Before his baby brother was born, the world revolved around him. He was always at my side whether it was shopping, cleaning, cooking or playing. He never really experienced solo play because I was always with him, facilitating his activities. We both loved that time together and took away many fond memories. Now that I am not as accessible, Caleb has learned that he has to play by himself. This discovery came with more than it’s share of guilt and regret as I realized I had to share my time with him and a demanding newborn. The first few weeks were confusing for both of us as we tried to settle into a new environment that worked well for the whole family. I learned to let go of the guilt associated with Caleb’s time with me and Caleb had to become more independent. I am still amazed how many skills he has acquired during the transition. He now knows how to put on his shoes, partially dress himself (he still tries to put his pants on two legs at a time), get water from the fridge, turn on the TV and navigate through the DVR to his shows, brush his teeth, and wash his hands.

Along with those life skills, his play is evolving from mimicry and parallel play to imaginative and social play. He has moved from repeating the actions of Mom and Dad to creating his own worlds and bringing his toys to life. To foster this, I am slowly trying to weed out the “educational” toys that only involve pushing buttons and alphabet songs to role playing and open-ended toys. I’ve learned that a hula hoop or a bucket of dinosaurs far outlasts the standard “button pushing” toy.

I feel there is a growing need to nurture young imaginations even more now than the last generation. Today, my children are being raised where the backyards are smaller, neighborhoods are (seemingly) less safe, and the wilderness is scarse. Gone are the days where children can leave their house at the crack of dawn, ride their bikes all day long wherever they want and come home by dinner time. Modern parents worry more, teach more, and take more precautions. I don’t want become a “helicopter” parent who hovers over her children all day wondering if their development is on track and if they’re eating enough vegetables. I want - no… I need - to step back, take a deep breath, and watch my son play by himself. All he really needs is to feel loved. And if he does, he will thrive regardless.

Nathan is one month old and cuter and chubbier than ever! I’m still surprised how big he really is. He’s already outgrowing his 0-3 month outfits and moving up to 3-6 month clothes. He has more “sweet” rolls on his arms and legs and is sporting a nice double chin. Just like his brother, he lost all the hair on top of his head around 3 weeks making him resemble a little old man. despite all these curious changes, he’s still a handsome little boy.

Nathan’s temperament is still mellow and laid back. He’s becoming very predictable with his preferences: When he wakes up, he’s in a very pleasant mood for about an hour where he starts to get fidgety and fuss until he drifts off to sleep. He sleeps very well through the day; still averaging around 18-20 hours a day. Night is wonderful. I can put him down at 7pm and he usually wakes around 6am. He loves lying on his play mat, watching his brother play, going outside for some fresh air, car rides, and being wrapped. He’s discovering he has feet and likes to put weight on them for short periods of time. He learned how to smile at 4 weeks and let out his first giggle a few days after that. During his quiet alert time, he coos and sticks out his tongue.

I am still adjusting to having two children, and some days are definitely better than others. But I am sensing our lives are slowly settling into a routine we all enjoy. Caleb has adapted wonderfully to the less direct attention and has learned to play by himself and now regularly engages in imaginative play. He has gained more independence and can wash his hands, put on his shoes, and eat his meals without assistance. These little skills help me tremendously. During Nathan’s many naps, we find special activities to do together. currently, we love playing with legos., playing golf, baseball and soccer, reading books, cooking and going outside. When Caleb naps, Nathan and I nap together or I snag a few minutes to myself  with a book and a handful of M&Ms. It’s amazing the times I spend with just one child feel like a vacation now.

Here are a few pictures from the past few days of the littlest man and his family:

I’m a little late in writing this but I have to say, there is a lot of adjustment when a family grows from three to four. I am trying my hardest to fit into the role of supermom of two but the learning curve is steep. Thank the Lord Nathan is a well-behaved and sleepy baby.

His two week check-up went splendidly. His is 9 pounds 11 ounces putting him into the 77th percentile for weight and he is half an inch longer at 21 1/2 inches putting his height at the 79th percentile. He’s well on his way to a career on the Cardinals’ defensive line.

