Christmas Eve

This year was our first Christmas in our own home with no family around! While I was definitely missing our families, it was also lots of fun to just be together and do our own thing. We've all been looking forward to this day because it was the start of Kenny's long break from work. We need him home right now, until I get a better grip on this 3 kids thing :). I made some Christmas treats that morning, and Kenny took the kids out to play in the snow. It turns out it was only the beginning, as it didn't stop snowing the whole day and we got a few good inches! It was a beautiful white Christmas! :)

We went around delivering goodies to friends in the early afternoon. That evening I wanted to have our very nice and fancy Christmas Eve dinner of ham, augratin potatoes, rolls, peas, and sparkling cider. I got out the little flameless lights to have a nice low-lit meal. And I think the set-up was very nice, and it started out with the best of intentions.

But here's how the dinner really went down...

We sat down and Brynlee immediately needed the glass plate taken away from her, replaced with a small pink, plastic one. She ate the food well, but she made a huge mess all around her...and no she isn't wearing a shirt. I can't keep clothes on that girl to save my life. She's always either undressing or dressing up in weird outfits/hats etc. At least she was happy.

Tyler complained the whole time about how he didn't like anything we were eating and he was NOT going to have what we were having (this is a daily battle, by the way). So we, and when I say we I mean mostly Kenny, worked with him for long after the rest of us left, getting him to eat the food haha.

And Kenny and I took turns holding/trying to comfort crying Madison for the first half of the meal, until she finally slept soundly (but only as long as I held her).

I just had to laugh at my silly kids. No matter how nice and quiet of a meal I wanted to have, this is how it will always be with young kids in the house. And ya know, I'm okay with that. In fact, I love it.

After dinner we acted out the traditional nativity scene. Tyler really knows it well and got into it. Brynlee just enjoyed riding the donkey, or her dad. But my favorite part was when Tyler switched roles to a wise man and all of the sudden pulled out the vacuum hose extension and started "fighting all the bad guys". I don't remember that from the scriptures, but it was a nice conclusion to our Christmas story :).

Next was the traditional Christmas pajamas. I decided to buy Kenny pants instead of make his because then he would actually wear them. And I lost the pattern for my own and then Madi was born and I never got around to buying another one and making myself some, so I bought mine too. But the kids' pajama pants are homemade and matching, and that's what mattered most to me.

And we didn't forget to leave out cookies and milk for Santa. I got this cute plate at Kohl's :)

We had such a fun evening together and it was the best to watch how excited they were, especially Tyler. Although I think I was just as excited and giddy about the whole thing as he was. Christmas is way awesome when you have kids of your own! :)

Never mind

Yesterday I decided I was going to go ahead with the whole potty-training thing. I felt like I was the one holding Brynlee back before, and that since we are stuck at home anyways I might as well take advantage of the opportunity.

So I started the day off putting her in a pull-up and talking to her about it. We sat on the potty several times that morning and she wouldn't go. After her nap I decided to put her in underwear so that if she went in her panties once, she might get it. It didn't take long before she peed on the floor, but it was on the hard wood floor so easy clean up. No big deal, we sat on the potty again and cleaned it up and talked about NOT going in our panties, just the big girl potty.

Not too long later, she pooped in her underwear. It wasn't a lot, so I quickly changed her and we once again sat on the potty for a while and talked about it some more.

Not even 5 minutes later she comes out of her room screaming with poop all over her hand and down her legs, and leaving a trail behind her on the floor. I ran her into the bathroom and cleaned her and the floor up, and stuck her in the tub. While I'm doing that Tyler walks in his room and informs me that, "there's poop on the chair, and on the floor." Well that was an understatement. It was EVERYWHERE!! Smeared into the carpet, a whole trail out to the door. I don't know how she did it, and so quickly too. So it took a long time and a lot of scrubbing and cleaning for that one. Madi was awake by the end screaming, wanting to eat, while I tried to hurry and finish cleaning up and get Bryn out of the tub. Yeah...I've had better days.

