Real Bath

Garrett's cord fell off at exactly sixteen days old, which is officially the longest that any of our babies' cords have stayed on. He sure didn't want to part with it! And with the loss of his cord he got to take his first sink bath. Unlike the sponge baths, he really liked this one and has loved them ever since. As long as he can stay submerged in water he's fine. It's the transport between the sink and the warm towel that has him screaming in hysterics! Lauren got to be my special helper and she loved being right there in the action. She got to lotion him up and now she wants to lotion him every time. Thanks for your help, Lauren girl!

2011 Little League

Little League season is in full "swing". With two kids playing and each having two games a week plus one practice most weeks (and did I mention two kids in soccer at the same time??) our calendar is full and crazy. This is Hailey's first year of tee-ball and her team is the Red Wings. She is the only girl on her team which concerned me at first. I thought it would be a repeat of her first year on soccer when she was the only girl and HATED it. But she seems to be enjoying it a lot! The pink helmet, pink bat, pink glove, and pink bat seem to have helped in making her like it.

Ethan is in his third year of playing ball and he's playing for the Knights. This year they are doing machine pitch and he has had a few hits and made a few runs for his team! He likes baseball a lot and the transformation between his first season and this season is unreal. He isn't the same kid as he was back then. I love watching him out there truly enjoying himself and cutting up with the other kids on his team. He has some out of his shell so much in the last two years!

Sponge Bath

Garrett had his first sponge bath when he was exacty one week old. Normally I can't wait to get my babies home to wash them off and I've always done it as soon as we are home from the hospital. But because I was feeling exceptionally sore this time, I waited a couple more days. As all our babies have done, Garrett protested. Oh sure, the first part was nice when he was fully dressed and had his hair washed. But as soon as his clothes were off and he got patted down with a washcloth, watch out!! Hailey and Lauren were great helpers. Since they are a little older now, they have been involved with a lot of the baby chores. They will both make excellent mommies one day!

Taking a Minute

I have spent the morning doing many things, one of which has been catching up on my journal. I am desperate to get caught up on the last couple of months before I start to forget details. I am one to want to do things in chronilogical order and as much as I hate to cause a break in my train of thought, I feel the need to write about what is going on in our house at this very moment. And in our livs at this very moment.

We are all sick. Well, most of us any way. I have what feels like the flu. Fever, chills, achy body. Lauren has it too. She is snoring soundly on the couch right next to me. Hailey has a double ear infection and stayed home from school today. She is in our bedroom playing PBS Kids online. Devin has a terrible cold and has been running fever off and on for days now and he is sleeping in his crib. Garrett for the moment, is sleeping in the swing. That boy has given us a run for our money since the day he was born. The poor guy was up a lot during the night unable to breathe because of congestion. He threw up twice all over himself during the night because while trying to clear his throat, chest, and sinuses, everything in his freshly filled stomach would come up as he gagged. And then he'd start all over again by re-filling his stomach. Oh, such a long night.

Poor Cody has been sleeping on the couch for five straight weeks. Garrett is such a handfull during the night and since I need him in our bedroom, there's no way Cody would get any sleep if he was in there with us. Maybe one day we will be normal again and be able to sleep in the same room again. Is there such a thing as "normal" when you have as many kids as we do in as many years as we do? Five kids in barely seven years. Just saying it outloud makes me tired.

I have seven baskets of laundry that need to be folded. I need to take apart the little boy's room to prep it for new paint on the walls. I need to clean out the pantry and frdge.

The last of the help left this morning. My dad has been here for two weeks and I was so sad to see him go this morning. He is the last of the grandparents to be here and it hurt when he left. He was a huge help to me and I will greatly miss that, but moreso I will miss his company. I love my dad and have a super relationship with him. He has a way of making any one of his kids feel like his "favorite". Whenever I am with him one-on-one, I am his favorite.

I should be unloading the dishwasher, or ironing Hailey's baseball uniform because we have to leave here to go have her team pictures done in one hour. And I haven't the faintest idea what we will have for dinner tonight.

Devin- 18 Months

Devin Joseph had his 18 month check up on April 11th (which happened to be at the same time that Garrett had his eight day check up. That was an experience!) Since my brain is so fuzzy, I can't recall exactly what he measured and weighed, and I am far too tired and lazy to go dig out his stat sheet. But I do remember that he was right on track on growth and came in at about the 50th percentile for both weight and height. Everything else checked out just fine and he is a thriving, happy, and healthy little guy! Having these babies less than eighteen months apart has left me feeling like a chicken with no head, and although I'd like to be able to record a complete play-by-play about his development at this stage, these are the things about Devin that I can think of right now.

