Memorial Day

For Memorial Day this year we went hiking and swimming at Mortimer Mountain. I really did not want to go. It just didn't seem like a good idea especially with a baby that hates all baby carriers. This meant she would have to be held the whole time and I knew that most likely that would end up being my job. I almost didn't go but I didn't really want to spend the day alone while everyone was having fun and I convinced myself that it wouldn't be that bad.
Hiking while carrying a 2 month old isn't fun and it can be a little scary. We stopped for some play time and to cook lunch and some s'mores. Then we hiked the rest of the way to the tip of the mountain where you had to kind of repel down to get to the foot of the waterfall for more swimming. Well Aubree and I couldn't do that so we watched from the top of the mountain. Everyone played for a little over 3 hours. I was able to get video of Daniel jumping from the top of the waterfall and of he and Scarlett sliding down the waterfall. Scarlett ended up further to the left than she should have and she hit her foot which resulted in a broken heel. There was no swelling so no one thought it was broken but Scarlett could not put any weight on it at all and she couldn't even move it without it hurting. Mark and Daniel helped her get up to where I was. I gave her my tennis shoe to wear so her foot could have some protection and then Mark and Daniel carried her the 2 miles down the mountain. Nate walked with Carolina. Katelyn walked with and at the end carried Brigham down the mountain. I carried Aubree and hiked down wearing my Rainbows. We all ended up getting separated along the trail and I ended up just sitting down to slide down one part that was too steep to walk down while holding Aubree but we all made it in 1.5-2 hours and we were all exhausted. We got there at 12:30 that afternoon and didn't leave until 9:30 that night. Brigham and Aubree did awesome. Brigham walked the entire way up the moutain and t of the way down. Aubree stayed on schedule all day and did really well sleeping in my arms which usually isn't the case. A couple times she slept on a blanket for 5-10 minutes and I gave up on that since she couldn't stay asleep.

3 Months

Three months has been so good to us!  Aubree has really turned into such an easy baby.  She began sleeping through the night completely on her own on July 13th.  She has only woken up 2 times during the night since then.  One time I just let her fuss and after a few minutes she went back to sleep.  The second time she was screaming so I got up and gave her a 3 ounces to drink and she was back asleep in no time. Some mornings she wakes up on her own between 7:45 and 8 and then some mornings I have to wake her up at 8.  She has been drinking 5 ounce bottles when she wakes up from each nap and she is happy as long as she is full.  She isn't a great sleeper if she is not in her bed but she will take little cat naps while we are out and about and she stays happy.  She also won't sleep more than an hour or so if she is just in a diaper.  She needs to have on at least a onesie to sleep.  She will not take a pacifer at all anymore.  If I try to give her one it will just make her scream.  She soothes herself in her bed by sucking on her fist or her middle and ring fingers.  Yesterday she finally found her thumb and started sucking on it.  I didn't see that until tonight when she just couldn't seem to get enough of it! Now I am just hoping she ends up just sucking it at night like Brigham does.  I need to get her something similar to Brigham's lion so maybe she will associate thumb sucking with it and we can limit it to the bed like we have with Briggs. Aubree is really starting to get cute.  Mark says she is looking less like a grumpy old man and more like a beautiful girl. She seems to already be daddy's girl.  She smiles and squeals when she sees him and does so much better when he puts her to sleep. It is just so adorable.
Today we moved Aubree-Rose to a 4 hour schedule.  She got 3 naps, 3 six ounce bottles, and 1 seven ounce bottle.  She did pretty good for the first day.  Each 4 hour block consists of 2 hours of awake time and 2 hours of sleep time.  I had only recently realized that she doesn't like to sleep without clothes on and I hadn't shared this information with Mark yet so her 2nd nap was a short one since she was "naked."  I had to wake her up after a long 3rd nap though so it all worked out.  I still need to figure out how to work the 3rd nap so she isn't napping from 6-8.  I am thinking I may just have to get her up at 7:30 but we will see.
Brigham is just so sweet and protective of his little sister.  A week and a half ago at church he saw this lady holding a baby that looked similar to Aubree.  He kept pointing and saying someone was holding Aubree and I needed to go get her (in a very worried voice).  I told him that wasn't Aubree and then I pulled the blanket back on the car seat and showed him she was sleeping.  He was so relived. ha ha.  He hugs and kisses her all the time and if I just want to take him to the store he always says that Aubree needs to come with us too.If she is crying he will go pat her belly or her back and say "shhh" or "it's ok sweetheart."  If she is in the car seat, he will rock her.  He gets her to stop crying pretty much every time.
Now, as much as that boy loves his baby sister, he also gets a little jealous sometimes.  He will tell me that Daddy needs to hold her or to go put her in her swing.  He has become even more of a cuddler and wants to be held so much more than ever before.  I love it though.  He is such a sweet boy and a good cuddle buddy.
Brigham is still an unpredictable eater.  He has days where all he wants is cereal or milk and then there are days where he will eat almost anything I suggest.  Sometimes he even really likes eating the lettuce from salads.  Right now he is watching The Lion King for the first time and I am pretty sure this will be his new obsession.  He has been hooked from the very beginning.
Mark and I just love these kids to pieces.  Mark is such a great dad and he just keeps getting better.  They both love him to pieces.  We are so grateful that we have been blessed with such cute, sweet little spirits.
This week I have been working everyday while Crystie is on her honeymoon.  I really do love my job and I am so glad I was able to work all week.  Mark starts his new job on July 9th and after that I won't be able to work very much.  Luckily I love being with Aubree and Brigham all day more than any job.  What I love about my job is the people I work with and being able to talk with clients about their studies and whatever else.  I really just like being able to have a different kind of conversation with people and learning about other people's lives.  On top of working all week, I am also preparing for an open house on Saturday.  I am in charge of all the food for it.  I have made 11 cake pedestals and I have painted and polyurethaned them all.  I finally finished them last night after starting on them Friday or Saturday.  Tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday morning will be spent preparing all the desserts and a fruit.  Saturday afternoon Mark has tickets for us to see Beauty and the Beast at Blumenthal.  After the show I will head straight to the open house to set up the food.  Hopefully I can finish it all with plenty of time to spare and be able to enjoy the show.  We'll see what happens.  I love having these opportunities as a creative outlet.  I can't seem to motivate myself to just make things for me, the kids, or our home when there is cleaning to do or my favorite almost 3 year old to play with.  I am so grateful when I get these little opportunities even though it much drive Mark crazy sometimes since right now our kitchen table is covered in some really cute turquoise cake pedestals and our house is a mess.  Luckily I am a procrastinator and it will only be crazy around here for a week. ha ha

