Playing in the Snow

Over the past week, we've gotten a few inches of snow, so we decided to take Abby out to play in it this morning. It started out like a scene from A Christmas Story - it turns out when she's in her snowsuit, Abby can't stand up when she falls down.



When we got out to the yard, Abby wasn't too sure what to do. She finally decided that it would be all right to walk around in the snow, kind of like she did with the leaves in the fall.



That worked out all right until the first faceplant. As it turns out, snow is a bit slippery. Abby's pretty good at falling and it doesn't usually bother her, but apparently dunking her face in the snow was a bit much, because for awhile after that all she wanted to do was swing. Not the most traditional way to play in the snow, but it made her feel a little better.



After awhile, we convinced her to come down from the swing and try playing in the snow again. She did all right while she watched Adam throw snowballs at the house, but pretty soon she faceplanted again, and decided that the snow was not for her. Eventually she decided that it would probably be all right to walk around on the driveway while Adam was shoveling, and that turned out to be her favorite part of playing in the snow. Well, other than coming back inside to have hot chocolate, of course!





Our other excitement recently has been getting Abby moved into her new room. She's been pretty excited about the new room and the new bed and the new bumpers on her crib. The room still needs some finishing - we have nothing on the walls yet, the bookshelves are empty, etc - but the transition has gone really well. Abby really likes living in there. She's especially a big fan of her little rocking chair. She had put it in the closet of the nursery and forgotten about it in there, so when it made the move to the new room she got really excited. She's not allowed to go upstairs to play by herself, so several times a day she asks me if we can go up and play with the rocking chair.





Yesterday we gave Nora her first tummy time that Abby was awake for, so they got to play together on the floor for a little bit. Abby had a great time laying down next to Nora, then getting up and running to the other side of her and laying down there, then getting up and running back. Most of the pictures we tried to take of them have Abby's face as a big blur because of that, but we did manage to get a couple of pictures of the girls together.

The Grand Old Duke of York

Abby's been doing a lot of singing lately. Mostly she'll only sing a song if she doesn't think that we're listening, but this afternoon we convinced her to sing The Grand Old Duke of York for us (with a little help).

Abigail and Eleanor

Abby's been doing well adjusting to Nora's arrival, though some moments are better than others. Provided she's reasonable well rested and fed I think it's safe to say Abby's excited to be a big sister.

Abby got to hold Nora for the first time today. Here are some pictures.

Abby also had an earl Christmas present from Grandma and Grandpa VanDuyne which she has really been enjoying lately.

A Few More Pictures of Eleanor

Sleeping with the blanket Mom made.






Sleeping last night (for a few minutes anyway).


Eleanor at 1 hour old.

Eleanor's Birth

When I thought about having Eleanor before she was born, I kind of imagined that it would be pretty similar to having Abby. Instead, she decided to let us know from the very beginning that she is her own person and would be doing things her own way. She started by coming early - two weeks before her due date! I've been saying for almost a month that the 21st would be a great day to be born, but that I was expecting her to be a few days late like Abby was. She decided to prove me wrong on both counts, and come even earlier. I'm so excited that she's here for Christmas! I already have grand plans to take her and Abby to see Santa next week and get a picture of their first Christmas together.

I also expected that going into labor would be the same as last time. The timing was almost the same - Abby's labor started around 10:00 PM and Eleanor's started around 10:30 PM - but that's about it. Adam and I had just gone to bed on Thursday when my water broke. We called my parents to come down and stay with Abby, and then started getting ready to head to the hospital. Since I really wasn't expecting her to come for another 3 weeks, I hadn't made any preparations at all. So I did a load of laundry to get the carseat and some baby clothes clean to take with us, packed the suitcase, and just tried to clean up the house a little bit in the few hours we had left. Another nice thing - since we weren't in a rush to get to the hospital this time, I got to take a LONG hot shower. Adam tried to sleep for awhile, but I was too excited about having Eleanor before Christmas. He kind of laughed at me, I was singing and dancing a little bit while I was getting things ready to go.

