Wrenn's Baptism

Wrenn's baptism took place on Saturday, March 23 at the 6:30pm service at St. Lorenz Lutheran Church.  Wrenn wore a vintage baby gown that was just gorgeous.  It was special garage sale find from a long time ago courtesy of Grammy Brechtelsbauer. 
 

 

 

We went up to the font with the whole family this time.  Ainsley was holding Mama's hand while Durham was being held by Daddy.  Durham was a little loud and squirmy for the first few minutes, bu settled down eventually.  Ainsley did her best to pull away from Mama for the first few minutes and then managed to slip away when Mama went to take Wrenn's new Bible from the pastor.  Fortunately, she went straight across the font to cousin Caitlyn who immediately grabbed her hand.  Whew! 

 

Wrenn was awake for the whole baptism and didn't cry at all when the water was poured on her head.  Immediately after the baptism, Mama passed Wrenn off to Aunt Mary who had driven from Arizona to see the festivities.  Having arrived from the furthest away, she won the privilege of holding her for the rest of the service.  This was also helpful for Mama and Daddy because watching three kids in the front row of church isn't the most pleasant experience.  Now we were down to just two to keep wrangled up. 

 

Durham managed to keep the wiggles in check until after the sermon, after which Mama and Daddy took turns watching him run sprints in the basement.  

Wrenn with her sponsors, Drew and Caitlyn. They are Wrenn's oldest first cousins.   



Wrenn's Grandma Roberts made the cake for the after party.  It was cherry-chip deliciousness! 

We had reserved three pews for the service and definitely filled them to the gills!  Grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, and second cousins were all there to celebrate Wrenn's special day.  What a blessed little lady! 

Afterward, a few of us went back to our house for cake and refreshments.  Wrenn got a few super special gifts and Ainsley and Durham got to run themselves ragged at yet another party. 

Pinterest Inspiration

I spend an inordinate amount of time on Pinterest.  I mostly use it for finding and storing recipes.  I usually make one or two pinterest meals/desserts per week.  Last week Ainsley and I made cookies inspired by a Pinterest pin. 

The inspiring pin. 

We don't get too serious about Pinterest ideas in this house.  I didn't even open the link to find a recipe or anything.  We just decided to make sugar cookies and dye some sugar with food coloring.  

 

Serious stirring of food coloring and sugar. 

After rolling the sugar cookies in the sugar, Ainsley couldn't resist playing in the sugar just a little.  I should warn you not to actually eat the food at my house.  It's probably been contaminated by germy, little hands. 

We never cut the petals into the cookies.  We were distracted by a hungry 1 month old. 

Ready to go in the oven. 

They aren't overly pretty, but Ainsley had a great time cooking! 

We offered a cookie to cousin Sara when she came to visit.  She politely ate one, regardless of their taste, looks, and germs.  She even gave horsey rides to the kids.  Love my family! 

Four Year Old Photographer Games

My lovely and active four year old told me she was bored today.  She always wants Mama to play pretend games.  There's nothing worse than playing pretend with a four year old. I'll do board games. I'll do arts and crafts.  I'll sit and do Barbie's hair. 

I cannot play pretend.  "I'll be the princess and you'll be the teacher and Durham will be the alligator!"  Ugh.  It lasts for maybe 30 seconds before I'm completely spent of imaginative energy. 

So when she came to me asking again to play pretend today, I had to come up with something else to distract her. My solution? The Photographer Game.

I taught her how to take pictures with my phone and told her to take as many as she wanted. I explained what a photographer was and how they work. We talked about props, focus, angle, and subject matter. I then let her loose upon the house. What follows is the fruits of her labor.

 

She learned that babies aren't always cooperative.

We discussed photographing non-human subject matter.  This was her first choice. 

Just another sibling refusing to cooperate and smile pretty for the camera.

She then went to her most trusted buddies. 

A nice shot of the laundry.

Picture of pictures?  Very fancy. 

That darn finger crept in on this one. 