2 Months

At 2 months life is happier for us all. Aubree has settled into a 3 hour schedule and is sleeping in her crib for all her naps and even at night now. It is wonderful! My goal wake up time for her is 8am. She is waking up between 6 and 8 each morning. Most mornings she will take a pacifier and go back to sleep until 8. If not, she will drink part of a bottle and sleep until 8. There have been a couple nights this week where she slept until between 5:30 and 6 and it was wonderful!
As of June 1st she is 22.75 inches long 55.32%), 12.5 pounds (81.74%), and a head circumference of 39cm (47.7%).
Over the last week her drooling has kicked into high gear. Today after getting home from Target she had a puddle of drool on her shirt. She chews/sucks on her fist a lot more also. Brigham's drooling started at about this age and he didn't get any teeth until I think 6 months and his drooling didn't stop until I think 12 or 18 months. It will be interesting to see if she follows that same path.
She drinks 4ozs when she wakes up from each nap and stays up for an hour then sleeps the next 2 hours. We do this 5 times a day which comes out to 4 naps a day.
Aubree is especially smiley when she first wakes up and as long as she is kept on schedule she is a very easy baby. We adore her to pieces and we are so happy she picked us to be her family.

The Man of the House

Things He Loves:
Robots
Dinosaurs
Trains
Cars and Trucks
Running Fast
Watching tv
Kissing Aubree
Hiding
Playing Tag
Slides
Climbing on Anything
Jumping Off Everything
Playing with Carolina, Hayden, and Madison Winn
The iPad

Television:
Before Aubree I limited Briggs' tv watching to 2 hours a day. Now it is more like 3-5 hours a day. He will watch almost anything and be completely entranced. His favorite shows are:
Dinosaur Train
Super Why
Curious George
Fresh Beat Band
Blue's Clues
Team Umi Zoomi

He discovered the movie Cars and asked to watch it several times a day everyday. Since then he discovered the movies Bolt and Shrek which he now asks to watch daily.

He has become very independent and doesn't want help with anything. He loves to cuddle especially on the mornings while he watches tv and drinks strawberry milk (strawberry protein shake). He has also started climbing into bed with us most mornings around 4 or 5. The best part of that is that he then sleeps most mornings until 8 or 8:30. Now if we could just get Aubree into her own bed and sleeping through the night life would be peachy!

