It was a special time for all of us to bond with Xan in those first few weeks. Atlas and Jane loved her so much from the minute she was born. Well, to be honest, Jane said she looked yucky at first, but as soon as she was rubbed off and wrapped up Jane said she was the cutest baby in the world! (Jane has told me she doesn't want to be in the room when any potential future siblings are born. Haha! I think she was little traumatized. Oops!) Atlas was enthralled with her immediately. He would get so excited to see and touch her! He definitely had to learn to stay calm and be gentle with baby sister, just like Jane had to learn to be gentle with him. I just love see all three of them together! It melts my heart!
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| Sweet sister love! |
Ever since Xan was born. Jane always asks, "Can I hold her? Can I hold baby sister??? Please!!!?" She loves her so much. Jane is always trying to make sure she is happy, doing what she can to make her smile, bringing her toys and giving her a bottle when she was allowed. She is a big helper for me. She will go get me a diaper or wipes when I need them. Or bring me my water bottle or my phone when it was out of reach. It's been such a joy to watch Jane love on her little sister. I love that she already has experience with a baby sibling and is now old enough to be gentle enough to entertain and help with baby sister. The sister bond is so sweet! Our family doesn't have any experience with a sister-sister relationship. It's so fun to watch it unfold.
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| Big brother!! |
Atlas was right behind Jane asking to hold baby sister. There were fights over who's turn it was to hold Alexandria. 5 seconds after Jane was holding Xan, Atlas would come up and say, "My turn now??" then 10 seconds after Atlas was holding her, Jane was asking for another turn. This would go on and on until I said it was my turn. ;) I think Atlas learned a little faster than Jane did to be gentle with a baby. But I think it has to do with how excited Jane gets about everything she loves and that excitement gets the best of her even to this day. I have to remind her by saying "Jane! I know you love her but you need to calm down so you don't hurt her by accident." Atlas is such a sweet big brother as you can see from him gently putting his head next to her's in the picture above. I just love watching all of their relationships develop!
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Making eye contact with Marmee!
The morning she was born. |
After Xan was born my mom spent the night with us the first few nights. Sam also took the first 3 days off. It was nice to have all the help those first few days when rest is so important and those super crazy afterbirth pains are making life extra difficult! It's like labor all over again except I already have my baby!! I almost dread them more than giving birth. Ugh, anyway moving on! My mom has always been super grandma for us but she was just beyond stellar that first week. Making and picking up meals, cleaning the house, keeping the older siblings entertained, holding Xan for me while I ate. Anything and everything I needed she was there. It's so easy for me to let my mom take care of me, but at one point I realized how drained she was becoming, so I told her to go home and get some rest and let Sam take care of us for a while. I am so blessed by her. I hit the mom jackpot for sure. I can only hope I can be the same kind of mom to my kids.
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| A few days old! One of my favorite outfits! |
This little cutie was an easy going baby from the very beginning. The first 3 days all she did was eat and sleep. I think she almost ate more than she slept. She would nurse for like 2 hours sometimes. :o Then sleep for like 1 hour and nurse again for another hour. I finally understood why I was so insanely hungry my whole pregnancy. This girl loves to eat! She never lost any weight. At her 4 day check up she had gained weight! Sleep is another favorite for this little(big!) girl. I feel like she rarely opened her eyes those first few days. She seemed upset to be awake outside my tummy. She got used to it eventually. ;)
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| Daddy snuggles! |
The second week after Xan was born Sam took off a few more days to stay home with us. It was a sweet and challenging time adjusting to a family of 5. It always feels a little off while I can't be 100% just yet. It's not natural for Sam to be in the "mom" role (sorry, not sorry if that's too traditional). He got the job done for sure and the kids loved the extra playtime they got with dad through that week, but by the end of the week he's ready to go back to work and I'm ready to get back into my natural role of caretaker of the whole family and to start finding our new normal with our new family structure.
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| They adore her! This was a familiar sight those first few weeks. |
After two and a half weeks (it was supposed to be only two weeks but I'll get to that story in a minute) I was feeling good and mostly all recovered from delivery. So I took on the adventure of taking care of 3 young children on my own for the first time! I also went back to work the next week. Most mornings Xan was content when she woke up. So I would let her hang out on a blanket next to me while I worked when the older kiddos were still asleep or watching a show right after they woke up. This seemed to happen almost every morning! They got down to just to look at her and pet her head gently. "Alexandria! Look at me! Hi!!" was the commentary I was listening to. ;) They are just so cute together!
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| Jane helping me give Xan her first bath. |
I was pretty impressed with how well everyone adjusted to adding a new member to the family. No one seemed jealous at all. They just loved her immediately. I feel like becoming a family with one child and then moving to two children changes the family structure almost completely. I think with our third it helped a lot that she came into a structure that had already been established. So there weren't near as many changes that happened or maybe that's just because she was such an easy going baby. Either way the transition from a family of 4 to 5 was the smoothest transition yet!
