Fatherhood Commercial

Jay and I were watching the Twins tonight and there was this commercial for Fatherhood....it was the first time I had seen it and I just had to laugh because I can sooo picture Jay and Kate doing this someday. 

I can also see our friend Cullen doing this with his daughter Avery:) Shout out to you Cullen!! "Girlfriend, girlfriend!" (insert your little snap, snap, snap thing you do here)

Here is the youtube video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2Ap3DyvLg

Fall is here

Fall has finally arrived! It has been quite chilly outside the past few days so we broke out some of Kate's new 'cold weather' gear and took some photos outside on a chilly autumn day. Here are a few pictures. 

Kate in her new sweater from Grandma Vicki

Kisses from Daddy

'Oh no you didn't'

My favorite picture....Kate slapping Emily. Check out the motion on Kate's arm....

and she really did hit her in the face!

Ha...and the new snow suit we bought Kate at TJ Maxx last night...its a little large but she should grow into by the time the snow starts flying:) 

T-shirt quilt

So Vicki, Jay and I have been talking forever about making a quilt out of Jay's old t-shirts and it is finally finished! It was quite the process. For one, Jay has 300 million old t-shirts. Once we had the shirts narrowed down Vic cut them all into squares and then we arranged them all.  Then we took the squares to my grandma who did the finishing touches. 

It turned out great! Its a little large but, again, this was the furthest we could narrow the shirts down to. I joke that there were so many shirts we could make enough quilts to warm all the children of Russia. 

Here it is!

It stretches from the floor to the ceiling!

Again, to show you its massivness....Kate is the size of one square.

And finally, the senior portrait:) 

Hahaha...I'm going to get killed for putting this on here but I enjoyed it. 

Fergie the wiener dog!

This past Friday, Jay and I took Kate to visit Fergie...the cutest dog ever. Fergie is the new long-haired wiener dog of Travis and Melanie Helling. She is a doll and much nicer than their other wiener dog Boone....who I'm pretty sure would tear me to shreds if given the chance. (Let's just say it is a bit confrontational with human folk). Anyhoo here are some adorable pictures of the new pup (6 weeks old I believe).

Look at those eyes!!! Adorable!

Barely taller than the grass!

Kate and Fergie - Kate has wiener dogs on her blanket which you can't see...well you can kind of see the tail at the bottom:) 

 

Finally...the mullet:)

Many of you have seen Kate's crazy hair in person....it stands on end and has a mind of its own. It's natural 'style' is a mohawk. For those of you who haven't seen it, I thought I would post some pictures to capture its true beauty:) 

Oh and did I mention she has a mullet??? Oh yeah baby:)

Rocking the hawk.....

She looks like a mad scientist here:)

Our little hedge hog....

The hair in its full craziness...

And finally....ta da...The best picture I could get of the mullet from behind.....

The many faces of Kate

At only 3 weeks old we have discovered Kate has a whole slew of facial expressions. I could watch her all day.....here are a few of them. Enjoy:)

The 'I'm so hungry I'm going to have a meltdown' face

The 'I'm a drunken sailor' face

The 'I hate when you make me wear mittens' face

The 'I stretch so hard that my face looks like its going to blow up' face

The 'I'm a squirmy squirmertan' face

The 'i'm a little bird' face

The 'i get stiff as a board whenever someone tries to change me' face

The 'Chris Farley...I live in a van down by the river' face

And to end it...just a normal wide-eyed face

3 weeks old already!

So I promised pictures and I'm finally getting around to it....

It is so hard to believe that Kate is already 3 weeks old. The time has just flown by. She is getting so big and is so much more alert. I have a ton of pictures I want to post so I'll probably have about 3 posts here of various pictures. We'll start off with some nice sweet ones:)

Kate and Mom (about 2 weeks old here)

Sleeping so peaceful (again 2 weeks)

Sweet smiles:) She has a lot of gas so we get to see lots of these:)

3 weeks old....she has been forced to wear mits on her hands because she loves to scratch her face to the point of bleeding!

Our little muncher

Well...we were forced to introduce the bottle sooner than expected. We were hoping to hold out until Wednesday when Kate was 3 weeks old. However, Kate was a feeding machine today and was eating non stop. She literally depleted me of milk. By the end of the day she was extremely fussy and I was trying to feed her constantly just so she could get even a drip of milk. The poor girl was starving so I had some milk I had pumped last week and we tried the bottle tonight. 

She did surprisingly well and she downed close to 4 ounces. Hopefully this will hold her over to allow me to replenish my supply of milk. 

Anyhoo, I was just excited she didn't reject the bottle as I don't know what I would have done...listening to her cry just breaks my heart:( 

I promise to post new pictures soon....

2 week checkup

My little baby is two weeks old....gosh it has flown by so fast:( 

Kate is growing and becoming much more alert. We had her 2 week check up today. 

Here's what we learned:

2 week checkup:

Weight: 7 lbs. 10 oz. (25th percentile)

Length: 19.5 inches (25th percentile) - they measure differently at the clinic vs. the hospital that is why she appears to have shrank:) 

Head size: I can't remember the exact measurement but it fell in the 25th percentile

So she is still just a peanut but has gained a good amount of weight and is proportional:) 

Here are her birth stats so you can see her growth.

Birth:

Weight: 6 lbs. 13 oz.

Length: 20 inches

Other than that, Kate has been a very good baby. We spend most of the day just hanging out and cuddling, napping, trying to get housework done, sometimes go for a walk, run a few errands here and there and then sometimes go to visit Dad up at work. 

She's been sleeping really good for us as well. Usually giving us at least one 4 hour stretch during the night. Last night it was 6 hours! So thoughtful she is:)  And when she does wake up she usually eats for 20 minutes or less and then falls right back to sleep. 