I called Kenny at work to complain and look for a little sympathy, but he couldn't stop laughing!! Thankfully by the end of the phone call he had me laughing too. And I requested he pick something up for dinner on the way home. :) At least he had a head's up for when he came home to a house that reeked of feces and oxy clean.

So never mind on the whole potty-training thing. I think we'll wait till next year to try again.

Christmas Outfits

So I got a crazy idea today, to do a little photo shoot of my kids. By myself. I had taken some of Madi when she was 6 days old, and I still needed some of Ty and Bryn, and some of all 3 of them dressed up together. I felt very brave doing this haha. I opened all the blinds, threw a black sheet over the back of a couch and had them sit on a chair. And I may be a teensy tiny bit biased, but I think they look pretty cute in them. Even with my poor photography skills, I have 3 beautiful children. That is still crazy to me. THREE!! Can you believe it?

I love the girls' dresses. Velvet and satin and oh so pretty. Hooray for matching!!

And only one of us was crying at the end...Madison, not me. She cried the entire time I was trying to take them of all 3 of them. But it sure was cute to watch Ty and Bryn try to comfort her and hold in her pacifier. I got several shots of that and I love them.

By the way, Madi looks exactly like Tyler when he was a baby.

I can't stop looking at these pictures. I just love my little family so so much. Ithink the Christmas season is the perfect time to bring home a new baby.

Grandma was here

My mom came to our rescue the day we got home from the hospital (Tuesday, the 7th). She stayed until Sunday afternoon and we were so glad to have her here. It really helps to adjust to a new baby when you have so much help. Not just me, but my kids too. She cleaned everything in our home, made us food, played with the kids, took turns at night with Madison, whipped up Madi's blessing dress in a few hours, went grocery shopping for us, and basically just made our lives easy for 5 days :). We missed her as soon as she left. Thanks for coming Mom--we sure love you!!

making sugar cookies

Madison's Birth

My mom is at the store with Ty and Bryn, and Madi is sleeping. So even though I want to nap too, I really need to just write this out before I forget all the lovely details.

Saturday morning I woke up and said, "I really want her to come this weekend. I'm going on a walk." So I did, but nothing happened. We went about our day as usual. I started having contractions late morning/early afternoon but nothing very strong and they were random. As the evening progressed they kept coming, but I was trying to not get my hopes up. We put the kids to bed at 8 like usual and I decided I should start timing them. So we put in a movie and just wrote down whenever they happened, which by now was about every 10 minutes. Then they were getting closer, like between 5-7 min. Around 10:00 I called my friend Rochelle, who had actually called earlier that day reminding me that she would take my kids whenever I went into labor. She must be very in tune :). So I told her what was going on and she offered to come over and sleep on our couch instead of having us wake up the kids and transfer them to their house. I was SO grateful for that. She seriously helped my stress level go way down, I was so concerned with how Ty and Bryn would do while we were gone, and now they wouldn't even have to know. So while we waited for her to come over, we got everything together and Kenny gave me a priesthood blessing. I was so grateful for that blessing because the words he said, and certain phrases kept coming back to my mind throughout the remainder of this process and it gave me a lot of comfort and peace. I feel so blessed to have Kenny.

