Grannie

Christmas this year was very rememberable but in a sad way.  My (Josh) grannie died at her home on Sunday morning.  She was 87.  She was the last of my grandparents still alive.
She was the classic grandmother.  She was very sweet, loved her family, cooked good food, gave good hugs, etc.  She lived in Little Rock so I did not see her super often but always loved my time with her.  She almost always made me chicken and dumplings when I went to visit because she knew it was my favorite.  Other family members would always show up also when I came because they knew Grannie would be making me chicken and dumplings and her's were the best. She also loved to play games and was always up for playing them with her grandchildren.  She was especially good at Boggle and I always loved playing Rack-o with her when I was younger. We will miss her.

Family

I know, I know, it has been too long since I posted some pictures of Clara. It seems that having two kids under 17 months makes things very busy. It seems like we don't have time to do hardly anything. We are very thankful for the days that Esther is at daycare during this time that we are off work. It helps us to rest and catch up.

Speaking of Esther, she is doing pretty good with Clara. She is overly helpful most of the time. She hands us the pacifier at least 100 times a day. Some of the stuff she does is very cute like helping us to burp the baby. And it is awesome when we go in to get her up in the morning and the first thing she does is say "baby?, baby?". She also gives her kisses and rubs her head. But there are also times when she is a little too rough because she does not realize just how careful she needs to be.
Clara is doing good. At her check up last Friday, everything looked good. She was within an ounce of being back to her birth weight. She is starting to be awake for longer stretches in the day which is good. She is a good crier for sure, she can really get going.

Here we are the day we brought Clara home

Margo's parents

Margo's dad with the girls

Josh's Parents

 Margo's grandmother

The cousins (Margo's side)

Sweet sleeping Clara

Silly Esther

One week? Seriously?

Clara is one week old today and today is her due date. She has actually been home for a couple days. It has been a little crazy around here so I am just now getting to blog about it. She got released on Sunday afternoon. She was able to spend the night Saturday night in the same room as Margo with only the heart monitor on. Everything still looked good on Sunday so they let us go. We will just have our normal pediatric clinic follow-ups and one follow-up in a couple months with a pediatric cardiologist to make sure her heart is still doing ok. It was nice to all be able to be home together.

Although the first night (as all first nights are) was really rough. Clara thought night was day and decided to be awake the whole night so we did not get any sleep. I had forgotten how hard it was to go without sleep. And because Esther does sleep in the night and not in the day, we are not able to nap during the day. Luckily she has daycare three days a week for us to catch up on chores and sleep. We started working on "training" Clara to the daytime/nighttime and working on her sleeping without us holding her. So, the second night was much better. I know we will still have many hard nights ahead but overall things hopefully will start getting better.

However, Esther's adjustment to a baby may take the longest. She says baby and points at Clara all the time. Most of what she wants to do is be close to her and touch her. But Esther's gentle is a long ways away from baby gentle, she is more cat and dog gentle. She wants to pat and rub on her very hard and poke at her eyes, pull at her arms, use her as a step to get closer to mommy and daddy. Her gentle is way to rough so we have to be on top of her all the time. I am not going to lie, we have missed her a few times and she has swatted/pulled/pushed on Clara pretty hard but I think Clara will survive. Luckily she is not old enough to be super jealous, at least that I can tell.

I wanted to thank everyone who has helped us this first week. Lots of people watched Esther for us while we were in the hospital and when we were taking trips to the hospital. And thanks to everyone who brought us food at the hospital and at home. We have really awesome friends and family that we are very thankful for. Now for some pics.

Mama and baby

Sweet Clara

She has eyes

This might be my favorite so far

First touch

First pat

More Pictures

Clara is still making progress. She got her oxygen taken off and her stomach tube taken out today. Most of her labs came back good also. As long as she keeps making progress and doing well, she might get to come home on Sunday or Monday. She is nursing over 20 minutes each time, just a few minutes ago she went 33 minutes. She is a big girl so she needs to eat a lot. They had an open mother/child room (for people who have a baby in the nursery so they can stay at the hospital) in the nursery so Margo is staying there tonight and tomorrow night so she can nurse Clara during the night. It is wearing us out going to the hospital every 3 hours so hopefully she comes home soon. Below are some new pics from tonight, she looks a lot better without the oxygen and stomach tube.

Clara Pete

In case you have not got an email from us or seen Margo's facebook updates, we are now a family of four. Clara Pete was born yesterday at 8:25pm yesterday. 9 pounds 3 ounces and 22.25 inches long. She is a big baby but a little less than we thought she would be. It was a stressful delivery. Margo pushed for 3 hours, which is super long. Everyone was impressed. Clara was not making progress and we were basically a contraction away from doing a c-section and she came out. It was very hard on Margo and she is going to be sore for a while. Clara had some issues right after birth and they wisked her to the nursery. She was having a hard time with getting enough oxygen and her heart rate was really high. They put all kind of tubes in her. Her lungs had some junk in them and they did not know what was causing her heart rate problems. By this morning her lungs had cleared which was good but her heart rate was still high. They spent a good part of the day trying to figure out was causing it and finally concluded she had an abnormal heart beat. The fix for this is to electrically shock her into a normal rhythm and hope it stays that way, otherwise we would have to go to Arkansas Childrens Hospital. They told us we could come see her before they shocked her. So we went down there to see her for only the second time. And right when we went in to see her, she coverted into a normal rhythm all on her own. This was the first time she had been in a normal rhythm. The nurses and doctors were all in awe because they were just about to shock her. They did a big EKG to verify she had converted and it came back that she was for sure in a normal rhythm. So they are just going to watch her and keep her here for 5 days or so to make sure she continues to do well. It has been very emotionally draining but we are so thankful everything is looking better. We go home tomorrow. It will be sad to have to leave her here without us. Here are some pics.

Right after being born






Here she is all hooked up in the nursery, the orange and white patch is the patch they were about to shock her with.

Measurement

Well, it seems most people did not want to guess Margo's girth because they were worried about guessing wrong and Margo being sensitive, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, the big number is 44 inches.

Stay tuned for the baby reveal sometime soon.