Blessing

My mom made a blessing dress for Allie, but since she came so early, the dress was way too big. So I made her a smaller one. That's Joey's hand holding the hanger for me :) The headband and bracelet my mom made were adorable

The Fam

Surgery

I was changing Allie's diaper a few weeks ago and discovered a huge lump in her groin area. I freaked out, raced her to the doctor's office. I was really relieved to find out it was a hernia. Hernias are no big deal. Except in girls it can cause damage to the ovaries, so she had to get it fixed, which meant surgery.

The thing that probably worried me most was that she couldn't eat for 4 hours before we arrived, and then it would be another hour before the surgery, so 5 hours without eating. That's kind of a big deal for a 3 month old baby. But she actually did really well. She slept until about half an hour before they started, and she only got a little fussy right before they took her in.

I was afraid they were going to take her and give her an IV, and she'd be screaming because they'd have a hard time getting it in because she's so little. But they gave her some gas to put her to sleep, then did the IV, so I was really happy about that. She wore this cute little hospital gown. And these are the smallest pants they had. A couple of the nurses assumed she was a boy because she was wearing blue. :)

After surgery, she slept like a log. She woke up about once an hour and gave a really sad cry, then went back to sleep. She didn't wake up enough to eat until late afternoon. I thought my chest was going to explode. Once the anesthesia wore off, she was in a lot of pain, and was inconsolable. They gave her a tiny dose of morphine, and she was much happier after that. By the next afternoon she was totally fine, didn't even need Tylenol.This is the incision, they didn't do stitches, just used some sort of glue. Normally they do it laproscopically, through the belly button, but the instruments were too big for such a tiny girl. As a side note, check out her belly button--it's huge! It was also herniated when whe was born, but it fixed itself. It's still huge, though. Her doctor said, "At least you won't have to worry about her wanting to wear a bikini!"So everything turned out just fine. I was really worried about it, but everything worked out great. Since she was so little she had to stay overnight. I stayed with her and Jared stayed with the boys. I actually enjoyed my time there. I had no dishes to wash, or meals to prepare, I just sat by her bed and watched movies and fed my new obsession: making headbands.

A lot of memories came flooding back, since she was right down the hall from the NICU. It reminded me again of how grateful I am that she is safe and healthy.

Smiles

I took this picture of Allie. So cute! As I looked at it I thought her smile looked familiar . . . Not Tyler. I don't think they look anything alike.

Not Jason. Although they do have the same blue eyes.

This is me when I was a baby. Getting closer . . .

Aha! That's where I've seen that smile before. I guess she looks like Baby Joey. And actually she reminds me of Joey a lot. She's a high maintenance baby, she wants to be held all the time, and that's how he was. And she smiles a lot, just like he did.

It was fun going through old pictures. It goes by so fast!

School is back in session. Jason is in Grade 1 and has to go ALL DAY now. I thought it would be hard for him, but the 2 recesses, plus lunch and lunch recess softened the blow. He is thrilled with eating lunch at school. Joey's in grade 5. So far so good. He keeps forgetting to bring his homework home, though, which had dire consequences: no video games. He suffers.

Tyler didn't start kindergarted until a week after his brothers. I took him to Thanksgiving Point to Farm Country on a $2 Tuesday. He loves animals, and I thought it would be a blast. In reality is was barely worth the 2 bucks. It's just not very fun to look at a pig or a chicken or rabbit when you don't even get to pet it. He did get to feed the ducks, and that was the highlight of the trip. Or maybe the popcorn was.

The wagon ride, with Allie in the picture on his request. Isn't he the cutest little boy ever? Tyler likes school, too. He kept saying he didn't want to go, though. On the first day all the kids lined up in front of the kindergarten room door. I remembered last year when Jason went that half the kids were crying, some trying to run away, there was a lot of drama. And I was noticing that none of the kids were upset this year. Then I realized Tyler was crying. Oops! He got over it quick, though.

Allie is growing like crazy--she's about 8 pounds now :)

She is smiling now, which is ADORABLE. And also hard to capture. She gets really interested in the camera and quits smiling.

And she has adorable feet nowadays, thanks to Auntie Betty

She's a pain in the neck, like all babies. :)

But we adore her.