Mid diaper change shot. 

She's getting a little abstract here. 

Toaster. 

I love how she incorporated a hair accessory for Nixon on this one. 

 

Sleepy sister. 

She spent nearly an hour walking around the house, setting up shots and deciding if the shot she took was acceptable.  It was an hour of near freedom for Mommy and sheer delight for a four year old.

 

 

Three Kids?

I always knew I could handle one child.  I've done enough babysitting in my life, worked enough with kids in multiple jobs, that I felt supremely confident in my ability to be a parent. 

Ainsley arrived and our life changed, but not so much that I felt overwhelmed.  I've always been a homebody.  I've known how much work it was to care for a baby.  The only difficult aspect of becoming a parent of one was simply determining how Tim and I would rebalance household responsibilities.  Eventually we figured it out and things were going well.

2009.  One child.  Living the easy life.

I then foolishly determined that two kids wouldn't be too much of a difference to our lives.  We already had all the things babies/kids require.  We had figured out how to adjust our lives to accommodate one baby.  How much harder could it be to add another?

I was wrong.  I'm not sure if everyone else goes through what we/I went through when we added Durham, but man was it hard.  Perhaps I had put too much effort into being a parent to Ainsley, but adding Durham meant that I had to take away attention from Ainsley to give to Durham.  Perhaps it was because Durham had colic for the first three months.  I wasn't just taking away attention from Ainsley, but sometimes having to completely ignore her for most of the day as I did everything in my power to try to soothe a screaming baby. 




Angry, angry baby.  Three months of angry.  Just look at the difference in the expressions on my face from the first picture to this one.  Oy. 

Naptime and she isn't even dressed yet. 
Who's supposed to be in charge of this one if I'm dealing with angry baby? 
How do you balance two? 

My poor girl was now being babysat by the television.  My poor girl was no longer going to be in dance, gymnastics, swimming class, valedictorian, student council, sports, clubs, church, EVERY ACTIVITY that would make her well-rounded.  Now I could barely leave the house for more than 30 minutes without stressing out.  Two kids was hard. 

So. Much. Mommy guilt.  SO. MUCH.

It got better.  I gave up my ridiculous ambitions and realized that the joy of having a sibling and someone to play with and interact with was something just as, if not more, special than working with my sweet girl every moment of the day to mold her into a genius athlete.


Ainsley loved to be with Durham before Durham could even roll over.

Who else knows what your life is like better than a sibling?

Someone to play with 24/7.

There's always someone your age at family gatherings. 

Then I had to wrap my head around three kids.  This wasn't so emotionally daunting.  I'm not overwhelmed with mommy guilt anymore.  The problem with three kids has been logistical. 

Our cars didn't fit three car seats.  We had to get TWO new cars in the same year.  We don't want to go back to car payments, so we had to do that with only the money in our bank accounts.  Ouch.  There goes gymnastics/dance/vacations for 2013.



Three carseats across a bench seat. 

We then had to deal with putting Ainsley and Durham into the same room.  Whoa.  Pulling my boy out of his crib to put him in a big boy bed in a room shared with his sister was...adventurous.  The adventure is continuing today as we are still trying to work that out.



It's crowded and impossible to keep clean. 

 Laundry and dishes have exploded.  I feel like I'm constantly dealing with feeding my kids.  Our solution?  Put pre-filled sippy cups in the fridge so that Ainsley can fetch the drinks and snacks by herself.  Turns out a four year old is way more helpful around the house and with a new baby than a 2 year old is.  No wonder it was so hard bringing Durham home.  I didn't have a four year old to help me.  :)

Put as many pre-filled sippy cups as we can in the fridge in the morning to save sanity later. 
Daddy sanity is saved by the beer seen just behind. 

It's already interesting leaving the house with our brood of three.  Who holds whom?  How do I hold the infant carrier and stop the other two from running into traffic all at the same time?  My solution so far is to not leave the house with all three at once.  We do whatever we can to divide up the kids between the two of us when running errands.  We tend to send one parent to run errands by themselves just to prevent problems that can occur in public.  I'm hoping that will change soon.  Our family feels...disjointed. 

