Erin Lucas Got Married!

As I mentioned, we traveled to Bristol, TN/VA (it crosses the state line) to be part of Erin Lucas's wedding. Erin & I both taught one year at Happy Valley a few years ago and it was obvious the Lord brought us both there for each other. Neither of us would have survived that crazy year without the other one. During that year, Erin met Jonathan and they started dating. He proposed just 2.5 months ago and they got married on Saturday!

Here is the flower girl. We accidentally left Kiran's flower girl dress hanging on our front door so we had to search for a new one. Thankfully we realized it on Friday evening so we got up Saturday morning and hit Bristol's mall. First we went to JC Penny and they had ZERO little girl's dresses. I was really scared at this point that we wouldn't find a dress. Mom, Dad, Jonathan and Kiran went on to Belk while I fed Sienna and they found this dress. I know it doesn't look like a typical flower girl dress but it was perfect. Erin's colors were navy blue and hot pink and Kiran matched so well (actually her dress is black and hot pink but no one could tell). And the dress was marked down from $52 to $15.

Here's the bridal party!! I didn't order my dress with the other girls because we didn't know if I'd be able to be at the wedding due to my due date being so close. I ordered my dress off ebay for $30. Can you tell a difference???

Kelley and Kiran

The Caskey family at the wedding

Thanks Erin for letting us be a part of your special day! (I better not find out you were reading blogs while on your honeymoon!)

I Did It!

I listened to every song in our ITunes in alphabetical order. All 1802 songs, 5 days 1 hour 36 minutes and 38 seconds worth. Ok not entirely true. I shamelessly skipped any Michael Jackson or marching band song if I was close to the computer. But I listened to all the rest of them. I used to set my ITunes on random but some songs never got played while others were played all the time. I felt bad for the songs that were being left out so I set it to go alphabetically and let it roll. I started on May 8 and finished yesterday. I feel better having now given equal opportunity to all my songs.

p.s. five_solas- I'm blanking on who you are! Comment or email me and let me know!

Another Post About Baby Sleep (Don't You Have Anything Else To Write About?)

While I am patiently waiting for my parents to send pictures from the wedding, I thought I'd update you on Sienna's sleep. She has turned into quite a good sleeper. If she is swaddled up tight and on her side in the sleep positioner thingie, she gives us good stretches at night. It was 3-4 hours but the past few nights its been 6-8 hours. Of course since I'm writing this tonight, she'll be up every 1.5 hours. She will sleep swaddled on her side for naps but it often takes a long time to get her really asleep so mostly she sleeps in my Moby wrap. During Kiran's nap time, I usually am able to get her down for a nap in her bassinet. I am so thankful that she is sleeping better. I don't think she is colicky- she is fussy in the evenings but still has some quiet awake time even then. I think we just had a really hard second week there.

Jonathan & I were nervous about sleeping in a hotel room with both the kids together. Kiran doesn't have a good track record of sharing a room with us (even though she did it well the first 9 months when we all shared a room- since then not so much). If Kiran wakes up at night and sees we are in there then she doesn't want to go back to sleep. My parents had brought Kiran back to the hotel and put her down before we got home from the rehearsal dinner. I stayed in their adjoining room till Sienna fell asleep at 11:30. The next thing I know its 6:45am and Sienna had slept all night. We thanked the Lord first thing when we woke up.

Things We Learned

Ten things we learned while on our trip to Bristol TN/VA to help Erin Lucas get married.

1. Sienna hates long car rides. With a passion. With a loud shrieking passion.
2. Kiran does not do well without a nap. She really actually falls apart.
3. The new part of 26 between Asheville and Johnson City is one of the prettiest drives in the Southeast.
4. If you put the flowergirl dress on the front door, it will still be there when you return.
5. JC Penney doesn't sell little girl's dresses this time of year.
6. Thankfully Belk does.
7. Instead of having multiple poops per day, Sienna likes to save hers up and have one massive explosion once a day.
8. Sienna can sleep from 11:30-6:45 without eating or waking up.
9. It takes four adults to successfully make it through a bridesmaids luncheon, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, night at a hotel, pictures, wedding and reception with two kids.
10. We wouldn't have made it in one piece without my Mom and Dad going with us! Thank you!

