Settling In...

Things are calming down a tad- as much as you'd expect them to be "calm" at this particular moment anyway! Ada goes to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays- and Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I'm gradually adapting to being a mom-of-two! This is us on our first excursion "out".... it went well! They are both such good kids.

Dax is 2 weeks old today!! I cannot believe it. He is doing SO well- and is such an awesome baby. We had our 2 week check up yesterday, and he's 10.0 lbs... that's *almost* as big as Ada was at 2 months, LOL! He sleeps a lot, but when he's awake he's so alert, adorable, and laid back. The only thing that works him up are if he wants to nurse (which is often!) or needs to burp or toot- typical boy. Otherwise he's totally content to just hang out and watch his cool big sister. :)

Ada is still amazing. She loves her "Dax-A-Doodle" so much- she kisses on him more than she'll let me kiss her! She actually has this ability to calm him down when he's upset better than us sometimes- I'm not complaining! :)

We are trying to treat Ada extra special since Dax naturally gets so much more attention and doting on- we take her to do fun things and are showing her with sporatic treats because "she is such a sweet big sister." (Just last night she got her FAVORITE movie of all time "Tangled"- we finally settled down to watch it after she ran around the house screaming for at least 5 minutes!) This is yet another one of our trips to one of the neighborhood parks on Sunday:

And, I'm offiically a "baby-wearer." This is Dax and me using our Moby Wrap that a friend loaned me- I'm addicted to it and Dax loves it, too! :)

Lots of friends and family have come to meet Dax- I will post pictures of that ASAP! :)

Daddy's Paternity Leave

Well, it's been difficult to find the time to blog about the last week! So I'm just going to mesh everything together into a "pictures are worth 1000 words" kind of a post.

First of all, Dax is 1 week old!!!!!! He is such an amazing baby, and I do not know how our family has survived this long without him! We all love him so much. Here is handsome Mr. Man on his 1 week birthday:

Ada is turning out to be such a fabulous big sister. She comforts Dax when he's sad, loves on him when he's calm, and hasn't shown one ounce of jealousy. She is precious, and I am so proud of my sweet girl. (We've also already discovered what makes boys and girls different. I hope she doesn't go to daycare telling all of her friends!)

And, Casey is the BEST. DAD. IN. THE WORLD. He's been on paternity leave for a week and a day, but had to go into the office today. I bawled, but am surviving! The rest of the pictures I'm posting are just some of my favorite moments from the last week. In fact, this has been one of my favorite weeks EVER.

Ada, playing lacrosse (her Daddy's sport!) in a sequenced princess dress. This should be the official uniform for all girls lacrosse teams, in my opinion! She actually got the hang of it pretty well:
We went to the park one day and played for hours:

Me nursing Dax in the middle of the park- story of my life for the next 12 months! :)

And I took Ada for some one-on-one girl time, too. We got Starbucks, shopped at Target, and bought a Beauty and the Beast castle with doll! (Notice her outfit- she picked this out from top to bottom!)

While the girls shopped, the boys stayed home and played hard!

We love you Daddy, and are missing you tons today!!!

Dax Christian Dowell

Dax Christian Dowell was born on March 16, 2011 at 1:19am- weighing in at a whopping 9lbs 6oz and 21in long! Yeah, that's big... but it's extraordinarily big considering he was only 37 weeks! He is absolutely perfect and precious and healthy; and Mommy, Daddy, and big sister Ada are madly in love with our Dax Attack!

I started having contractions 5-6 minutes apart about 8pm on Tuesday night- but didn't think much about them because they were no more painful than the contractions I've been having since I was 4 months pregnant. In less than an hour, though, they were 3 minutes apart, I was in a ton of pain, and MiMi was being paged. Another hour later- MiMi had just arrived, I was puking in the car with contractions 2 minutes apart, and we were speeding to the hospital! When we got to the hospital I was dilated to almost a 7... but that didn't seem to put a rush on things (which they will hear about in my satisfaction survey, haha!)- we still had to go through the ENTIRE intake process (which took about 45 minutes- I hollered the entire time), bloodwork, paiging the anesthiologist. By the time the epidural was being placed in my back, I was 9 cm dilated and feeling the urge to push... I could tell they were hesitant to give me the meds, but I was being such a pain in a$$ that I think they decided it couldn't hurt! I was pushing Dax out about 20 minutes later!