Overall, bringing Wrenn home hasn't been a toll on my mommy guilt load.  I've already come to terms with the fact that my kids will need to be more independent and that we will not be able to afford to allow them to participate in every activity they would want.  Right now, it doesn't even matter. 

They have each other to play with.  No matter how much Durham and Ainsley fight, it's so worth it to watch them chase each other down the hallway or play flashlight wars in their newly shared bedroom. 

I can't wait for Wrenn to join their chaos.  Looking back, I realize that I would have so much more mommy guilt if my Ainsley didn't have her siblings.  Having a brother and a sister is so much more valuable than anything we've had to give up to accommodate our growing family.
 

Priceless.

Wrenn's Name

Choosing a name for our third child wasn't an easy task.  We immediately decided that any possible names from the first two kids were out.  We had to start completely over.
 
Tim seemed much more interested in choosing names than I did.  He had come up with a list by the end of summer.  I wasn't even in the second trimester yet.  We didn't know the sex of the baby even.  I absolutely refused to even think about names until we knew the sex of the baby.  Tim, on the other hand, had a list of about 10 names for either sex.  I wish I would have kept the list, but I didn't.  I remember wanting to burn it because none of the names were remotely acceptable. 
 
The one name on his boy list that I FLAT OUT REFUSED was Fielding.  Fielding?  Really? 
 
After that I really wasn't interested in talking about name.  Tim was apparently crazy.  How could I come to an agreement with him when he was starting at FIELDING? 
 
We found out the sex of the baby at 22 weeks on October 25th.  Once I knew we were having a girl, I felt much better.  At least Tim and I weren't going to have a fist fight over the name Fielding.  We both began texting possible names to each other.  Names high on my list were Wren, Charlotte, and Ivy.  Tim mentioned that Wren wasn't so bad. 
 
I took that as official agreement and began making plans in my head for baby Wren.  It was too perfect.  Robin and Wren. She would be my little birdie junior.  Tim even mentioned that we should use my middle name (Rachael) as hers.  Durham's middle name matches Tim's.  Ainsley's middle name matches my mother's.  Wren would need a special middle name as well. 

After a few weeks Tim began to have doubts about the name.  He wanted a name that had two syllables so it matched Durham and Ainsley.  He offered Wrenley, Wrenlyn, or Wrenna.  [Let the record show that after reading this post Tim was adamant that Wrenna was never an option.  It was Wrennen.]  I was MORTIFIED by the prospect of any of those. 

I simply told him that my heart was set and he couldn't change my mind.  I'd learned from the previous two pregnancies that he would defer to me in the hospital anyway.  I was going to stick to my guns with this one. 

We didn't even talk about it again until a couple of days before Wrenn was born.  Tim emailed me to offer up one last choice.  "How about Hadley?"  This was tempting, but I wasn't about to budge. 

By the time we got to the hospital, I offered to change it to Wrenn with 2 n's, knowing that Tim would like that better. 

So on February 19th, Robin Rachael Roberts gave birth to Wrenn Rachael Roberts. 

She's my little birdie. 

 

 

Read about Durham's name here.
Read about Ainsley's name here.

 

Durham is Two Years Old

Durham turned two years old on February 5th.  Our little man has quickly turned from being my baby to being a smart, feisty toddler.  It's hard to believe that last year he wasn't even walking yet. 

 

 

Some of his favorites: 

Food:  Hotdogs and pickles.  He's also quite a juice-a-holic.  This kid asks for something to drink every hour of the day.  If you don't answer in the way he wants, he'll SCREAM.  Ahh, two year olds.  He's also not very adept at using utensils yet.  We haven't even tried using big boy cups. 



He'll drink the juice in one gulp without stopping to breath.  Impressive, I know.

