A walk in the woods with friends

Last Saturday it was absolutely beautiful out!  I'm pretty sure it was in the 60s which is practically unheard of for November, and we of course had spent the two days previous stuffing ourselves full of turkey.  So we decided that it would be the perfect day for a long walk.  And we were joined by our good friends the Kreylings! Adam was the photographer that day since I was carrying Asher, so I actually made it into some of the pictures.  Look kids, mommy was there too!

Emma and Lily held hands for a good amount of the walk!

All the girls and Asher :) 

Me and the little guy, too bad you can't see his face! 

The three oldest kiddos, they had to climb up on to every single rock, and there were a lot of rocks! 

Yelling at the top of their lungs, because it's the woods and you can do that!

Another rock to climb...

The View from the top of the trail, super pretty!

Trying to get a good picture of the four oldest kids on the way back down. 

All in all we managed to herd the kids around the trail for two hours!  And there wasn't even a lot of complaining until the last fifteen minutes or so.  Pretty amazing for five kids under the age of six. :)  We are so thankful Emma has such fun friends!

Asher's birth story. part 1

Dear Asher James,

      This is the story of your arrival into this world.

I will not lie to you, this pregnancy was difficult.  It was difficult both physically and emotionally.  We found out we were pregnant in January, right around my birthday!  It was a wonderful wonderful birthday present.  We were very excited!  Shortly after that, I began to deal with the usual morning sickness and vomiting most mornings. Of course I was expecting that and even welcomed it because I knew that morning sickness meant I was still pregnant and you were most likely doing ok in there!  At 18 weeks, we went in to have our first ultrasound and find out whether you were a boy or a girl.  We were both so excited to find out that you were you. (especially daddy, I think he was secretly hoping you would be a boy).  I was a little bit concerned when the ultrasound technician spent so much time focusing on your brain and kidneys.  Little red flags started to go off in my head and I had a bad feeling in my stomach that only grew worse as they kept us waiting for a long time before calling us in to go over the results.  It turned out that there were some small "'cysts" on your brain and your kidneys appeared to be swollen.  On their own, these two things were fairly normal but together they were "soft markers" for scary scary things like down syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities.   It was a very very emotional appointment for both of us.
     The next day we went into Boston for an appointment for a more detailed ultrasound, we were super super nervous, but the results were good.  The ultrasound technician just said that we would be monitored throughout the pregnancy but didn't seem overly concerned.   We were very relieved (although a small part of me worried throughout the entire pregnancy about your poor swollen kidneys).
  
   Fast forward to five months into the pregnancy and mommy failed a glucose test.  No big deal though, a lot of people fail their first one.  It's the second one that you have to worry about!  Needless to say I failed the three hour one as well and received the diagnosis of gestational diabetes.  At first I was able to control it through diet and exercise (which was very very hard for mommy as I've never been on any kind of diet before in my life) but eventually I needed medication to control my numbers.  I did start to feel much better and had much more energy once I was on the diet and the medication.

For the last two months of the pregnancy because I was a high risk patient, I had to have weekly ultrasounds and twice weekly NSTs on top of my weekly midwife appointment,( that's four appointments a week!) so it was a crazy time. I couldn't wait until I got to hold you in my arms instead of seeing you on a monitor!   It felt to me like pretty much nothing had gone right this pregnancy and I was so ready to be done.  Also according to the ultrasounds you were enormous! They kept telling me you were going to be at least nine pounds, and the possibility of a C-section was brought up a few times.

top: 18 weeks

bottom: 38 weeks

For your part, you were a crazy man inside the womb, you were always on the move!  Sometimes it felt like there were two of you in there because there were so many limbs kicking me from different directions.  Once I even got to watch you kick the ultrasound monitor, and you were always kicking my NST monitors off.  We were constantly adjusting them because you moved and we couldn't hear you in there anymore.   I loved feeling all your movements, but at the end it got to be ridiculous!  You wanted to come out so badly, sometimes we could even see the outline of your toes against the outside of my stomach!  And I was so big at the end of the pregnancy, I looked as though I had swallowed a watermelon sideways (I'm not even exaggerating check out these pictures:)

34 weeks

Also notice how low you were? Ouch!  I only gained about 18 pounds but it was all belly and it was killing my back! 

36 weeks 

Emma Turns 3!

 On November 8th, Emma turned three years old! I still cannot believe that my little peanut has been on this earth for three whole years!! It blows my mind to think about it.  But at the same time, it feels like she has been with us forever.  It's hard to remember what life was like without you little girl!
 
  She has grown up so much in the past year. She has lost her baby face and definitely looks more like a little girl.  This is a picture of her from last year:

Isn't that ridiculous? I know it's a parenting cliche but seriously, they grow up so fast!  Ok, enough sentimentality, here is how her birthday went.  Since this time of the year is crazy and we were still adjusting to life with a newborn (not to mention the gross cold the whole family got last week)  we decided not to have a huge party this time.  Instead we took some of her friends (the Kreyling kiddos) and her to Mall Tots.  Mall Tots is a huge open space at the mall filled with every toddler toy you could possibly want (they've got the crawling tubes, a play kitchen, slides galore, a huge pirate ship structure, balls of every shape and size, all sorts of ride on toys and two toddler sized bouncy houses)  So it's pretty much a toddler paradise.  The kids seemed to all have a lot of fun (with the exception of one ride on toy minor accident) and so I'd call it a success!

  Then we headed back to our place, for dinner, cake and presents:

A good time was had by all.  And then later that night, Emma lost her voice and began complaining of a scratchy throat. In an unfortunate coincidence that also happened to be the first night of daylight savings.  (otherwise known as the worst possible thing to ever happen to a toddler's schedule in the history of ever)
Oh and also because we're the smartest parents in the history of the world, we decided to re start potty training.   Therefore last week was full of the longest days of my life wherein I did nothing but wipe various bodily fluids off of everything (but mostly me) and not sleep.  I'm pretty sure I only left the house three times.  Once to go to Friendly's on Emma's actual birthday, once to go to a doctor's appointment, and once to grocery shopping.

But the point of this post isn't about my whining, it's about the fact that despite all of parenting fails our little peanut has managed to survive three whole years!  And now she is a "big girl".

I love you my Peanut! You are absolutely worth all of the bad days and I cannot believe how smart and beautiful and independent you have become this year! :)

So I haven't updated since February... super fail. Since I can't possibly catch up on everything that has happened since then, I'm just going to start from the present.  Beginning with:

Asher James Roy 

Born on September 17th 2011

Weighing 8lbs and 1 ounce

I think I will save his labor story for a different post, as it is a bit on the complicated side.  Fast forward to today though, and he is already two months old, and very healthy!

His current skills include:

Sleeping through the night (mommy's personal favorite!)

Lifting his head up off the ground (and holding it upright most of the time)

and Smiling Socially! (mostly at mommy, but sometimes at Emma or Daddy)

oh, and in his spare time he commands the USS Enterprise!

(more on that in a later post )

He's also pretty proficient in drooling, spitting up, and pooping but I will spare you those pictures ;)

All in all, he's a wonderful, good-natured, happy little man!  I think we will keep him for now!