall she didn't cry super loud and I definitely got more rest than I expected to. Sunday brought another round of visitors and cabin fever definitely started to set in, so when there was talk of me getting discharged the next day I was all over that. The doctor was very pleased with my progress and said I would probably get my staples out the following morning. Madison got a clean bill of health from her pediatrician despite having a slight case of jaundice, she didn't have to be under the lights or anything though. Sunday night was pretty uneventful, just like Saturday she woke up only for about 2 hours and didn't have any major meltdowns. This morning we got the all clear that both of us were free to go. We had yet to get a hospital photo taken, so we made sure to do that before we left. The photographer was too funny. She said Madison was so animated and there were so many good pictures she couldn't decide on just one. She had us sign consent forms to enter Madison into a Cutest Baby contest which made us swell with pride and said she might use some of the photos in sample birth announcements. I couldn't decide on just one pose, so we got 2 of them, they are just too funny and no words will do them justice. Mike agreed to get the 2nd pose only after I said he could get a new hard drive...wasn't too excited about that but had to do what I had to do LOL.

Our Chunky Monkey

Went to the doctors on Monday and had another ultrasound. We got the 100% confirmation that Madison is indeed a girl :) Janie also looked at my placenta and it is still low. She tried to show me, it's a lot more confusing than looking at the baby LOL, what makes it a previa. The basic jist of it is currently the placenta is not completely covering my cervix (a good thing) it's on the very edge, however if I were to go into labor when my cervix begins to dialate it would then begin to overlap and obstruct the baby from coming out. So while Janie isn't a doctor she is 99% sure that we will be discussing c-sections at my next appointment.

Janie then began doing measurements and Madison is measuring 1-2 weeks ahead of schedule. She is in the 60th percentile for her age. So Janie estimates that Madison will be between 8 and 8.5 pounds at birth. While this could be true, I think she will be in the high 7's. They also thought Aidan would be a little bigger and he was a teeny tiny 6.2 pounds. So while Madison is having adequate weight gain, I'm actually losing weight!! Since my last appointment in January I lost 8 pounds and in the first trimester I had lost 15 pounds for a grand total of 23 pounds lost so far. I think I may be one of the few pregnant women in the world who will actually probably walk away from this pregnancy weighing less than I did when I got pregnant. woohoo!! enjoy our little chunky monkey :)

hand always up at her face

practicing her "call me" sign

the "bubbles" by her mouth is actually the umbilical cord

look at the size of those chubby cheeks!!!