At the very end of my two week extra help period my mom took off work again and Sam went back to work. While she was here the weather got warm enough to run the sprinkler! Jane and Atlas had a blast getting to play in the water again! I had forgotten how crazy the dog gets with the sprinkler though. She attacks it, barks at it and tries to pick it up and run with it. Hyper, water loving lab that dog. Then at the end when I try to dry her off she won't sit still and tries to eat the towel. I hear that once a lab turns 2 they start to calm down. Here's hoping that will turn out to be true for us. She's awesome dog, but man is she energetic!
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| 2 weeks after Xan was born. No fun. |
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| Iron Giant seems to be our sickly movie. |
Y'all.... 2 weeks, JUST 2 weeks after Alexandria arrived I caught a stomach virus. Seriously, my uterus was still recovering from pregnancy and birth and I'm barfing my insides out.(TMI warning but it was one of those out both ends at once viruses!) I had gone to bed on Sunday night expecting to wake up Monday and start my first day on my own with 3 kids. But I woke up just a couple ours later with terrible stomach knots. Xan was very clingy at that point, nursing every 2 hours and had to sleep next to me and any time I got up she would wake up. It was so hard! Then an hour or so later the dog had a runny poop accident over half the house. That had never happened before!! Like what the heck! I could not deal with it. So Sam spent like 2 hours at 2am cleaning it up as best as he could. An hour after he got back in bed Jane started throwing up. It was the very worst! The perfect storm. Sam was up the entire night with sick people. Atlas started about 7am. Finally at 9am I felt ok enough to sit on the couch with the kids and let Sam take a nap. (since he got like an hour of sleep.)
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| First bits of food. Yummy toast! |
The whole time I was terrified Xan was going to get sick. That was the only silver lining through the whole sickness though. Xan stayed completely well and unaffected. The thing about a stomach virus is that no one can come help out except for dropping supplies at your doorstep. If you do let them help then you are dooming them to the same awful fate. Sam and I agree we had never been so tired and it was the hardest 24 hours of sickness we've experienced. Sam does not handle other people's (and dogs) bodily fluids well. It's normally my job to take care of sick kids, but I was physically unable to care for any one and barely myself for almost 12 hours. But we made it!! We survived! The next morning the kids had dry cereal and toast and held it down and wanted to jump on the trampoline. I thought we were through it all. But that night Jane threw up again. Just once and then the next night again just once! We were baffled that she was the only one that couldn't seem to shake it. But finally 3 nights later, everyone was completely better. Maybe her sensitive stomach has to take it really slow to eat more than dry plain food again. So MUCH laundry... and I had to re-clean the floors from the dog grossness too. (because husbands do their best but you still feel better to make sure it's extra clean!)
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| First walk with three kiddos (and a dog) |
Ok enough with the virus, let's move on!! 2 1/2 weeks after Xan was born I had my first day on my own with three. I don't have almost any memories of that day. I guess it was such a blur that I didn't hold on to anything or maybe the sickness memories are just so strong that it drowns out any other memories from right around that time. I have a general feeling that it went really well and Alexandria has been a dream baby since birth pretty much, making the transition to three on my own really smooth. I spent the rest of that week recovering and resting as much as possible. I waited to go back to work until Xan was three weeks old.
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| Our favorite park! |
It felt sooo good to finally find our new normal and start working on a good routine for our new family unit. One of the first things I got back into doing was going for walks. They are definitely a little tricky to make work these days since I only have a double stroller and Jane doesn't love to walk on her own yet. So sometimes Jane rides her bike, sometimes she helps me push the stroller, other times I wear Xan, but most of the time I find a way to fit all three of them on the stroller together. The next thing we added to our plate was going back to park day! <3 It's the best!! There is such a great group of mom's that come to park day that I can ask one of them to hold Xan while I go help Atlas or chase him down. If I need to feed Xan while I'm there I can ask one of them help me keep an eye on Jane and Atlas. We love our park friends.
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| Baby's first park day! |
Right after I took this picture Xan got her first taste of salami. :O Atlas somehow snuck a small piece in her mouth without me seeing. I looked back at her and saw her mouthing something, freaked out for half a second then I swiped it right out of her mouth! I was a little upset, but I knew Atlas didn't know that little babies can't eat food. We hadn't really gone over that yet. We haven't had an issue since. :) Alexandria was cool to hang out and watch us each lunch at the park otherwise she was happy to be in the carrier the rest of the time. I do a lot of baby wearing! You have to when you have three kids. ;) A lot of our activities happened to be around 11am so Xan got into the routine of taking a nap in the carrier. It worked well for us. She would sleep though all of gymnastics and more than half of park day.
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| Mother's Day with my youngest |
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| She was loving the view poolside |
Our very first outing after birth was to my parents house for dinner. We got back into our Thursday and Sunday dinners the very week after Xan was born. I felt well enough to take the short drive over and it was a welcome outing that felt safe to me when I was still recovering. These pictures were from Mother's day over at my parents. I had to grab a picture with my youngest on my first mother's day as a mom of three while the big kids were swimming. :) Alexandria loved watching big sister and brother in the pool!