7 Weeks Later

Our sweet Aubree-Rose is 7 weeks old today. Sometimes I can't believe she has been with us this long and sometimes I can't believe it hasn't been longer.
While I was in the hospital with her Brigham spent the night with Madison on Friday and Mark picked him up Saturday night. This was his first sleepover without us and he did great! He is completely in love with Madison though so I am pretty sure he would live there and never miss us. He ate food that I can never get him to eat for me just because Madison was eating it I guess. When they came to the hospital Friday night he couldn't care less about us. I was so glad he was having such a great time since he didn't yet know how much his life was going to be changed once we got home.
Aubree and I got to go home on Sunday. We had to wait for Mark to finish his Spartan Race before he could come and get us. I wish we could have been at the race but a baby is worth missing a race for! On Monday morning I was sitting on the couch holding a sleeping Aubree when Briggs came running down the hall. MOMMY!!!! He was so happy to see me. Then he saw I was holding the baby and he burst into tears. It was heartbreaking. At 3 weeks in he had a lesson in nursery at church about family. After that he has been in love with his sister. He hugs and kisses her all the time. He wants to hold her and feed her. If she is crying he pats her back or belly and tries to give her the pacifier. He is always talking about how cute and pretty she is. I love watching him with her and I am so grateful for whatever was said during that lesson! He liked her ok before that but he mostly ignored her.
Aubree has slowly adjusted to life. I have tried establishing a 3 hour eat, play, sleep routine but she has her own agenda. For a while she was eating full feelings every hour or two. I could not pump every hour and after a couple weeks of trying to keep up with her and not succeeding we got some formula to supplement. This was a life saver. She was no longer hungry all the time which meant she was a happier baby which meant we were a happier family. She only cries when she is hungry, sleepy, or occasionally if needs a diaper change. Up until then we thought she was just a crier. Poor thing was just always hungry. Luckily she was on track with her weight gain so she was getting the calories she needed. At 5 weeks she weighed 10lbs 5oz. When we left the hospital she was 8lbs 5 ozs.
She now has days where she will sleep more than 5 minutes without being held. Then there are days where she refuses to not be held. This would be ok if there was a baby carrier that she liked but no luck there. She will occasionally enjoy the Moby but not consistently. She hated her bassinet so I finally just sold it yesterday. I bought a crib mattress and today we will put her crib together and hope she likes it. I need a safe place to put her so Brigham can't get to her and I need her to start sleeping on her own so I can give Brigham some one on one time, cook dinner, shower, clean up, ect.
She gets up twice at night usually between 3 and 3:30 and again between 5 and 6. On Tuesday and Wednesday night of this week she got up once at 4 and it was glorious and I was hoping it was a new thing but that is not the case. She was up at 3, 5:15, and 7 this morning. She sleeps pretty much all day until 5 or 6 at night. She usually won't go back to sleep until between 9 and 11.
Last Saturday she came down with a stuffy nose. This made her very cranky. She is still a little stuffy which you don't really notice until she is sleeping but she has seemed unaffected once Saturday passed.
On Monday we took her to have her ears pierced. I had several people talk me into it. I have always thought it was cute but I didn't know if I could do it. I thought Mark really wanted it done from what he was saying so I agreed to do it. Well he just thought I really wanted it done so he was saying what he thought I wanted to hear. Ha ha. She did great and barely cried. She cries a lot worse when she wakes from a nap hungry. I still feel awful about it though.
Here are pictures I will have to add captions to once I am on a computer.