-He has a fantstc mop of curly blonde hair, and we are terrified to cut it. Ethan also had beautiful blonde curls and after his first real haircut, it started growing in straight! So we are a little scissor shy right now.

-His vocabulary consists of Mom, Dad, uh-oh, hello, mmm mmm mmm (as if "no no no" which Mom says all the time) and this funky little car noise of sorts. He knows that all of these "words" make us laugh, and when he is in trouble, he starts going down the list of his cutisms and knows he will get out of trouble imediately. And it always works!

-He wears a size four day diaper and a size five night diaper.

-He wears eighteen month pants and 2T shirts.

-He wears a size six shoe.

-He rarely cries, and when he does, we know something is realy wrong. He is the sweetest natured kid around!

-He climbs on ev-ry-thing. If he can get his feet on it, he will climb it! And he usually falls, but he has determination and tries again and again. The poor kid is always covered in bruises and goose eggs because of how much he falls. But does it stop him? No way.

-He wants so badly to be one of the big kids. Now that Garrett is here, he wants to be included in the big kid stuff even more.

-He unknowingly knows all the vowels. He walks around saying "A E I O U" all the time. He probably picked it up from a kids' show. He can also recognize letters as being letters. Whenever he sees a letter, he shouts "A" no matter what letter it actually is.

-He has not had any real jealousy issues with Garrett. Maybe it's becaus he's too young to know what's going on! He loves to get the binky and tries to put it in Garrett's mouth. Devin never took a binky so he thinks they are a novelty. He also loves to stroke his head and give him loves (kisses on the top of th head). I think these guys will be great friends!

-If he can ever get over this cold he's been carrying for weeks, he gets to start nursery at any time.

-He is the ultimate Daddy's boy. Mom is usually chopped liver the second Dad comes in the door. He seems to have a sixth sense in the evening and knows when Dad is coming home. He starts watching the front door and sometimes takes his toys down by the door to wait for him. As soon as he hears the keys jiggling in the door, he jumps up and starts saying "Dad! Dad!" He only wants Dad when he is sick or when he wakes up during the night. This has worked out well since Garrett was born, because Mom and Dad can play man-on-man at night. Mom takes care of Garrett, Dad takes care of Devin.

-We still call him Moo, Mr. Moo, Baby Cow, Fatso Face, and Dev Dev.

-When he gets scolded, he has mastered the sad glare to shoot at us. It never gets him out of trouble, but it sure is cute!

-He is a great eater and will eat almost anything I put on his highchair tray. Oh, if ony this phase would last all through childhood!

-He still takes a bottle of milk at naptime and bedtime. We will eventually break him of this, but lately we have all been in survival mode around here so now is not the time.

-He is such a happy boy and he fill our lives with joy everyday! We sure love our Moo!!!

Going Home

Garrett and I were finally released on Thursday, April 7th. Ironically, that was the day he was "scheduled" to be born. So instead of being admitted that day, we were being discharged. Kind of nice to have a five day head start on life! I was giddy to dress him in the going home oufit that DADDY had picked out for him. When we left the hospital it was cold and snowy all over. I had spent five days looking out the window at a gray and bleak sky with snow all over the place. Not what we expected with an April baby! The drive home was yucky, but I was overjoyed to walk in and see my other four babies. They were very excited to see their new brother again. I wanted a picture of all five of them on the couch, but the only way to get Devin t cooperate was to put a cookie in his mouth. Very typical!

Meeting Garrett

By day two I was already missing the kids like crazy and counting the minutes until Cody brought them up to see me and the baby. For several weeks the girls had been talking about eating in the hospital cafeteria when they came to meet the baby, because whenever they'd go with me to a doctor appointment, we'd pass the cafeteria and they'd beg me to eat lunch there. So I told them that maybe Dad would take them to eat dinner there when they came up to meet the baby. Cody brought them up at about 4:30 on Monday afternoon, which would allow them time to visit and then hit the cafeteria for dinner.

When I heard several little hands knocking on my door my heart leapt. I was so happy to have them there with me! They walked in, each of them looking a little nervous and shy but very excited. They gathered around my bed and oooohed and awwwwed when they saw the baby in my arms. Devin was very happy to see me, but then a look of concern spread over his face when he saw what I was holding.

Being there with all five of my children made me want to cry. It was a beautiful experience. Finally, the seven of us felt complete. It's like we had been waiting for baby #5 for so long and finally, we were all there together. Simply amazing.

When it was time for Cody to take the kids down to eat dinner, Lauren would not leave my side. She insisted on staying with me and I was very happy to have her keep me company while the others went to eat dinner downstairs. She helped me eat my dinner that was delievered about the time they all left. Okay, so she mainly just ate the chocolate cake! Lauren by far had the hadest time with me being gone in the hospital for five days. For weeks afterward she told me "Mom, promise me you will never go away again!" Poor thing.