She's changed so much in two weeks, even since I posted the pictures from Saturday. I'll post some new ones soon. She is getting chubbier and her hair is still crazy as ever but it is lightening up a bit. 

Ok, I must get back to baby Kates....she is getting hungry. 

Kate's first photo shoot

This past Saturday our good friends Cullen and Jen (and their daughter Avery too) came down so Jen could take some pictures of Kate. Jen did an awesome job and the photos turned out great! Here is just a snippet of some of the ones she took....you would never know that these were taken in our living room.

Kate was a perfect little subject and stayed sleeping for most of the shoot. And thankfully she held out on pooping until after we put her diaper back on.....words cannot explain the mess that was had after we got her dressed again.

Thanks again Jen for coming down and taking such great pictures. Thanks to Cullen too:)

First few days at home without Dad

Well the first few days at home without dad have gone good. Monday we just laid around. Both my mom and Jay's mom came over throughout the day to help relieve me so that was great. We also had an in-home nurse come and visit. She has gained 5 ounces since leaving the hospital so they said that was very good. Other than that they said she was doing very well. 

Yesterday we visited Jay at work and then ventured to the mall. I'm beginning to think she likes to shop as she has been a very happy camper whenever we go shopping (ok well 2 times but whatever). We also started 'tummy time'. Not sure she dug that so much. 

Tonight we went to Jay's softball game and she did pretty good. 

Other than that she's been sleeping pretty good (most nights at least one 5 hour stretch). Last night was kind of our first sleepless night but I think it was because she had gas (takes after her dad). 

She's been eating well too. Its definitely a challenge to try and time things with feeding her but we're adjusting. 

Here are a couple pictures from our last couple of days.

We have a thumb sucker...

Kate and Dad watching the Vikes game

Tummy Time

Visiting Dad at work....notice the mini miller lite can. Daddy's girl.....

Kate's first bath at home

I must admit giving Kate a bath was quite stressful....trying not to get water in her eyes or ears, trying to keep her from screaming from being so cold, I almost cried myself watching her so upset. And here are some photos of the joyful experience:)

Not that bad after washing her hair....but once the blanket came off to wash her body....lookout!

Starting to get mad.....

Not a happy camper

4 days old first trip to Target

Call us crazy but yesterday we decided to venture out to Target. We had to run and get a few things, I was already getting a little stir crazy, so we decided to make the trip. 

We made sure I had just fed her, loaded her up and away we went. 

She was a perfect little angel and slept the whole time. We even went to Panera and grabbed some lunch to go. 

I figured we better get her used to it since we love going to Target and I'm sure we'll make plenty of trips there when I'm on leave.

Bundled up at Target....

Going home from the hospital

We're finally settled in at home so I'll try to update the blog to catch everyone up to speed of where we're at. First things first....coming home from the hospital:

All strapped in....she looks so little!

Loaded up in the car and leaving the hospital. 

Goodbye to all the wonderful nurses who were there for my every need.

But Jay has been awesome and I call him my new nurse:) 

Chillin at home finally....in her new plush swing from Jodi! 

In heaven...I wish they made these for adults.

One proud mama

Well I was finally able to hop on and post about the day.

Jay might have already touched on this but here is my recap of the day.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning with what I thought were contractions. They weren't coming very close together but were about every 10 minutes. I called labor and delivery around 4:30 a.m. and they instructed me to drink plenty of water and see if the contractions continued. They did, I called back and they advised me to come in. 

Jay hopped in the shower and I finished packing up some of our belongings. 

We checked into the emergency room around 5:30 a.m. and they hauled me off to labor and delivery. They hooked me up to all the machines and started my antibiotic for the Group B strep. The contractions continued to come and were becoming more intense. Jay helped me through them by rubbing my back.

When I checked in I was dilated to a 4....by the time the new nurses were on call around 7 a.m. I had dilated to a 7-8 and they started breaking down the room for delivery. At this point I started freaking out that I might not have time for the epidural but they ordered one and also gave me nubaine to help take the edge off things. The nubaine made me feel like I was drunk which was a wonderful and welcomed feeling at the time:) Shortly after the anestiesiologist came and administered my epidural. I thought this procedure would hurt and it was a piece of cake. Within minutes I was in heaven!

They broke my water around 10:30/11 after I had started receiving the final dosage for the strep. Within an hour it was apparent I was ready to push. 

Started pushing around 12 and Kate was born at 12:41 p.m.

I must say, I was scared out of my mind for delivery and to be honest, except for the contractions the first few hours I had a wonderful experience. After the epidural I had no pain or discomfort whatsoever, I had fabulous nurses who I could not have done it without and Jay was a great coach. I would do it again in a heartbeat and finally meeting Kate was one of the best feelings Jay and I could experience. Words cannot explain how rewarding it was to meet this little person we created.  

After she was delivered they laid her on my chest for 2 hours and we just hung out and bonded. She took to breast feeding right away and has been doing good every since. 

We had tons of visitors tonight and thank you so much to everyone who came to visit. Jay and I were reminded what great family and friends we have....and we can't wait for Kate to meet each and every one of you. 

We just sent Kate to the nursery so Jay and I can try and get some sleep but we'll be sure to update you on the happenings over the next few days. 

Thanks again for everyone's warm wishes and for keeping us in your thoughts. 

Have a great night,

Angie, Jay and Kate

And finally a couple of new pictures...she looks different even now then she did when she was delivered.

Such a little peanut

Sporting her new Nike hat

And I'm sure there will be plenty more pictures to come:)

More Pics :)

Here are some more pics of Kate and Mom, Ang is feeding now, so when she's done she can do her update. Things are still going good, what an amazing day.