He is such a wonderful baby. He always looks like he’s got a little grin on his face. He seems to sleep about 23 hours a day only to wake up to eat and take a look around before nodding off again. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his witching hours though. If he decides to get fussy, he’ll wait until his daddy comes home to show off his personality. But this only happens occasionally. When he is awake, he loves watching his big brother play and talk to him. As soon as he hears Caleb, he’ll look around for him. This makes my heart instantly melt. I love watching my boys interact with each other. Here are a few pictures of the bothers from the day Nathan turned 2 weeks old:

My dear friend Amber came over the other day so we could take Nathan’s newborn pictures. He was quite the trooper for 3 1/2 hours of photo taking with only one projectile poop incident. I really wanted to capture every detail of his babyhood from how curly and snuggly he is to the wrinkles in his lips. Even though memory is a powerful tool, having photographs to help me remember this fleeting moment in our lives.

The brothers hanging out this morning:

At 9:18 pm on August 10th, 2011, Nathan Andrew was born! He weighed 8 pounds, 13 ounces and was 21 inches long.

We were scheduled to be induced at 6 am on August 10th. I woke up at 4 am ready to go and called the hospital around 5 to check the availability for beds in the labor and delivery ward. Apparently, every full term fetus had decided to make their appearance that day so the nurse said there was nothing available and all I could do would be to call back in about 4 hours. Slightly deflated, I wobbled my way back to bed. At least now we could have a normal morning and not be rushed to go in. Around 9, I called again only to be turned away with the same instructions. A little more deflated, we packed up and went to Target to burn some time and anxiety. I knew by lunch that chances were slim they would take us in at all that day so I waited a bit longer to call and took a nap instead. I woke up around 1:30 and called the hospital knowing full well, they hardly take inductions past that point. To my surprise, the nurse asked if we could come in right away. Since we had our bags literally packed for weeks, we were more than ready. So we dropped Caleb off at his uncle and aunt’s place and hurried over to the hospital. This was it! We were prepared for a long night of labor. At least the Diamondbacks were playing that evening.

It took a while to get settled in our room (the hospital was packed). They finally got us hooked up to the IV and pitocin around 4:30. I was dilated to 4 cm and 50% effaced. At first, I had only minor cramping and discomfort but about a half hour later, my doctor came in and broke my water. At that point I was already dilated to 5 cm. My doctor predicted labor would only be about 4-5 more hours. Since my body has been telling me it’s been ready to go with bouts of false labor and steady dilation each week, I knew that breaking my water would probably get things going naturally. The added pitocin really only made things go faster. About five minutes after my water broke, the contractions quickly became very intense. I couldn’t believe how quickly everything was moving. about 15 minutes went by and the pain was terrible. Not wanting to miss my chance for an epidural, I gave the go-ahead for the order. 10 more minutes of crazy painful contractions and the anesthesiologist made it to our room and hooked me up to the epidural. At first, I could only feel it working in my right side and began to panic a bit. They had me move around and the anesthesiologist adjusted the catheter in my back and after a while the problem cleared up. Trauma averted. At this point, 7pm, I was feeling great and the nurse checked me again. I was 8cm and totally effaced. Just an hour or two longer and we would be pushing! We watched a few innings of baseball and I started to feel some pressure. Turns out baby was making his way down and I was almost set. Once the doctor came in, and everything was set up for delivery, it was time to push! Time in labor: less than 5 hours! After about 25 minutes, Nathan was born! He took his first breath, cried a bit, and took a look around. Then they nurse took him to get cleaned off and checked up. We could tell right away he was a very big baby but I was surprised to hear 8 pounds 13 ounces! He looks just like his brother did except for the lighter hair and extra pound of chunk. Here are a few pictures from our delivery:

Today, Andy and I celebrated 5 years of marriage together.

5 years of pets, children, projects, and new opportunities
5 years of great joys and dark trials
5 years of loved ones coming and going
5 years of lessons learned and some we’re still trying to comprehend
5 years of sickness and triumph
5 years of great ideas (mostly him) and not-so-great ideas (mostly me).

I can’t think of a better person to spend those 5 years with. He has held steadfast to his vows - loving me when I was hardly worth loving. His loyalty, patience and grace was, and is, something to be admired. We have faced many adversities as many couples do, and together, we’ve strived to come out of those storms ever stronger.

I can honestly say, he’s upheld the biblical example of a husband and has resonated the image of Christ’s love for the us:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. - Ephesians 5: 25-28

I’m blessed enough to say that as we’ve lived out our own love story through these past 5 years, I’ve also learned a little more about the overarching love story of God to his people. Marriage, in it’s purest form, exemplifies that love. God used us, as broken and faulted as we are, to play out His unyielding love for His children the moment we said our vows. In 5 years, we’ve learned this much, I’m excited to learn so much more about this love story through the next 50 and beyond.