Watching Pictures

Kiran doesn't watch tv unless its the weekend and we've got sports or HGTV on. We don't even have our DVD player hooked up so she doesn't watch videos. BUT this week she has started watching our screen saver on our computer. We have it set to display the pictures in our mypictures folder and she loves seeing them all go by! She talks about everyone in the pictures. She'll sit for more than half an hour watching the pictures!

This is Kiran watching the pictures today after her 2.5 hour nap (during which Sienna slept 2 hours IN HER OWN BED!).

Every Little Bit Helps...

Thanks for your support and encouragement. It really is nice to know I'm not alone. ItsAMomThing- I don't think it was a coincidence that I stopped by your house today before I even read your comment.

Today was a little better.... Sienna slept in her bassinet for 2.5 hours straight last night! She had a few short happy awake times- even in the evening! After getting home from Greenville, she slept in her carseat in our bedroom for an hour!

But, as my dad says, babies aren't linear so I know not to expect those things tonight and tomorrow. I will enjoy whatever I get. Thankfully we have such a huge support system here.

Oh Girl

So..... seems like we got us another fussy baby. Kiran was fussy but not to the point of colic. Sienna however seems well on her way to colic. The biggest problem is that she is very hard to get to sleep and she will only stay asleep if someone is holding her. Thankfully she will *usually* sleep in the wrap. I honestly don't know what I would do if she didn't. Anyhow.... she's not screaming anymore after we got over the stomach stuff. She's just fussing. Almost all of her awake minutes. BUT we're only a month away from peak fussiness and by November this should all be past. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I feel very alone having a fussy/almost colicy baby. I don't know if people don't talk about it or if I truly am alone. Sometimes it seems as though there is some big Mommy secret out there that I don't know about how to have a calm baby. If you have an easy baby, I'm sincerely jealous. If you have a fussy baby, I feel your pain.

And we're accepting volunteers to come over and hold our baby.

What can I say?

The past 36 hours all 4 of us have been battling tummy troubles. Nothing too serious- just a little rumbling. But poor Sienna just screams and will fall asleep but wakes up if you put her down. I called in the reinforcements of my MIL and her best friend (aka my other MIL) to come hold the baby today. I can handle fussing but the screaming was absolutely tearing me up. Thankfully they came and held Sienna so she could sleep and fed and took care of Kiran so I was free to go get my bridesmaid's dress altered. I had been stressing over that b/c the wedding is next weekend and I wasn't quite fitting in the dress! But God sent me to the right seamstress via the yellow pages today and she totally took care of everything.

Thankfully Sienna still slept pretty well last night so I'm hoping she'll do the same again tonight. I really hope she's feeling better tomorrow (and the rest of us- I think it was something we ate but we can't figure out what).

Playdate

Today I took Kiran & Sienna to a playdate with my MOPS group. We went to a park downtown that has a part where fountains squirt up from the ground and the kids can play in it. I was really surprised to see there was a lifeguard/first aid guy working there. Although pretty much all he did was holler at the kids to stop running. Anyhow, Kiran really enjoyed the water and we will definitely go back to this free fun park. I would have taken pictures but I couldn't carry anything else. I had Sienna on my front in my Moby wrap (which I'm LOVING! I'll have to blog about it later). I crammed all the swimming stuff, picnic lunch, diapers, wipes, extra clothes, etc in Sienna's backpack diaper bag on my back and I pushed Kiran in her stroller. But we made it. And it was fun. And today was better than yesterday- keeping those expectations low and Kiran's showing signs of her normal self at times.

Chunker

Sienna had her one week dr's appt today. She's 9 days old and she weighed 8lbs 6oz at birth. Today she weighed 8lbs 15oz! Her dr said well that's impressive. The goal is for exclusively breastfed babies to be back to their birth weight by two weeks old. Oh Sienna.... she's gained a pound since we discharged from the hospital last Monday.