Rochelle got to our house a little before 11:00. By that point my contractions were slowing down and I thought oh great! As we started on the road I kept praying that my labor would not stop and I'd be able to have her that night. We decided to go to Wal-mart since they were still open, just to walk around and see if we couldn't keep things going. So we did that for an hour (they closed at 12) and then headed over to the hospital. They checked me and I was at a 3, but their little machines weren't reading very many contractions. I was having a lot of back labor pains, which was a whole new experience. I didn't have that with the first two. So they said we'll keep you for an hour and if you haven't made progress you have to go home. So we got up and walked around in the hospital for the next hour and that certainly worked. So they said I was at a 4 and could stay! woohoo! A couple hours later I asked for an epidural. It was about 3 a.m. and I was pretty tired. I had gone to the hospital wanting to do it naturally, like I did with Bryn, because I was still scared of epidurals from Tyler's birth. But aside from not wanting all the pain, I really did feel like that's what I should do. It turned out wonderfully and they were very considerate and kind, knowing of my hesitation and previous experience. So anyways, right after I got the epidural, my doctor (midwife, actually) came into break my water and she checked me and said I was at an 8!! An hour later she came back and said, we'll start pushing in a few minutes. Sure enough, little Madi was ready to come. I only pushed for a couple minutes and she entered this world at 4:29 a.m. and mad as could be! :) She had the cutest cry though and it was such a beautiful and emotional experience. She is perfectly healthy and doing so well. She figured out breastfeeding quickly and hasn't had any problems. They kept saying it was like a textbook birth, and she was a textbook baby, etc. and it's true. We have been so incredibly blessed. My recovery has been amazing. I didn't tear or get an episiotomy this time and I can't even believe what a difference that makes. That's seriously the worst part of birthing.

We are all just smitten with her and it's so cute to watch Tyler and Brynlee get so excited to see her and hold her all the time. She has such a sweet spirit and we're all just so grateful that everything went so smoothly. We couldn't have asked for a better experience.

In the Hospital

About her name...it was the great compromise and we didn't decide on it till the day after she was born. I wanted Madilyn and Kenny wanted Madison so we agreed on Madison Lynn haha. We both love it though. We can't get over how beautiful and perfect she is. We are loving how thick and dark all her hair is!! She also has extremely long feet :) it cracks me up. I see both Brynlee and Tyler in her face for sure. Birth story still to come but for now, enjoy a few pictures of when we were in the hospital with her.

Madison Lynn Weston

Our sweet daughter was born December 5th, 2010 at 4:29 a.m. She weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. She has lots of really dark hair and she's as perfect as can be. Everything went so well and we are so ecstatic that she's here! Pictures to come soon.

I'm Still Here

Well I know I've been a bad blogger, and I wish I could say it's because I have a new baby to tend to. But that is not the case. I am still here, as large as can be, waiting anxiously for the arrival of this little one. This past Tuesday at my appt. they declared me dilated to a 2, which is better than nothing. But let me share with you why I'm secretly glad she has waited to come. For the last 2-3 weeks, we have all been feeling c-r-a-p-p-y. Lots of coughing and headaches and coughing and throat aches and coughing. First the kids, then Kenny and I inevitably got it. (I pray we didn't spread it to anyone else.) I kept putting off taking anyone into the doctor because I hate paying a doctor to tell me that we all have a bad case of the common cold. I just assumed they would say to let it run its course and it would go. But the time for it to go came and went, and we were all still sick. I had been praying so hard every day for us to all be miraculously healed so that we could be healthy when this baby joins our family. What a stinky deal for us to all be sick when she got here! I had been re-reading that talk on faith from General Conference and it got me really wondering afterward. I was sure I had enough faith for us to be healed. So why had it been so long and we're all still sick? The next morning I woke up around 4:00 and wasn't really able to fall back asleep (not being able to sleep=another fun daily occurrence). But I had a revelation during that time--GO TO THE DOCTOR. It was pretty simple. I suppose you can call what I was doing, faith without works :). So that morning as soon as the offices opened up I was on the phone making appointments, and demanding that Kenny do the same. By the end of the day we all had a diagnosis of sinus infections, and a good dose of antibiotics to get rid of them. Hallelujah!! Modern medicine is the miracle I was neglecting to partake of. But don't worry, we're all feeling much better now and just waiting. And waiting. And I seriously just can't wait to see her and hold her in my arms, and mostly just get her out of my stomach. It's pretty much all I think about.

If only we could agree on a name...

p.s. If any of you are missing your chin, just wait a few weeks. I hope to return all of the extra chins I've accumulated shortly after she's born.