With Caleb, I had three good reasons not to have maternity pictures done for myself:

1) I wasn’t really into photography at that point.
2) It would have just been me and my belly. Andy is not one to voluntarily go in front of a camera and I needed to share the spotlight.
3) Let’s face it. I’m a cheapskate. I would rather learn how to do something myself than pay someone else to do it for me.

I was content with a weekly documentation of my belly through a quick snapshot in front of a mirror. Now that I’m completely immersed in the world of photography and see everything as an art form, I wanted something a little classier than the traditional giant orange belly through a toothpaste-spattered mirror look.

My good friend Amber, who is also a photographer, totally gets my obsession with making everything into a photo shoot. She came over this past week to be my photographer and we had a ton of fun. It was refreshing to be the person in front of the camera for once; even though I know nothing about how to pose my own body or how to “smile with my eyes”.

So without further ado, my 31 week belly through the lens of my big girl camera:

During Caleb’s pregnancy, we splurged on a boutique 4D ultrasound. I still love looking at those pictures and comparing them to how he looks now. I didn’t want to miss out this time around so we found a reputable place downtown to get some awesome images of Nathan. The tech was amazing and Nathan cooperated for the most part. There was a few minutes where he wanted to bury his face into my back and cover his head with his hand. But we were able to jiggle him out of that position. Out of the 70+ images we got, here are a few of my favorites and a video of some highlight from the session:

I’m pretty sure Nathan and Caleb look almost identical. They have the same mouth, eyes, chin, and sleeping expressions. Caleb had huge poppo cheeks at this point and his nose was a little smaller but you can definitely tell they’re related. The tech also confirmed his gender (That would make this the third time we’ve checked. I just to make sure we don’t have to repaint the nursery!) and pointed out that Nathan has tons of hair already.  Seeing these images just makes me even more anxious to meet our new little guy!

I find redecorating therapeutic in the highest sense. When I’m stressed, I clean the house, When I’m bored, I think of ways to change up the decor. When I’m pregnant, I morph into an obsessive home decorating monster. During Caleb’s pregnancy, I found enough time to hand make just about everything in his room besides the furniture. This time around, I have none of that time, but I still have the nesting itch. So instead of concentrating on one room, I’ve expanded to the entire house. Since we moved in 5 years ago, every wall except the living room and two bedrooms was white. Doing something about that was first on my agenda. So for my birthday, I asked for an entire painting of the kitchen/dining/living area. After three years of figuring out what to do with the open floor plan, I decided on a dark red for the kitchen and a light neutral green for the rest of the area. Nothing made me more excited than watching those sterile white walls disappear. Here is the result:

I was thrilled with the outcome… but then came the discovery that we were having another little boy. This opened up a whole new slew of decorating opportunities. We decided to keep Caleb’s room the nursery and move him into the spare bedroom right across the hall. This way, we could transition him into a toddler bed and provide him a new room to grow into while at the same time, keeping the nursery theme the same so we could reuse most of Caleb’s baby decorations. My sister-in-law helped create the ultimate little boy room with super awesome airplane murals on the walls:

Caleb was so excited for his new room, he insisted sleeping there before we were even ready. We haven’t had any issues transitioning him from his crib to the bed. So lesson learned for the next one: If you don’t want problems with the extra freedom that comes with a bed, make a room where they want to spend all of their time despite the freedom.

Now that Caleb was happily settled in his new room, I moved ont to Project Nursery. I wanted to reuse the bedding I so painstakingly made with my own hands and wanted to keep the same blue walls. But I needed it to still be a unique room for Nathan. One trip to Hobby Lobby helped me decide on a western theme. Since there was paisley already in the pattern of the fabric, converting to a cowboy room would be seamless. I just added a few extra decorations for identity and texture. My oh-so-creative sister-in-law came over to help me on the rope name above his crib. In less than a week, Nathan’s new nursery was complete:

All three projects were very low budget. All furniture was either what we already had or given to us. Decorations for the kids’ rooms were either products of great sales, reused from other rooms or inexpensive materials. I love knowing every room in our house is now complete and has an intentional purpose. It’s a peaceful contentment knowing our house is the perfect size and we need nothing more. And as of right now, my monstrous nesting instinct has been pacified….. but I do have exciting plans already in place for a few years down the road.

