two months old

My sister stephs says that I am a bad mom, You may not understand this picture at first...but here is what happened.
while Peter was naping, I decided to paint our stair well. I had gotten it all ready to paint....cleaning the wall and filling holes but then it sat like that for three days. As soon as Peter went down for a nap that I thought would last a long time, I started to paint. Peter did take a long nap, 2 hours, just not as long as I needed, it took me two hours and 15 min to finish painting. When Peter woke form his nap, I was almost done. I couldn't jsut stop painting right before I was finished. So I tried to quickly finish and clean up. Well in my hast, I spilt paint all over my arm and didn't know it. I went and picked up my screaming child who thought he was going to die of hunger and layed him in my arm to nurse him. 15 min later he was finished, I sat him up and saw my child with half his head painted. Fortunately only a little of it had dried, so I was able to wipe most of it off. The picture doesn't show the paint very well, But there was enough dried paint on his head that Chris came home and said "Why is there paint all over the baby's head"


Here is my adorable baby at two months old

I did my own photo shoot but Peter wasn't always very cooperative. I needed another set of hands to help hold him, This was Chris' favorite picture

and peter didn't last very long before he was done with me taking his picture.

Lyntte and Sam drove up for Thanksgiving, it was wonderul to have them here, especially when it was time to clean up. Unfortuately, we didn't take any pictures of all of us or of our beautiful feast, just the after math.

Thanksgiving weekend, we always go and pick up a live Christmas tree. These are my cute boys all bundled up and pink from being outside, and on our way home to decorate the tree.

This was peter's fist time getting bundled up, and he wasn't very happy about it.

Here is our tree beautifully decortated by Madeline Ty and Elias.

We were fortunate to have Chris around for the whole 4 day thanksgiving weekend. Chris really enjoyed the time off and catching up on so overdue sleep.

Happy Halloween and one month old

This is my sweet little baby at one month old.



He has been smiling since he was 2 weeks old, but getting it on camera is not easy. Ty actually took this picture while I was prompting Peter to smile.





My happy little vampire, this is his scary face. He couldn't ever help not giggling while trying to growl.

Ty the Star Wars Clone Trooper.

And Madeline the Halloween Girl.

violin performance

Madeline has now been playing the violin for one year, and this is her first performance, I was sooooo proud of her. Madeline and the other little girl are playing the melody, and the other two are playing the harmony.

Happy 9th Birthday Madeline

This is Madeline's favorite meal her dad makes for her...Crepes with whip cream, a variety of fillings, fried banana's and sausage. I must admit it is one of my favorites also.
Madeline didn't have much of a birthday party, just some friends over and a pinata. She had a great time and said she was sad that the day was over so quickly.

Here is baby Peter, he has started to smile now, but getting the smile on camera is kind of tricky. This is a picture just after the smile.

Two weeks and all alone

This is my wonderful sister Adele.

She stayed with me for three wonderful weeks.

She cooked me wonderful dinners, and dessert every night. Drove my kids to swimming, gymnastics and school, kept my kitchen clean, and was great company. But now she is gone and I am all alone....it is very sad.

This is one of her desserts. It doesn't look that great, but it sure was yummy.
While Adele was here she was also my photographer. She took some much over due family pictures.








Our tree house that Chris was able to finish on his week vacation.


This is my little monkey, you can't tell me he doesn't look like a monkey here.
I love this little boy, I could eat him up he is so precious!!
Aside from having PUPPS (Horrible itchy hives all over my body from the increased hormones ) and a baby the isn't a great at nursing, and bleeding cracked nipples, things are going great. This is a picture of how we feed peter half the time, with a medicine dropper. Nursing is so painful that I can hardly stand it sometimes, but giving him a bottle makes him not want to nurse so when I do nurse it is even more painful. The lactation consultant suggested using a medicine dropper, and so far it has worked great. It gives me a break from nursing, but doesn't give the baby nipple confusion like the bottle was doing.

Baby Peter.

Peter Nicholas English was Born!!
9lbs 1oz and 21 1/2 in.

With my due date the 27th, my sister Adele arrived on Sept 26th to help out. However, Peter was content where he was in my belly and didn't want to come out. On Oct. 1st at 10:00am I went to the hospital to get induced.

Here is the short version of my delivery.

10:00 AM arrived at the hospital

12:30 Dr. Christensen arrived and stayed either in my room or just outside my room until the baby was born. It was nice to have my own Dr. at my beckon call.

1:00 got my epidural.....I wanted NO Pain! with the epidural my legs immediately went numb, and my belly was mostly numb.

1:30 pitocin was started.

4:00 contractions started, and I was feeling them!!??

5:00 contractions were were regular and painful, my goal of no-pain....failed. The anesthesiologist came to check on why my epidural wasn't working. He gave me a large dose of medication through the epidural. All it did was make my legs go completely dead. At this point my legs could have been amputated and I wouldn't have known.

5:30 the first epidural was removed and a second one was placed. Life was good. Except that by now I felt as if there was no chance my legs ever coming back to life.

6:30 began to push baby out.

6:42 PM baby Peter was born.

2:00 AM My feeling returned to my legs and I was finally able to get out of bed.

This is Dr. Christensen and my delivery nurse Rebecca (I was her only patient the whole day).

proud daddy!

Big sister loves her new brother. Her goal is to Make Peter love her and not her brothers.

The cute baby

He immediately wanted to suck on everything. But I am not a fan of finger/thumb sucking, he has already adjusted to his pacifier.

Adele was a wonderful help during the delivery and has been awesome helping out at home.

This is the lot of the fourth child. Here is his going home outfit. Madeline and I picked out an outfit for him to come home in, but unfortunately, Chris forgot it when he came to pick me up. So we put a hospital shirt on his legs to help keep him warm. Poor 4th child.

This is the first time we actually have space for a baby. The baby doesn't have to be squished into some corner of an apartment. This summer I spent finding baby things at garage sales and on craigslist. This is our first baby nursery, and I love it! And the kids love the new soft carpet.

Chris's vacation and the first day of school.

When Chris is Home...

Chris has this week off for vacation, and it has been wonderful to have him around. The kids especially love him being around because they get to do things with Chris that I just don't do. Like set up a tent in the kids room for the kids to sleep in. Chris has also taken the kids on bike rides, jumped on the trampoline with them, and spent countless hour wrestling.
With Chris home, we were able to can peaches. Our pears are waiting to get ripe so we can can those also. It is a beautiful site seen all the peaches finished and the canning mess all cleaned up.
Madeline was a big help with canning. She peeled the skins off the peaches after they were blanched.

An empty nest....Well at least for 3 hours a day ( and only for about another week until the baby is born).
All my kids were off to school today. Madeline in the 4th grade, Ty started kindergarten, and Elias is now in Pre-K; Ty and Elias both have school from 9-12.

Ty rode the school bus for the first time, Madeline was a wonderful big sister and sat with Ty on the bus, even though she had to sit in the front with all the rest of the kindergartners and not with her friends at the back of the bus. Ty was such a "big boy" he just hoped on the bus with out any concerns or looking back. When Madeline was in Kindergarten she cried every morning until January that she didn't want to go, I'm glad that we won't have to go through that same ordeal with Ty.

Madeline was sad she was going to have to last a whole day without seen her beloved cat "Riley". But she really looked forward to seeing her teacher and all her friends again.
Elias cried all morning that he was too scared to go to school, but once he saw all the boys playing with cars, he was just fine.


A side note on my pregnancy...I'm 3cm dilated, and the doctor says the baby looks like it could come any minuet, so I'm hoping it is soon.