This is me when the epidural finally began to kick in:

Then, OILA! Out popped a perfect baby boy!

Instantly in love:

Snuggling with Daddy:

Swaddled and sleeping:
Brother and sister meeting for the first time- the most precious moment of my life!!!

Too cute:

I love my babies!

Leaving the hospital on Thursday! We begged them to let us out a day early- I was so over the hospital stay.

Getting dressed for the first time:

First car ride home- look how big he is!! It took Ada weeks (months?) to grow out of the white cushion!

Chillin' in Ada's pink boppy chair! He's so masculine it doesn't even phase him. ;)

Mommy, Dax, and Ada hanging on the couch. Pretty much the perfect afternoon:

Which First- Good News or Bad News?

We're going to start with some bad (to get it over with), and then ping-pong between the two.

Bad: Christian is not getting better yet. One of my many phobias are antibiotic resistant infections, and he's got one. He went to the hospital for a high fever and UTI, and then he caught pneumonia THERE from one of their ventilators (a-holes). And that pneumonia is what they are calling a "super bug." We don't know which "super bug" it is yet (think: MRSA), but will know more soon. He's feeling OK at the moment (actually better, Andi says) aside from the pressure sore that is also the Hospital's fault (big a-holes)- but it just sucks because it's far from a good situation, and he'll definitely be moving to the Spinal Cord unit for an extended say. *sigh* He hates those. Christian- you're not getting these blog updates regularly at the moment, but when you get home know we're thinking about you and love you lots!!! Expect lots of toddler artwork coming your way soon. :)
Good: we got an ultrasound of Dax today at 37.5 weeks, and he's pretty cute. And pretty chubby.

Bad: He's REALLY chubby. The ultrasound tech predicted 10 pounds (and then cracked up because there was a fat roll on his eyebrow)... and my doctor brought it down to 9 pounds after my exam. 9 pounds at 37 weeks is insane. Ada was 6.5 pounds at this exact point.

What's really bad is that it ups my chances of a C-section dramatically. It also ups the chances of complications during labor if I end up having him normally- like dislocated shoulders or broken collarbones. I hate either of those options, and I'm really emotional when I have to think about it.

Good: My doctor moved my induction to the EARLIEST possible legal date (since there is nothing technically "wrong" she can't induce before 39 weeks- although a huge baby is what's wrong in my book!)- next Wednesday, March 24. She also did this thing called "sweeping my membranes" which hurt like a mother and has been known in the past to induce labor sooner. I'm not getting my hopes up though. I've been dilated to 2.5 cm for 3 weeks now, and am only 50% effaced. (I'll save you from explanations if you don't already know what those mean.)
Good: MorMor finished Ada's ladybug quilt!! It's 100x more amazing than I imagined it- and Ada is madly in love with it!! I have a feeling it will go to college with her like Fruit Blankie is living it up at A&M with Uncle Drew right now... :)

Bad: we only have 10 days max left with our Ada Bug and life as we know it. I'm excited about Dax coming, and I love him to pieces already...but I'm having really mixed emotions about everything.

Good: we've been savoring every second possible together, and having a lot of family fun! I love my husband and daughter and soon-to-be-chubby-bunny-son!

One Last....

One last car payment in the mail!!! We paid off Pearl 2 years early! Casey's "big account" that he broke in the fall has kind of leveled off in the past few months, so it was all we could do to make ourselves send those last few huge chunks of money- but it will be so worth it when I take an income-less maternity leave, and then when Dax starts school in the fall! (Which is like 2.5 car payments in addition to Ada's... so when they are both out of daycare, we're going to treat ourselves to 5 new cars! Just kidding...) One last try at the garden! Not sure if you remember our fruitless season last year (literally)- but Casey decided he wanted to give it one more try. So, here we go again! We painted the bed white, so it looks cuter on the stone, too. So far, so good!