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| Before she was too heavy for Mama. ;) |
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| Great Papa always makes the great grandbabies smile! |
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| They were excited cousin Amanda had a trampoline too! |
We enjoyed the 2nd annual family crawfish boil at cousin Amanda's house this May! It was Xan's first family event and my first time to drive three kids out of my little city on my own. It went pretty well! Especially considering I was still driving my Grand Prix at that point and I couldn't prevent car fights since I couldn't separate them. Jane and Atlas were so excited that cousin Amanda had a trampoline in their backyard! It was just so hot we weren't able to stay out there too long, but they had fun inside too since there were lots of fun toys to play with. Great Mama and Papa helped me keep Xan entertained while we were there. We had a great time with family and enjoyed the delicious crawfish cooked by Jonathan, Amanda's then fiance, now husband. The kids (and me) really liked Amanda's pepperoni rolls. She says she never has leftovers of those! ;) Looking forward to next year!
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| So thrilled it was finally party time!! |
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| Jane was so excited all her friends came to swim with her. |
Oh my goodness? How is my baby 4?? Jane had been asking about her birthday and her birthday party and when it would be since the day after her party last year! Haha! She was old enough to have significant influence in her party decisions. I asked if she wanted to do something different than a pool party and she said adamantly, "NO!" It's such an easy/cheap party for me so I love it too. The only thing that turned out not easy about this time was that sunscreen ran into Atlas's eyes and ruined the first 30 minutes of the party for both me and him. :( He was crying and inconsolable on the couch. He has very sensitive eyes, poor guy! We put on Cars to help him forget about it. Sam took over after a while and lured him outside again with the promise of pizza. After that all was well. I actually almost forgot about that whole ordeal. So maybe it wasn't as much of a big deal as I thought it was. I felt terrible not being able to focus on my guests for that amount of time though. As you can see in the picture above he finally got back in the pool eventually. Next year I will make sure to have the party later in the afternoon so we can avoid sunscreen all together and the pavers won't be so hot to walk on!
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| So happy!! |
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| Water Balloon fight! |
The thing Jane asked for during her party more than anything with no influence from me at all were water balloons! But with everyone having so much fun swimming and the Atlas incident, we kind of forgot about them until almost everyone had left. It worked out though because I would have needed more water balloons if we had more than three active participants. ;) Jane, Nicole and Brianna had a blast! Me and my dad got in on the action as well. Atlas and Ariella had fun watching and holding a water balloon or two. :) Jane loved all of her presents! The little monkey she's holding was the favorite of the day. Also she had been asking and asking and asking for an Elsa dress. I told a few people about that request, but no one had told me for sure that they were getting it. So I bought one, wrapped it up and gave it to her after all the presents had been opened to make sure there wasn't an Elsa dress from someone else. That present has probably been the most used since that day. We almost need another one! It's been worn so much it's starting to come apart.
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| Sweet friends! |
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| Dress up in Jane's birthday dresses! |
Jane got two other princess dresses from Great Mama and asked specifically for a wand, crown and princess shoes. So the girls had a dress up party before Brianna and Nicole had to leave. I just love the joy on Jane's face in all of these pictures. <3 She told me it was the best birthday party ever! Almost all of her best friends were able to come this year. So much FUN! My kids birthdays are pretty much all in a row, end of February, Early April and end of May. So it's kind of like birthday party season in the spring. It's really fun, but it's also kind of a relief when it's over and I don't have to think of planning a party for a while. ;)
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| She'd been asking to go back for a whole year! |
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| Atlas was old enough to pick by himself this year. |
Another thing Jane had been asking about for a whole year was blueberry picking! We went the first weekend Moorhead's was open trying to beat the super hot days. It still ended up super humid and hot. We only lasted about 45 minutes. Jane said she was done because it was too hot and I was worried about Xan overheating since she wasn't even two months old yet. We still enjoyed ourselves and got a few pounds of berries since the bushes were nice and full. We got a snowcone before we left to help us cool off on the way home. Jane doesn't remember the heat apparently because she's been asking to go back ever since yet again. Haha!
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| Waiting in line for the Library to reopen! |
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| Xan slept through her first storytime |
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| So so happy that the Library is back!! |
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| They love to jump off the concrete blocks every time. |
Our last spring adventure was attending the Kingwood Library reopening! It was a long awaited day for us. The library had been closed for 9 months to rebuild after flooding during Hurricane Harvey. We had missed it dearly! I was so excited they reopened just in time for summer so we had a cool place to escape during the summer heat. We go at least once a week and try to make storytime if we can. It was really fun to wait in line for the doors to open for the first time since the hurricane. Everyone cheered together when we got to go in. I think there were about 50 people there waiting. Oh yeah! I was even quoted in a news article about the library reopening! You can check it out
here.
That concludes our spring season this year. It was one I'll never forget. So grateful for all the blessings that were poured on us by God.
Proverbs 1:2-7
To know wisdom and instruction,
To perceive the words of understanding,
To receive the instruction of wisdom,
Justice, judgment, and equity;
To give prudence to the simple,
To the young man knowledge and discretion—
A wise man will hear and increase learning,
And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel,
To understand a proverb and an enigma,
The words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
But fools despise wisdom and instruction.