Television show:  Dora the Explorer.  He'll dance a celebratory dance if you turn it on.  He'll sing the opening song.  He loves to answer the questions. 

 

Movie:  Cars 1 and 2.  He now has Lightning McQueen shoes, clothes, bedding, and a Tow Mater talking truck.  He says, "I am SPEED!" often.  He can quote different parts of the movie.  If you think his celebratory Dora dance is something to watch, you should see the dance he does when "race car" comes on.  Whoa.  There isn't another movie that can capture his attention the whole time.  He will sit and watch these movies the whole way through. 

 

Activity:  Playing with Matchbox cars and the iPad.  He loves to line the Matchbox cars up, drive them along the wall in the hallway, and send them down the ramp he got for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa.  He's always asking to use the "puter" to play games.  His favorite iPad games also involve trucks.  He has a truck matching app that took him about a week to figure out on his own.  He wasn't interested in Mama teaching him how to match the cars.  He just wanted to flip the cards on his own and after a week began to discover they could be matched.   He also loves the play house app.  (He spends lots of time putting the rubber ducky in the toilet!)  He also plays with Ainsley's spelling app.  He uses his trial and error skills to place the letters in the right spots.  Tim and I are convinced he's a genius.  :)

 

Playing with a vehicle identification app.  The kid doesn't actually talk much, but he'll tell you what a forklift or concrete mixer are. 

 

Sayings: 

"Durham juice?" 

"NOOOOOOO!"

"Yummy good!"

"Delicious."

"Oh no!  Stuck!"

 

Jammies and Froggy. 

 

Stuffed animal:  Froggy wins.  He slowly became more attached to Froggy throughout the last year.  He likes to have Froggy when he sleeps.  Sometimes he has to have all of his stuffed friends with him for support.  It's awfully cute to see him coming down the hallway attempting to bring six stuffed animals with him when he wakes up in the morning.

 

Durham still is quite skeptical about shenanigans.  See the picture below.  His signature expression is the furrowed brow.  The shenanigans at hand in this picture?  Singing happy birthday. 



Why is everyone singing?  I'm not sure about these shenanigans. 

 

Durham is especially fond of leaving the house.  He doesn't get the opportunity to leave the house often.  He'll sit and look out the window often, hoping for a car ride.  We feel bad for him and load everyone up into the car just to drive around town for 20 minutes.  We typically hit up the covered bridge (TUNNEL??!!) for his ultimate amusement.  On one of these trips we passed a silver Aztek.  Durham said, "Mama's car?"  We had purchased a new car for me six months ago, but he remembered what my old car looked like. This kid LOVES cars and trucks.   

Planning his escape.

Freedom! 



Wrenn's Birth Story

This pregnancy was a little different than my other two.  With my first two children, I never really had contractions, Braxton Hicks or the real deal ones.  This time?  Braxton Hicks contractions started shortly after 24 weeks.  The Braxton Hicks contractions came in the evenings at first, but by 30 weeks I was having them once an hour during the day and multiple times an hour in the evenings.  They always seemed to relax and go away as I slept though.  There was even one evening that I had 10 contractions every hour for four hours and had to call the doctor for advice.  (Sleep it off!) 

We were scheduled for a c-section on Friday, February 22nd.  This was a perfect date for my schedule.  It was a day I had off of school.  It happened at a nice point in the unit I was teaching in my classes.  It fell on a Friday so Daddy would be able to take the weekend off to be with us.  And it was an even number.  I thought 2/22 seemed like a good birthday. 

I was able to plan out everything for Durham's birth, so I assumed it would work out with Wrenn as well.  I should have known that with all the Braxton Hicks, she couldn't wait until 39 weeks + 3 days. 

On Monday, February 18th, I taught all day.  I was having Braxton Hicks contractions all day, multiple in an hour.  Or were they not Braxton Hicks at this point?  Who knows?  They weren't painful, just an annoyance in trying to teach through.  I wasn't feeling well enough to eat lunch, but tried to nibble on some of my co-worker's offerings.  (Thanks, ladies!) 