Caleb’s rendition of “I’m a Little Teapot”

A few weeks have passed since my last update but everything has been relatively uneventful. First, I’ll update on our firstborn. Caleb is getting more and more grown up by the day. He is definitely easier to understand and has a huge vocabulary. I can’t keep him away from anything cooking-related - his kitchen, my kitchen, cooking shows, the appliance section at target…. I bought him an activity book the other day to help him develop his drawing skills and he’s taken off. He can draw smiley faces:

and flowers along with basic shapes and his favorite scribbles. Andy has already gotten him started on sports cards I think mostly so Andy can rekindle some old childhood memories:

He also learned how to ride and steer his tricycle and loves cruising up and down the hallway:

We’re working on decorating his new big boy room (Airplane themed complete with a big boy bed) before his little brother comes. Of course, me being the decorating fanatic that I am, he can’t sleep in there until we’ve painted it, hung up curtains, hung all the decorations moved in furniture, and His Aunt Brandi has painted airplanes on the wall. He’s already thrilled about the idea of a new room and has already deeded his old room over to his baby brother.

Now on to our new addition. We had the opportunity to sneak a peek at little Nathan at our 18 week ultrasound. He, however, was not being very cooperative. He was facing my spine the entire time and would squirm out of the way each time the tech needed to take measurements. Thanks to modern techology, we still were able to capture some pictures of him:

Here’s an image of his spine and torso.

It’s confirmed, He’s a boy!

His leg and two sets of toes.

His face.

Profile

3D of his face. Kind of sketchy based on his awkward position.

And here is a video of the the ultrasound. complete with captions so you can tell what you’re looking at.

First, let me get out the most exciting news discovered this week: we are having a boy! Caleb will have a little brother; a little pal to play with; Andy will have another little buddy; I will have another little boy to love. I can’t express how happy this makes me. Boys, to me, are simple, transparent, adventurous and have less obstacles to deal with in this society. I’m am so thankful and feel so blessed to be able to raise two of them.

Second most exciting news: we have a name! After much discussion and near misses, we’ve decided on Nathan Andrew. His middle name was known from the beginning as to pass down Andy’s name but the first name was nothing short of a challenge. We had a girl name easily picked out early on, but any boy name just sounded off. When Andy and I both heard this name, we knew it was a good fit for our next son and our family; plus, Caleb can pronounce it better than his own name!

Our little bun in the oven is 12 weeks old: his fingers can open and close, his mouth can make sucking movements, he can squirm in response to my movements. We had an ultrasound on Friday for some routine testing. Everything looks perfect and he’s right on track. The tech and the doctor were both certain he was a boy and were impressed with how well he behaved for the ultrasound, whatever that means. Here are some pictures and at the bottom is a video of the highlights. You’ll be able to see him moving around, his heartbeat, fingers, and a little dance move at the end.

We had our first OB appointment and sonogram yesterday. Even after going through this process before, seeing the tiny flutter of a heartbeat was nothing short of a miracle. Baby is measuring right on track and is due August 12th. I’m actually going back at the end of January for another ultrasound at 12 weeks. We never had this one with Caleb so I’m really excited to see what that stage of development looks like. When we came home, we showed the picture to Caleb and tried to explain that those wavy gray lines were his little sibling. Of course he had no clue and was only concerned with holding the picture himself.

We are really impartial toward either gender. I’m a little more on the side of a boy just because I would love for Caleb to have a brother/best friend to grow up with. But recently, I’ve been beginning to wonder if we’re having a girl based on a few clues:

Clue #1. Before we were even pregnant with Caleb, we had a boy name picked out. Girl names were all but impossible to choose from and up until that ultrasound, we still had not decided on one. This time, we have already decided on a girl name but can’t agree on a boy’s name at all.

Clue #2. Today I asked Caleb if the baby in Mommy’s belly was a little sister or little brother. He repeatedly told me it was a little sister AND said it was a girl.

Clue #3. I’ll just claim this one as a maternal gut instinct. Some part of me thinks it’s a girl, but I’m also a little back and forth on it. Probably because I’m more partial to boys and am a little intimidated at the thought of having to raise a girl in this society.

Only time will tell. I’m assuming we’ll have that all-revealing ultrasound sometime in March. Here is the sonogram picture from yesterday. Baby is in the middle of the black circle. Head is on the lower right and the heart is the bottom middle bulge:

Love,

Andrew, Bri, Caleb and Baby #2