Thrush Thursday

thrush.

did any of your kids have this?

it's another common baby illness that i had never heard of before until one of my kids got it.

if you don't know what this is, it's a type of fungal infection usually in the mouth caused by an overgrowth of yeast.

and charlotte has it.

with her, it's just a thick white coating on her tongue and it doesn't affect her eating.  but she's had it twice now.  the first time was the week before her blessing and the second time it came back this week.  i've been treating it with gentian violet hoping she won't pass it to me while nursing.  it went away within a week the first time around and i'm REALLY hoping it goes away for good at the end of this week.

i'm mainly blogging about this because i want to document pictures of charlotte with her mouth full of the purple meds.  she looks hilarious.

the first 2 pics were from her first round of thrush and the last 3 are from this week.

she's been looking like a zombie or like a baby modeling a super purple lipstick.

but she's still so cute!

life with 2 kids

everybody be quiet, both of my kids are sleeping!!

everton stopped taking naps when he was around a year and a half old.

but lately he's been waking up a little earlier than i'd like, then he'll sonk out later on in the day, making him not sleep at night.  note to self: don't feed him ice cream right before bed and after a long and late nap.  today though, he's been a little feverish and cranky so i made him take an early nap.  

and charlotte, her whole life revolves around sleeping and eating, so i didn't have to worry about her not sleeping.

which, she's been sleeping reasonably well at night.  some nights she decides that she doesn't need to eat at 3am and sleeps ALL night.  and then there's some nights where she wants that late night snackaroo.

hopefully we'll get onto a good schedule where she likes to sleep all night.  HOPEFULLY.

so i thought i'd take this rare moment and come back to my darling blog.  i miss blogging.  but holy crap, taking care of two kids doesn't allow me to do much else.  when i need a nap, i let netflix babysit the toddler while i nap with the baby.  otherwise, i'm always changing someone's poopy butt (we're working on getting everton potty trained soon!  i'm scared) or i'm feeding someone's face.

geez, what's 3 kids gonna be like in the future?

anyways i thought i'd catch up on what's been happenin since my last post.

we got newborn photos done of my sweet girl.

taken by charlene!

i made her tutu and did her nails.

having a girl is wonderful.

i think charlotte and everton are going to be best buds.  she smiles like nobody's business when everton gets in her face.  he always kisses her good morning and goodnight.  he gets concerned when she cries and tries to soothe her with the pacifier.  i'm so grateful he loves her and hasn't tried to kill her.

and then we blessed our charlotte on march 2nd.  it was a beautiful day, she didn't poop up her dress and didn't cry and freak out during the blessing.

we had a luncheon after with a ton of food and a ton of loving family and friends.

here's some pics of some of those family and friends.

we also got everton a twin bed and he didn't have any trouble transitioning. he actually looks like he's in heaven when he sleeps in it.

i got to go to charlene's baby shower!  she's due in the beginning of april and we're all anticipating the arrival of sweet baby emery!

the cecil and caldwell kids.

having these four together make for a lot of noise.

charlott's such a sweet jolly baby that brings such a sweet spirit into our home.

oh crap, she's waking up, time to feed!

charlotte's story

holy crap holy crap.

i have 2 kids!

we added the second kid on january 31.

so let me tell you about that exciting day.

the due date was indeed friday, january 31st but on thursday, the day before, i had just visited my doc and talked about the possibility of inducing.  we decided on inducing on february 5th if nothing happens by then and let's be real, i was shooting to have the baby in february.

everything was all planned.  i went to bed at 12.45 that night (my mom and i had a walking dead marathon so i've been going to bed really late lately and being 40 weeks pregnant makes for sleepless nights anyways) and at around 1.30 am on jan 31st my water broke while i was attempting to sleep.  i ran to the bathroom to make sure it was my water breaking and not just me peeing myself (at least this time it didn't happen at the mall!) sure enough it was my bag of water escaping me.  i woke up my mom and brett and we headed over to the pioneer valley hospital in west valley.  my doctor decided he wanted to start delivering babies at this hospital instead of here in tooele, which meant having to haul it to west valley.  he's lucky i love him enough to change hospitals.

this time around though i started feeling contractions right away, which is something that didn't happen with everton.

as we got closer to the hospital the contractions got closer and were just a few mins apart and they SUCKED!

we got checked in and were brought to my room.

it was now 2:30 in the morning and the contractions were steady.  they had to go through the procedure of making sure it was my water breaking and blah blah blah before they could call the anesthesiologist who lived 30 mins away.  i wanted that epidural NOW.  with everton i was dilated to about a 3 when i asked for the epidural (i'm a HUGE wimp and have a super low tolerance for pain.)  they called the epidural dude and i still had to wait 30 mins for him to get here.  

i progressed from 4cm to 7cm in an hour.  i thought i was dying.  contractions are truly a B!@%$*^$#$&^* the baby's head was more towards my back, which meant having back labor.  awful awful awful.

the anesthesiologist finally got there and i told him to shoot me up!

it took a little while for the epidural to kick in and when it did it didn't reach this one spot in my lower back for a while.  i couldn't feel anything anywhere else except in that one spot.  it felt like hell so the epidural man shot me up with more of that sweet juice.

it finally took effect in my back and now all we had to do was wait for me to get to 10cm.

the epidural did slow down my progress a little but pretty sure i didn't care cuz i just didn't wanna feel those horrifying contractions.

it was about 7ish am when i finally reached 10cm. 

i pushed and pushed and pushed and with a little help from a kiwi vacuum i birthed a baby girl at 7:42 and the first thing she did while on this earth was take a poop on me.