When I went home, I tried to lay down to get the contractions to ease up.  They didn't.  They just became gradually stronger and just slightly closer together.  I was kind of confused about what to do.  I've never gone into labor before.  It had been four and a half years since my only birth class. 

What did I do?  I downloaded an app that kept track of contractions!  The app was amazing.  I lay on my side on the couch keeping track of contractions all evening.  They were 6 minutes apart, consistently. 

By 2am, they were still six minutes apart, but nothing that was going away.  They were strong enough that I couldn't sleep through them at all.  I was getting no sleep.  I decided to wake Daddy up to let him know I was uncomfortable.  I also decided that I couldn't go in to work on Tuesday.  I couldn't walk during the contractions anymore.  How could I teach?  Pause every six minutes? 

Daddy knew I couldn't stay home with Ainsley and Durham by myself so he sent in sub plans (which ended up not being necessary as Millington ended up having a snow day.) 

By morning the contractions were still 6 minutes apart, but much stronger than the night before.  They hadn't gone away through the night, which was what the doctor said Braxton Hicks contractions would do.  These were apparently the "real deal" contractions. 

I called the doctor's office at 8:30am when they opened.  They wanted me to wait until the contractions were 3 minutes apart.  Why?  I don't know.  I was a scheduled c-section.  There was no purpose to these contractions.  This wasn't necessary for my baby's birth.  I told the doctor that if I couldn't work, we needed to have the baby and start my maternity leave.  She told me that I could come in for monitoring, but couldn't make any promises that the c-section would be that day. 

I was beyond depressed.  Was I supposed to live through these contractions until Friday?  Not work until Friday?  Use up three maternity leave days with NO BABY?  Ugh.

We called one of our babysitters (thanks, Allie!) and headed up to the hospital.  I didn't have a single contraction as I packed up my stuff and got dressed.  This wasn't a good sign.  The moment I called the doctor the contractions stop?  That would be my luck. 

After we got into the car, the contractions started coming back.  They were strong enough to make me squirm in my seat.  I had quite a few in the car on the way to the hospital.  This was NOT how this birth was supposed to go.  Contractions are for OTHER mothers.  Not for me and my perfectly scheduled c-sections. 

We got to the hospital and were put in a room for monitoring.  I was without Daddy for the first 45 minutes as they got me ready and asked me all sorts of questions about my home life and whether I had control of my own money.  The contractions were just getting stronger and closer together.  This was a good sign.  Let's get this show on the road!

Then the doctor came in to check to see if I was dilated.  Why?  I don't know.  That wasn't the escape route.  I wasn't dilated at all, but the doctor thought this was because the baby was trying to exit through the scarred area from my previous two c-sections.  Seemed sketchy, but I didn't care. 

While we were monitored, nurses and student nurses came in to check on me and the baby.  After a while, I called down and asked for some sort of pain meds to take the edge off.  I couldn't breathe or lay or stand or continue living.  The contractions were 3 minutes apart and lasting for at least a minute each.  This was just too much drama for this Mama.  These contractions had no purpose besides annoying me and the baby.  The doctor listened to my request for pain meds and left the room to contemplate it.   

Finally a nurse came in to ask a question.  "Would it be alright for a few SVSU student nurses to watch your c-section?"

My response?  "Does that mean today or Friday?  If it's today, then yes."  She didn't know and left the room.

A little while later the doctor came back in to let us know we were going to have our c-section that afternoon after a change in shift.  It was nearly 11 am, and she wanted to wait until the next doctor came on shift.  Wonderful.  Just another hour or more of needless contractions.  I wasn't in a good mood.  At least there was an end in site. 

I had to sign all sorts of papers giving the doctor permission to basically do anything to me and my organs in cases of complications.  Whatever.   Give me the papers. 

A resident anesthesiologist came in to ask if he could do my spinal.  He seemed confident.  Sure.  Let's make this happen! 