Kiran thought Sienna wanted to play with her baby dolls

Well, Kiran, Sienna & I survived our first day home alone. The morning was stressful. But after successfully lowering my expectations of how an almost-two-year-old should act when having a new sibling come into her life, the afternoon was much better. Plus Not-Aunt-Lauren came to visit!

LP and Sienna

Eating, Sleeping, Eating, Sleeping...

There hasn't been much to post about this week. We've just been sleeping and eating for the most part. One of the joys of being close to home has been sharing this first week with our families.

Sienna has so much cheek that they overflow onto the carseat straps.

Sienna spent lots of time sleeping....

...and bonding with her sister. Every once in a while she'll stay awake and chill with us.

Sisters

Sienna Alice

In 2007, we went on a vacation to Italy. While in Tuscany, we took a day trip from Florence to a little town called Siena. While we walked the streets, Jonathan and I fell in love with the town and I thought if I ever have another little girl, I want to call her Sien(n)a. We talked about many other names too- our last two were Sienna and Eleanor (Nora). When she was born though, we decided she was a Sienna. The town only has one n but we decided that since we were giving her a more uncommon name that we would at least spell it the more common way. It is actually gaining in popularity- it was the #169 most popular girl's name in the US in 2007.

Alice is Jonathan's mom's middle name as well as both of her grandmothers' middle names. We knew from when we found out it was a girl that we wanted to use Alice as the middle name so we had to make sure the first name went with it. That was when Alex was cut- Alex Alice. No.

We are home and enjoying being with both our girls! Thanks for all your comments, emails, calls. We feel very loved!

Birth Story

*warning birth story- I tried to keep it short and not too descriptive but I'm wordy so.....

Friday morning I woke up to a few small gushes of water. It kept coming slowly so we headed to the hospital around 10:30am. When we got there, it was amniotic fluid but it had stopped coming. The nurses said it had probably torn and resealed itself and that it often does that right before it breaks. They kept me around a little hoping hoping it would go ahead and break but it didn't. I had a few major contractions while there but they were about 30 minutes apart. They sent us home around 12:30pm saying that they would see us back shortly!

We had a fun 4th of July- cookout with J's family, birthday celebration with my extended fam (for cousin Emily June 27, brother in law Brooks July 4, nephew Brody July 6 and Baby Girl Caskey who was represented with a pink question mark on the cake), and we got to go to our favorite 4th of July party. All day I had contractions that were intense and long (averaging 60 seconds) but not regular. A few times they had gotten to 5 minutes apart so we decided to send Kiran home with my parents to spend the night. We got home about 11pm and soon after my contractions started to regulate- every 8-10 min apart. They were pretty intense and long. Then they jumped to 2 min, 3 min, 2 1/2 min apart. I could tell my body wasn't dealing well with it- I was already shaking and getting nauseous so we headed back to the hospital. We arrived at 12:45 and I had dilated from 2-3cm that morning to 5cm. By 3am I had gotten my epidural (I loved it!) and we slept off and on till 6am. Unfortuntaely the epidural didn't do anything for the throwing up- this baby was going to make me throw up from day one till the very end. About 6:30am my water broke completely and I was 9cm. My dr arrived a little after 7am. I started pushing through contractions at 7:20 and she was born at 7:43am. Her head came out and then she tried to turn her body which caused a slight tear but that was it. Everyone in the delivery room was surprised at how big she was!

Someday I need to list out all the differences between Kiran's labor and delivery and Sienna's. It was all so completely different. Everything from the place and the culture to the way my labor started to how big the babies were. This birth was so calm and peaceful and pleasant. It was wonderful. My labor and delivery team was awesome. Our parents were all here and got to see Sienna right after she was born.

Now we are recovering and resting and we will head home from the hospital tomorrow morning. Sienna has checked out well so far and she likes for us to hold her all the time and not put her down. Maybe she will be our snuggly baby?

Sienna is Here!

Sienna Alice was born at 7:43 a.m. on Saturday, July 5. She weighed 8 lbs., 6 oz. and measured 20 3/4". The name is pronounced see-EN-ah.

Sienna has a full head of dark hair!

Mommy and Sienna

Daddy and his girls