We got to the hospital at 3:26 (according to my wristband) and headed up to Labor and Delivery. We had decided to try a VBAC, but I was still considered a surgery risk because of having the c-section last time, so they hooked me up to a million monitors to make sure that everything was going well the whole time. By this point contractions had started, but weren't too bad, so we tried to get a little sleep. I know I didn't get any, and I don't think Adam got much either. Around 7 I got an epidural - which was a bit terrifying, but so great. What really pushed me to get it was that since I hadn't last time, I had to have general anesthesia and Adam couldn't be in the room when I had the c-section. I wanted to avoid that this time if we had to have another section. By that point I was in active labor, so the contractions were coming closer and more intense, so when the epidural kicked in and all I felt anymore was some pressure, but no pain, I was so happy that I had braved out the shot in the spine. Another bonus, without the pain I was able to get about an hour's worth of sleep.

It turns out that being in labor is kind of boring. I'm sure it's less boring if you're in intense pain the whole time, but with the epidural making me comfortable, there weren't too many distractions. I told Adam at one point that we should have brought a movie with us - The Muppet's Christmas Carol was sounding good. That lasted until about 1:00, when my epidural began to wear off. The anesthesiologist put something else into the epidural, which helped a little, but from then on I was feeling things again and suddenly labor didn't seem so boring.

Luckily, by about 2:00 I was ready to start pushing. My goodness, that hurt! At that point I was wishing that we had decided to go with another c-section instead of trying a VBAC, but it was a little late to make that switch. I really didn't think that I could do it, but as it turns out there's not really another option, so out she came. I only had to push for about half an hour, so I guess it wasn't really that bad, although at the time it felt like I'd been pushing for hours and that she was never going to come. The really great part about Eleanor's birth as compared to Abby's was that they gave her to me right away, and I got to hold her and see her right then, instead of it being 2 1/2 hours later. So for the next almost two hours, we just hung out in the delivery room as a family. They did all the measurements and everything, but mostly we just got to hold her and sing to her and all the fun stuff. We also got to eat, which was great since we hadn't eaten since 6:00 the night before. I don't think french toast ever tasted so good.

At 4:30 or so we moved up to the 11th floor and postpartum, and we've been here ever since. We're all pretty tired right now - Eleanor from being less than a day old, Adam and me from not really sleeping two nights in a row. I'd kind of forgotten that while you're in the hospital someone's stopping in every couple of hours to check you or the baby, and when you add in feeding the baby every 2 hours and then her not sleeping or crying for whatever reason, it makes for not a lot of sleep. But we're heading home this afternoon, so hopefully things will return to normal pretty soon.

Eleanor VanDuyne

Eleanor Joy VanDuyne was born on Friday, December 18th at 2:32pm. She weighs 6 pounds 7 ounces, is 20 inches long and has blond hair. Both mother and baby are doing great.

Getting ready for the Holidays

We haven't updated the blog in almost a month now so I thought I'd put something out there. We've been pretty busy getting ready for the holidays. We all put up the Christmas tree when we got back from Thanksgiving and Kristin's starting to decorate the house. Abby's not a big fan of the house decorations changing. It's been a week and she still asks about why the mantle is different every morning.

She's also learning to sing Jingle Bells.

We're toying with the idea of outside lights but we haven't gotten around to that yet. I feel like I'd be obligated to rake my leaves before that which is a definite con.

Some of Abby's new tricks include sliding down the stairs, 'on her bottom'. And helping mom organize the kitchen.

In other news, after almost 100 years of faithful service we finally lost our boiler to old age. It took a while, mostly just to pick the right contractor, but we have had a new one installed a few days ago. It turns out there are still quite a few contractors and manufacturers out there who work with steam. Once we gave someone the go-ahead they had the old one out and the new one in the next day, though it took them another day to get all the controls in.

It seems to be working pretty well now, though these things take some time to settle in.

The old boiler.

The new boiler.

Hopefully the new one will serve as well as the first.

We have the rooms painted now. We had a lot of trouble with the red and may need yet another coat. I'm not anticipating getting around to remaking the trim until next year.

The floors are mostly sanded as well. I've gotten the vinyl off of our bedroom and scraped most of the tar paper off as well. There's still a lot of glue but I'm hoping I can sand that off. If I can we'll probably stain and finish the floors this weekend.

Hopefully by next weekend we'll all be warm in our new rooms and preparing for Astronaut's arrival.

No one's going to freeze to death ... check
Everyone has a place to sleep ... check

That's a pretty good year I think.