After a little while, we were walking down to the operating room, pausing every few minutes so I could just wait out the contraction. 

When we got to the operating room, they asked me to "hop" on to the operating table and straddle it like a horse.  The table was chest high.  I just stood there, looking around at the 6 people buzzing about doing whatever they were doing.  I stood there awkwardly long enough for someone to notice that it was too high for a enormously pregnant woman having contractions to "hop" onto.  I got some help and we started prepping for the spinal.

The spinal. 

Oh, the spinal.  Let's just say it took about three minutes for each of my first two c-sections, and this one took almost an hour of poking.  Another hour of contractions.  One hour and three different anesthesiologists later, someone finally got it figured out.  I don't think I've every cried so much in my life.  There was SO MUCH POKING.  In my SPINE.  OVER AND OVER AGAIN.  And Daddy was sitting in the hall chatting it up with the doctor the whole time. 

They laid me back and my giant pregnancy baby belly flopped to the side of me.  The nurses stepped back to assess the situation.  They were confused as to how to proceed.  This always worries me.  Don't they do this so often that nothing should surprise them?  Why does my belly surprise them? 

They ended up taping my belly from its flopped position over to the right to get it to stay in the middle of my body.  It was so strange. 

Soon the doctor and daddy stopped chatting long enough to come in and get this party started.  By 1:39 pm, Wrenn had arrived. 



See the clock in the corner? 

 I was hoping for a play-by-play from the doctor, but he preferred to work silently.  I kept asking about how everything was going until the doctor just told me he was "working down here."  Okay, then.  It took all I had to try to be quiet. 

Daddy got to hold Wrenn first.  She weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce and was 20 inches long.  We were expecting a baby much bigger.  The doctor did tell me I had a rather large amount of amniotic fluid that made for my giant belly.  Wonderful.  And weird. 

Wrenn and Daddy in the recovery room.

 Soon we were all in the recovery room.  The nurse was utterly confused about technology and Daddy and I spent the time alternately catnapping and laughing at her failed attempts to turn off the incessant beeping.  We were in the recovery room for nearly two hours.  I felt a little bad that I didn't spend much time holding Wrenn at this point.  I was just too sleepy to think.  I needed the catnaps. 

Getting her feet printed.

 Soon we were moved to a room on the fourth floor to spend the next 48 hours in.  Our first evening was spent peacefully napping, staring at our beautiful girl, texting friends, and checking Facebook on my phone.  I also spent an inordinate amount of time examining each of her features to determine if she looked more like me or Daddy.  In the end, Wrenn definitely has Dad's toes and ears.  I then moved on to determine if she looked more like Ainsley or Durham.  This staring and talking about her features lasted hours. 


We spent most of the first day snuggled up together.  She likes to be held.  I like to hold her.  It works.

 The next day was all about visitors.  Aunt Chris was the first to come.  She had spent the night with A and D and had emerged unscathed.

With Aunt Chris

Grammy had flown back from Arizona early to help out with the kids and see her new grandbaby.  She brought A and D with the help of cousin Jenna. 



First meeting. 

 Ainsley was very excited to see Wrenn.  Durham mostly wanted to look out the hospital window in hopes of seeing a truck or school bus. 

With cousin Jenna

With Grammy

Sisters

 Later Aunt Sherri stopped by to get some baby snuggles. 

With Aunt Sherri

The next night was harder.  My morphine had worn off and the night nurse was a stickler for the "no holding the baby all night" rule.  We were ready to go home and do things our way.  And by "our way", I mean holding the baby all day and night.  Bassinets and cribs are for the birds!   



Laying sweetly in her bassinet.  She's so sweet, I just have to pick her up and hold her again.   

She has such long toes.  They kept grabbing my IV line and pulling on it.  Monkey toes. 

 The next day we got to go home.  We were discharged and got home at around 4:30pm on Thursday, March 21st. 


Going home outfit. 





Packed up and ready! 

Read Durham's birth story.