Christmas 2011 and Beyond

I admit, I haven't been a great blogger lately. Taking care of an active toddler and a newborn is more work than you can ever anticipate.

I thuroughly enjoyed our Christmas this year. My sister and brother-in-law came up from Georgia for a nice long (but never long enough) visit.

We started Christmas week with a girls baking night. Wish I actually got pictures of all the yummy creations. I made Oreo Truffles, Rice Crispy Treat Snow Balls, and chocolate dipped pretzles. My sisters made various cookies and mom made some homemade fudge.

We also had our very first annual craft night. We made homemade yarn wreaths. They all turned out great....well, we have yet to see Michele's finished product, but knowing her it will blow the rest of us out of the water :) Maybe next year I will be a little more organized!
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My finished product w/ homemade felt rosettes.

We spent Christmas Eve and Day with my family. The in-laws came to my parents' house to join in on the festivities on Christmas Eve. It's wonderful that we are able to celebrate with both of our families. We are so blessed.

Christmas Day we got up and went off to church, then we all gathered at my parents' house for out traditional gift exchange. I have to note that I felt my family did a great job with gifts this year and thought there were some very thoughtful gifts given. Makes me want to do better next year.

Unfortunately, a flu bug ran through not only me and the boys, but also my poor sister Michele and mother. Not a great way to end Christmas and bring in the New Year, but thankfully it seems to have passed now.

Birth Story: William Richard Gehrig

Brothers!

*Warning: May be too much information for some. Read only if you are interested in this sort of thing. This is written mostly for my own memories sake*

It is hard to know where to start with this one. I started having painful contractions 3 weeks before William was born. They would range from a couple an hour to every 15 minutes for a couple hours. Then, they would just die out completely. After a week of that, I woke up one Saturday to contractions that got from 15 to 10 to 5 very quickly. We thought it was time to go to the hospital. They monitored me and I had contractions every 3 minutes in Triag. They addmited me being at 5cm and then after a few hours the contractions completely stopped again! I never thought that I would be one of "those people." Going to the hospital too early or having multiple "false alarms." I thought I knew my body well enough to know when I was going to into labor. I will never judge again! Little did I know it would be another 2 weeks of on and off contractions before the baby would arrive!

The day before I went into "real labor" I had an appointment with my midwife and I was still at 5 cm. We thought it was reasonable to sweep the membranes to try and help things along. I also went to the Chiropractor that afternoon to see if an adjustment would move things along as well. We bought some Castor Oil and that evening we walked the mall. At 3:30 in the morning I started getting intense contractions every 15 minutes apart. Didn't think to wake Byron since I have been going through that for the past 3 weeks. After I woke up around 7:30am and started moving around for the day contractions got closer together and were about every 5minutes. We decided to have my mom come to get Gideon and head to the hospital. After monitoring me at the hospital I was still at 5cm, but 100% efaced. Contractions slowed down to every 7minutes, but once I got in our room and got settled they increased to every 5minutes with increasing intensity. Unfortunately, after hours of this, I had not progressed in dialation. I was completely exhausted at this point and extremely frustrated. We had a talk with our midwife about our options and thought it would be a reasonable thing to break my water bag. This was not our ideal, but being an hour from home and 100% with regular contractions we felt it the best decision for our situation. After she broke my water, contractions got increasingly stronger and closer together. My poor husband's arms may have gotten bruised a little, but he was a trooper and huge support. I eventually started using the birth ball and that helped a little. I started feeling the need to push. I was SO happy to finally be at that point. I was terrified, but excited at the same time. I pushed for maybe 20 minutes and then our baby was born! Another boy! It was about an hour and a half after our midwife broke my water that the baby was in my arms!

I feel so blessed to have been able to have another natural birth (or as natural as it could have been with a minor intervention). The Good Lord has blessed us with two beautiful boys! We are just so happy and having fun figuring out how life works as a family of four.

William is such a relaxed baby compared to Gideon. He totally goes with the flow and tollerates all the hugs and kisses his brother loves to give him. Gideon is doing so well adjusting to the new baby and their our no big signs of jealousy-yet. He helps me throw away diapers, gets me burp cloths, and the like. I also wasn't sure how he would take to me nursing the baby, but he is just fine with it-and doesn't even seem to remember nursing himself just about 5 months ago.

Praising God daily for these two beautiful blessings in our lives.

William Richard Gehrig

William Richard Gehrig. Born on October 22, 2011. Length-20.5 inches. Weight-8lbs, 5 ounces.

Our little one finally decided to join our family Saturday afternoon! I will give a quick update here and hopefully write a full birth story later on. Saturday morning my contractions started to increase in intensity and were getting closer together. Definitely felt like it was time to go to the hospital after we all had breakfast. Called my mom to pick up Gideon and we were on our way! At 3:40pm William was in our arms!

We were able to come home Sunday evening. Gideon seems to be adjusting as well as can be expected. He loves to kiss and hug the baby and let him hold his finger. It is quite precious. I just hope he doesn't decide he is sick of him in a week or so here!