The Story of Aubree-Rose Ellalee

It was no secret that I didn't particularly enjoy this pregnancy. My body hurt and the days were dragging by so slowly but it was mostly the constant back and pelvic pain that caused me to really not enjoy much of the actual pregnancy. I tried getting my doctors to commit to inducing me on March 23rd starting in November. They never would commit. As the 23rd slowly became closer and closer I started researching natural ways to induce labor. I wasn't willing to drink castor oil because it would taste gross and I had heard that it could make the baby poop while it was still in the womb and that would be bad. So it came down to me drinking raspberry leaf tea and doing lots of deep squats once Thursday arrived (the 22nd). I had had some signs that my body was preparing for labor so I didn't want to take any chances of it happening before Friday. On Wednesday I decided I would drink the castor oil if necessary on Thursday night. desperate times call for desperate measures. Well by 8:00 Thursday night there were no signs of baby after drinking the tea that tasted like dirt all day and doing lots of squats. I was about to leave Krystin's house when she suggested I just go ahead and drink the oil there. I hesitated for a second. I didn't want the other side effects hitting me as I drove home but I decided to go ahead and drink it. She gave me some seltzer water and I tried mixing them and drinking the concoction through a straw but the oil was too thick to really make it so I just got the seltzer water on the first try. I eventually got the oil down and I was glad it was over! Now all I had to do was wait. Briggs and I got home around 9 and I was still feeling fine. I got him to bed and started to clean the house. By 10 it was as if I had never drank any castor oil. I should have been spending the last hour in the bathroom if the junk was working like it should. I decided to drink another larger dose this time. I mixed it with chocolate milk and I couldn't taste it at all! It was perfect! I continued to clean and organize things and wait for something to happen. Well at 1am I gave up and went to bed. Mark had been in bed for hours since he had an all day interview at Vanguard the next morning. At 2:45 I was woken up with some cramping. I was half asleep and was just thinking it was my sore old body. About 5 minutes later I jumped up. I was having contractions!!!!! I was cautiously excited. It was early so I knew I had plenty of time to get this baby out but I also knew that these contractions could stop at any moment. I definitely couldn't sleep now. I was too excited and the contractions were too painful. I downloaded an app so I could time them on the iPad. I am so grateful that I didn't have to do anything other than push a button when they stopped and started. At 6:30 I went into our room to tell Mark the news! He decided that he would just drop off his resume at Vanguard and we would head to the hospital since the doctor's office said we needed to go ahead and get to the hospital (my contractions had been 5 minutes apart since I started timing them at 3). My friend Melanie told me earlier in the week that she would watch Brigham when we went to the hospital so I text her to see if she was ready because the day had come. We dropped the boy off after going by Vanguard an then went to the hospital. It was about 8:30. I was getting nervous that they would send me home. I was sent to triage where after about an hour it was determined that I could be admitted! I am pretty sure the nurse in triage may have said I was slightly more dilated than I actually was to help me get admitted. Later on my labor and delivery nurse checked my dilation and it was less than what I was told in triage. Ha ha. Either way, I am grateful for the nurse getting me admitted! I got my epidural a little after 11 and my water was broken around 1. I was not progressing at all so the pitocin was started. My blood pressure was scary low for my nurse so I had to lay on my side and every hour or so I would switch to the other side. I think this really prolonged my labor since I didn't have the help of gravity at all. At about 5:30 or so I gave a practice push and they said I was definitely ready. The room was prepared and 3 pushes later at 5:57 our sweet 8 pound 15 ounce Aubree-Rose had arrived! I cried this time and had a hard time stopping. I didn't even know why I was crying. The nurse was asking me questions and I could barely speak. Ha. The doctor could not believe that I had such a big baby. Maybe one day when I tell doctors that I have big babies they will listen. I was also even more grateful I had induced myself instead of waiting until my original due date of April 1st!
Now this labor process also gave me one of the most embarrassing moments ever. Since castor oil is a laxative it causes certain things to happen to your body. Well I had used the restroom 2 or 3 times while at home. At about 4pm I began to feel the full laxative effects and my poor nurse had to keep cleaning me up for the next hour and a half. She eventually asked if I had been sick or anyone I had been around because loose stools were not normal. Ha. I said no and I never mentioned the castor oil.

How She Got Her Name
Aubree had been our girls name ever since before we knew Briggs was a boy.
Rose was my grandma's name and when she passed last May Mark suggested we name our daughter after her (if we ever had one).
Once we were at the hospital and we knew we were going to meet our sweet Aubree on March 23rd (my other grandmother's birthday and the whole reason we wanted her born this day) Mark began to think he wanted his grandmother's included also. Their names were Sara Eleanor and Frances Willie Lee. I suggested hyphenating Aubree Rose and then he could do whatever he wanted with the middle name. We decided to combine 2 names and the best combo in our opinion was Ellalee. Aubree-Rose Ellalee Rufty is definitely a mouthful but it is sweet that she is tied to all 4 of her great grandmothers.

On a side note, my mom said she never thought castor oil would work and she didn't actually think I would go into labor Friday!

So at yesterday's doctor appointment I found out that I am 2cm and 50%. Technically I could go into real labor any time but this is the same place I was at 2 weeks before my water broke with Brigham and 5 hours after being induced. So I don't think this "progress" means much of anything. With Brigham I never had any contractions until I was induced but I have been having contractions for weeks with this little girl so maybe that will help get her here on Friday.
Today Brigham went to his first birthday party that wasn't for family. It was a princess party and he went as a prince. He was the only kid dressed up besides a couple girls that had on tutu's. Oh well. He had a lot of fun. He had so much fun in fact that he ended up getting diarrhea all over himself and the slide and the platform for the slide. That was embarrassing. Patti came and said that someone had diarrhea but she couldn't tell who it was. They closed off the swing set and brigham got a quick bath. Luckily I had some jeans in the car for him to put on and we went home. He acted fine and he still seems fine. I think maybe all the pineapple he ate caused it but who knows. I put a diaper on him when we got home so there would be no accidents while the missionaries were here for dinner.
Today was definitely day I won't forget!