In addition to our typical array of tomatoes and peppers, we added an avacado and lemon tree, and this thing:

A citronella plant! (Called a mosquito plant at Garden Center.) It supposedly repels mosquitos- plus I've always wanted an excuse to buy one of these giant coffee cup flower pots at Wal-Mart!

Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom (and other cute statements that just put a smile on my face) from one intuitive 2 year old:

"Poopoo is so yucky. Never touch poop. Never put poop in the kitchen. NEVER EAT POOP!"

"Dance like this. Now like this. Now like this. Now like this. Now like this...." (etc etc etc for an entire 3 minute song in the car.)

"My Rapunzel's bald!!!!!"

"I WANT STARBUCKS!" (Upon pulling into the Target parking lot...)

"I WANT CHICKEN NUGGETS!" (Upon pulling into the WalMart parking lot...)

"Shrek tooted!"

"Your phone's ringing, Mommy. Say 'Hey!'"

"Ms. Ally hit Jackie today. She got a time-out." (Not sure what spurred this imaginative scenario of her class)

MiMi: "Ada, if you don't treat your books nice, I'm going to take them back to my house."
Ada: "Yes. Let's go now!"

And, here is my sweet girl playing on her big girl swingset after school today- the weather's getting pretty around here!

Eating dinner at our picnic table (it's Thursday, so we're eating bean "bee-ritos" from Taco Bell!)-
"Ready! Set!! GO!!!"

She's mastered the rockwall!!!

I'm 37 weeks preggo with Dax- this is when I had Ada, which is SO crazy to me! My doctor gave me the option of inducing a week early, which I jumped on... so mark your calendars for MARCH 28, if I'm still pregnant by then! :)

36 weeks and prayers...

Here I am (and Casey and Dax!) at 36 weeks... we were going to his boss's house for dinner, which actually ended up being a ton of fun! I know I've posted a ton of random and light-hearted posts in the last few days- but several people need our prayers right now, too.
My Uncle Christian is back in the hospital with a high fever and infection- once that comes down he'll move to the Spinal Cord Injury Unit to recover, which I know he hates. The Schilhabs need our prayers and happy thoughts. And then, selfishly, me too. I'm super uncomfortable, but I want my last 3.5 weeks with Ada to be as wonderful and special as possible! And of course that Dax arrives healthy and happy and we don't totally suck as parents to two.... Ha!

Build-A-Bear... Ada Style!

I've had a coupon for Build-A-Bear for a while now, and everytime we think to go it seems to be a holiday weekend- which means the "boutique" would be PACKED with gung-ho Thanksgiving/Christmas/Valentine's Day families creating a new lovey..... so this weekend we decided to get up there since we didn't have a lot on our to-do list and it was just a normal 'ole time of year. Ada is addicted to the experience, and of COURSE built the most unique, Ada-ized stuffed animal possible!!! The best part? We only spent $14 instead of almost $40!!! :)

Waiting to get the party started:

Filling him with stuffing...."Making him soft!" Ada is very intrigued:

Chatting with her new Princess Panda while we create his birth certificate:

Picking out just ooonnnneeee more accessory:

And, here it is! Princess "Fiona" Panda (we're really into Shrek right now), wearing a Princess shirt (that says "Gracious and Kind"- HA!), a TuTu (of course), flower bows, and an electric guitar.

I'm thinking we might have a possible venue for her 3rd birthday party... which is only 7 months away! :)

1 Down, 3 To Go!

I have 3 friends pregnant with boys and due between March and May right now.... and the first one went on Thursday 3/3! Ashleigh (my Chemistry co-worker) and Asher Gaulke are doing well!! I'm missing her at work, but am so happy for her! I'm next (3.5 weeks!), then Katy Schilhab (4/21), then Megan (5/4)! We'll be halfway to a baseball team!

He's so cute!!!