Huge thanks to my wonderful husband who not only allowed me to beat him up a little during labor, but who has been a huge support at home as well. Doing laundry, dishes, warming up meals, extra help with Gideon, and the like. I could not do it without him! I also thank my parents and family for their much appreciated help with Gideon, our friends and family for setting up and cooking meals for us, and all the prayers and well wishes from all! We also are so thankful to our GREAT God for looking out for all of us during all of this. Mom and baby are healthy and I was able to have another natural birth! We are so blessed in so many ways!

Praising God...

Pumpkin-ish Picking

Saturday we thought it would fun to take Gideon to pick pumpkins. After checking out some places, the cost, and the fact that it was going to be a cold and windy day we decided for something a little let extravagant. We basically went to a local glorified farm stand. They basically picked all the pumpkins and put them in big piles according to size outside of the barn. There you can go and "pick" your pumpkin. They also have some cheazy kid stuff like pony rides, train rides, and the like. What drew us here was the there was no entrance fee and the fact that we didn't know how long our 2 year old would last.

Out of the only 30 minutes we were there I think our son had about 10 minutes worth of fun. He HATED how windy it was. Such a wimp, but good call on our part. Here are some pictures...

Checking out the ponies

This one gets me.

Hiding from the wind, but still smiling.

Fall Things

To keep my mind off of things the last couple days, I have been distracting myself with some fall-ish activities. Ideas from Pinterest, of course-my latest addiction.

Yesterday, I made this fall centerpiece using the pumpkin candle idea from above mentioned website. I just cut out the centers of the mini pumpkins (only 3 for a $1) and inserted little tea candles. It was actually a really easy project. I got some pine cones and fake fall leaves from the dollar store to finish it all off.

Today I decided to take the plunge and bake something due to some encouragement from my mom and my husband's aunt. I made Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Pull-apart Bread. I will say, I should have picked a simpler recipe to bake today, but it made the house smell like fall and tastes delish. It reminds me more of a pumpkin monkey bread. Yummo right out of the oven.

RandomGoingCrazy-ness

Aaaahhh! Okay, so it is only the day after my due date. BUT I AM GOING CRAZY. Probably because this baby has been messing with me for the past two weeks and last weekend we spend a half day at the hospital thinking we would be leaving with a new baby in our arms. BUT NO. This baby just wants to play tricks on me-forever I think. A friend suggested spinningbabies.com, which i have been trying different exercises and techniques from there. I have also been walking a lot and trying to stay active in general to hopefully get this baby on the move. Along with some other ideas I found online, we went out for some spicey Thai food for lunch as well.

I guess I just feel like my life is hold and that I am constantly living on standby. Thinking that any moment we can go into labor and everything has to be "just-so" just in case. I have been crazy making sure every dish is washed and every bit of laundry is washed. I have been ITCHING to do some fall baking, but the crazy person inside me says, "No! What if you start something and go into labor while it's cooking in the oven" or something like that. I am going nuts over here. I did manage to do a fall craft today to keep my mind off things. Maybe I'll post about that later.

It doesn't help that I can't nap because of all the house construction work noise on our street EVERY DAY FOR THE LAST THREE WEEKS! AND not to mention our tenant upstairs is a lover of generating noise. All day I hear his computer vibrating through the floor (because it is old and needs to be fixed but he won't fix it and I have to suffer). Yes, I have asked him to shut it off several times when he is not home or not using it, but he just "so forgetfull" he says. Yeah, I am ranting....and going crazy. CRAAAZZY! I need to get out of the house, but I am afraid to go too far for too long.

My midwives tell me I am a "loaded gun" and when things start going I better get over to the hospital fast. I am already 5cm and an hour away from the hospital. Any conventional doctor would have induced me for sure by now, but if the baby isn't ready then it isn't ready. No matter how much it is driving me crazy I want to do what is best for my baby, not give into my selfish desires.

So pray this baby is done cookin' soon! I know it won't get any easier when he/she arrives, but I really just want to move on and figure out how to do life as a family of four.

For now, I will just spend some time with my new addiction, Pinterest. I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon after many invites from friends. Now I just get depressed at all the fun crafts or yummy food I can't(err won't let myself) make until baby comes.

That's enough for now. Blah!

Number One is Number Two!

2 years ago today Gideon Anthony Gehrig was born! Time flies so fast. We started the day by opening his birthday present (his dad just couldn't wait). He loved it and played with it all day.

We got him this:

We thought we would stick with tradition and go to McDonald's Play Place for dinner. The eating part went great, but he definitely didn't like play part this time around. He totally freaked out in the tunnels and daddy had stick with him every crawl of the way. Let's just say it didn't last too long! Funny. Last year he had so much fun. FAIL!

Short video on the way to dinner:

Gideon and daddy

Happy at first...


Then freaked out. Can you tell he is hanging on Byron for dear life?


Sweaty and glad it was all over

After that we decided to stop by the library and check out the new remodle. He loved it there, but I forgot my camera in the car, so no pictures.

We ended the day playing with his cars and track a little more and now he is sound asleep.

Happy Birthday to my big boy-err "happy day" as you say! Love you more than you could possibly know. Thank you, Lord for our little one that proves to be more of a blessing each day.