The First 24 Hours

In my experience, the first 24 hours are the most horrible for me physically. It's when the spinal starts to wear off and I feel the sudden rush of pain throughout my whole body and the afterbirth contractions are in full force and I start rethinking the whole baby thing. It's then that I am reminded of just how easy it is to be pregnant...even though I've just wished for the last six weeks that the baby could be born already. Yeah, it's so much easier to be pregnant than to give birth and care for a newborn. So I always say that if I can only get through the first 24 hours, I can get through anything. And this time was no different.

I was into my postpartum room sometime around seven in the morning and I tried my best to sleep, but is always a joke. I don't know how it is with a "normal" delivery, but when you have a c-section you have people checking on you every fiftenn minutes. The afterbith contractions were the worst yet, which was to be expected with this being my fifth baby. They get worse each time because the uterus gets more tired with each birth and has to work hadrer to contract. I had the same nurse that I had with Lauren and Devin, and if you ask me her name I will completely butcher it. She is from Pakistan and her beautiful name starts with an "N". I really love her and was lucky to have her for a thrd time! She really wanted me to get up and walk as soon as I could, but I was sooooooooo tired that I didn't even try until about 2:30 in the afternoon. All I wanted to do was cuddle with my little guy and sleep.

A nurse came into give Garrett his first bath around noon. First she did his footprints, and the whole thing made him VERY mad. And then the bath made him very VERY mad. I finally got up to walk for the first time and it was horrible, as always. You literally lose all diginity when you have two or three ladies hoisting you out of bed and helping you to the bathroom, with blood gushing down your legs the whole time. And then when you finally are able to sit down on the comode, one nurse holds your gown up while one hoses you off and one wipes you all clean. And then comes the fun of de-catheterizing you. But once you are all clean and don't have a hose hanging out of your urethra, well things just seem a little happier.

(This next part is very much TMI, but I wanted to document it for myself.)
I had a problem urinating this time which was totally new to me. I've never had that problem before. Since the catheter had already been removed, it was crucial that I did my business on my own. But oh, how it HURT!! That evening Cody came back up to see me and the baby and I laid in bed in serious pain as my bladder continued to fill up. And the more full it got, the more intense my contractions were. Pure hell is what it felt like. The nurse said that if I couldn't relieve myself by a certain time then I would have to be re-catheterized...this time with no anesthesia. OUCH! Finally around 7:00 that night I got up to give it one more try. I put the handy measuring device in the comode and did my best to get something to come out. And holy cow, my determiniation paid off. I filled it up almost to the one liter mark. I have never felt so good in my life!

The remainder of that first 24 hours wasn't s bad after that. I spent most of the time lying in bed and falling love with my new baby boy.

Garrett's Birth Pictures

This is the very last side shot of me pregnant...ever! That is such a strange thing to think about. Like all the towels on the floor? Gushing water is yucky.
Very bored in L&D. Cody and Leighann were asleep on the couch and I was left alone with the beeps of the monitors and my thoughts.

Getting all set for them to start cutting. Good thing Leighann was there to give them the okay!

Cody kept it light by picking my nose with his knuckle.

Here he comes! Isn't that cutest little leg ever??

The boy came out screaming and didn't stop for the entire hour and a half in the OR.

A very happy mama to hear the healthy lungs on her babe!

Proud Aunt Leighann

The nurse bringing him over to meet me. This is always my favorite part.

Proud Papa...for the fifth time!!

Wow, such a long ordeal. But extremely worth it! Welcome to the world, little one!

Contemplation

I have been thinking about this for quite some time. Tonight while I was brushing my teeth, I thought about it again.

I am thinking about quitting this blog.

I am not sure that I will, but I'm thinking about it. I am not sure if anyone reads it anymore. I used to have more readers and the numbers have dwindled over the years. I have been pondering the exact reasons for keeping this blog. Why do I write? Is it because I have an audience? Do I like the comments? Do I need the recognition from random people who are reading? Or do I write because it's for posterity and a way to document? I think it's the latter.

Something you should know about me is that I run from trends. I mean, I RUN THE HECK AWAY from them. When something gains popularity, I often times [unknowingly] run the other way. Even if it's something I really love, I tend to run. I don't know why I do it. Maybe it's the non-conformist in me. And my dear friens, blogging has gained such momentum since I started this blog almost four years ago and once again, I am running.

I use this blog as my family journal, for the most part. And I've come to realize that I can't be as vulnerable as I'd like to...a least not with it being public for anyone to see. But then again I hate having a private blog. So, I am trying to figure out exactly what avenue I'd like to take to document the comings and goings of my not-so-little family in our little corner of the universe.

But for now I haven't quite got it figured out.