THE STATS

-name-CHARLOTTE AVELINE CALDWELL

-weight-7lbs 8oz

-length-20in

brett, here's your daughter.

good luck with her.

my everton, my sweet everton.

when he first met little charlotte, he hung his head, grunted, and exclaimed, 

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO."

he eventually warmed up to her.

he would try to roll her hospital bassinet around and reach out to hold her.

officially a fam of four.

and these grandparents are thrilled about this 4th addition to their grandchild collection.

i think she's perfect, but i'm not gonna lie, i was hoping she would have as much hair as her brother did at birth.  and again, with how much tums i ate during this pregnancy i thought she'd have a ton o' hair.

but i am glad she does have some hair anyways and it's really dark.

getting ready to go home.

my mom made this AMAZING car seat cover and my sis kyla made charlotte's car seat swaddle blanket.

practically pink in every way.

poor poopsie was so sad to be leaving the cushy confines of the hospital.

me too girlfriend.

it's been an adventure adjusting to life again with a newborn schedule plus a toddler on the loose.

the first night REALLY sucked.  charlotte was up what seemed like every hour but the next night we decided to put her in the bouncer and she slept for 5 hours at a time between feedings and she's been sleeping that way since then.  we definitely don't plan on having her sleep in the bouncer forever but right now, i've been getting an adequate amount of sleep for having a 2 week old newborn so sleep in the bouncer she shall.

p.s. watching 30 rock is an excellent show to watch while nursing in the middle of the night.  thanks be to netflix.

everton has been adjusting to charlotte at home.  we're still trying to teach him to be gentle with her at times but for the most part he's sweet to her.  he actually loves to hold her (with parental guidance) and loves to shove the pacifier in her nose eye mouth.

and everton is already willing to share his toys.

 

she looks like a dancing mushroom from fantasia.

brett took 1 week off and then my parents have been here helping out since brett went back to work.

i'm so thankful for them all!  i seriously don't know what i'm going to do when my parents leave.  dealing with 2 kids give me the heebie jeebies right now.  i've been left alone with them for just a few hours so far and i think everton knows he can get away with murder while i'm glued to the couch nursing.  it'll be interesting living life with 2 kids but for now i'm totally going to cherish my dad taking care of everton in the early mornings and my mom cooking amazing food for us.  i wish brett could get the same paternity benefits like they do in other countries and get like a whole month off or something.  

and if men could help with breastfeeding that would be AWESOME too.

oh my gosh i seriously love having a girl!

i love the pink, the dainty shoes, the frilly dresses, the pink, the flower headbands, the adorable onesies with the ruffle butt pants, and the pink, pink, pink!

thanks for coming to our family, charlotte.

we needed you.

ready to poop, i mean POP

let's talk about the fact that i turned 39 weeks last friday.

i'm SO ready to poop this baby out.

my due date is in THREE DAYS.

i just finished my third bottle of tums this pregnancy so this baby better come out with luxurious pocahontas hair.

as of my last doc visit i'm dilated to a 1 1/2-2 cm and he said she's deep in my back which is why my back's been so achy lately and why i don't look that huge.  but believe me, i feel freakin huge.

i'm ready to be done being pregnant and brett and i are ready to meet our little girl!

as for everton, who knows what he's thinking.  he still doesn't talk but i'm sure he's aware of the super girly carseat sitting in the corner or all these little girly baby clothes hangin around.  i hope he loves her when he meets her and doesn't try to hulk smash her instead.

i thank the heavens my parents are here to help out while brett's at work.  my dad is so awesome at getting everton ready in the morning and entertaining him and my beautiful mom continues to be the amazing cook that she is and has helped me tremendously in organizing and cleaning my messy house in preparation for the baby girl's arrival.

we're all sitting on pins and needles as to when she decides to make her debut.

some things we've done while waiting for said baby have been....

going to the ice castle in midway, ut.

and celebrating kyla's 23rd birthday!

she requested that we go the cheesecake factory for dinner and before dinner we browsed our favorite stores at the city creek mall.

 and while waiting for a table at the cheesecake factory we met tracy morgan!

when he strolled in, i was like, "is that tracy morgan??"  seeing celebs in real life doing regular things sort of made me think, "nahhh that can't be him."  turns out it totally was and we quickly got a picture with him.  he was so awesome to talk to and when he saw kyla's baby he said his baby that was with him is the same age.  they talked about how much trouble kids are when they start crawling and other baby stuff.

the waiter told us that that was mr. morgan's second time at this cheesecake factory within a few days and that he was in town for a stand-up comedy show. 

and that's been pretty much it.  hopefully next time i blog we'll be a family of 4!

now i gotta go take a nap, growing a baby is seriously tiring work.