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.

Home at Last

Her first picture without the NG tube.
That red mark on her head is a hemangioma, which is a cluster of extra blood vessels. It's basically a birthmark that will go away someday, but it might get much bigger before it goes away. I'm hoping it stays tiny! Luckily she's a girl and I can put a bow over it. It felt so good to hold her without wires and tubes, and no alarms beeping at us.

Strapped in for the ride home. We laughed when we put her in because she was so small in the carseat.Now Joey and Tyler can hold her to their hearts content. They have to take turns, though, much to their annoyance. They want her all to themselves. Jason still won't hold her.It's such a great feeling to have my kids all safely gathered. When I was at home I thought about her constantly, and wanted to be with her. When I was at the hospital with her I was thinking about Jared and the boys, and wanted to be home with them. My mind is at ease now.

Allie

When I went to see Allie she was sound asleep. I thought she looked a lot like Tyler when he was a baby. But when I went home and looked at his newborn picture I realized how FAT he was!! Really, it's not that he was fat, it's just that she's so darn skinny!

Look at him, he was huge. And he really wasn't huge, he was only 6 1/2 pounds. That's not a big baby.

So little.

And just to show you how adorable she is:

I can't get enough of her.

No I can not.

Baby Allie is here

Here is the newest addition to the Moore family:

Baby Allie. Her arrival was not at all the way we expected.
Last week, on Wednesday and Thursday I was feeling really crummy. My stomach hurt and I was nauseated, and just felt lousy. Our boys were in Colorado with Jared's mom and dad, and we were going to pick them up on Friday. On Friday morning I woke up feeling crappy still, and decided that all these symptoms were probably big red flags, telling me there was something wrong. I had flashbacks to 9 years ago, laying on my bed one saturday morning, crying as I called Jared at work, telling him I just didn't feel good. On that day we went to the emergency room, and later that day I gave birth to Joey, because I had Toxemia.
I asked Jared to take my blood pressure (handy, having a nursing student around) knowing that if it was high, we were headed down that road again. It was high. I was really upset. We went to the hospital, and after waiting all day, a doctor told me it was toxemia, and if it got any worse they would induce and I would have the baby immediately. If we could hold off for 48 hours it would be ideal, though, because I could get steroid shots to strengthen the baby's lungs. My doctor was in Hawaii on vacation. When he got back (Sunday) he said he thought it might actually be my gallbladder, not toxemia. So we did ultrasounds, and more tests. Turns out it was toxemia after all, so on Monday afternoon I got the Pitocin going, and Magnesium Sulfate, which stops me from having seizures, which I was at high risk for, and could kill me. I know, very scary stuff. My body didn't want to give up this baby. Magnesium sulfate is something they use to stop premature labor. You see the problem here? I might also mention it makes you feel really crappy. I have never been so miserable in all my life. I was so weak and drugged I couldn't lift my arm. I was terrified about having my baby six weeks early. It was the worst 5 days of our lives. But on Tuesday morning, after 17 hours of weird labor, Allie was born. She was so tiny! In my drugged state of mind I asked the doctor if I tore, and did I need stitches? He looked at me like I was crazy, and said that my birth canal never knew there was a baby in it. She was the ugliest and the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She was slimy and purple, and squashed. But she was my baby, and I loved her instantly. They whisked her out to the NICU, and Jared went with her, and she was having a hard time breathing. It was really scary for him, watching his daughter fighting for life, and didn't help that he understood all the medical jargon they were using.

She was 3 pounds, 12 ounces. Even for a 34 week old baby she is tiny. But she only needed help breathing for an hour, then she was fine. She has been doing great every day. She is fed through a tube that goes through her nose into her stomache. They increase the amount every 12 hours, as long as she tolerates is, and she is almost up to the full amount she needs. Today she got her IVs out, and probably tomorrow she won't need the bilirubin lights anymore. She just has to be able to eat on her own, then she can come home. That will probably take some time though, maybe a few weeks. It is difficult for babies born so early to figure out how to suck and swallow, and it takes a lot of their energy. So we try a little bit at a time, and slowly she will figure things out.

At first it was okay that she was in the hospital, I was so weak and my body had been through quite the ordeal, It was nice I didn't have a baby to take care of. Now it makes me sad to put her in her "E.T. bed" as Jared calls it, and leave her there. I want her home with me. It also makes me sad that my boys can't go see her. They can only go on weekends. They've seen her once. Tyler really liked her. He touched her feet and looked at her, and was very interested in his new baby sister, "Owie." That's how he says Allie. LOVE it. Jason just looked at her, didn't want to touch her. He thinks we should keep her, though. Joey could not get enough of her. he asked if he could go see her again the next day, and I told him yes, (not knowing that he couldn't) and he just lit up. He was upset when he found out he couldn't go. he said it's like they have an age line around the NICU, like in Harry Potter, how there's an age line around the goblet of fire, and oly 17 year olds can get through. If only he could get his hands on an aging potion.

So she is here, safe and sound. After the delivery the doctor showed me the umbilical cord; there was a tight knot in it, and my placenta was beginning to calcify. He said there is no doubt in his mind that she would not have made it to full term. She would not have survived with a knot like that. I'm so grateful that God is in charge, and that he took such good care of me and Allie. We don't always know why things happen, but in this case we do. Everything turned out perfectly.

A Pink Christmas

My Auntie Betty stopped by a couple weeks ago on her way home from a vacation in Arizona. I loved seeing her again. I really never get to see her because we live too far away. She brought with her this humongous bag:

Tyler wasn't in it at the time. He's there to show the scale of it. It was packed full of adorable things for the baby. So much that it felt kind of like christmas.
This post is really for my mom and sister because they were almost as excited about it as I am. Also, this is a tribute to my aunt, whom we can all agree is pretty much AMAZING!!

First, some cute pink outfits:

Pajamas . . .

With adorable feet.

And frogs, because, have you heard? I love frogs.

Cute bum.

My favorite, and Auntie Betty's favorite, too. The "icecream dress," looks like neopolitan icecream.

And these are a close second. I love hoodies, and little sweaters.

Some more adorable outfits

Love this crab on the bum

Onesies and blankets

And sheets! I love these sheets, and bibs and socks

For the boys
Some more fun pajamas

I Love these feet! These pajamas are so soft, I wish they were big enough for me. They'll be great for cuddling the baby.

Cute, no?

Someone dropped by later that day and I had all the stuff out, looking at it. She said, "So you're having a girl?" How did she guess??

This Great Aunt also brought the coolest Lego Star Wars sets for the boys, way better that anything they've ever had before, and kites and bubbles, and pizza and pop, and cash for me and Jared, which we spent on a memory foam mattress topper for our bed. Now it's hard to get out of, it's SO comfortable . . . and also because, well, it's just plain hard to get out of bed these days, I have a big belly. I have to kind of roll out.

Thank you so much Auntie Betty! I love you! And I want to see pictures of baby Alice, the twin cousin, in the same cute things.

Really? Blog Spamming Now?

So I announce I'm having a baby girl and in the comment section I get a total stranger begging me to go click on his blog to help pay his tuition. Really?? Has it come to this? I don't really appreciate getting crappy spam on my blog. In fact, it really annoys me. You guys think I should go private again?